Lathe Leveling - Waste of time ????

hey guys chill five here advance animations welcome back to the shop actually somebody should be saying welcome back to me because I've been off the grid for a while pushing some work through the shop you know you got to pay the bills so thanks for hanging in and then I got a chance they will take a short trip and take care of some personal business and as luck would have it that short trip took me to the island of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands so I mean if you got to take a business trip that's a good place to go which brings us to my first point of business here I have to give a shout out to this company right here on my shirt Makai or maka e Adventures and they are in a lot hiking that Maui that is on the northwest corner of Maui it is a boat charter whale watching scuba diving played place and I tell you if you're if you're going to go and you're going to spend the money that kind of money to go and do some type of adventure go see these people it's a family-run business and to Kevin and Amanda who made us feel right at home thank you for everything was a positive experience and they can be found that's like 16 and the Latino or latina Harbor in Maui fantastic they did not compensate me for that but the experience was worth the shoutout so today I'm going to show you a highly technical model on lay the live link and when I say highly technical get ready for this because I went all out on this one ladies leveling is probably the most misused or abused term that there isn't but people say oh I got my leg so flat it's absolutely incredible that means nothing unless you take it to the next step and you combine that with a head stock alignment if you get lucky and you're lay that is very rigid and straight and small enough that when you level the bed everything falls into place well you're one in a million so good for you what I'm going to show you how important is to follow up with the head stock alignment as well as the lathe leveling watch out for that words over let's take a walk out on the bench I'll show you the simulator that I have out there and I hope that what you see sheds a little bit more light on some problems you may be having with the geometry of your part let's take for the most part you are going to find on an engine lathe that the head of your Anjali has four adjusters to your in the front two in the back and on the other end of the bed you are going to have two as well total one in the front one in the back now believe it or not as rigid as this machine looks the likelihood of a pivot or a bend or a twist is going to originate right here okay you have the mass of the head which is a conservative way with all the gears and motors and everything else going on and then you have the extension of the bed and I like to compare this to a truck pulling a trailer with two balls okay we have two potential pivot points it's not going to go this way unless you crash it real hard yes it can go that way but for the most part it's going to want to bend right here it's going to want to go down up and this end is going to want to twist but the twist that is apparent on this end is going to be greatly reduced here because this is more rigid okay this is connected to the head now just because I can't take this machine and Bend this machine around the way that I would like to to demonstrate let's step over to the bench I'm going to show you a little mock-up that I have and this is going to make it pretty clear right away exactly what's going on and hopefully give you a little bit better feel for all these lines that are happening right in front of you all right this is the highly technical lathe leveling simulator inspired by this old Tony he did an animation on his channel and if you haven't watched this old Tony check him out he's one of my favorites so just to put all the myths to bed right now just assume that these are your bed ways this is the projected center line of your machine everything is perfectly straight level flat lined up headstocks lined up so this is a perfect machine now let's take the entire bench that this is sitting on and lift the bench at 15 degrees or 10 or 5 or whatever this machine is no longer level but it's still good so the word level is abused in my opinion it doesn't really have to be leveled it just has to be true to itself let's talk about leveling it up by the head you want to see a level this way out by the tailstock you want to see a level this way side to side you know I've got to say that I'm really not sold on the fact that the lathe needs to be level side to side you want consistent readings here and here that is a fantastic place to start not by doing that by dialing that in in my opinion in my shop and in my experience I've used the front side adjusters on the head and the two on the on the end of the lathe to bring my bed into a decent planer relationship not so much these guys I keep up with them so that the head is somewhat level but let's take a look at why you want twists out of your machine and why you want the headstock to be aligned after you level the bed I'm gonna pull the back spacers off of this setup okay say right now we have an even distance from the centerline of the machine to the front rail it's even all the way out okay perfect ideal scenario let's pull the back spacers out man look at that holy mackerel look what happened to the radius this is still the same because it's steel it's solid right a little bit of