Eric,
I thought as much. The ruby tipped dial test indicator rarely lies to me.
That's what I love about geometry- it is fundamentally irrefutable.
If something rotating doesn't hit the same mark, when all is set right- 2
bores are not centered. There isn't much way around faking that.
That is how I figured out the tailstock was probably not original to the
lathe (it's usually the tailstock that is replaced, as the headstock
usually stays with the bed, as that makes someone a working lathe). That
was how I found the 15 thou vertical error. It may not be that much,
there may be grit under the headstock yet. We haven't had it off. But
there's enough error there to know, geometrically, something is not factory.
I love art, and find Burning Man facinating. I have a friend that went last
year and told me about it. To think the lathe was for art purposes is a
cool history for it. That also explains how the accuracy thing might not
have affected you as much, it wasn't precision parts as much as parts
that fit with each other.
We did get a good manual with it that has helped a lot. Anything you wish
to bring will only help, more parts are helpful. Just like making gear
cutters though, some things just have to be put geometrically correct to
work. There's no bodging alignment, and other stuff, and hoping it
works. It just needs to be put correct again, and only once, and it will
work again.
Up till now, I've kind been a supervisor and minor party- Joachim is the
man on this so far, he's torn most of it apart, and done a lot more work
than me. I am helping him at this point, and it started the other way
around. This weekend will be my chance to give back more. It's hard for
me to get down to the shop around prototype work and a full time job living
too living in Greensburg, almost 50 miles away from the shop.
Shim stock would be helpful- but I think we'll need brass shim stock only
for now. I've ordered some.
-Andrew
On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 8:07 PM, j. eric townsend <jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2/9/16 18:08, Andrew C. wrote:
Hi Eric,
I take it you haven't been up to date on that then.
No, I had two lathes at the time I made the donation so after we moved
that one to the shop I kinda forgot about it. I bought the Atlas in
California and used it for burning man art projects and other "looks like
it will fit" parts for art projects. After we moved to PGH I got a good
deal on a SB 10L (that came with a new centering bar!), rather than sell
the Atlas I figured HackPGH could make use of it.
it does need about 60 years worth of maintainance for wear.. We'll make
this thing work well again. You donated a lot of parts too!
You're right that some of the parts probably don't match. I bought some
stuff on eBay and other stuff at garage sales. Glad to see you working on
it, it's probably good for another 100 years after a rebuild. I have some
shim stock and found another box of cutting blanks, I'll dig thru my parts
bin and see if I have any other chucks or Atlas accessories. I also bought
a bunch of oils, lube, paint, and other stuff to rebuild the 10L, it's easy
for me to drop off a pint of one or the other, just let me know.
--jet
--
J. Eric Townsend
<http://www.flatline.net>
HF: KG6ZVQ
PGP: 0x335E5548 / 75DB 5C22 FD5D F33E B1FA D5BA B429 EA93 335E 5548
