Hot lathe chips

[Joseph Noci 1Participant @josephnoci1]

Ok, only Aluminium chips, but, man! do they fly…

**LINK**

Where machining time is money – amazing stuff.

Have to excuse the Bombast a little..

Joe

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

In the toolroom alongside Joe the shaper’s machine, he had a large box of nuts, bolts, and a range of clamps.

As a quite young and clearly insufficiently experienced apprentice, I was helping myself to some bolts from the box, presumably because I was using the other shaper alongside Joe's machine.

Something landed on top of my head as I was bending down, and not realising what it was, I tried to brush it off with my hand. Silly me!

It was a very hot piece of swarf fresh off Joe's machine. It neatly wrapped itself around one of my fingers so I couldn’t brush it off.

Oh the pain, the pain!

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Blimey, you lot do go on about pain and misery! Any who've worked in the industry will have their tales of woe.

Yer don't gotta do this! Yer not doin' it fer pay! How many times I gotta tell yer?

Cut slow, cut light. Then you don't need to encase yourselves in armour and visors.

Edited By Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:13:04

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

I like to put oil on my shaper work and then watch it fire chips across the room that leave a very satisfying smoke trail like little rockets.

[Ross Lloyd 1Participant @rosslloyd1]

Posted by Richard brown 1 on 27/06/2018 08:43:30:
I like to put oil on my shaper work and then watch it fire chips across the room that leave a very satisfying smoke trail like little rockets.

yeah this is fun

Ross

[Anonymous]

Posted by Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:06:40:

Cut slow, cut light. Then you don't need to encase yourselves in armour and visors.

I'd rather suffer the odd hot chip than die of boredom waiting for a cut to finish.

Andrew

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:06:40:

Blimey, you lot do go on about pain and misery! Any who've worked in the industry will have their tales of woe.

Yer don't gotta do this! Yer not doin' it fer pay! How many times I gotta tell yer?

Cut slow, cut light. Then you don't need to encase yourselves in armour and visors.

Edited By Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:13:04

Haha. The worst one at work as an apprentice was assisting the welder. He could flick the glowing end of a welding rod down the open front of an apprentice's overalls without even looking up from the job.

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

Last week I stepped into my sandals just to go and lock up my workshop. I couldn't help doing a few more cuts on my big Harrison lathe. I then did a very silly hot swarf between the toes dance, which is a bit like tap dancing but with more swearing.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

When I was 14 I was signed up for the Arborfield Army Apprentice school, I had a couple weeks to wait before joining. I approached a local Engineering firm and was given a job at 21 shillings a week, My first job was to clean up the wash room which was filthy but i did it with Vim. Next I was given the job of drilling some big half inch plates and then tapping the holes with a pillar drill which reversed itself after tapping. Along side were two big Ward capstan lathes and one was making Fuse bodies and the other was making big fat washers, Again alongside was Milling machine and it was set up to horizontally cut stacks of half inch plates, boy did those chips fly and i could feel the concrete floor shake as it started to cut. The chips came off blue and they put screens around the machine to stop the ships flying, guess who got the job of cleaning up.

Clive

[thaiguzziParticipant @thaiguzzi]

Posted by Joseph Noci 1 on 25/06/2018 22:52:20:

So much Talk about Chips – Grab a Pint and watch some Porn…

**LINK**

Joe

Superb! Thanx for sharing.

[thaiguzziParticipant @thaiguzzi]

Posted by Hopper on 26/06/2018 00:37:43:

Gets real interesting in the tropics where thongs (flip-flops) are standard safety footwear. Red hot swarf landing on sensitive feet is not that much fun. But its the bits that get between your toes and stick there so they don't dislodge when you shake your foot that really hurt. All this standing one one foot shaking the other mostly seems to happen when taking that critical final cut under careful hand feed of course.

SOP here in my workshop. And swimmies. And nothing else. Topless

Wear an apron though for nasty off hand grinding and mig welding…

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 27/06/2018 11:54:37:

Posted by Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:06:40:

Cut slow, cut light. Then you don't need to encase yourselves in armour and visors.

