MAKING AND USING A TEST BAR FOR TESTING AND
ALIGNING THE LATHE
By Jose F. Rodriguez
Imagine having just purchased your first or
maybe even your second lathe and after lugging
everything into your garage, or as with the majority
of us, down the kitchen steps into our basement shops,
you sit there, sweating, gazing happily at all that
new pretty tooling. You spend all that time
recuperating as you read and re-read your new lathe's
instruction book and marveling at your brand new tool
and accessories. Some how you have managed not to
botch anything up during the transportation and
installation and you are very pleased at how easily
and smooth everything went together. Now you can
hardly wait to create some chips with it. Even if you
just merely reduce a piece of bar stock to nothing.
You just have to get some cutting under your belt with
your new machine tool. Being the careful worker you
are, you carefully chuck a piece of mild bar deep in
your three jaw chuck, so as to not have more than 1/2"
of stock protruding beyond the chuck jaws. You perform
a beautiful facing cut across the end and marvel at
how great a cut it makes. Now you proceed to center
drill the end with a #2 center drill taking
precautions to not let the straight portion of the bit
enter the cut. Now you repeat the procedure on the
opposite end of the bar so it can be mounted between
centers and you can then take a turning cut along its
length know well it is the most accurate way you know
to turn an accurate cylindrical workpiece. You remove
the headstock chuck and insert a dead center into the
spindle's tapered bore. You have made doubly sure that
the inner surfaces of the spindle and the MT dead
center are perfectly clean and free of any stray chips
or dirt. You gingerly place the bar stock between the
centers in the spindle and the tail stock and secure
it by tightening the tail stock center and locking it.
The ram of the tail stock is extended only about 1/2"
from its bore for the highest possible rigidity. A
driving dog linked to a face plate and clamped to the
work will power it. You are now ready for that first
exciting cut. The cutting tool you have selected for
the job is of the correct grind profile and has been
freshly sharpened and honed for the premier cut. You
have set up the carriage auto advance to the finest
feed rate to insure the most even of cuts across the
work. Now is time to begin that long anticipated
event, so you begin the cut, making sure to maintain a
sufficient amount of cutting oil on the surface of the
bar as the cut proceeds. As the tool tip begins to get
too close to the driving dog, you stop the carriage
and turn off the lathe. The surface looks beautiful,
smooth and even. You see no ridges of grooves, only
very closely spaced machining marks. You are ecstatic
with the results and then someone suggests that you
check the diameter at several spots along the length
of the freshly turned surface. You whip out that
expensive micrometer and with a smug grin on your face
you begin to take some measurements. First one is
taken close to the driving dog. Then one near the
center. Your throat begins to feel dry and your heart
begins to sink as if it was made of lead. Your face is
no longer grinning. You cannot comprehend what has
gone wrong. You now get off the floor and finally
confirm that you have just turned the finest example
of a tapered cylinder immediately after you have taken
that last measurement of the tail end of the bar. Your
wife is sensing that there is going to be an eruption
that will dwarf the Mt. Saint Helens event. She wisely
leaves the house to go play Bridge with her friends.
You can't seem to be able to deal with this and can't
wait until daylight the next day to call that BLANK-
BLANK tool company and begin to kick some much needed
ethics down their throats. First thing next morning
you have that service rep on the phone with your hands
around his imaginary throat. You are told to calm down
as there is nothing really wrong with the lathe
itself, it simply needs to be aligned. Your still
spitting fire and brimstone and barely allow the poor
service rep to get a word edgewise, but eventually you
do calm down long enough to listen to his good advice.
He confidently explains that you are simply suffering
from a slight tailstock center lateral misalignment
and it shouldn't take more that 10 minutes to get
everything lined up perfectly.
Magically, the smile has all of a sudden
returned to your face and you almost begin to feel
like you can once again get near that lathe. You seem
to recall that you sort of read about this very same
problem in one of your metalworking magazines or was
it in a book?
Their solution to the problem called for the
fabrication of a test bar which you could then use to
align the tail stock to the spindle to within a
fraction of a thousand of an inch. You couldn't ask
for better results that those.
The test bar is nothing more than a length of
bar stock of at least 8-10" long ( depending on
your lathe's capacity ) and of a diameter large enough
to insure that it is stiff enough to avoid any
sideways deflection while you are machining it. It
must be pretty straight to begin with so a good piece
of cold rolled steel or better yet, a length of large
diameter drill rod would be best for the test bar.
