upgrades

[holsgo]

More details:
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Tap sizes at 3/8 16 for the holes tapped to hold the bearings to the steady/follower arms. These are just bearings from a local bike shop. Nothing special and they were $2 per.
5/16 18 for the bolts that hold the steady/follower to the steel carriage.

You can see here, in this last pic that the design particularly is sized so that the bit, when in the tool holder and the table height adjusted to put the bit dead center on the spindle gives the steady/follower arms plenty of space to contact the item being turned.

[holsgo]

Moved on to finally mounting the cross slide on the table itself. Now that the table is supported (previous pics) and there is no deflection the mounting is pretty straightforward.
First centered the vise under the bit. I centered both the x and y directions to be approximately 1/2 way of travel. Marked, drilled and tapped the iron table with 5/16x18. The x travel is parallel with the miter slot.
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Checked the y travel by chucking a v groove bit and having it ride on the inside of the vise itself to check alignment.
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Lastly, milled a piece of aluminium. Used setting N at 2800 with a few plays with the feed rate. I have a feed and speeds chart but I'm estimating my feed rate a bit. HTC tools carbide end mill which I must say is fantastic for the price. Find on ebay for the 1/4 3 flute.
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I must say it cuts well. But, I do have to listen to the machine and feed lubricant which helps the cut. I might be the only guy playing with some of these things right now but maybe someone will want to make use of this stuff. At least I know it works.

[holsgo]

Here I am back again with some pics of a project I was working on. First is what my end goal was which is a support which caries a bearing which also fastens to the way tubes as well as can be a versitile steady rest when turning long slender spindles of wood. Steady rest isn't done yet but I do use 2 of these, mounted to the way tubes to stabilize an arbor during a milling function.
Here is the end game:
The base of it has a 1 3/4 pipe clamp attached to a hollow rod. In that rod sits the threaded rod with a bearing mounted to the end. A keyway is cut to allow for the set screw and give it a channel to ride it during adjustments.
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Closeup of the parts.
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I doubt you would want to make something just like this but it's the cutting of the keyway and the turning down of the threaded rod you might be interested in. Both were done on the shopsmith making it a pretty good grinding station.

[holsgo]

Here's how things were done.
First, all of these pics are after the fact. Meaning the part was made and lessons learned. All of the actual grinding was done with a live center. This is just a mockup after the fact.
Here is the Dremel.
This first pic shows the threads on the dremel which allow attaching of holders. I made a holder for the compound out of 3/8 thick aluminium with a 3/4 12 TPI thread. This block is then clamped into the jaws of the vice and can be controlled by the x and y of the cross slide.
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Use the cross slide to control the dremel along it's travel. I locked the spindle in place by simply hooking up the belt sander on the other end. Use the table height adjustment and the xy to control the abrasive disk which is cutting the keyway. Take light passes and be sure to use the backed disks not the ceramic cutting disks usually found with dremels.
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[holsgo]

Now, I'm showing these a bit out of order. I did the following operation first and then cut the keyway. Stupid of me to post it this way but oh well.
I first had to remove about 1 inch of the threading on this rod to allow the piece to be cut and drilled to mount a bearing. I used a grinder setup. Ran the Shopsmith on slow (jigsaw range). As you can see (and again the setup did include a live center) I mounted the grinder to be able to sneak up on the work. Taking passes from right to left, adjust depth, and left to right I was able to very cleanly remove material.
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Now I don't have a metal lathe obviously and I am now hoping to get one. But, in spite of the Shopsmiths limitations (and inspiration from Farmer) the Shopsmith can be a great grinding station. I probably should get some pics of the cross slide in a position facing the chuck so I can show the dremel as a cutoff tool and effective grinding from other angles. Is anyone interested in this stuff? I'm talking to myself I think.

[holsgo]

Funny. I've been going over a motor for a metal lathe with you guys in another thread. I mentioned there that I needed to make a countershaft before I could test the motor correctly. So, here's why. The one on the right is badly scored. Abuse with no grease in the bore. Stupid. In the end, using the process above I was able to toolpost grind this .875 shaft to .742 with a flat shoulder. Reassembly is next. But, the shopsmith can do some cool stuff. It takes time though and as you get close (within .03-.04 maybe more) to your final dimension STOP grinding. Cool the piece with ice to check the dimension cold. The heat from grinding can send you below your cold dimension if you don't check. Just a tip. Use a file with lube to get to the final.
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[JonH]

very cool mods! any updates?

[holsgo]

Sorry for the delay. Tons of updates, most of my time though has been spent on an actual metal lathe and milling machine.
But, as I mentioned elsewhere recently, I still get a huge amount of use out of the shopsmith.