Sieg SC3 Mini Lathe - Let the adventures begin

Great minds and all that, I was thinking that very thing a couple of days ago. I may need a bit more oil in my pot though, I only have a small amount in a jam jar at the minute.

 

The first bit of the carriage work is now complete and I am happy with how it's gone so far.


Next is more character building work with a hack saw...

 

A bit of a milestone reached this evening as it's almost ready to reassemble. I just need to cut some lengths of M6 studding to fasten the bottom slide bars on with. Then once the basic carriage is reassembled and fitted on the ways, I need to mark out, drill and tap the carriage lock before reassembling the cross and compound slides.






There wasn't a lot of depth and I wanted them countersunk to retain as much cross slide travel as i can also I doubt if these will ever get unscrewed again once finally fitted so I used M6 button headed cap screws instead of the usual deep headed type.






This is what it will look like when all fitted together.



The end support piece and the bottom of the carriage lock are made from the same piece of bar (eBay purchase) and must be free machining as recommended by Mike Evans, because they machined, drilled and tapped so much easier than the steel that I made the other parts from.

 

After spending most of the day trying different thicknesses of shims to get the most rigid, but sliding fit the carriage is back together. As I had hoped a 1/4 turn of the rear cap head screw locks the carriage.

I also cut a spacer/shim to fit on top of the feed nut to do away with the need for rocking about a grub screw. I have left the grub screw in place to stop the hole filling with swarf but it's no longer functional.

This is the spacer in place before attaching the cross slide.



Next was reassembly of the apron, cross and compound slides ready for a test run. It all went back together nicely but getting the main lead screw cover in the right place for the power feed half nuts to engage/disengage properly was a right pain and took several adjustments before everything ran smoothly.





I still need to make a couple more spacers/shims to take more backlash from the cross slide but I needed the lathe back together to turn them.

 

I agree, but it has taught me a great deal about the lathe and how it's put together etc.
I reckon I have spent about £50 on materials but of course because of the amounts that you buy to make things economical, I have spare bar and fixings for quite a few other jobs, jigs or fixtures going forward.

 

I have a rotary table for the mill and the dividing head for the Proxxon Pillar drill so hopefully that should cover my needs, that said I recently watched a video on making an indexing plate from a cast iron dumbell weight. So never say never.

 

Thanks Torry,

For the know how ,YouTube is your friend. If you had suggested doing all this, to me 18 months or so ago, I would have laughed and thought it beyond me.

 

And I thought the two Unimats that I had were small...

 

Yesterday I had turned a spacer for the cross slide leadscrew which along with the extra backlash nut that I made earlier has removed all the backlash from the cross slide.

This morning saw the final piece in the current puzzle, the replacement for the missing compound handle. Made from 8mm stainless I am really pleased with how much different the lathe performs now that I have made the improvements.

 

Very Nice,

Funnily enough I have an unmachined set of castings for LNER Pacifics (A3/A4/W1 although I would need an extra axle for the latter) and I was wondering about getting a form tool. I watched a Gauge O guild video on wheel turning by Dave Brooks of JPL who doesn't seem to use a form tool.

I haven't turned wheels before so I will proceed with caution when I get to it.