HandLathe.com – Lathe Products and Blog

This is a short video of my CNC-converted Grizzly Mill-Drill (Sieg Super X3) being used as a lathe to cut a switch knob for a PDP-7 computer. A 3/8" 6061-T6 aluminum bar about 3" long is mounted in a collet in the mill, and is driven past standard lathe tools mounted to the mill table. The spindle is running in reverse direction due to the orientation of the tools. I created a G-Code program by hand to make the two different tapers and cut off the knob at the end. Depth of cut was .010 because heavier cuts caused the rod to deflect too much. Spindle speed is about 800 RPM; cuts were made at 3 inches/minute except for the final cutoff, which is about .3 IPM. UPDATE: I have received a good number of questions about the videography. I used an HD camcorder (Sony HDR-SR11) which captures in AVCHD format. youtube will not accept AVCHD video, so I used a program called Free HD Converter from Koyotesoft.com to convert it to MP4 at 1280×720 resolution; which I was able to upload directly to youtube. Not much work all told, and the results speak for themselves. Of course, good even lighting and using a tripod are key to getting good video.

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Turning down and cleaning up the metal from an old axle. Turning, facing and beveling on my new Seig C6 Metal Bench Lathe. The tools were hand ground and the video is sped up about 5 times.

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Video of a CNC lathe used in the home/shop/garage. It’s been converted from a 0 mini-lathe.

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