Easy To Make Ball Turning Fixture Using Brass Plumbing Couplings

I've got some new ball turning tooling to show you this evening that I've made I've made a second up all turning fixture of plumbing parts and I'd like to show you how to make that in a minute and I've done some upgrades to the Repton ball turning attachment and the my third ball turning attachment that you get from our DG so I've been using the Repton ball turning attachment for a while now and I showed you how to set it up in one of my last videos I found that after used in there and particularly with the screwed man drills for turning the balls I showed the edge of the original carbide tip holder gets damaged around the diameter there and this is only made of soft aluminium which has been black anodized so it's not very good for the purpose of holding a carbide tip so what I've done is I've made a new carbide insert holder of oh one tool steel I've made it slightly smaller than the original one and I think it's about half an inch so it's very strong and also being hardened it doesn't get damaged when it touches the mild steel mandrels so that's a good upgrade to do on this rep turn and they're very easy to make I bought another all turning attachment for the my fiddly I bought this one on eBay it's a used one and I got it for half the price and this is the one sold by RDG now I found when I came to use it on large diameter work that when I came to set the central part here the radius here would actually clash with the end of the bar and I was unable to set it correctly and also the tip was slightly under the center line so rather than all to the part here I made a new part like there and this one is much more versatile can cut larger diameter radiuses and I'll be showing another video later on how I made this toll and how well this small turning attachment performs with it so you can make great pictures out of plumbing components you can get secondhand one from the scrap yards you can get on eBay or you can even buy new ones and this one here is basically to hold the ball when it comes off the mandrel it goes in there like that the front screws on tightly and traps all in there and then you have the ability to do all other operations that you would like to do to the ball so you could either drill and do another thread in there and you could just limit yourself to one mandrel and then you could rethread it for whatever you're going to fit the ball on or you can ball right the way through for making a ball valves or you can even make full radius balls by first turning on a mandrel or just straight from bar put it in the second OP fixture and using the ball turning attachment to finish the other end and there you have a nice solid brass ball with no hole so it actually saves marking or damaging the radius of the ball and you can also use it to put a finish all in and buffing on the buffing wheel and then you move it round a bit and till you've completed the whole ball like that one there and get a nice mirror finish on app so this ball here I've turned is 31 millimeters in diameter and to make a fixture to hold up all that side you need a brass plumbing coupling which is 28 millimeter and if you buy a t-shaped one like this you have three different ends which you can use for various fixtures and adapters so firstly you put this one in the vise like this and sawed down an angle like that down to there and then put it in the vise again and saw down here so that you saw one end off like that and remember this would be a rough sawn edge so then you put the saw off and on the mini lathe now if you have a four inch chuck like this one this is the original chuck that came on the Chinese lathe you find the tops or the outside parts of the hard drawers are quite rounded and instead of holding on the thread and damaging app you can put the component on to the jaws or the doors inside the component and open the drawers out to hold the component like that and then you just face off and then just use a toe like that to remove the sharp edge you can leave the ball the size that it is and you'll find that the modern couplings run true the ball runs true to the thread so then I got a piece of thirty two millimeter mild steel and faced off both ends and turned the diameter and then I measured the ball with a vernier and turned the diameter about six millimeter deep so that one goes on there a nice push fit and put a little groove in there for the Loctite and also slightly undercut the corner there with the turning toll and then I drilled through various sized drills until I got up to half-inch diameter and then that one will go on there like that with the Loctite and you can see that I've bought out the back there with a bit of an angle just enough clearance so that when the ball drops in there is not hitting on the back face so it looks like that and if that angle there was already on the component and that will be all right for the ball to sit on so I used Loctite 638 which is a high-strength retaining compound filled the groove covered the diameter and pushed the coupling end on there like there and let it set it sets rock-solid in a few minutes but you can make it go quicker if you want to by just warming it up slightly and you will find that you won't be able to get that component off of there again unless you actually heated it up very hot so it's a very high strength retaining compound and ideal for this type of work so next you get the ball drop it into the fixture and try the nut on the end and you'll find that it most probably will screw down far enough it'll just be a couple of threads and you need at least three thread turns so the nut needs a very slight alteration to the angle in there that that thickness is thin the bare and allows the nut to screw on further so to do that you put the fixture in the lathe and tighten it in the Chuck and check that it's running true and then I use a tool like this one here which has got a nice angle on the back there and then I can use this one to bore out the angle of the nut from inside so that one goes on the tool post like that and then so I know that I'm not going to touch this face here or cut any of that off I set it on the front face touch on the front face and put a stop on the carriage then screw them up on the end and there is enough gap to get the tall inside so then wind the tall into the stop and warned out on the diameter and who were here and then wine football back I just skim off the back of the angle and thin that wall thickness and that one's done and you can see it's cut that angle a bit more taking it in a bear and Lena or through further onto the fixture with the ball in it and then you can see that it screws nearly all the way on now incident you can take that ball out a little bit I have on that one so more of the bore diameter sticks out but you can see that it's holding that all captive in the fixture ready for machining on this end so when you come to use the fixture put it in the charkh and clock in clock there on the angle and get it running as true as possible and then I use my mandrel that I made that I did the OP 1 of all turning on and this has got an eight millimeter thread and a center drill in that end and you can use this one you screw it into the ball like that and then you put the nut over the ends like that and just like the nip and that part and then use the tail stock with a live Center and put it into the center drill hole lock the tail stock up and then tighten the coupling now up with our large adjustable spanner and then withdraw the tailstock and you'll find the ones fairly true and that's the easiest way to crew the ball in the fixture and now I'll give a quick demonstration of one of the many uses that you can use this all turning fixture for I'm going to drill right way through the ball and then bore a half inch diameter ball right way through so to make sure it's tight enough you're grilling I'd put a spanner or a adjustable spanner on one of the doors and just tighten that one up and just use a small pouring bar and that's the half inch for finish and if you want to complain the ending like that and there you have the ball with the half-inch diameter right the way through and you can use it for all different things and obviously using the fixture like that won't damage the radius of the ball and then is use the fixture again and turn the ball around put it in rock it out threw it up and just deeper the other end and then you have a perfect spherical diameter from bore to four so the plumbing fittings make really good fixtures I've used them for many different things and obviously cheap to make because you don't have to pour out solid bar and also you don't have to mess about cutting threads you

Channel: Steve Jordan

Views: 64,484

Rating: 4.8453608 out of 5

Keywords: Ball Radius Turning Home Made Fixture Myford Chinese Mini Lathe bore

Id: tplUdJDIWZE

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 01 2016