Making A Lathe Chuck Back Plate

ladies and gentlemen feast your eyes on the finest four-jaw chuck money can buy you were probably expecting like an F or a G but no no no this is an H I've wanted a smaller four jaw Chuck probably ever since I got the lathe and then when I finally did get this it spent a long time playing musical chairs around the shop just getting moved from one place to another it has always seemed to be in the way I was essentially avoiding making the back plate that I needed to actually mount this thing on the lathe but I woke up this morning look myself in the mirror and said this old Tony today's the day so if Chuck backplate to your thing you've come to the right channel now my lathe uses an American L zero spindle and I seem to recall at the time checking places like eBay quite often for a small six-inch chuck with an integrated l0 mount and I really couldn't find anything that looked like it was even in halfway decent condition so I bought this one this is new it's import and now I need to make a back plate in order to attach this to my lathe you can sort of see the back plate here where the back plate ends and the Chuck begins now I've made a couple of these in my time there's really not all that much to them they're just a pain in the butt first I'm going to have to find a large enough piece of material to hog one out of then there's boring and cutting the taper of course and from what I recall that just involved a lot of putting the Chuck in the back plate on and off a million times until that fit was just perfect the l0 tapers also require a key and then there's just some big threads so the first order of business is dig through the cut-offs pile and see if I can find a piece of material about six inches in diameter and not enough two or three inches thick the only real candidate that I have is this thing here so as usual I'm not exactly sure what this thing is I think it's a low to a low medium carbon steel the only thing I do know is that even though I'm constantly cutting slices off this it never gets any lighter now word on the street seems to be that Chuck back plates should be made of cast iron and I'm not really sure why that is the few back plates that I have made I've always made them out of steel and I've never had any issues with them the cast iron may be an issue with maybe purely threaded spindles you know like thread galling or seizing that might be reduced but going to a cast iron like a dissimilar metals sort of thing but beggars can't be choosers I'm going to need a nice thick slice about two and a quarter inches that should leave me some breathing room for some cleanup now if this thing had only been about two inches smaller I could have cut this in my saw we have to figure out another way to get this thing off of here given my unfortunate lack of options I think the only thing reasonable to try is the Bruce Lee one-inch punch okay that looks pretty all right remember that's all in the hips got to come from your core though that did wander a bit not the straightest thing in the world that's what I get for worrying too much about the camera and not concentrating on my Chi I'm going to pay for that in the lathe I'd like you all to meet my spindle nose as I mentioned earlier this is an American l0 taper it's got a key in there and then a big captive ring that helps pull and seat the truck or the faceplate onto that taper now before I have mount the four jaw I want to pick up this taper angle I'll be cutting that taper with the OP slide it's short enough taper that it's not really a big deal to top slide it instead of setting up something like the taper attachment okay so I'm sure you've seen this before I've got an indicator in the tool post exactly to the center height of my lathe and I just eyeballed the tip of that indicator to the tip of a Center in the tailstock before I moved over to the spindle nose you'll notice I'm setting up on the backside of the taper instead of up here in the front and that's simply because when we're cutting the female side of this taper in the back plate that will be flipped around right pointing towards the tailstock end and because my boring bar is cut on the operator side I want them to travel in that direction cutting the inside of that taper and this angle here is on that side of the spindle nose in the interest of making sure this horse is dead the whole point of this is to set the top slide to the same angle as the spindle nose so the taper of the top side is going to cut hopefully it will match the taper on the spindle nose and because I'm not uri geller I'm using an indicator to dial that in I'll spare you the details but this process is very tedious this took me probably 20 minutes to really get it in there screwing around with a soft hammer and you know tightening the top slide and then it moves and then loosen it again I mean there are a couple of dips and small dings it's not the freshest spindle nose in the world I'm going to call that good maybe now no matter how I set the tool post the top slide is always going to cut that taper or cut that angle right even if my tool is back here and I turn this handle it's going to trace that taper now apologize if that came across is painfully obvious but I thought I'd just get it out there because it's going to become important when we set up to cut the threads now you could have set up that spindle nose taper without reading directly off the spindle nose look up the numbers in the Machinery's handbook and set the top slide up with indicators and sine bars and angle blocks or I suppose if you're trying to make some kind of spindle adapter or backplate