> After doing all this I looked on Ebay and found that you can buy these quite cheaply, Ah well.

Never a good idea to do that

Neat in the execution. I assume Stepperhead is continuing to earn its keep then?

Neil

Some notes on these type of centres.

I have one with needle bearings in, a commercial one actually made by Jones and Shipman and TBH it's the worst centre I own, if it wasn't so handy being low profile I'd bin it.

The problem is unless you can control the bore and press fit of the bearing very accurately you cannot control radial movement. The J&S one when used leaves a finish akin to fine knurling every time and if I swap to another centre it cures it.

Even a simple centre with two deep groove bearings has control over radial load as when axial load is applied it pushed the balls back akin to an angular contact bearing.

The Locatelli production wood lathes have a hydraulic tailstock in that as the tool moves towards the headstock it reduces pressure so the long wooden 'spindle' it id turning isn't under too much pressure and you finish up wearing it

Unfortunately this means they often have too much pressure on at the start of a cut and they burn bearings out quite a lot.

After a while we changed the front bearing from radil bearing to angular contact thinking this would cure the problem but all it did was to extend the life by a few months.

Then we swapped the angular contact to a taper roller which was a bad move as not seen a centre for repair in the last 4 years

Alan

That RGD live centre looks quite neat so thanks, I thought it was the replaceable points that were on eBay but I could not find any.

Relying on the (albeit very high) precision fit a needle roller bearing for a spindle carrying work being machined does not seem like good engineering practice but as you have found, it does work in practice!

I have an MT2 live centre with its front bearing being a crowded roller type, however the inside diameter of the outer race has the benefit of being adjustable.

Ian P

Michael

Not your fault, but the link is almost 'pointless'.

I probably read that thread when it was current, now however with the passage of time, the images that would have allowed it to make sense do not appear.

I will stick to the live centres I already have.

Ian P

I find a live centre an invaluable tool but if you want a really accurate job and no doubts a fixed centre can't be beaten, it's just a bit more messy

For completeness … here are some details of how Gepy does it.

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apologies for the typo in my previous post

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MichaelG.