I had noticed this hippy/biker/old coot type guy shuffling through the factory on numerous occasions. He had matching tie dyed headband and tank top shirt which he wore with bib overalls and really big custom made logging type boots. His beard would have allowed him a place as a roadie for ZZ Top. I mean, how could you miss this guy? Later I found out his name was George.

I had been moved over from the big Cincinnati Gantry mills to the White Sundstrand OM-1′s (5 axis milling machines). They had these prehistoric Swinc controllers about the size of a refrigerator on them. George had been assigned to train me on the Swinc control. He got me going fairly easily since the machine was all EIA code and I had run hundreds of similar machines. A few days later, George saw me struggling which is a key word for my being hopping mad jumping up and down and swearing a lot. He shuffled over like Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural. “What seems to be the trouble over here?” says Mr. Natural. “This %$^&( Machine is the biggest piece of $&*))*&% I have ever seen in my whole &*#$^ life, that’s what is going on over here.” sez I. “Oh, well that’s because you aren’t treating it right, you have hurt its feelings.” George said matter of factly. “Huh?” stunned. “It is like a beautiful lady, you have to treat her with respect and dignity,,,man.” Then George went to the control and stroked it with the palm of his hand in a nurturing way while he whispered something to it which I could not hear. He turned to me and said “try it now.” “Yeah, right, I am not going to buy into this $#@& at all. “Try it”. So I pressed the Cycle Start button and the machine did exactly what it was supposed to do. I had tried the Cycle Start button at least five different times before George came over. It never did anything let alone produce a good part.

20 years later I teach machinists at a Technical College. George sometimes comes in to be a guest lecturer. He always tells this story. Once he does, my students suddenly understand why every time they see me run a program, I stroke the control and whisper nice things to her. Hey, machines have feelings too, man.

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You’ll also get a little humor along the way – something that is usually missing from most machining-related videos. What stones do you have in your toolbox? Feel free to add your “two cents” by visiting the forum topic related to this video.

Enjoy!

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Hello again readers.

You have a gleaming green lathe, you have a solid workbench made just for it. Let’s put them together. This article will walk you through the process of leveling your lathe.

First you must buy beer. Without beer you may have a hard time getting the guys to come over to help you lift the lathe up onto the bench. The general rule is to buy two beers per helper. If you buy more than two beers per helper the helpers get all wobbly and at the end of it you still have a lathe on the floor. If you buy less than two beers the helpers will tire easily and be afraid of injuring their backs. “I have a bad back” is code for more beer is required.

With the crew sufficiently liquored up direct them to lift the lathe form the floor onto the bench. This is an activity you should direct rather than participate in since lathes tend to be heavy and you don’t want to hurt your back. Besides, you bought the beer. Once the lathe is in place excuse the helpers and get to work.

Place the lathe on the bench in such a way that the controls on the headstock (left end) hang over the front of the bench. Using a square pushed up against the lathe bed, leadscrew or ways, measure to the front of the bench and make it equal near the headstock and the foot of the lathe. Locate the attachment holes. Stick a Sharpie marker down inside each of the holes to mark the location on the bench. After the required hole locations are marked push the lathe back towards the wall so you can drill the holes.

Many people use a paddle bit (correctly called a spade bit for those who knew what a paddle bit is) in an electric drill. For those seeking a spiritual cleansing, a brace and spur bit are the weapons of choice. So go drill the holes. I can’t believe I even had to say that. Surely just mentioning the drill and bit would be enough wouldn’t it? A writers life is filled with such indignities.

This seems like a good time to scoot the lathe back over the holes. Alrighty then. The lathe is over the mounting holes in the bench. Time to go to Harbor Freight and buy a horseshoe shim assortment. Then go across the street to Home Depot and buy some nice grade 2 or grade 4 bright bolts that are just small enough to enter the holes and long enough to go through a washer, the lathe foot, the bench, another washer and a lock washer and STILL have enough length left to mount the nut on. Split lock washers with a plain nut are fine although flat washers with a Nylock nut would be better.

Back from the store? Good. Mount the bolts in place and torque the nuts to the snug setting on your ratchet. You have now completed step one Lathe Mounting.

So why even bother to level your lathe? Does the Navy level the lathes on their tenders which will be rolling through the waves and never be level again unless they are in port on a windless day and not even then? Yes they do. Why do they? Because only by leveling the machine can you remove any twist that might be in the bed. It really isn’t about level it is about twist.