for someone else's lathe I don't know maybe your mother Theresa or something you could have set it up without having the spindle taper in front of you and that's probably as good as it's going to get maybe although I do have a quite a bit to take off of here this is more to minimize how much my leave is going to be trying to dance across the floor all right so it's all set up and ready to go I can start to rough this out now I did set up a Center in there this probably isn't strictly necessary but because the surface isn't flat I'm going to have somewhat of a violent interrupted cut until I flatten it out better to have that there in needed then need it and not have it there all right get to it already it's not going to turn itself all right so I've got to get this down to about four and a half inches to about an inch inch and a half deep or so I've to double check so I'll catch back up with you in a couple of weeks I've got the boss to final shape that's where the threads will go there's the thread gutter in the back and I've board it through now it's time to cut that internal taper tapers can be a little bit funny not haha funny it's best to get a good night's rest before you try to come on here's my version of the powered top slide tool I think everyone's probably got their own take on this thing that just goes into the center drilled hole in that top slide bolt and then I can power it with the cordless drill from my lathe this style seems to work better with the socket on there it would unscrew that nut and this one's also good for vampires you're not going to see this while I'm cutting the taper but off-camera is basically what's going on okay I've got the carriage locked the diameter of the taper or the depth of cut will be set by the cross slide and the taper obviously gets cut by the top slide so that in theory is an L zero taper end up with a little bit chatter down in that inside corner all right so now I'm just going to go in there and cut some clearance maybe a hundred thousand ow the spindle nose would fit you know by the time it hit the tape it would hit the taper and bottomed out at the same exact time I want that taper to hit first every time so I'm going to take $100 off the bottom I think that's about all I can do I cut some relief in the taper wall there so the spindle nose doesn't have to kiss off on that entire surface area and I just broke some of these corners while I was in there I guess it's time to try the threads starting thing is looking a little bit short though but yeah that's what the numbers say starting thing is looking a little bit short though all right I'm also up to cut the thread I've actually already done a quick scratch pass to make sure I was cut in the right pitch I've got the thread cutting tool in there it's square to the work the top slide is over twenty nine and a half degrees and both the dials are zeroed out now I see that question come up a lot online the whole twenty nine and a half degree thing there's not really much to it but it does seem like it's a source of confusion we can take a look at that in a minute I just want to get this thing cut the twenty nine and a half is in doesn't have to be exactly twenty nine and a half like if it's twenty nine point four nine or five one that's totally just kidding as long as it's a hair less than thirty it should be fine and we'll look at why that is in a second so I'm not going to go through every step here there's plenty of videos on thread cutting online I think there are it's a 60 degree thread four and a half inch by sixty P I get my carriage is zeroed out my cross slide sorry that's going to be my reference point I'm never going to touch that I mean I'm going to use the cross slide to pull the tool away and then use its zero mark to get it back in the same position it was where I left off the depth of cut is all going to happen on the top slide alright I'm going to start to rough this out and it looks like we're getting close I'll break out the wires we'll start taking some measurements I am getting some chatter though as that tool has gotten in there pretty deep but those threads are almost cresting you can hit that with a little triangular file and we'll take a measurement okay so thread measuring wires my set happens to be a PD I'm sure they're all the same there's sixteen sizes you get three of each and it comes with a conversion chart sorry a thread chart to use the wires these are 60-degree threads the conversion chart is four if you wanted to measure metric threads with these inch size wires there's also a little chart for Acme screw threads and if you haven't used these you just select you know find the thread you're trying to measure in this case it's six threads per inch it tells you which wire size to use a ninety two and there you go you laid them over the threads and mic over the wires and there's a little formula that tells you what that size is now there are other ways to measure threads I've just always used the wires and happened to like them I don't know why already complains about these things you just put two in one side one in the other and then measure across the top of your mic so for the price it really doesn't get much easier than that now in this case I don't need to use any formulas because I could just use these same wires on the back plate in the lathe and if I hit this measurement I know that all thread on to the captive nut so now hold on just a minute I have no idea what that is you're looking at in the camera but it's not what I was looking at in real life stick with it just a minute until the camera angle changes before you hit the unsubscribe