pivot going on here because of the way the machine flexes but this triangle between the center line and the ways is fairly set in stone now when the heads low in the back you can see that the projected center line is up what does that mean well it means it's a greater radius here than it is here so the parts are gonna be a reverse cone like a megaphone if you're cutting it you may blame it on Park deflection but when you take a free pass and another pass and another pass and you're not cutting basically any material off and you're still getting a cone this is probably what's happening okay quite the opposite when the back is too high [Applause] get a little carried away but Illustrated just fine you can see that when the back gets high the radius deteriorates and the front fine all well and good so now your genius brother-in-law comes over and he says hey let's check your machine what he does is he takes a bar and he puts it between centers here and at the tailstock so when he lifts the bar up and puts it back in the center between the tailstock well the triangle at the tailstock is a hard triangle like the one at the headstock and when he trams it and goes hey man I got your lathe true within a half a thousand chah's you can say hey yeah that's good you know I'll call you and get out of my shop because as soon as you pull that center line of that test bar down and pinch it you've lost all relative accuracy in what you're trying to accomplish I'm going to need my hands for this so bear with me for a second all right you're going to need if you don't have a headstock alignment tool and a lot of us don't I know I don't what you should do just find a piece of material Thompson rod whatever you can find that you know is straight roll it across the surface plate make sure you don't have any of that flipping going on in the center then indicate it true here zero spinning indicated true all the way out on the end spinning if you have zero and zero you can rest assured that it's in line with the bearings in the head okay now in an unsupported manner you do not want to influence the end of this part now track it see what you got if it's if it's low then lower the backside of your machine if it's high then raise the backside of your machine the same condition can take place if the bed is twisted okay we're back to the supposedly condition out if the bed is twisted if it's high on one side let's make it really high get carried away with this demonstration gonna make it really high okay your lathe bed is twisted this way because it's not the same here in here this side is up and what do you have you have a situation very similar to the situation if the headstock is high on the left hand side the radius here is smaller because this way is getting closer to the center line if I wanted to really twist it there's your triangle your triangle deteriorates as it gets closer to the tailstock and the same with the back so consistent measurement across your ways in and out is what you're going to start with as far as level is concerned like I showed you if we tip the entire machine up or tip the entire shop as long as the machine is true to itself it should cut good a final test to know whether or not your headstock is aligned properly is to take as much of the gear off of your machine as you can take the Chuck off take everything put a collet in here and face a piece of material off right up against the headstock place it off don't change the tool out on the quick change the tool post leave it there put your Chuck on put a bar in let it stick out six inches face it again take a look at the difference between the geometry of the little part that was faced here and the part that you faced way out here if there's any discrepancy high or low with the center line of that machine you're gonna see it out here you face it off nice and good come out here if you leave a bird at it protrusion if the tool is above Center as it's coming you'll know that the material is either up or down so that's a good litmus test for the alignment of the headstock after you've leveled your ways that's about all I got guys it's it's pretty straightforward but seeing what's going on with the different parts of the machine as the machine goes high and low sometimes it helps so thank you to this old Tony for the inspiration for the twin rail model and that's about all I got I hope that helps and you know believe it or not I'm not going to admit this too many times but I had a job one time where I was turning and I was getting a taper on my part and learned this trick from an old CNC guy who used to programmed tapers into his parts to eliminate deflection of the material actually jacked up the one corner of my machine to skew the geometry of the rails and took the taper out of the part because I jacked up the machine if you do it make sure you own that machine because if you do that to somebody else's machine well you're not gonna be very popular ok guys that's it any questions put in a comment line and thanks for watching you

Channel: Joe Pieczynski

Views: 70,078

Rating: 4.9602499 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Pie, JoePieczynski, Advanced Innovations, advanced innovations llc, how to, machine shop, shop tricks, shop hacks, shop techniques, shop tutorials, lathe leveling, leveling a lathe, lathe setup, new lathe, correcting tapered parts, tapered parts, lathe alignment, lathe alignment error

Id: dnhT88kSUh0

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2019