If you are fortunate enough to have a lathe with prismatic (incorrectly called Vee ways) then you will also need parallels to get the level above the prismatic way. I suggest you buy a couple of lathe toolbit blanks tall enough to get the level above the vee.  Toolbits are ground to very close limits but you should lightly stone them anyway just on principle. If you are a poor guy like me you might have a lathe with flat ways and leveling becomes much easier. That is the ONLY good thing about flat ways except being able to build bed attachments easier but that is another story.

About levels: Buy, rent, borrow or steal the very best machinist level you can lay your hands on as shown here.

Good Chinese machinist levels are available for less than $75 on eBay. You will also need a good 2 foot carpenters level. What is a “good” carpenters level? Well, surely there could be no better level than a good old cast iron level made by Stanley, Lufkin or Millers Falls before 1950. Before you go moaning about how they are not available go look at eBay. There are hundreds of them on there. Buy a decent one and not a bent one. Take it to your local machine shop and have them grind it flat and parallel. You should do this because you will then have a very fine BAP (Big Ass Parallel). The level will cost less than $20, the grinding will cost less than $50 and for $75 you will have a BAP that would cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars if you bought it new. In addition, because the level is 70 years old it has had lots of time to stabilize. When you have it ground it will stay straight and parallel way past your lifetime. You cannot say that about the more expensive new one you would have to buy. A BAP is a tool you will use for many things throughout your machining career. It will also draw ooh’s and Ahhh’s from the crowd when you pull it out of the roll away tool box and place it on a little silk pillow made just for it. Now you can bridge long distances with the BAP and lay the precision level on top of it. This will essentially give you a very long, very precise level.

During this phase do not tighten the nuts, just snug them. Lay the BAP along the ways left and right, to see that the headstock is higher than the foot. If it is not shim the headstock end higher with the horseshoe shims. Lay the BAP across the ways front to back near the headstock and start shimming with the horseshoe shims until you can see no error in the center vial. Again lay the BAP along the ways and shim the foot of the lathe until you have attained level that way. One more time lay the BAP across the foot of the ways and again shim to level. You might think you are done now but no, you are not. We have now completed step two Rough Leveling.

Break out the machinist level. A good one will measure as close as .0006 per foot per graduation. That is nigh onto perfection. Lay the super level across the lathe ways at the headstock as shown.

Tighten the nuts on the headstock end. I use a torque wrench set to 50 foot pounds torque. Add whatever shims are necessary to get the alignment to within a couple thousandths per foot. Yes, oh yes, this is a royal pain, but it will pay huge dividends down the line. Again, lay the level along the ways as in this photo.

Raise or lower the tail of the lathe by adding or removing shims until you are within a couple thousandths per foot. Now lay the level on the back way just to make sure it also says level within a couple of thou. If it is close do not alter the shim. Finally lay the level across the foot of the lathe like this
and shim to a couple graduations on the level. You have now completed Step Two of this process. Your lathe is already straighter than 99% of all the lathes in amateurs shops. Now we will continue on to make it a thing that songs are written about.

Again we lay the level across the bed at the headstock. Use a long ratchet, breaker bar or torque wrench to tighten one of the bolts enough to bring the machinist levels vial to zero. Do exactly the same at the foot of the lathe. Now use the BAP or just the machinist level if it is long enough to diagonally measure the bed as in the following three photos

It should be perfect, if not, back up a few steps and get everything closer. Again set up the BAP or level this time from headstock front to tail end rear. It should be perfect. You have now completed leveling your lathe.

I know this has been awful. It is a lot of work. It is absolutely worth it. If you have problems with alignment in later articles, then it is because of improper leveling. If you do not level the sucker, you will always have to fight and fart around with alignment. Do the work it is worth it. For those of you who did not hear that last sentence here it is again. Do the work, it is worth it.

Barry

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Machines are expensive. Dust is abrasive. Don’t believe me? Go get that old motorcycle helmet that Aunt Beunice gave you for your 16^th birthday after you bought that 125cc Honda Combat Wombat with your paper route money. Yeah, the snazzy lime green one. See all that dust on the face shield? Give it a good rub and telephone me to tell me it didn’t scratch it up.

You keep your calipers and micrometers in a toolbox right? Those baseball cards that Grampa gave you go into his footlocker right? You keep your money in a bank right? So what do you do with your machinery? If you are like ninety nine percent of amateur machinists you let your machinery sit out in the open, unprotected, cold and lonely.

