Never Have I Ever

[140mower]

How can you not care about the wenches?

 

[Susquatch]

How can you not care about the wenches?

Hard to tell what joke we are toying with here.

@Brent H 's wench was a winch not a wrench.

But either way, with a 1 rpm (or even less) drive, who needs a wrench or a winch. On the other hand, wenches are always welcome!

 

[Tecnico]

I used to enjoy discussing how innovation happens with my research and academic colleagues. It seems like most often, it is the product of a young uncluttered mind unschooled by the discipline and rote of established methods and formulas. But sometimes a cluttered mind is required to provide enough cross-fertility for synthesis to arise spontaneously. Perhaps it's that piler / filer thing again. Other times, I think it's driven by raw need, or just building on other new or existing ideas.

At any rate, I had found myself wondering how that crank idea arose in your mind. What in the world led you to that idea.....

I had thought maybe you were trying to fill a specific need, or perhaps you were using a chuck wrench to rotate the chuck and got tired of it.....

In any event, I had raised my image of you to compare with one of those rare geniuses like DaVinci or Gallileo.

Now I discover that you just saw it on a board in England. Alas, you are not a DaVinci anymore..... Just another amazing Machinist doing ordinary things like making fine machines out of iron ore.

Ya, I'm still impressed. Just only mount everest level now, not a super god on mount olympus. Insert big sigh here......

No worries about whether you planned the shoulder or not. That wasn't my point. My point was that it was possible at all!

Feel free to ask about shear tools, I make and use them all the time. When nothing else will produce a good finish on mystery metal while creeping up on a dimension, a shear tool will. Look them up on our forum here too. There has been some good discussion.

You know @Susquatch, I so enjoy your posts! Never too serious but still with plenty of serious gems.

I'm hugely flattered to have walked among giants if only for a short time until the truth came out. Really, to quote Sir Isaac Newton it's more like this:

“If I have seen further,” Isaac Newton wrote in a 1675 letter to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

I like your shout out to da Vinci, that guy (and his contemporaries) was awesome. All of those "old guys" were the real deal, the smart ones, today for the most part our inventions are deriviative (standing on their shoulders) and we have so much more advanced (analysis etc.) tools that they didn't. I'm in awe.

I had the privilege to soak up a bit of the da Vinci mystique a while back, I lived in Italy for a while and got to visit his home town Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci translated = Leonardo of Vinci) and to go through the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science & Technology) in Milano and see many models of his machines. He was brilliant and it was fun to look at the models and figure out what they were for and how they worked.

My using the hand crank in this and similar situations really is a result of sizing up threading up to a shoulder by power and choosing to do it by hand because I can control the end of cut much more easily. I have visions of broken lathe pieces and work flying around the shop if I don't drop out the drive at the exact right time, not a pretty picture. At some point I'll have a job that suits it. I have vague recollections of a Standard Modern that had an adjustable carriage feed kick out, that would be perfect for the job but the Myford doesn't have that feature.

The shear tool has my eye, it's on my Project 42 list. We'll probably talk then, thanks!

D

 

[Tecnico]

The closest I've ever come to @Tecnico s crank is to use the jaw tool in the drive holes and turn the chuck and spindle with that. But I never thought to cut threads that way.

I don't think you need to have the spindle in low gear. You can cut threads or turn the chuck manually in a higher easier to turn gear.

But I'm making myself a crank. I'm gunna bolt mine to the spindle ( because I can) and I'm going to make the crank a ratchet wrench so I can leave it engaged for the entire threading operation. I make make the spindle drive a simple 1/2 female square drive. To accept various wrench ratchet styles.

Of course, after I install a VFD and can run at 1 rpm, I may not care about wrenches anymore.....

I have used the wrench in the spindle when starting a tap. When I do that or use the spindle handle to thread I flip the belt off the spindle drive (speed change mechanism) so I'm not turning the whole drive system.

I'm not sure I understand, you're not going to leave the (ratchet) wrench on the machine while you're under power are you........? I noted that the plug gets pulled on my machine and the E-STOP gets pushed while the crank is in the spindle.

D

 

[Susquatch]

The shear tool has my eye, it's on my Project 42 list. We'll probably talk then, thanks!

This really should be done well ahead of 42. I'd make it 4 or 2, but not 42. Seriously! After you make and use your first shear tool you will wonder why you never knew about it earlier.

I'll leave you with just one wisdom: You are not doing it right unless you are making a pile of 0000 steel wool.

 

[Susquatch]

I have used the wrench in the spindle when starting a tap. When I do that or use the spindle handle to thread I flip the belt off the spindle drive (speed change mechanism) so I'm not turning the whole drive system.

I'm not sure I understand, you're not going to leave the (ratchet) wrench on the machine while you're under power are you........? I noted that the plug gets pulled on my machine and the E-STOP gets pushed while the crank is in the spindle.

D

Not a chance! That's hilarious! Might need new floor bolts if I did.

However, I might leave a drive nut (think integrated 1/2" socket gizzmo) installed.

Im just thinking my lathe is big and to get the leverage I need, a big socket wrench might be better and also that a 360 degree swing might be too much with a long bar. So why not a ratchet.

With a 1/2" drive socket, the wrench could be removed as needed.

But I'm also thinking that with a 3ph 1000 turn down motor and VFD I could run my lathe at 1rpm or even lower. Then who needs the crank.

You have opened a wild rabbit hole and my crazy mind is just working overtime. I might wake up tomorrow wondering what the heck that nightmare was all about!

 

[Tecnico]

Not a chance! That's hilarious! Might need new floor bolts if I did.

However, I might leave a drive nut (think integrated 1/2" socket gizzmo) installed.

Im just thinking my lathe is big and to get the leverage I need, a big socket wrench might be better and also that a 360 degree swing might be too much with a long bar. So why not a ratchet.

With a 1/2" drive socket, the wrench could be removed as needed.

But I'm also thinking that with a 3ph 1000 turn down motor and VFD I could run my lathe at 1rpm or even lower. Then who needs the crank.

You have opened a wild rabbit hole and my crazy mind is just working overtime. I might wake up tomorrow wondering what the heck that nightmare was all about!

OK, I get what your words meant now, long handle and not enough room for a full turn so a ratchet needed. I had pictured a ratchet buzzing away except on operations when it was needed & thought it sounded a bit scary. Not to say you'd do anything not safe. I try not to stop until I'm at the end of the pass.

D

 

[Tom O]

Who needs a hand crank when you have a pulley, it worked for me.

That’s my son in the picture.
.

 

[Susquatch]

I try not to stop until I'm at the end of the pass.

Sure enough, can't sleep.....

Yes, this has bothered me a bit as I contemplated how well a start stop crank might work.

I reasoned that it might be ok, as I have tapped a hole using a chuck wrench to turn the chuck. My gonads are just not structured for power tapping.

I think this is something I just have to try. Then I'll know.