[GaryCorlew]

Well Ken, I got the plans from a german site. I don't remember if the link is in adobe's thread or not but it is on the zone somewhere, so for the most part I used those plans. I found out after looking at them that some of the fits were interference fits so I knew that that was not going to work very well. I started editing some of the parts and it was starting to take longer to fix the problems than I wanted to spend on it(the parts were converted from acis (*.sat) files) So I kind of trashed the whole idea of fixing the problems and started fresh, but I printed all of the converted files as a guide, and as far as the center height, well I just built it. My boss has a jet lathe I don't know the actual size but I think its around 15 x 60 I measured it once and it was about 3" from the top of the cross slide to the center of the chuck, I also measured a harbor freight one(one of the mini's) and it also was almost 3" so I am assuming that as long as it is less than 3" it should be good to go. What I will do when my CFO (wife) allows me to spend some more money(I built a cnc router spent about 4,000 on that) I am going to buy a lathe. Even though I was hired as an IT guy I run the cnc milling machine most of the time at work and I also run it at night for more money. When I get a lathe I will just mill out a spacer to go under the indexer to make it the right height and then my plan is to drill and tap the cross slide and bolt it down.

[Ken_Shea]

I had gotten those same plans some time back and began to convert them to English but that got old real quick

I will say that Dieter does some beautiful work.

Thanks for the info on the center height Gary

Ken

[Adobe Machine]

Dzastor, that nickname fits ! Not many people would survive that hard of collision and live..Whew, to crush a body that hard and live to tell about it !
I lost .700 inches on this last wreck, could not imagine losing 8 or more !


Lucky13: Yes, the LeBlond as been a good lathe,got it at auction in the '80s was 5 years old at the time. Used in production untill 2002 when I sold my shop, but the purchasers only wanted the CNC equipment, so I kept it and the Pratt Whitney. Did have a 17 inch chuck come apart ( operator was running it way too fast ) and do a little superficial damage under the chuck.
Just before I started the Pratt-Whitney Lathe conversion the electric brake on the LeBlond blew up, after calling for the price of a new unit, I quickley decided that we could not afford to go new and factory, so I fabricated a hydraulic disk brake using a wrecking yard rotor ,disk caliper and master cylinder. The disk and pully hub for the elec. motor were machined, then located the caliper. ( see pictures ) I did extend the sheet metal away from the lathe using 1 1/2 tubing, then hinged it for access. The foot portion of the brake extends the full length under the drip pan, made out of some 2" round tubing and welded together, pivioted at each end into the stands of the lathe.Works good, total cost under $80.00.
I have also installed a new Acme screw and nut for the cross slide, and made a better way to oil the nut and acme screw.
Yes, the ways are replaceable, and a small fortune new.In the late 90's I removed them and had a grinder in Phoenix surface them..He told me that they were some of the hardest steel he had ever ground. On the backside they took less than .003 to clean and on the front side way, .004 to clean. This is a factory reccomended repair, and when I reinstalled them, re-levaled the lathe and set the tailstock, there was little ,if any taper over 55 inches. The grinder charged me $200.00 ( $100.00 / way). The saddle has adjustment pads for wear. I use a Dial indicator on both axis, and can hold tenths if I concentrate..The machine produces a nice finish,even when we used it to turn shafts up to 18". Hope that helps your evaluation of the one you are looking at.

Mr Gary Corlew..Yes we did get the file open and thank you very much, the German puzzel is being revealed. I have about half the G gode generated and edited. Thanks for the pictures, that answers more questions !

Pictures of the LeBlond lathe brake retrofit

Adobe (old as dirt)

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

AM, The 8" was a tonque in cheek type joke. The only bruise on me was a 3" dia. spot where the end of the right handle bar punched into my right shoulder. That mashed my right brachial plexus (main nerve trunk right shoulder/arm/ wrist etc.) took 4yrs to regain 50% of use of right arm. That's where it is now. My neck is now 22 1/2" but I blame that on pizza & PU. Did that dictionary ever show up? Had that dilated pupil eye exam today and now I'm squinting. Later

[Adobe Machine]

Richard Zastrow: Yes, THANKS..Got it This last Friday in good shape.Will get this German ATC cleaned up and return to you..

Finally finished the way and ball nut oiling system.Oils all sliding and turning parts in the cross slide and Z axis saddle.

I squared a block of 6061 T-6, drilled and cross drilled 6 holes for tapping
1/8th pipe ( Q drill), tapped and installed 5, 1/8p X 1/4" compression needle valve fittings. Drilled and countersunk 2, 5/16 holes for attachment bolts.

After attaching the oil log to the lathe ran individual steel lines to the oiled points, tightned and tested everything. With the needle valves for each circut, I can adjust flow and turn them off so that there is no leak back or syphon back to the pump.

No more thearpy ! So I can devote a lot more time to finishing..next is the X axis DRO sender, and incorporated into that will be the overtravel switches for the X axis.

Pictures in no order, but after finishing I did "Play" a little..

