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Here is my lathe. It's a 1960s Myford ML7- a fairly common small lathe with a centre height of 3.5", 6 chuck speeds, including a 'back gear' behind the chuck enabling quite slow speeds- this is useful for tapping or cutting threads, knurling, etc. I have a vertical slide attachment, so that basic 3-axis milling can be done- not as stiff as a milling machine, but fine for light machining. 3-jaw chuck is still fairly accurate, and probably the original one. |
| I
have a huge collection of milling cutters which came with the lathe,
some are even sharp. Also a lot of TC/HSS lathe tools, and thread
cutting taps of some unusual sizes, many have turned out to
be
just the required thing too. 'Brass' thread anyone ? Weirdly, I have almost no thread dies- just a few common metrics. As well as the Myford lathe, I have a pillar drill made by Draper- this is fairly well made for a far-eastern type, and has a 1/2" Jacobs chuck on a 2MT taper, two belts giving 12 speeds between 180 and 2800 rpm, which is good for most jobs except extremely large or small drill bits. It is one of those with a strange height- too high for normal bench mounting- so I had to build one end of the bench 20cm lower to mount the drill on. This does mean that the rack adjustable table will go down to below the level of the remaining normal 90cm height bench- handy for long lengths of material. There is a second bench for brazing- I have heat-proof blocks to make a hearth from, and a MAPP gas torch which copes with most small silver soldering jobs. The remainder of the space is parts and materials storage- I rarely throw anything away, so I often make new objects from re-used old ones, especially plastic injection mouldings. There seems to be a lot of mechanical/electronic devices in boxes which I hang on to for no good reason. |
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