Nice job Rob. Made one similar when I had a milling attachment. I made mine so it was the whole width of the back plate. I put 4 holes on one side of centre so I could move the tip across for different radii. Helps with the balance as well. Thanks for sharing. regards from the UK
Now I like that! I have seen faceplate fly cutters before but they are involved modifying the faceplate, your solution is much more elegant, I will be making one!
Nice work I made a similar fly cutter for my mill and it works well. I have just found your channel and subscribed. I’m looking forward to watching your videos.
First time seen for me--thanks for sharing the idea! As for the "no room for a mill" comment, a skeptic might say that a Rong Fu would occupy roughly the same space as that drill press of yours. But then, if you had one of those, you wouldn't get to show off that cool hydraulic jack trick, so best keep things as they are.
Awesome idea. I was looking for a way to cut my homemade milling machine headstock so I can setup a pulley plate and this will do perfect. I finally get to use my faceplate.
Thanks! I have a face plate I made for turning the break drums for my tractor that I think will work for this. I just need the verticle mill slide. Thanks again. Cheers.
Good one. I actually pulled the Face plate out today, first time for ages. But, no round HSS. But, worth looking into. Thanks for the video. Graham, Bundaberg.
12:39 yeah, that's the best way to do it 99 times out of 100. But you still can cut tool steels with a hacksaw if you have a carbide hacksaw blade. Pretty handy even for mild steels, zips right through the job.
Nice idea, but I think you should have just run the mounting block straight across the faceplate, and used the second bolt to secure it on that side. Then it's secured in two places and can never move. You're using the second bolt for balance anyway, which I think is a very good idea, so why not take advantage of it? As it stands now that 12mm bolt is subjected to a turning moment as the fly-cutting bit hits the work. The split lock-washer is a good idea, but I would be concerned that the moment caused by the cutter would still cause that bolt to loosen and allow the tool to move, thus causing your surface finish to go bad.
Comment on threading using taps & dies. The most commonly accepted technique of turning the tap handle a small amount, then backing it off "to break the chips" damages your taps & dies prematurely. Those broken off chips get wedged against your material when you take the next cutting stroke, and break the cutting teeth on the tap / die. A much better technique that will prolong the life of your taps & dies, is to start your thread and NOT back off while cutting. You can stop to take another handhold, just don't back off the cutting teeth engagement. Never allow the chips to get between the leading edge of the cutting teeth and the material being cut. Use lots of cutting fluid. In thinner material, continue your cut until you finish threading all the way through. In thicker material (over 3/8") stop cutting, back your tap / die all the way out, then clear out all cutter chips (compressed air works best). Once cleared of all chips, re-insert your tap /die and continue cutting. Once again, lots of cutting oil. This method will greatly extend the life of your taps & dies. You may even find you only retire them for dulled cutting teeth (normal wear) and never for broken teeth. This works in all materials, while I am focusing on mild steel for this comment. Always start with a Taper Tap. If you are threading a blind hole, next use the Plug Tap, and finally a Bottoming Tap.
Just did it the other way round and I believe it was easier than your setup. I simply fixed the vise on the face plate and voilà...Ok, ok, some more possible unbalance, but I compensated that with counterweights. No need for your special milling attachment.
I like your simple solution, thank you very much for posting this. I was wondering about the tool geometry you used or ground it to (for your HSS bit)?
The cutting profile can be any shape (eg. curved or chisel) but it must have some front and rear relief for cutting effect and chip clearance. Cheers Rob
xynudu Thank you very much. As it happens, I have a rectangular casting to face off that is too large for my faceplate and will definitely try this out. I have already built a mini pallet for the carriage but my existing fly cutter has too small a radius, hence your example comes in handy.
Is that milling attachment OE or is it aftermarket? I need one for my ENCO 1340. That made short work of facing that item. Why not counter balance with a second cutter? Good video and proof of concept.
that's the simplest yet the best fly cutter I have seen for the lathe. I was thinking whether I should buy lathe or mill first, and I'm glad I went for the lathe, because it seems like I will be able to do both turning and facing, but of course with the limited parts sizes. in most cases I will be facing < 3 inches longest edge, so the lathe should suffice for some time. quick question: with the 4 jaws chuck, would you rather drill all these holes in the lathe or in the drill press? I think if it is possible, I would like to do everything on the lathe, just for the fun of it
The lathe will defnitely be more accurate. The table on a drill press will flex from true vertical alignment unless a support (jack) is put under it. A lathe allows you to index holes much more accurately with a simple paper chart behind the chuck - see my videos on this. Cheers Rob
Hello to you sir, I am really new to this, a while back I bought my self a really old lathe, the problem is ive tried loads of new different types tools and I cant seem to get a good finish at all. I definitely cant get right through on a cut off, its a mess. I have tried new hss, new carbide. trying and trying to get dead centre, and sharpening, ive tried it all, the last thing is am I doing it all at the wrong speed, I don't know what else to try, have you any ideas please. regards Colin.UK.
Hi Colin, We all start at the beginning. What is the lathe ? I suggest that first off you read this free on line book put out by Hercus: tokentoolroom.com/files/Text%20book%20of%20turning.pdf That has all the basic techniques you need to understand, and deals with HSS tooling for older lathes. If you want to try carbide tooling I only recommend TCMT inserts in the smaller sizes, as this puts the least amount of load on the lathe by having a small tip radius. Keeping the cutting area/radius small and reducing loadings on the lathe are important if you have any strength/flexibility issues. Smaller old lathes often do. I hope this helps. Cheers Rob
Love the setup...i would just face it off in the 4 jaw but this would be great for irregular objects.Why did you hang milling attahcment over the side instead of trying to get it closer to the center of carriage...
