Get Your Steady Rest Aligned

hey guys kill fry here welcome back to the shop thank you to all my subscribers thank you to all my new subscribers when I see these subscriptions growing that's like a big thank-you from the people that I help or try to help anyway so thank you for that and much appreciated today's topic is something that I continue to see online I get offline messages I get comments steady rest all right a couple of different kinds of steady reps we'll get right to it you have steady reps with wheels you have steady rests with non-marring brass bronze tips whatever you have three points you have four point those are about the only ones that I'm familiar with if there's another kind and I'm not talking about follow rest here I'm talking about steady rest it's in place it's locked down and you just pray that it's in line with your spindle so that's what I'm going to address today and let's talk about when you put a piece in a Chuck and you set up a steady rest and you run it if you have any experience with a steady rest you watch the track that the wheels I like roller rest so that's what we're going to talk about you watch the track that the wheel is tracking on your part and eventually you're going to see that track start to get a little bit wider and when that happens you know that your part is walking out of the Chuck that's a kind of a scary thing because you don't know how your features are going to come out they're going to be concentric are they going to be tapered are they going to be the size what's going on so I'll show you why the part starts to walk out of the Chuck it's a thing called micro motion and in the orthopedic world we're out from micro motion is something that is almost undetectable but it's there and ultimately it causes big problems downstream so let's take a look at what's going on all right you have the spindle of your machine say your line let's say it's the center line because it the line between two points maybe that's the bearings of the machine your steady rest let's say when your steady rest is out here not on line with that machine but out here greatly exaggerated of course it's not going to be two inches off I mean my god can you have this going on so here's your chuck job hold on to that bar well greatly exaggerated of course when your part is in there and it's sitting force like this as this Chuck turns the contact or the pressure value or the pressure distribution of the jaw against the part changes it reverses as the Chuck spins so if your part is trapped out here in your steady rest and it's spinning this way and the Chuck is spinning this way when this job moves around to the backside of the part this is what you have so you go from contacting the heel of the job to the contact on the tip of the jaw hundreds of times a minute because of how many rpms the thing is running and there's your micro motion it feels and before you know it your part starts walking out so without even realizing it you are pushing that part out of that machine or pulling it or however you want to describe it but anybody that's ever dropped engage pin into a nice nice tight fit hole and can't get it out you felt that click click click click click oscillation that will allow that pin to come out of that hole same things happening right here so the challenge is to get the center of your steady rest on line with the center of your machine I've seen a lot of different techniques a lot of guys rely on indicators and hopefully they can hang the part out and get the part to run through enough so that they can dial it in while it's running sometimes you can get away with that sometimes you can't but it sure would be nice to know that in a perfect world with the Machine level with the head Square to the bed with the planets wind up at high tide and 72 degrees outside and whatever somebody else is going to add to this equation you can get that steady rest on line with that machine relatively easy and I was inspired the other day to compare the way I do it to something you can probably find laying around your shop and if you do have these things laying around your shop I want to show you what I use this guy right here will be the inspiration for the solution to your shop problem and if you know if this is this is a adjustable stop to the back of a curve 675 or 688 nice and you probably have one of these laying around if you don't you should make one because they're a lot of fun to make anyway this piece right here that's your salvation I'm going to take into the shop I'm going to take you to the inspection area and I'm going to show you how to set one of these up to help you with steady rest alignment on your late let's take a walk and check it out okay guys this is the arm from the Curt stop that I'm going to use for this particular operation I took a piece of quarter-inch material how to put a flat on it so it's not influenced by the screw too much and I rounded off the tip so as it spins I can be assured that I'm going to hit the high spot on it now you can do this with a height gauge and indicator of B block stack drop indicator nineteen different ways you can set this but for somebody that just has gauge blocks in their shop and some parallels this is a three quarter inch diameter bar so it's 3/8 to the center so whatever stack of gauge blocks you use to set from this surface to here you want to add in this three-eighths to your calculation to make sure that you have the correct radius set since this is a 3/4 diameter and this is a 1/4 diameter rod I have a quarter inch diameter or excuse me 1/4 inch high height gauge per gate block underneath it to keep the rods flat and the stack is quite simple I have an inch and a 125 block here plus the 375 radius of the bar gives me exactly an inch and a half from the center line to the top of the stack just simply push this thing tighten your screw down and you know you have an exact inch and a half projection from the center of this bar to the tip of your block and actually if you're not turning three inch diameter material set it however you need to set it and then make an adjustment if you decide to do this again once you turn your journal diameter on your part okay guys for setup purposes I've got the steady rest on the machine the machine is cleaned and the 5c collet setup is currently in the machine just because I am changing over from small stock to a larger diameter let's take that bar that you just saw me set up to stick it in this three-quarter collet and I'm going to line up the bar with the roller Center in this rest and I know a lot of you guys are going man that's a great idea so why didn't I think of that all right machines in neutral right now and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to bring my wheel up make sure you have just a little bit of drag on your lock mechanism here so that everything is already ended correctly and you want it to drag I'm just going to work this back and forth until my roller starts to show me that it's making contact if I can find a marker so we can all see what I'm going to do is put a little stripe on here so I can't tell for sure that it's moving we get up contact will do the same thing around the back okay we have motion I get up check it out we'll come back around to the front wheel and see if it's still kicking which it is and at this point these bottom rollers are set for an exact three inch diameter and the prop let's just bring it down and make contact but just for yucks I'm going