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  • Several Regions have held meetups already, but others are being planned or are evaluating the interest. The Calgary Area Meetup is set for Saturday July 12th at 10am. The signup thread is here! Arbutus has also explored interest in a Fraser Valley meetup but it seems members either missed his thread or had other plans. Let him know if you are interested in a meetup later in the year by posting here! Slowpoke is trying to pull together an Ottawa area meetup later this summer. No date has been selected yet, so let him know if you are interested here! We are not aware of any other meetups being planned this year. If you are interested in doing something in your area, let everyone know and make it happen! Meetups are a great way to make new machining friends and get hands on help in your area. Don’t be shy, sign up and come, or plan your own meetup!

newbie fron the UK

jackary said:
Hi I am new to this site from the UK. I have worked in Canada for a few years in Vancouver, Calgary & Newfoundland.I have a Colchester Chipmaster lathe and have also built my own lathe shown here https://www.lathes.co.uk/stepperhead/ I look forward the site discussions
Cheers
Alan
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What a coincidence, I read that lathes.co.uk article just a couple days ago! It looks like a fascinating machine, although to be honest I did wonder about your motivations building it. Were you just looking for a challenge, did you have some specific requirements that off the shelf machines don't satisfy (space perhaps), or does it fill a niche that your other machines (which I assume that you have) don't cover?
 
SightlessSeer said:
What a coincidence, I read that lathes.co.uk article just a couple days ago! It looks like a fascinating machine, although to be honest I did wonder about your motivations building it. Were you just looking for a challenge, did you have some specific requirements that off the shelf machines don't satisfy (space perhaps), or does it fill a niche that your other machines (which I assume that you have) don't cover?
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Hi SightlessSeer, My reason for designing and building the machine came out of frustration with the backward thinking design for the then available machines. The Myford ML7 for example but other lathes were similar used a separate countershaft with a conglomeration of vee pulleys to vary the spindle speed even though there was good VFDs available. These lathes needed clutches, reversing gears, back gears and a range of change wheels etc to enable screwcutting and feed speeds. A screwcutting gearbox could be available at great cost, and cross feed was not generally available. You may correct me but things do not seem much different today. Also to be able to raise or lower the spindle and tailstock over the bed seemed to give way to a range of versatile operations not before available unless a vertical slide can be used, but this is not usually a very rigid option. To add electronic control but still be able to easily switch back to manual operation was also a requirement. I could go on but I think I did that enough in my description here https://www.lathes.co.uk/stepperhead/ I just wanted the industry to Stepperhead.
Alan
 
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Welcome to our newest member from across the pond. Great that you have come on board :)
It’s nice that you have had an opportunity to see some of Canada. Come visit again.
 
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