You could mount the vise a little lower you could slide the angle plate back a couple inches it would greatly improve the load direction on the ways......cheers....its your world...
what sort of rpm is your belt sander running at? I wouldn't mind makin one. and I've just dumped some power tools I didn't want or need, I knew the motors would be handy for something but at the time I couldn't think of anything and I really needed to have a clear out so I threw them away even though the motors were still good. I'm sure I still have something with a usable motor... maybe I could adapt an old air powered DA sander to power a belt... so what's the rpm again?
It's not about RPM, but about belt speed. Ok, the motor speed is 1400 rpm, the drive pulley is 50 mm diameter. So to get belt speed we multiply the pulley circumference by the motor rpm. That is 3.14 (Pi) x 50 x1400 which equals 219,800 mm / minute or 3663 mm per second. That then becomes 366 cm per second - in USA terminology that's 144 inches (12 foot) a second. That's a lot faster than it looks, but the figures don't lie. Makes all that high school learning worthwhile ;) So to make one up you will need to use the same maths for whatever motor and pulley you are going to use. You can get great stuff out of old treadmills to make these units (rubber coated rollers , shafts, ball races etc). Linishers are one of the best things you can have in the workshop. Cheers Rob
If the motor is an armature type (has brushes) you can easily reduce/control the speed with a cheap PWM voltage control (same as used for ceiling fans) provided it has the correct wattage rating. It would be handy to have slower/variable speed for some jobs. Rob
I bought the sander part from a garage sale for a few dollars. It was originally driven by a flexible cable from an electric drill (crappy setup). So that would limit the motor speed to no more than 3,000 rpm. As I wanted a low speed unit I just used a junk day motor from the kerbside which was suitably low rpm. Crunched the numbers and it seemed about right, and presto that's what you see. If you have a hand held belt sander it would be interesting to see how the belt speed compares (crunch the numbers the same way) but you have to allow for any toothed belt gearing etc. Cheers Rob
Hi Peter, not if the lathe spindle incorporates a drive plate. A screw on face plate could unscrew quite easily though. It's basically no different to parting off at the rear of the cross slide. Cheers Rob
@@Xynudu Rob thanks, it has the three pin locators, not a screw on. Damn dog wants to watch me do the lathe work and trying to keep the metal chips in the pan and out of her paws. Love your videos, helping me greatly. Thanks
Just get a piece of round stock and braze on an insert and you can use the same setup. You might even have a boring bar already that would work. Do you know anyone that sells boring bars???? :P
Hi John, I have seen a single large bolt used with a HSS tip brazed on. It puts a lot of pressure in one place and could maybe crack the faceplate, but as I said in the video description, there's lots of ways to do this. Cheers Rob
hope you can reduce the volume during those sections where it's just machining, so i don't have to constantly adjust the volume to hear what you're saying only to get ear-raped by the noise :)
6:40 I have a cheap set of taps and dies just like that, had them quite a while and forgot I had them until today.... the taps look like they were cast up someone's arsehole, in fact thinking about it now they're rough surfaced like they've been case hardened with casenit but then not surface ground to make them good... and the dies are just as bad with crooked looking teeth. I'd never cut new threads with them... they're only good for chasing rust out of old exposed bolt holes which is what I used them for today when I fitted a towbar to the 4x4. and wouldn't really want to use quality HSS taps for what I did today if I could help it. but for what you're doing here it would have to be quality taps for new thread cutting but you seem to have done all right with them, maybe yours are a little better than mine.
There are cheap tap/die sets and cheap cheap sets. They are all made from high carbon steel. I have two of the former (metric and Imperial). Both made in Japan and at least 20 years old. They cut OK and are quite accurate (did that job) but still not as good as expensive HSS pieces. I haven't had a look at the Chinese sets (which are a copy of the earlier Japanese sets) but I don't doubt that the quality may be a bit suspect. Rob
strange, I just checked my set and it has German writing all over it but they're not your typical German quality lol so who knows where they were made... Interesting to just discover there's an 1/8th NPT tap and die in there too... gives me an idea. Sure would like to compare mine side by side with yours. I'll admit to not having really put mine through their paces to see how well they perform, when I need threads cutting I typically by individual taps specific for the job. By the way, I didn't comment on the face plate fly cutter... great idea and well executed.
I too have the two sets. They were handy when I was not able to afford anything better. I now have three Mastercraft sets, and a forth set that goes from the 9/16th to the 1 inch size.
I do not fully agree with the tapping fluid you use. You say it is kerosene and motor oil. The main purpose of a cutting fluid is not only to lubricate but to avoid chip build up (aka tip welding) on the cutting edge and at high speed also cooling. There are two types. One for low cutting speeds like tapping and one for high speed cutting like turning, milling, drilling. In both cases the cutting fluids (water based and oil based and pasty) should contain sulfur compounds like disulfurdichloride or equivalent that chemically react under heat and pressure at the cutting edge and act as a release agent to avoid chip build up and extend the life of the cutting edge. Many know the dark brown, smelly, smokey cutting oil. Using such a real cutting oil may cost more than a home brew but it pays back by longer tool life, lower cutting forces and less broken taps stuck in your work. Try it and you will feel the difference especially with difficult materials like stainless steels.
Hi Rol, I do have proper cutting fluid (thicker dark sulphury stuff) but rarely drag out the bottle to use it. The taps cut fine with my basic home made mix. I'm sure you're right, but hey if it works then it can't be too bad. Cheers Rob
Rob is using the lathe as a mill when he does uneven or odd shaped work. In a chuck or on a back plate you can only machine a diameter but with a milling machine you can cut a straight line. regards.
