What change gears?

[Murph1090]

Barry, that's why I bought it, it's a beast and a half, very big for a "hobbyist lathe". I can run carbide tooling and carve off metal like butter, the power is there for it! I got one hell of a deal on mine, $400 got it in the back of my car!!!

The program is written for both gearbox AND hand change lathes, what I have here is an oddball to work with.

I'm also going to check at Marv Klotz's website, he's got a LOT of good shop software there, and it's all freeware, too!

Murph

[NortonDommi]

$400! Even at our exchange rate that is a bargain. I looked again at the manual,(I was very busy yesterday), and the gear set up looks like one on lathe I saw at CNC Cookbook. Seems that a lot of the 7 x *** stuff is applicable. Good score indeed.

[NortonDommi]

Muph1090,
Went back over a few places and found these which could be worth a look.

New Machine Build 8X14 lathe Slow Mod [Archive] - CNCzone.com- Largest Forums for CNC Professional and Hobbyist alike!

Machineshop3

[Ron B]

Hi ,I got it to down load. I learned 45 years ago how to calculate driver over driven etc etc but with my present lathe it's been difficult to set up fopr thread cutrting because of the lack of info and no lables on the quick change gears,this will help speed things up a lot using the generic setting.

[Murph1090]

H'lo all!

Sent a e-mail off the Vernon on the Lathe Gears program/app, he got it all sorted for this daft Paddy!
When it was all done, the answer was simple as chips!

First, load all your gears available for your hand change gearbox. If you have two of the same gear, enter both, ALONG with the gear on the headstock spindle.

Now, calculate all your gearbox rations, as a function of your drive gear, i.e., 40/xx, xx is your driven gear on the leadscrew. I named them as a fraction, e.g. 40/48,and entered the ratio next to it, 0.8333. Do this for every one of your gears. It will take a while, but it's worth it.

Next, enter the pitch of your leadscrew. metric or Imperial (TPI)

Now, enter your thread to cut, and indicate your Max Error. The smaller the number, the less gear combinations it will calculate.

Now, hit "Calc Gear Rations", and watch the fireworks!

You'll have a HUGE list of gearsets to choose from, and the tolerance error listed as well!

Nice part is the list is big enough that if you're missing a gear, there's another ratio to give you a "workaround"!


Murph

[NortonDommi]

Hello Muph1090,
Very happy to hear all good. That %error function is great. Over the course of a evening I made a list of all the common threads, Imperial & metrickery then a list of missing change gears to cover all plus a few oddballs. Saved many, many hours confusing a calculator.