The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

The projects are turning out very well. I intend to follow the Alexsation project, using a vertical spindle motor to minimize vibrations and balancing the 100mm, 10000-grit grinding disc. I just don't know yet if he uses the same 10000-grit disc for grinding and polishing. Sorry, the English is fro...

Todays effort... About 5 minutes to grind once I figured out the grain, only frustration is finding out that the geometry is off. I'm using plastic fibre optic cable with a 20mA high brightness 4000k LEDs attached with UV Resin glue and heatshrink. That's just after faceting, I am still yet to polis...

I have been able to pick this up after some time... I think I made some progress this week, the cast iron does indeed, need to be very very flat. - I still don't have a functional stylus, but I havent actually entered the polishing stage yet. I think I was running into issues with scratching and cat...

I've had the exact same problem - haven't quite figured it out. I have 4 lathes of the same design - 3 are fine, 1 is not...I'm also using a nema17 for the carriage motor. I've checked everything mechanically, swapped out steppers and drivers, reuploaded code from the working machines....My next ste...

I’ve tracked this down again, so I’ll post it as a bit of an info dump… 311B12DF-39B6-465E-B505-3FA0A0683EE3.jpeg This is a chart of the material removal depending on grain orientation, too me, it looks like 110 would need to be flipped, whereas with 100, it should be fairly even on all sides, but t...

I believe this machine utilises metal bonded diamond grinding discs rotated at a very high speed. These discs are very expensive so I don't think I'll be going down that path as this is only a hobby for me. Looks like a good option if you are doing it commercially though. When I looked into these g...

Cheers, I tried removing one of the runners that feeds into the wheel - this gives me the ability to rotate the carriage around the centre of the carriage, without affecting the angle of the grind, I *think* it's working/helping to find grain. In this image the big facet I managed tio grind really q...

I had these holders arrive from aliexpress - they do a much better job than the brass ones I had. They dont screw, so I mounted them into my usual homemade dop and had a thread so I could push a couple of nuts up into the ring to keep clamping pressure constant. I've started working on this again, a...

Hi Simon, I’m a big fan of the DATs tester. It’s been great to ensure all the coils are wound to the same impedance. It’s also useful to make sure that all the spring tensions are consistent, and does a good job highlighting if the pressure between the three springs are equal. There is an inbuilt co...

You need your disc to look like this. I'm trying to get to grips with that a prepared scaife should look like, can I ask, if this photo taken as it is spinning? I've been experimenting with different surface preparations before charging my cast iron. Yesterday I tried cleaning it with acetone and s...

https://i.postimg.cc/G2kVD92L/20250319-132715.jpg I’m very interested in your gem holder - have you constructed this yourself? If working with cast iron at higher speeds it probably pays to check the compression strength, I was warned by a few machinists that spinning cast iron at high speeds can b...

I'm interested to see what others have to say on this topic - I tried using ceramic bonded discs, but found the removal rate was too slow - or maybe I'm too impatient, as it seems like Estrada is getting usable results with a bit of patience... After experimenting with ceramic bond discs, I put the ...

Thanks guys, It's closing up this month. Lucky enough to have been asked to show the work somewhere else. There were a few malfunctions, I guess those are the things you can't plan on when assembling something in the garage and testing for 30 minutes when it is on display for 10 hours a day 7 days a...

I'm doing some final tests (and changes...jeeze...) to my mono head. Aiming to have it available before mid-year.

https://lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?p=63193#p63193

I haven't updated the thread in awhile, but something will be coming soon.

There is a signup list for notifications on my website.

Hi Pennstate! Not at the moment...There's a few things that I've since worked around and my model management has been somewhat subpar! I'm happy to explain some of the design decisions with you if you're interested. The linear rails are just 25mm L shaped extrusion - the pieces that fit over them do...

I'm not in Australia, but I am selling coloured polycarbonate blanks from NZ - including a transparent browny-black.

This forum is called the 'Experimenters' & Innovators' forum' not the 'Do Precisely What Has Been Done Before forum'

Great work farmersplow, if it's any consolation I've been use PLA printed bearings for my carriages and they're silent enough for me - Igus bearings would be a great step up for me.

Thanks for sharing your developments.

I use leadshine ISV57 servos, they are the quiestest I could fine and provide quite a lot of torque, i recently used one to spin a 800mm platter with 100kg+ sitting on them. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUr4jF4bhaI) At this point I think they may be overkill for the lathe. The benefit they have ...

I've been working on this collaboration for the last month or so - lucky enough to have been able to show it in the Ōtautahi/Christchurch Art Gallery in New Zealand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNFxESt3ZjA