Next time you are using foul language to describe to a friend how your machine wouldn’t hold the tolerance you wanted it to, look back at how you treated the poor machine. You oughta be ashamed. Why would you put the bench grinder where it would spit abrasive particles onto the lathe? You mean you did woodworking in the same room as your metal machines are stored? Don’t you know that wood chips will soak up all the oil on those precision surfaces and make them rub together? The precision of your machinery is based on the wear that occurs to the ways and other sliding surfaces. So when you are done hanging your head, when your lip stops quivering, I will help you pay your penance. Even you can seek forgiveness at the chapel of the recovering machine abuser.

The only way to fix up your Karma is to make covers for your machinery. Yeah, a lathe cozy. This sounds dumb until you think about it. Like “Don’t run with the scissors,” sounded dumb until you either thought about it or found out why people told you that. This is the same, you can learn the easy way through logic or you can poo poo the idea and pay when your machines will no longer do what they should. I finally got sick of waiting for February 30^th which is when my wife said she would finish my equipment covers and asked her to show me how to sew fabric. This she was perfectly willing to do. It was not that hard to learn. We measured the extreme length, width and height of my Atlas horizontal milling machine and she made a sort of toaster cover shaped thing that fit like snot because the mill was not a perfect cube. Scratching my head I thought up a better way. That is what this article is about.

I took a cheap blue tarp and threw it over the mill. Everywhere there was looseness in the tarp got a row of pins. Eventually the tarp fit it snugly. I cut away all the excess tarp and cut nice and even around the base. Voila! We had made a pattern. We took it into the sewing room and laid cotton duck (fabric) down on the floor and laid the “pattern” over it. Dang! The fabric was too narrow. No Problem, We sewed on an extra ten inches and now it was wide enough. We pinned the pattern to the material, traced around it with a Sharpie marker and cut it out. She showed me how to sew the seams  which was WAY easier than I thought. I had her sew (hem) a piece of clothesline around the base of the cover and it was done. Yay! It fit all the curves and odd surfaces of the mill. It literally was a custom made cover.

Next came the Atlas 7-inch shaper. I decided to document the process and do all of it by myself.  Here are photos of the goofy shape that needed a cover

It is an ungainly thing to try to cover.

Under the tarp it looked like an ostrich trying not to be seen.

See that big flap ‘o nonsense hanging off the front? That is the excess we are trying to get rid of. Gathering all the excess material together then pinning it to isolate extra fabric leads to rows of straight pins pinching off whatever you want to get rid of like this.

Once the excess is pinned you can carve away the extra fabric OUTSIDE the pins with scissors leaving you something better looking like this.

Be sure to write on it before you take it off so that the outside is obvious. Otherwise the seams will show and your buddies will laugh even harder at you. When you trim away the bottom of the cover level with the floor it suddenly looks like a machine cover.

Now the pins can come out and you have a pattern. Lay this on the fabric you have chosen. You can see how I had to add material to get the width problem mentioned above solved.

Trace around the pattern and cut out the fabric. Sew up the seams and sew in the cord around the bottom. You now have custom fit machine covers. In this last photo you can see the incognito shaper on the left before the cord is sewn in around the bottom and the incognito milling machine on the right with the cord sewn in. The cord gives the cover a finished appearance so don’t be an idiot and leave it out.

That’s it! If you have a question or you want to leave a comment please click the “Join the forum discussion on this post” link below to log into the forum topic tied to this post.

- Barry

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Norman Newguy: In the Beginning

by Barry Young

While perusing You Tube one day you quite by accident come across an intriguing video of a model steam engine whizzing away. Meh! You move on. Something in the back of your noggin keeps reminding you of the video. It just keeps coming back. “Honey!” you yell through the house, “Where was that one video that had that one thing on it on You Tube?”


Yes my friends, it can start just that easily. Nobody with more than six neurons is immune. Just such occurrences can lead otherwise decent, intelligent and family loving people to disregard their families drain their bank accounts and do stupid things they would normally never do. Yes! It is the insidious beast Amateur Machining I am talking about. Only the heinous shutterbug and crack cocaine addiction bite deeper. If you have ever uttered the amateur machining mantra “So THAT’S how they do that”, I am afraid it is far too late for you. You are smitten. You will only level out after losing a family or two and several good jobs. Don’t laugh, I am talking to you.