button but it looked nothing like that car accident you're looking at on the screen and if for some unfortunate reason you don't have three hands see you some grease I said some grease not a ton of grease looks like I have about 40 mm - the wires I'm within about two thousand terrible all right the triangular file helped a bit I'm going to go out of the limb here and call these passable I'm still not sure why those chattered so much I didn't put a radius on the threading tool just so the root wouldn't be so sharp maybe that radius was just a little too big with the size of threading tool probably not a bad idea to clean this key up oh I'm here well nuts I'm barely catching that thread I've got maybe a thread and a half of engagement I knew something seems fishy I mean it looked a little bit small I'm going to set that back up again and open the taper just a little bit it doesn't take much on diameter to get it to translate up that taper ain't that something all right that's a lot better it's just one last thing I want to check though you're not going to be able to see this because I can hardly see it myself I've got some 1/16 TIG wire which is little bend in it and I'm feeding it through into the bore and trying to measure the distance between the end of the spindle nose and the inside of this back plate I can't get the sixteenth in there that's Oh sixty that's called 60,000 but I have some 30,000 there I just want a little bit more gap at the end that's starting to get a little bit tight if I end up with a chip or something in there when I mount the Chuck to the spindle nose it could potentially cause problems alright that's a little bit of than before I've probably got about 50,000 there I can just get the tip of this to stick they'll have to do if I come out any further I risk losing the register that needs to be machined on the front of this last thing I want to try is blowing it up protip the thicker you lay this stuff on the better your tapers will match up alright here goes nothing so don't know if you just saw that I've completely backed up the captive nut the back plate is still tight I think that's a good sign like that taper has locked and now I've got to tap that captive nut just a bit to knock it off they'll keep in mind this wouldn't be the first time I've spoken too soon so I don't know how well you're going to be able to see this it's pretty faint I do have blue on the top and the bottom a little bit more on the top the back of the taper then at the front this could use a little fine-tuning with some sandpaper or like a small rounded stone I'm going to call this good for now and go ahead and cut the keyway I haven't bothered to completely clean it up because this still needs to be taken to size a lot of this material is going to come out when I fit this to the Chuck I'm going to cut the keyway in the shaper I've locked down the clapper box and I've got this sort of homemade tooling for cutting keyways it takes ten millimeter square high-speed steel that are just ground into different size and length of slotting tools they're just inserted and tightened down for the front I also have this angle plate it's probably one of the first things I made for this shaper it's got a large cutout to accommodate different tool clearances and diameters of work bolt that on and then I intended to bolt this in with the taper facing the machine but it looks like it's not really going to fit maybe I could do it this way I don't know if I have enough clearance and it actually looks like it'll work I think I'll set it up this way I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before this is in ohms 300 I don't even know if I'm saying that right I've never seen another single piece of machinery in my life with that brand on it it has eight speeds via to leverage air box I'm currently running at 60 strokes per minute usually I'm down in the 35 and 45 I don't think I've ever run it much over 60 and you really don't want to see this thing running at 150 strokes a minute I have no idea what that's used for so I've gotten it set up and I've actually cut the first pass and by the first pass I mean I don't like to go start right at final width that's a big cutter for this size machine so I'm now cutting four millimeters and then I'm going to switch over to the larger tool and cut pretty close to final size I don't have a tool that's the width of the key slot so I'm going to step over left and right a bit so I've switched to the 8 millimeter cutter I've got a bit of a thin section here I'm worried about blowing that out so I'm going to take it slow the final key width is 3/8 of an inch you may notice that the shaper strokes a little bit on the long side for this but I'm just going to roll with it I will be running it at about 60 strokes until I get through this thin section and I'll slow it down when I hit the actual meat of the taper so I came down into the garage this morning with a cup of coffee in one hand this sort of mindlessly putting some tools away with the other soaking in the atmosphere and generally lollygagging but getting back into the state of mind of finishing the key way in the back plate on the shaper when out of the corner of my eye I caught the yellow in this Chuck what a brilliant color that is nobody likes changing Chuck's on the lathe when you pull this off the shelf and you see that wonderful yellow color in there it just brightens up your day anyway I've been hung up about a 65 millimeter dimension that I don't know how I got into my head for some reason I thought the register on this was 65 when in fact it's almost 130 that's more than five inches so all that