Leveling and Setup of the Metalworking lathe Part 1

welcome back doc stools on time so today what we're going to be working on is leveling the metalworking length my yam it's to be specific we installed the the Dro on the machine and to do that we had to drag it out from its normal position so it's back in position now and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to level the level the machine and get it properly and accurately level and then do some test cuts so this is a kind of a single subject video and and what we're going to talk about the room type a leveling and setting up a lathe and we're going to talk about the levels and the different types and how to calibrate levels and and why you should calibrate levels in what else I'm going to figure out something else anyway let's pop over to the the surface plate and we're going to look at some levels and the different types and how to calibrate the levels and sedima properly okay so we got a bunch of levels here and we'll just kind of go through them real quick let's see how do we want to do this well this is this is more for demonstration purposes about calibration because it's it's got a nice thumb wheel on it but to start with the most accurate and we'll go to the least accurate so this is a minute oh yo and this is a very precise level and this reads out one division which means one line is six ten thousandths of an inch in a foot and this is a little less than a foot so what that means is one of those divisions if you put a piece of shim stock under one end that was six tenths it would move it would move one division now all of these levels here our user our caliber a table okay I don't know if that's a real word but the users can calibrate their own levels and you should calibrate your level every time you use it you should calibrate your level in particular the very fancy ones and here you can see the it's got an adjustment screw okay now because of temperature and things like that the the bubble will change size and if you hold your hand on it for too long and warm it up the the bubble changes size too and also the casting can actually change size - so go mistake these these are very very precision instruments okay and should be treated as such the bottoms if there's any Nick's or burrs and the bottoms those need to be removed because that will affect your that will affect your readings okay so before you use a level to do a job you want to make sure that the surface it here that you're interrogating is is smooth and burr free and that your instrument is is smooth and burr free and clean and that it's in proper calibration okay so that's that one let's let's let's move on here so this is a this is a stare at ninety eight here this is a real nice level too and I believe this one's around ten seconds of arc or about five thousand spur foot something like that what the divisions on this are so these are perfectly adequate for for setting up lays this is kind of overkill but hey if you get one for a good price great go for it and this has a little V groove in the bottom and once again you know you're going to want to you're going to want to check it for birds and nicks and stuff like that and protect it from that kind of stuff and then this has a little cover that protects the bubble there too now these have ground vials in them they're ground glass and they're tapered slightly where you're you know kind of hardware store variety levels that the tube is actually bent slightly okay so there's that one that's a stair 98 and this is kind of a copy of a stair of 98 this particular one is made by the South Bend lathe company which is kind of cool and then here's the here's the calibration screws right here and it's very similar and this one is probably about 10 seconds also 10 seconds of arc similar to that okay and it's going to be grooving yeah there's the there's a calibration hole there okay and then here's this one this one comes from my old tool maker friend charlie in fact he didn't even bother to label it he needed a small level for something I don't know what but he had a bunch of these these vials here and so anyway made up a quickie here but this was kind of neat because it's got a little thumb screw on it so you can quickly you can quickly calibrate this and this we might just these are these take a little longer to calibrate here because you have to you have to do several repetitions of it but this one here we can do pretty quick and so I think I'll zoom in and we'll look at that one and you know making a level is probably kind of a cool project if you if you find a vial like this somewhere at a sale you can you can make your own base and do whatever you want there so let's zoom in a little bit and then we'll look at how to calibrate a level okay so we're going to we're going to use this little this little funky one here too for our demonstration so you know this is a theoretical flat plane here okay but it's not this particular surface plate is not leveled so if you think of a flat plane there is there's always a line running through a flat plane that is perfectly level and you find that by just rotating the rotating the level until you find that particularly knits in this flat plane that is level okay so that's pretty close right there but we don't know if this level is calibrated yet so what I usually do is I just kind of start out that way and you know define this this kind of nominally a level of spot right and say okay that's that's a good starting place and then what I like to do is I I bring a something over here and I might need to move thee and this is going to work okay I might need to move the camera so what I do is I put something there that that gives me a little fence okay so I don't have to think about it so the way you calibrate a level levels are pretty cool in that they're self-proving okay and what that means is if I take a reading this way and then I swap it 180 degrees oh look at that okay so something's wrong there the in fact we may need to move this because it's it seems like it's it's far enough out but they're self-proving so when they come back here it should read back where it was okay so what that means is by swapping this 180 I can compare I can compare two positions and when they cancel each other out or they null each other out then the level is in calibration and you can fuss around with this and in even on these these very accurate level and you can you get fractions of a division of agreement so that's what's cool about them and all good levels have the ability to be calibrated okay all right so so how we would do that is we would make an adjustment all right and then what