Let us assume you have decided to take a trip down the slippery slope. There is no talking you out of it and no intervention service exists for amateur machinists. Where to start? Not where you think. Every book says rush out and buy a lathe. Bah! Before you do that lets juggle some numbers, it may be your last chance to see your kids. My divorce started when the wife stubbed her toe on a lathe chuck. I do not know what she was thinking going barefoot in the bedroom but she blamed me nonetheless.


To the numbers.
$800   Lathe
$100 Lumber for lathe bench
$200 Drill press
$500 Minimill
$2000 Measuring tools
$13 Material, one piece, 3 feet long from Home Depot
$56,514.26 Haas CNC Vertical Machining Center


That totals a whopping over 60 thousand dollars to get started. Add to this having to find a new place to live when you get kicked out of the house plus travel costs to see your kids between projects.


For those of you still reading we will now get a bit more serious. I have tried to save those of you I was able to.


A cheap drill press from Harbor Freight is the first thing to buy. Also some crappy drills from same vendor. If after drilling some holes in anything you can lay your hands on you still want to pursue this hobby then you are one of the truly shining examples of machininghood and we can proceed. If the junk drills do not deter you by making you feel the true level of frustration this hobby has to offer then you have the requisite stick-to-it-ive-ness. You are on your way to becoming a steely eyed master of metal. The pure among you will try every belt setting on the drill press. You will use nearly every drill and drill nearly everything that is not nailed down. If you back out now you will not have killed the Roth IRA and your family will welcome you back into their open arms tears in their eyes. If not, then come with me friend as we delve deeper into the world of amateur machining.


Your first major machine purchase MUST be a metal lathe. It is called the prince of machine tools for a reason. NO a wood lathe will not work. NO you cannot convert the drill press into a lathe. NO you do not want a milling machine first. NO you cannot start with a five gallon charcoal foundry and a wheel from a 74 Pinto wagon. That is only for the most pure among us who willingly choose to spend six months of toil and learning to avoid buying a sub $1000 Grizzly lathe. Do not even go there. If you do, you venture forth alone. Get thee to a Grizzly catalog or website or showroom and buy thee a nice machine at a great price and bask in its green glow. This for you is prudent. Be not tempted by old Atlas and South Bend equipment on Craigslist that is for later. Right now you need a machine you can lubricate turn on and enjoy. You needeth not the hassle of restoring an antique. In the beginning you need to cut metal, not shine it. Buy as large a lathe as you can afford. That is THE rule when lathe shopping.


Before the truck shows up with the shiny new appliance, you will have cleared an area of honor for the thing to sit. The area is dry and has good lighting. The little cabinets that come with small lathes are not tall enough and I am a short guy. Soooo. The bench will be built using stout 4X4 legs with 2X6 aprons bolted through the legs (drilled on your HF drill press). Another set of horizontal 2X4 bracing goes around the bottom about 6 inches off the floor to hold the legs steady. On top is a piece of 1 ½ inch flooring plywood from Home Depot. The more skilled craftsmen will let the plywood into the top so the edge does not show.


While waiting for the truck to show up spend as much time as possible with the family. They might just decide to keep you. The big day arrives. The truck shows up. Stop that jumping up and down. Try to act “professional”. Act like this happens all the time and you are bored. Be cool. When the driver asks for your signature say something like “whatever man”. Nobody needs to know that you are bursting inside. Stifle that grin now.  Do not let the driver go until you have opened the box. If any castings are broken you want to inform him BEFORE he leaves. Once the driver leaves you can go into the bathroom and lock the door and jump up and down till you have that out of your system. Regaining your detached persona go and unpack the machine. There are many little packets of fasteners and such. On packages like this the manufacturer hides pieces and parts all over so be careful. One time I had to chase the garbage truck to retrieve a piece of Styrofoam packing that had a follow rest in a little pocket. Check all the packing materials and retain them for at least a week. The manual goes into a file folder in a file cabinet in the house. Make a copy of it for out in the shop. Yes, I know they are almost always available at the manufacturer’s website but the one time you need it the server will be down. Been there. So stop sassing and go make a copy of the manual. Sheesh!


Get a friend or three to help you lift the machine up onto the shiny new bench you built. Bolt it down and finish the assembly of the wonderful thing. Step back, take a look and soak up the aura of this beautiful thing. It will never look this good again. If you want a picture now is the time. After use the paint will be scratched and oil will leave little trails everywhere so get while ya can.


Next time we will move on with leveling, alignment and initial power up of your glorious machine. Meanwhile you can write a letter to your kids.

Barry

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