Lathe bed protector

[th62]

This is a bed protector I made up a while back, keeps the bed pretty clean. The protector blind is made of some oil impregnated canvas which seems pretty well impervious to everything so far. It clips over two bolts on the carriage, the other end contains the roller made of PVC pipe with bearings sunk in and secured to the angle bracket by a couple of 1/4" bolts. a cable is wound around the PVC tube and routed via two aluminium pulleys to a largish weight at the rear of the lathe which slides up and down in a PVC tube. Wind the carriage back and the canvas follows the carriage. Wind the carriage forward and the weight drops in the tube turning the blind tube and winding in the canvas.

Simple but effective!

[DIYer]

Thanks th62! We've added your Lathe Bed Protector to our Lathe Accessories category,
as well as to your builder page: th62's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Lathe Bed Protector by th62

tags: lathe, dust cover

[LMMasterMariner]

Hello th62,

Excellent idea and thanks for sharing. I must make the same for my lathe. I am very familiar with weight in tube design. Had it on one of the vessels as door closer. But thanks to my wife and her wrong order, I have one spare IKEA roller blind. I still have 1000 x 300 mm x 2mm rubber sheet at home which I obtained for my mill/drill machine but had never fixed there. Will make it as I am also tired of sweeping and oiling lathe bed.

Best regards
LMMasterMariner

[j.bickley]

Great idea! Will make one for my lathe.
---Joe

[Toolmaker51]

Hello th62, compliments on this. As you said, Simple but Effective! For the project and description, think anyone should be able to pattern theirs from your information.
This will go a long way to preserving not only the ways, but wipers and felts too. Small or large.....applicable to lathe's in general.
If a large swing project [i.e. gap lathes] or other instance causes interference, just pop it off until complete.

[Frank S]

Anyone who has ever turned graphite or carbon knows that you have to, not just need or want to cover your ways the best you can in an effort to prevent the almost micro particles from getting between the carriage and the ways, can well appreciate your bed cover idea

[Toolmaker51]

Anyone who has ever turned graphite or carbon knows that you have to, not just need or want to cover your ways the best you can in an effort to prevent the almost micro particles from getting between the carriage and the ways, can well appreciate your bed cover idea

Or bearing bronze, hard brass, cast iron, phenolics, certain plastics...any material that flakes instead of common chips. Just because they may not be injurious to ways or wipers; being hard to clean up is reason enough!

Sometimes it depends on who PAID for the equipment; on how much dedication is applied to protecting machinery. In concert with that, is how hard such an individual worked to pay for it.

Below Olderdan makes a valid observation. Graphite will let certain materials slip over each other. My surprise is that such a lathe retained nice looking ways; that dry stuff soaks up lubricants.

[olderdan]

Anyone who has ever turned graphite or carbon knows that you have to, not just need or want to cover your ways the best you can in an effort to prevent the almost micro particles from getting between the carriage and the ways, can well appreciate your bed cover idea

I am sure you are right in your observations about graphite dust on lathe ways, however I will just throw this in as my experience of this.
Much of our work was EDM using high density (Poco) graphite electrodes and one lathe a Colchester Bantam) did nothing else but turn these for over 20 years, no covers only dust extraction which caught most of it but the lathe was always covered in dust and absolutely filthy. When the factory closed this lathe had the best unmarked bed ways of any other machine in the place.
We know dry graphite can be a lubricant but I am not sure if it also has any abrasive qualities in dust form but when in doubt keep it out.

[Frank S]

I installed a centralized continuous pressurized lubrication flush system in a factory that made carbon, graphite and talk wafers among other things, the foreman said the spare parts they had to keep in stock for their grinding, blending, machining and press equipment was a horrendous expense but nothing compared to the amount of filters and oils they went through plus the time to clean the muck out all of the gear boxes. They had hopes to reduce the wear on their machinery by as much as 30% and cut their downtime maintenance. we installed a total of 10 centrifuges any 2 of them could be taken off line for cleaning while bypassing through others. once the system was up and running it only took 2 hours before the service warning buzzers some of the centrifuges started going off. After a couple of months they said they only had to service the centrifuges on a routine basis within a year their downtime repairs had been drastically reduced
First last and hopefully only time that I ever want to have to wear a space suit in a work environment even with all of their dust collection and extraction equipment you could see the air in in certain areas of the factory

[th62]

If the gap is of concern and the bed protector must be use the roller can always be reverse so the canvas is rolled underneath. that of course requires the canvas to be swept occasionally.