heartache about breaking through with the taper on the back plate and losing the register on the back of the truck was for naught let's have a look over in the shaper you see that thin wall in there I just needed a couple of millimeters I thought to register the back of that Chuck and that little bit of material has been requiring me to go to longer and longer slotting bits in the shaper I mean not the end of the world but just a pain in the butt so I'm just going to put this back on the lathe and cut that out then come back here and finish that slot all right now it's a little more like it there's the piece that popped out as I was cutting it it was about four millimeters thick that saves me a lot of height in slotting tool and it wasn't necessary so if you're wondering how I got that into the same exact position the answer is I didn't I mean I balled it as close as possible but that slot has yet to get the final width or final depth though some extent it doesn't really matter though in the shaper I've never really found a good convincing way to center key slots like exactly I mean usually what I do is just bring the tool bit in really close so I'm just scratching the bore and watch that the two edges of the cutting tool scribe about the same line inside that bore so basically two parallel lines of the same depth or width I'd and I call it it's very touchy-feely I mean it's always gotten me you know close enough for what I've had to do but if anybody knows of a good way to actually dial that in I'm all years all right so this will be the same stick as before I'm going to start off with the narrower slotting tool move over to a larger one and then when I'm at depth bring the slot to final win all right let's give it a try I think that'll work let's take it over to the lathe so I think you saw me just break some of those sharp edges off of the file it turned out nice if I do say so myself the old saying is true the only thing you can't make with the shaper is a profit and it's good to try Yeah right up with the key all right that magic moment it's a little snug it looks like I went a little bit deeper than I needed to with that key slot I think it should be all right now that I've got that in there I can take the diameter down and cut the register so it looks like a pretty decent fit could have probably been just a hair tighter but I can't feel any emotion at all once it's on there it looks like it's it's a really good fit but just by hand when I put it on it seems like it could have been just a little bit tighter I'd like to take this flange diameter down a bit but I'm going to wait until the socket head screws get in there and see how much material actually I've left on the perimeter this is easy to cut even with the Chuck installed so without a dro or a mill for that matter I've had to lay out the bolt hole pattern the old-fashioned way why this was still on the lathe I black into the back and use the lathe cross-slide to scribe a faint line at the diameter of the bolt hole circle I then made a punch mark did a little bit of math and just set my calipers to you know sort of a straight line distance between holes and then just walked my way around I don't know if you can see that on camera it took me three tries to get that just right and I've marked the drill location with just a blue sharpie mark so that little drill press isn't really intended for these sort of shenanigans it was much too fast for what I needed to do but you know when your backs up against the corner now if that just ain't the cutest all right all in all I think that turned out pretty alright I've now got a little four jaw Chuck I can spin at the top speed of my lathe I've never taken the big one up to 1,200 rpm I think that technically is rated to 5 or 600 but for smaller work and especially for drilling and boring odd shaped parts this so welcomed edition ah so I think that wraps it up I apologize I think I mentioned maybe getting into some of that thread cutting stuff but this video is probably too long if anyone's interested in that sort of thing maybe just let me know in the comments and I'll do a separate installment so that's it thanks for having stuck around I appreciate the company

Channel: This Old Tony

Views: 1,995,414

Rating: 4.9333835 out of 5

Keywords: lathe, lathe chuck back plate, chuck backplate, mill, taper, L0 taper, L-0 taper, Stefan Gotteswinter, metalworking, machining, cutting a taper on the lathe

Id: uAQLrM1P-YQ

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This is a well-done video and what looks like a nice shop. Good size lathe, a shaper (which I'd love, even if it's an "Omes" (never heard of it either)) and I think I saw a Clausing mill in the background, although later you said you don't have one. What is that thing?

To center in the shaper, can you put one of those rotating coax indicators on the end of the ram and center in the bore? Oh wait, you don't want center in 2D, just 1D.

Editing hours later: Here's a way to center inside a bore on the shaper:

1. Put an indicator on the ram and point it straight down. Do this by rotating the indicator until it gives a maximum reading against the table.

2. Mount the work on the table. Move it back and forth until the indicator gives a minimum reading. You are now right above the lowest point.

I'm not sure this is more accurate than your "scratch on both sides" method, though. If you don't object to an electronic fix, maybe one of those touch sensor dealies and move the work back and forth to get a width in X and then divide by 2.

[u/fabbricator]

just the video i've been looking for for a few years, thanks for posting.