we're looking for actually we're going to need to go the other way a significant amount here all right let's try that and then you know there's a little recipe for how many lines and then you do a little math and then you can kind of do it in one shot here okay so we're getting a little closer there pop it around okay so I was plus one on the in the other direction OOP me go the other way so I'm going to probably go about a half there maybe okay so I don't care where it is right now all I care about is that I get the same reading in both directions okay I'm actually getting pretty close there let's try that yeah pretty sure you guys can seal this and you see I'm just putting it up against the fence that way I'm putting it in the same place I'm putting in the same place each time when I when I flop in and then yeah we're going to we're going to change this because it's considerably out of love that's actually looking pretty good right there that's not too bad so let's let's reposition here and find a cannibal make sure I'm make sure in the frame mr. wizard of course I'm not on top of this so I can't quite say okay there we go okay so that's our new quote-unquote level line right so we're just going to come up like this do that okay and then we're going to check it okay so that's looking pretty good all right now this particular one I think is mm per line per foot I believe is what what he meant I haven't checked it to see what that's what what he means by his labeling there but anyway that's kind of how you how you calibrate a level is you're swapping it in for end you need to do several cycles of it to get it to agree and you don't want to keep your hand on the thing because as you as your hand heat goes into this this base expands and does some weird stuff and then if there's any inaccuracies in your base you can push on the ends and you'll you'll see the thing move a little bit so that's what you don't want all right anyway that's how you calibrate a level and this is the little one so that's and actually this is pretty good one because I could just turn the knob I didn't have to use tools and whatnot like you do on the others but it takes a little while to do it and you should do it every time before you before you use your level so now let's go over to the Machine and I'll show you how the how I set up to level a metalworking lathes right here and the way that I like to do lays in particular longer ones like this is this particular Lake has eight leveling points on okay and really they're they're load-bearing points is what they are they want support underneath the machine at those those positions now so when you're when you're leveling on on multiple points like this it's much simpler to level on three points like the tripod principle okay so it's much quicker to get the machine close and in level when you're on three points so what I like to get was under the heavy end over here I use two points under that in and then I get a single point under the the tailstock well how do you do that right I mean I got I got two leveling feet under this in and I want one you really want it on the center of gravity typically you know which would be roughly the centerline of this okay so how do you do that well what I use is I use a and I think they call these planer jacks okay or you can use almost any kind of a screw jack but what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that under the under the center of one in okay and get up off of these these two feet here okay so now I have I have a tripod situation so the far am i get this axis here and at this end here I get this axis so it it simplifies leveling greatly now once I get it all leveled and I'm happy with it what I do is I bring all these feet down into bearing on the floor and then it gets a little tricky at that point because what you want to do is you want to make sure that they're all loaded kind of equally for their area okay so here the headstock it's very heavy so all those will have a particular load per foot per knot square foot but per foot and then foot and here at this end this is actually the very light end of the machine so these will have a different load per foot okay so it's a miserable job because you're going up and down up and down back and forth back and forth so anything you can do to simplify it's better okay I'm going to move the camera bring in a little closer and we'll talk about some of the other gear that we're going to use here too so okay so this particularly is metric and I didn't have a the proper wrench to fit the adjusting feet and the last time I did with an adjustable ranch and it was a pain in the you-know-what so I went I bought a I bought a ranch 26 millimeter wrench goofy size I didn't have an inch wrench that would work because it's like an inch and 27 thousands or something like that some silly silly number this is for the that screw Jack there gloves this is a handy item when doing this because you're going up and down up and down up and down and then some pads or as Adam would call it a redneck creepers right I didn't have a big piece of cardboard so my redneck creeper here so then I'm going to bring me in on top of the Machine here and we'll set the levels on the machine and you can see how we're going to do that and then we'll go from there okay so we're going to get this under here and find a good supply so now what I want to do is put it up on this okay so that foots up and that foots up and the other thing I want to do is I want to run these up a little bit so that I don't come down on the on the the stock feet here okay so I got plenty of clearance and you can you can tap on and that they sound different when they're when they're load-bearing okay so here all right you hear that that's like hard on it okay so now go around the Machine and I'm going to check that all the other feet are not touching except for the foot the farthest two away which gives me my my my tripod okay okay so I since I got enough levels what I'm going to do is and these levels have been calibrated just in case anybody's wondering so I have two so I can position one this way and I can position one in the z-axis too so what I want to do is put it on a precision surface which this is probably okay this is okay up here but so we can go down here or up here what I want to do is make sure that there's no no Nick's or burrs and this is this area tends to get a little bit beat up now you can go over the ways also the I have seen some lathes that the flat ways are at different heights okay so I kind of like to come up here this is where your tool is anyway so you know this is ultimately the point that we care about up