I'd rather suffer the odd hot chip than die of boredom waiting for a cut to finish.

Exactly. Why spend ages tickling off metal when you can cut it. That's got to better for the machine too, if that matters to you.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Make the lathe do the work, that's what I say

I decided this 2mm cut was too feeble, so had to crank it up to 3mm…

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

Posted by vintagengineer on 26/06/2018 20:43:38:

Wait to you get one on your todger!

Posted by mark costello 1 on 26/06/2018 17:40:08:

If One gets up Your nose You get the smell along with the pain. On Your lip seems to be the pain apex.

Don't want to even think of that.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by mark costello 1 on 27/06/2018 21:35:53:

….

Don't want to even think of that.

Anyone who worked in the industry for any length of time will have taken hits in most or all of those places – I know I have.

Eventually you realise it's just unnecessary and pointless – at least some of us do.

[JonParticipant @jon]

Posted by Mick B1 on 27/06/2018 08:06:40:

Cut slow, cut light. Then you don't need to encase yourselves in armour and visors.

Difference is some of us want the job done this century.
Intermittant turning will still come off warm ran slow and light, more so if hardened steel!

Precisely the point Neil if its not stressing the mechanics.
At the end of the day its a tool and tools break are replacable just like any other. Could balance that out over 12 months by taking your time and literally doing 1/32 nd of the work acomplished no joke.

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Nice lathe, Neil.

Having the ability to drag this topic further from its original title, at some time around the 50’s, a likeable old chap called Fred joined the toolroom and put in charge of the 24” shaper. There was a story, perhaps invented to impress us apprentices that he had once worked for RR.

Already in his 70’s, he was heavily into chewing tobacco. Some of the lesser respectful, suggested that he had an A/H at both ends. Even worse (?), especially for the labourer who had to sweep up everyone’s swarf, he regularly aimed his excess spittle into the pile of chips building up in the guard surrounding the business end of the shaper.

Spittle-quenched chips of blue?

So that I haven’t killed off Ross’s thread altogether, here’s a rhetorical question …

Is the (lathe/shaper/milling) tool cutting or pushing?

Sam

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Jon on 27/06/2018 22:49:04:

At the end of the day its a tool and tools break are replacable just like any other. Could balance that out over 12 months by taking your time and literally doing 1/32 nd of the work acomplished no joke.

I doubt that insert will last as long doing ten times as many 0.25mm(!) cuts as recommended in the lathe's manual.

Even a mini lathe will take 2mm cuts all day long and my mini-lathe manual says 0.1mm!.

Neil

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 27/06/2018 23:35

Even a mini lathe will take 2mm cuts all day long and my mini-lathe manual says 0.1mm!.

Neil

Now, that might depend on the feed rate as well as the material and the cutter. Probably not a good idea if running slow on a speed-controlled motor while cutting a large diameter workpiece!

But I do agree that a decent workload on the tool is necessary to maximise the amount of material it will remove in its lifetime, or between sharpenings.

Also have to remember that most in the UK set an actual cut depth, but many, particularly over the pond, have the ‘cut setting indication’ as the reduction in diameter for a lathe (yeah, they have different views for lathes and mills – and I do sometimes wonder what they report when taking circular cuts with a CNC machine). So we have to be a bit specific when making claims.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by not done it yet on 28/06/2018 06:34:37:

…

Also have to remember that most in the UK set an actual cut depth, but many, particularly over the pond, have the ‘cut setting indication’ as the reduction in diameter for a lathe…

Not necessarily – popular UK machines like the Warcos and others calibrate the crossslide on diameter. Means you have to dial off twice the value when milling in these lathes. I think the Colchester Student I often use down the railway shed is the same.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

I did say ‘most’ and unless someone can quote actual figures to disprove my statement, I will stand by my post. And that many in the UK have lathes which dial in half the cut for the value indicated.

That, I think, indicates that the numbers of each may not be so wildly different, but that the ‘real cut’ indicators are the more prevalent type found in the UK.

[Author]

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