An automatic carriage stop for a Prazimat lathe. Jim Whetren comes to a stop. My first lathe was a Cowell ME 90, which was later followed by a Drummond flat bed in a search for greater capacity. Both of these lathes feature a dog clutch on the lead screw to enable the power traverse to…
BACKGROUND Sometimes, when making clock and other small parts, I forget to do a second operation before breaking down the setup. On other occasions, a part has to be machined with reference to a centre that is no longer there because I have replaced it, unthinkingly, with a hole. At other times, it seems…
A FACEPLATE FOR “UNCLE GEORGE” Eric Clark describes how he fitted a readily available faceplate to a Hobbymat MD65 lathe. Background George was my lifelong hero, mentor and much-loved Uncle. When he sadly died in 1997 my Aunt Ruth very kindly gave me the Hobbymat MD65 lathe that Uncle George had bought…
This time, lets do something useful to demonstrate the power of a simple CNC program. The first program is the test program used in the review of the KX1 in Trade Counter. All it does is mill a groove in a bar and then it drills holes along the bar using a simple repeat command.…
One of the main uses of CNC machines is the production of complex profiles. Profiles can often be programmed and milled faster than you can set up a rotary table. Once you have had a little bit of practice at programming, even one offs become quick and easy. In the Practical Engineer article on page…
This month, we move onto simple profiling starting with the G12 and G13 circle cutting cycle and continue with straight cuts using the G41 offset left command. This is quite a long program as it cuts five holes and then cuts the profile. In future articles, unless very short, I will limit the program to…
Many visitors to this website probably don’t have a clue about fitting a backplate to a chuck. This article aims to rectify that. At one time, my only workshop tool was an old second hand Myford. I did not even have a drilling machine. The lathe had to do everything. Although I purchased a brand new…
I am not yet retired (that hopefully is a long way off yet) but I have been buying tools and kits most of my life and now have a reasonably well equipped workshop, apart from the occasional tap and die or small tool. Prior to becoming editor of Model Engineers’ Workshop, I spent most of…
As readers will be aware if they have read Editors Bench that I am moved to Scotland. One of the problems faced was moving my workshop at the same time as the house but there was no outbuilding to store the tools and machinery in. So, a major priority was to get a suitable size…
There have been several articles in MEW dealing with the conversion of a manual milling machine to a CNC version. These have all been well written and informative; however, the information that has been omitted is probably as important to the reader as the information published. This is the Now I have converted it to…
