Steady Rest Failure

[Everett]

Glad you got a replacement unit quickly and at a decent price. The base is still useful for other stuff, perhaps even as a base for a larger diameter capacity steady for your lathe. It seems like the steady rests on these machines will only handle up to about 2-1/2", which is just too small sometimes. One project on my "to-make" list is a larger steady for my lathe, got the materials and plans together, just need the time.

 

[PeterT]

I'm convinced the roller bearing fingers I got from LMS are the culprits in this case. They were quirky from the get go. Once you had the fingers hand tightened to the work piece, tightening the lock down bolts would bind the bearings even tighter....
.

I don't use mine enough but now you have my interest peaked. When the rollers were just making contact with the machined end & snugged, did you put a DTI on the stock near there to ensure it was running true? I can envision that if the jaws didn't grip it concentrically for whatever reason & the end had runout to begin with, then 'locking it in' with the roller jaws would create issues.

Also, was the parting on the left or right side of steady?

 

[YYCHM]

I was parting on the right side of the steady and no I didn't DTI the setup. It was running pretty true from what I could tell.

I did it this way because the end I was trying to part off was mangled some what. What I should have done was cleaned the mangle end up on the grinder, chucked that end and used a live center in the tail stock. The good end of the piece was already drilled to take a center. That arrangement would have placed the parting location as close to the chuck as it could get.

Having said that, I would have flipped it around and used the steady rest to face it off, center drill and drill it anyways.

Live and Learn.

 

[kevin.decelles]

The latest 'Home shop machinist' came in the mail last week, I just got around to reading it. Great article on fixing cast iron called "Broken Cast Iron with missing pieces". Author describes a typical cast-failure and the steps to weld it.

And the main feature (this is for you @Dabbler), is an article called "Scraping a 9x20 Lathe - A beginners attempt", about 15 pages on this. Pretty informative.

 

[Dabbler]

Wow I'd love to read it some time! I'm a pretty poor scraper (hence my desire for more training). I've managed a few simple things, like flattening a surface, etc. I'm always up to learn more!