here so and then you know we can cross-check by putting it on the ways to see if those those agree with one another okay but what you want to do is remember I mentioned that we don't want any burrs on on your instrument okay well we also don't want any on the measuring surface to and they see a little something there that I don't like so I'm just going to kind of gently stone that a little bit to get any high points off like that and kind of clean that up a little bit and actually I'll get some some cleaner there I'll do that off camera we don't need to watch that anyway then we're going to position this and then make sure it's sitting down properly okay and you can sit man oh can you see that for I don't know I don't know if you can see that but it's considerably out of level right now so and then you know once again always it's the levels or self-proving you know when you're getting I don't know I don't necessarily do this on every reading so I'll just leave it right I'll give it leveled and you know to the tolerance that I want and then I'll swap this in for in to see that I that I get a proper reading and then I'll check it in a few places perhaps here or towards the tailstock farther and then towards the headstock also and see if I'm in general agreement there okay and then the other one is basically just laying on one of the flat ways lon longitudinal ways you know same thing make sure there's no Knicks burrs or crud underneath it and that you're bearing properly and then we just adjust the screws until we get to where we want so let's do that you you okay so now what we're doing is we've got the lead the levels are nice okay so what front to back and left to right we're a good shape on the levels now what I want to do is I want to bring all the the machine feet down into bearing against the floor so right now I'm at the the too far ones are in bearing against the floor so the other six I need to run those down until they start touching and then kind of chase around in a circle here and get them all kind of loaded up and while keeping the Machine still level so at this point when I bring these down and bring them into bearing here this is going to come out so we'll be on four points in and then we'll expand that six and then we'll expand that to eight all keeping it in agreement on the levels okay so this is pretty straightforward here I'm just going to run these down so till they start oops till they start bearing it before so here's where you got to be careful because it's really easy to do - Jack this out of position okay I'm still good and I may have to cut my eye Brayden Resch up to an adjustable wrench final bid here kind of an evenness but my only my only tool that I have is is my feeling of torque on those adjusters right and watching my level so what I wanted I wanted to feel about the same load-bearing lies that start getting loose and keeping it in love okay so far so good so what I really wanted to happen here is just everything you can feels pretty good got some weight on it okay so let's set that s mom look up and we're pretty good on the level okay let's do the other ones all right so after crawling around and a couple of circuits I got them all hard against the floor and kind of appropriate even loading for where they are relational machine still level and we'll come in and look at the levels you know some guys are probably curious how close I shoot for here so we get a shot of that and then so probably run the Machine a little bit so put some minute now this rather than a couple of speeds is to kind of rally machine and settle it we'll check again that we'll set up to do a test cut which is where you turn a couple of bosses that are separated by a distance and you can see if there's any any twists in the system so generally I'm on fire working lays in this one in particular it's got this massive frame and casting that goes along with it so they're not as sensitive as what you'd see like an Old South Bend with the the shallow bed and and no integrated chip can I guess how I should put it those are a little a little more flexible I would call it so older lathes are generally a little more flexible that way and they're harder to set up because of that so modern laser are much less sensitive to to twist and they hold tiny stuff okay so let's bring it and look at the look at the levels okay so here we are in this one here it's kind of hard to get dead over the level but trust me it's it's good okay and then the you know the final kind of proof to make sure that we haven't lost anything is we we swap it in for end and let it settle out okay and it agrees okay so our 180 proof works so and then we'll go down and look at the little South Bend light - okay and here's the little South Bend and when you when you read it when you read the bubble you want to read both ends at the bubble because the bubble changes length as temperature goes up so you want to compare both ends of the bubble on a calibrated level so you don't just look at one end you look at both ends in fact the best level to actually split the image of of the of the bubble and they superimpose the images on one another and so you're actually comparing the ends of the bubble to one another so it's kind of cool they call it a split prism level I think or something like that I can't quite remember get the lathe leveled and I'm pretty happy with it so far I've run it for a little while at some of the higher speeds which I were kind of hard to do before because there was a little shimmy in the lathe that's why I switched the feet so pretty happy with the stability right now and what we're going to do next not in this particular video but it'll be a follow-on video to this one is we're going to do some test cuts on this bar right here and that's where we do a very sensitive test to check for twists in the ways now with modern more modern legs with very very deep cross rivet castings you don't see a lot of a lot of twists although you can see some if you're bearing down on all the feats real well where all the feet real weld and generally they're pretty good but we'll check it it's always a good thing to check and it's a simple test but it's very sensitive so try that out okay and I don't know I think that's about it and thanks for watching

Channel: oxtoolco

Views: 114,799

Rating: 4.8984036 out of 5

Keywords: Lathe, Metalworking (Visual Art Form), Precision level, Starrett 98 level, Mitutoyo level, Test bar, Lathe twist, Machinery setup, Millwright (Profession), Tom Lipton, Oxtool, Nothing too strong ever broke

Id: zIDL77qt1tI

Length: 30min 58sec (1858 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 21 2014