Simple Carriage Stop

[Wongster]

The progress of making the stainless steel bushing for my dad was a slow one. Especially with the turned lathe being some time too long and some time too short. I went to the various sites again to look at the carriage stop implemented on the mini lathe, hoping to find one simple one to make for the Proxxon. Decided to just make a clamp out of some aluminium block together with the clamp plate from the Fixed Steady Rest.

I do not have aluminium stock of the right size in my box and so most of the time was spent cutting and milling a bigger piece into rough dimension.



This one is flawed. The cap screw head is too tall. Even if I counterbore the aluminium piece to cater for it, I'm still not able to get under the chuck to tighten it when in position.



Replacing with the Hex Head solved that problem.



I carried on working on the bushing and was happy about what I did till a long string of swarf got between the carriage and the stop. I tried using a small piece of card to cover the gap but still allow a portion of the gap visible. Need to know where to stop the power feed and manually complete turning to the shoulder.

This proved unsatisfactory as the card kept being pushed out of the way by swarf. Time to complete the carriage stop like those pics I saw.

I have a piece of 8mm diameter aluminium rod which I shortened for the carriage stop. The stop was drilled through followed by a tapped hole to hold the rod in place.





The smaller surface area of the rod acting as the stop lessen the chance of swarf coming in between. With that done, I carried on and completed 3 pieces of bushings. At the beginning, I actually wanted to have a micrometer of sort to use as an adjustable stop. The one I bought sometime back is too long to fit. Without it extended, the carriage stopped too far away from the chuck. I'll see if I can get a shorter one, hopefully with its stem at 8mm diameter. Save me the trouble to make another piece of the block.

I had a fun day playing with the mill and lathe. I'm able to use all my endmills now with the ER16 collet chuck. I also bought the keyless drill chuck which is such a beauty to behold. I didn't believe that by merely tightening the chuck by hand that the drill is locked in place, strong enough for drilling and even tapping (by hand of course, with the chuck serving as a guide). I drilled up to 8mm without an issue (started with 6mm drill followed by 8mm).



The X axis scale really helps! But I still count the turns in case I've some play in the bracket holding the read head. I stick the display on a bookend bent backwards.



That's all for today. I'll be going back to work tomorrow though I'm on 10 days medical leave. Fixed up a couple of appointments end last week. Couldn't find someone to take over. Its ok, I'll take the opportunity to pop over to the tool shop to buy one or two more machine light with magnetic base in between appointments.

Blessed day!

Regards,
Wong