Adobe (old as dirt)

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

AM, Now I,m even older than older than you. Turned 66 today. FYI its -9f with a wind chill of -35f. Thats the bad news. Good news is my oil pressure is really high. Also, the PU stays cold on the way home from the store. Glad to hear you finished your rehab. Keep on truckin'

[Adobe Machine]

Richard Zastrow: Dzaster, Dzaster.. Ok you win, your older..73 degrees here all day.. lost a pedical screw on the fusion hardware , lumbar region Sat morn, just got out of the hospital this afternoon, O'well, this is being fun.. Happy birthday,, any reconsider on comming out here yet ? Son says Penn is cold, snow and windy..Flying out of Baltimore is real trying..know what I mean ?

Adobe (younger than Dzaster now ! )

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Adobe, Like them young snots say "Wa's up"? haven't heard from you since I got older. I'm working on a 3 speed planetary transmission with minimal backlash. 'nother one of those "projects" (shhhhh). I'll mail you some stuff on this, you'll love it. Got the idea from a NASA thing. Post up and let us know.

[sanjiv]

Dear sir
I have some confusion. Pl take it lightly. I have also a lathe 6' swiss make. i am also intrested for retrofitting the same to cnc. my question is when i get the machine retrofitted, all the controls eg gear changing, lead screw, feed rod will be in function? what about single point tool?

[NC Cams]

SANJIV: The amount of modifications needed to retrofit a lathe is TOTALLy depandant on:

1. The condition of the lathe.
2. The amount of automation that the retrofitter desires to incorporate.
3. The amount of engineering and/or machine integration that the do-it-yourself type person is able/capable of performing.

A lathe that is was CNC based before and has NO change gears or other geared infeed capabilities would require a fully integrated CNC package - not a task for beginners. Do a search for "lathe retrofit" on CNC Zone - this topic has been discussed in great detail and it is NOT an easy thing to do and/or do well. This is NOT as "friendly" a retrofit as a mill retrofit to CNC.

A lathe that has a lot of change gears already fitted to it would require a totally different set of modifications to get the change gears to shift automatically or, conversely to tear out the gearing and replace all the feed mechanisms with servo's or steppers - this could be a MAJOR tear up and not worth the effort in the long run.

What are you trying to do??? You might be better of buying a CNC lathe than to try to turn a fully geared machine into something that it was never intended to be....

[Guldberg]

Dont make it more difficult than it is:-) Why is it so much more difficult than retrofitting a mill? For hobby usage one could as a beginning be satisfied with just the x-z control, later on, maybe add-on the spindle control. As with everything else, take it step by step and eventually you will get there. Proberly you will have spend more money and time than it would have cost to by a cnc lathe, but what the heck, this is what hobby is about

[NC Cams]

Memo to Guldberg: do a "lathe retrofit" search on this website.

When/if you do it, you'll find several horror stories relating to guys who bought lather retrofit packages from reputable outfits and had control problems, lathes that spit billets out of the machine and/or totally unsatisfactory retrofit experiences.

And this was reported with SEVERAL high end retrofit systems. I'm not making it more difficult than it is, only reporting what sort of problems other people reported on this exact same topic.

BTW, I'm still waiting for a promised contact back from one of the MAJOR lathe/mill retrofit outfits that come "highly recommended" - an inquiry that was asked for nearly a year ago.

As was reported in my prior lathe retrofit threads on this site, retrofitting a lathe (especially a CNC lathe that already has servos fited that only needs a controller update) is NOT a plug and play project nor is it as easy as a mill retrofit. Period. Paragraph.

Caveat emptor.

[Guldberg]

Maybe you got a point on retrofit package, personally i was thinking on DIY solutions for the DIY person, no buisness here. Its a matter of specification requirement:-)

[NC Cams]

Retrofitting a lathe, regardless of who does it, is NOT a plug and play project.

This is ESPECIALLY true if you're looking to make a servo based system will real time servo feedback to the controller. Notice the word SERVO as some applications are not suitable for sterppers which eliminates MACH from this aspect of the discussion.

It doesn't matter if it is DIY or machine shop retrofit or hobby intent, getting a lathe to work properly is NOT easy.

There are safety issues to consider and, especially for threading, there are spindle to feed screw timing issues that have to be unerringly kept. Definitely NOT for the inept or those who haphazardly do things.

Think a lathe retrofit is easy and/or the support is merely a phone call away from your preferred vendor? Check out the following:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8803

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...lathe+retrofit

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...lathe+retrofit

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...lathe+retrofit

[Guldberg]

Hehe, ive seen you argumenting for this in other threads here one the forum:-) Ive said it before, its a matter of specification requirement, for hobby usage, no reason why steppers and mach wouldnt work. Would i trust my buisness with it, never! Can i use it for all my DIY work, no problem at all. Backlash, sure, but its a matter of how you do the code most of the time, i can manage to hit it within a couple of 0.01's (mm).
What i will give you is, dont expect to make a full size lathe do production runs with just the flick of a switch

[Adobe Machine]