to close this lock it get down here and set it I'm going to put a reference mark on my top wheel and when I do finally make contact with the actual part I'm going to verify or just double-check where this lines up to check my position now you're going to want to maintain pressure on your set screw on your top wheel because gravity is going to want to pull it down and you want to stay against these threads as it's coming down okay that's money right there I'm going to put a little arrow on the top so that it faces you Chuck smug it turn it up we go that's a three inch you can do this with any size you want actually if you have a short piece and you have the Chuck you can indicate your short piece and do this exact same thing and then move out but let's just see how this works out give me a couple minutes and change over to my Chuck and get a big piece of material and I'm going to lay that in there and fire it up okay guys got the three jaw Chuck in it is not indicated yet the steady rest has been moved out into location the bottom rollers have not been touched this one is snug there's an arrow on top facing the chuck so let's load a piece in here and just see what happens now the only reason I have the carriage on this side of the steady rest is so that I can stick an indicator on here and track it to see just how close this setup is going to get me and we're going to be surprised together because I haven't done this on this setup isn't right now for now I'm just going to go snug this so it turns I'm not going to make it tight and this is where we back this guy up man lock it down loosen this up and we are sitting right now the arrow on the top of this knob sitting at four o'clock with any kind of left when I bring it back around to nine o'clock and a certain saying we are right there we are approximately 20 degrees different I'm going to have to assume that's because of the backlash and the threat these are all tight the rest itself is tight this one to the back a little bit tougher to chase this and see what happens US general model 387 indicator base in case I'm going to get questions on that about a million years old love it and just for sake of needle movement if I'm not measuring restrictive indicator movement since I am NOT measuring with this indicator the tip angle really doesn't matter so I'm just looking for contacts I'm looking to zero out the part then we'll start it on C with that now another technique that I've also seen online colleagues working both rooms at the same time I am NOT a big fan of working both screws at the same time so when I start indicating a Chuck I'm going to back all four along I'm actually you can only do this if you have an adjustable checker okay all four of them are loose I'm going to look for my left side and I'm going to pull it in there we go the Chuck body slides nice and easy when they're all loose now when you're doing this when you loosen up all four make sure you have sufficient drag on the whole assembly that the way the Chuck isn't going to move it on the back plate [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] okay I like martensite part is true [Applause] now inside the study rest you are going to have a track left behind by the rollers it is this track that I was referring to inside that you want to keep your eyes on I'm just going to open it up so that you can see it this track right here you do not want to see that start to get wide then you know that the parts pulling out you also don't want to see your rollers writing into the material and displacing it so every once in a while stick your finger in there and feel whether or not your rollers are digging in you'll know that they're too tight that is also not good now let's quickly indicator on the top of this thing see how it looks [Applause] [Applause] I know the camera is not going to be able to track this indicator so you're going to have to take my word for the results here okay we were sitting on 0 [Applause] there's about a 5,000 - sir I'm going to spin it to see if the parts mode or the setup [Applause] [Applause] there is almost no indicator movement along the front I'm not going to lie to you the indicator did move along the top which would say that the steady rest is high on this angle that being said and I'm glad that that happened it could indicate a level issue with the engine laid since the engine lathe has two Jack screws on the tailstock end and four Jack screws on the head the relationship between the head and the bed could be skewed and the natural centerline projection of the head could get higher or lower as it gets towards the tail stock because of the four leveling screws all at all I think if you're going to be two thousand three thousand sout on a tail stock or steady rest I think you're in the ballpark if you want to make a fine adjustment which you're probably going to have to do after you turn your journal diamond around there make it at that time I do plan to shoot another video on how I am going to check the alignment of my head to my ways if anyone out there has a way they would like to suggest a way that they do it or point me at a video of someone else that's already done it I would love to see that but I do plan to shoot one or my all means that's all I got for you using this little guy right here will get you closer than you could possibly hope to get out here on parts that are naturally not trustworthy to be extended so far the weight and such I know that there are some guys out there that do really big material and this isn't something you just want to leave flop it around to a center drill it or whatever so it's nice to have your steady rest clothes right from the get-go okay that's all we got you you okay well naturally if you have a smaller diameter you can check that smaller diameter in a collet or a three jaw six jaw four jaw for those of you guys that like to hold round stocking for job get it to run zero so ID your steady rest up against it and touch it off slide it back you're done now naturally the technique that I am a big fan of is you Chuck your part is sitting in the steady rescue throw a little journal diameter on it filter around put that journal diameter in the wheels because round stock isn't always round but if you hear a thumping grinding bang going on in your steady rest it's probably because my high spots are coming around and nastiness is happening so by all means technique this isn't about turning general diameters and flipping parts around all that this is just about how to set that steady rest in line with your leg I hope you like what you saw that stop that I used if you don't have one of those make something grab a piece of ground stock grab a piece of stainless whatever make one and set it up the way I showed you give it a shot try it if you like it give you a thumbs up give me a comment to back to me let me know how it worked for you it's a relatively easy solution and if your machine is properly set and adjusted level it'll work so anyway that's all I got till next time till five dance innovations often Texas about

Channel: Joe Pieczynski

Views: 183,212

Rating: 4.9076376 out of 5

Keywords: joe pie, joe pieczynski, advanced innovations, advanced innovations llc, steady rests, roller rests, how to adjust a steady rest, shop tutorials, shop hacks, machine shop videos, lathe attachments, setting a steady rest, steady rest setup, lathe tutorials, lathe lessons

Id: MkSJilGKB_A

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2017