Hello..two weeks in a hospital, 3 weeks in an "after care" (pumped up name for a nursing home, bad food, noise all night and bad smells 1/2 room,
$5,000/mo, just B.S.)..started out simple, got complicated when I was able to get my self out of a high hosbital bed at 0300 hrs in the morning, as a nursing assistant "forgot to bring up the sides", including 3 I.V.'s and pumps on my lower legs..what a mess, I guess was in all kinds of body fluids on the floor when they found me..required more surgery..this was in a very high rated hospital that we just got a bill from ( hosbital only) $342,391.64..jeeze, I almost fell out when I read that..anyway: The day before I entered the hospital,I got anxious to try the lathe..The lathe worked real good, excellent finish, compound curves, just what I drew, except..I DID NOT PROGRAM THE TOOLING CORRECT..Desk CNC uses a term called "bottom angle" which I mis-interped as total angle of the insert...this gave me wierd angles to the part, especially on the edges where I specified a radius..I had to run the simulation about 5 times before I caught my mistake, and a friend came over in the evening that caught the mistake immediatly..

Will be a couple of weeks before I'm up to "snuff", I'm still on Percocet and other drugs, still having trouble concentrating( I now have the attention span of an attorney, matching a 5 year old kid)and even reading and typing..would like to mention that all in all, the 8 inch long by 3 inch round part did hold tenths , and had an excellent finish...I still have a bit (lots) to finish on the lathe...but looks like it will pertform as I wanted as an open bed CNC lathe than can cut threads, profiles and tapers accuratley .

I would like to thank NC Cams and Richard Zastrow who contacted me when they became concerned, along with every one else..I say THANKS..
My only excuse they had no WYFI, but I'm not sure that I would not have made much sense anyway.

One of my main E mail address had 2418 E mails when we got home,most some real bad stuff, so I closed it out..I just could not go through it all , so axing it looked simpler..

THANKS EVERY ONE

Adobe ( old as dirt, and feeling like it )

[LUCKY13]

Adobe, hang in there bud. I have had my share of things myself. I am sure you know, but when it comes time to lay the Perks down it want be a fun thing if you know what I mean. Just take care & give things the time needed. The lathe can wait. Besides, we want get to see the results of your sweat work you have done if you get out there & hurt something before your ready to handle it. Heck if your like me, its become a part of life, I have learned to deal with it so much that I could run a machine or HotRod on my worst day. But still no use in pushing things.


Take care, we can wait on Machine Porn until your up to it. Although your machine will be some sweat porn, and I am sure everyone else is like me & will be looking forward to seeing the end results, its not going to hurt us to wait till your ready.

Thats good to here she is holding tenths, even though there may be a learning curve to go though before it becomes second nature.

Jess

[Adobe Machine]

Pretty much out of the wheelchair..So back at the lathe..I installed my new 6 jaw "Tru-Set" chuck with a friends help. I installed the chucks backing plate and trued to the lathe drive ( took about .005 off) then reduced the center to .010 under the chucks size..should give plenty of room to adjust.

I had little problem getting it to .001 TIR, but getting to tenths was a real challenge..I had to walk away twice as it was a little frustrating, but after about an hour it came to almost" 0". I torqued the fastners to 41 ft. lbs, and rechecked, it held tolerance.

Being anxous to really see how the lathe would perform,I drew up a random lathe project in Vector, and down loaded into Desk CNC, which included arcs, angles and some turning. I used Ron Hill's "Lathe quick Turn" ( a CNC Zone member)I had purchased from IM Machine to bring the material to size. This brought the material to .0005 of final size, then started the lathe project from there.

The pictures are random, but you can see how nice the finish is, the part was exactley as drawn, the tolerance was under .001 into tenths.

As you can see, I still do not have the coolant system installed, nor the X axis reader ( I just used my dial indicator to check accuracy), nor the set up for chuck RPM, which is needed to thread accuratley.

Tomorrow I will install the coolant recovery system and tubing, then start on installing the chuck speed encoder.

Adobe (old as dirt)

[Adobe Machine]

Lucky 13...Yes you were very correct about a learning curve..

My experiance this after noon: I designed some of the Encoder drive in Vector CAD/CAM, and forget to check "Bottom to Top"( the program changes "Y" to "x")then generated the G code, WITHOUT RUNNING A SIMULATION 1ST! da aa da a, wow..

I did the set up, punched "go" and unfortunatley the machine did exactley what the G code called for:A "Z" minus ( toward the chuck) on the center line of the part..it got .443 thru the stock before I hit the EM stop..What a mess, Even had to re-zero the 6 jaw Tru Set Chuck..My hands were shaking ,I was shaking after the accident, one, one inch tool was damaged.

I did go back and run a simulation, and had I just taken that step, would have seen the problem. I also checked all of the tolerances, and fortunately had not damaged any other systems. I was a little suprized that the servo did not fault and was still trucking untill the EM switch was hit ?

Anyway, usually I'm very cautious, but took a short cut that almost cost me a machine and $ $ $ we do not have, my advice.. Check your G codes, simulate 1st and concentrate on the tool path. Just a real dumb mistake that should never have happened...!

Adobe (really older than dirt tonight)

[FPV_GTp]

welcome back Adobe Machine

Wander where you had disappeared


keep up the good work

cheers