Drill rod is normally ground to very fine tolerances
so it is perfect for this particular job. If the price
of drill of that size worries you, just think that
once you have finished this tool, you and maybe some
of your closest machinist friends that may get to use
it will treat it as a prized piece of high precision
tooling.
The first step in the machining process calls
for you to face and carefully center drill both ends.
If your chuck can swallow a 1" wide bar, that's great.
More than likely it won't, so you must support the
ends with a steady rest. Adjust the bearings on the
rest so the bar's end is running as close to zero
runout as possible and proceed to face and center
drill each end. You will want a pretty stout center
hole for maximum support so use at least a #2 or #3
center drill for this. The following step is the most
important step so do it as carefully as you possibly
can. Remove the head stock chuck and insert a morse
taper center in the spindle. Make sure that the inside
spindle and the side surfaces of the center are clean.
Install a catch plate, mount the work piece between
the head and tail centers and tighten the tail stock
ram so it is nice and snug but not overly tight. You
do not want to deflect anything by using excessive
force here. Install the driving dog and connect it to
the catch plate. Using a freshly sharpened tool that
cuts to the left, take a turning cut beginning at the
tail stock end of the bar, taking off only about .010"
of material. Use the power advance and finest feed
possible for this. Proceed until you have machined
about a 1/2" to 3/4" length of the end of the bar.
Use a good cutting oil to insure a very fine, clean
finish. Take one last finishing cut of no more than a
few thousands and proceed to congratulate yourself as
you have just finished making one of the most
important lathe aligning tools you will ever own.
The alignment process is actually a simple one
that once mastered, will take the operator no more
than a few minutes to perform whenever needed. The
objective here is to determine and measure if the tail
stock ram axis coincides with the spindle axis. The
relationship between the two points will not become
important until you attempt to turn something between
centers. You will need a small dial indicator either
on a magnetic base sitting on the cross slide surface
or held in the tool holder in leu of a cutting tool.
Either way you decide to mount the indicator, the
plunger must be aligned so it is as close to center
height as possible and operating horizontally. Now you
can mount the test bar between centers so the machined
end is toward the spindle. Using the cross slide,
bring the indicator plunger to bear against the
machined surface of the test bar so the needle is
displaying a solid reading at a convenient, easily
visible region of the dial. Re-zero the dial and
adjust the cross slide if needed to bring the needle
to exactly zero reading. Without moving or displacing
the cross slide in any way, remove the test bar and
move the carriage toward the tail stock so the
indicator plunger is near the tail center point. Be
doubly sure that you do not move the cross dial
setting. Better yet, it should be locked during this
operation. Re-insert the test bar between centers but
this time, reversing it end for end so the same
machined end is toward the tail stock just as it was
when you first machined it. With the bar in place so
the indicator plunger is bearing against the machined
end, the reading should also be zero, indicating a
perfect alignment condition or as in most cases, it
will show a difference of a few to several thousands.
This will depend on how bad the initial misalignment
is or if you purposely displaced it to cut a taper.
All that is left to do is to loosen the adjusting
screws for the tail stock deflection adjustment and
move the tail stock position out or in order to bring
the indicator reading back to zero. Check the
alignment once more and re-adjust if needed. In the
beginning, when you are first learning the technique,
it will probably take you several attempts to get
everything back in line.
Once you have gotten everything perfectly
aligned, the proof of the pudding will be whether you
could turn a perfect cylinder with parallel sides.
Remember way back when our friend's brand new lathe
first arrived? Turn another piece of stock just like
our friend did the first time and check the diameters
again. These should be perfect or at worst, no more
than half a thousands off. If you are off a couple of
thousands out of parallel just adjust the tail stock
slightly while continuing to take very light turning
cuts and re-checking the diameters. Remember that if
the tail end of the bar is narrower than the spindle
end, you have to move the tail stock toward the back
of the lathe bed or away for you. If it is larger, you
move it toward the front or nearer to you. You only
compare the tail end to the spindle end diameters,
never the other way around. When you get it all
perfect and you wish to purposely cut a taper, you
just slap on that nice test bar and while taking a
reading directly off it, just deflect the tail stock
whatever amount of set over you need. Once you have
finished machining the part, it's easy to set
everything back in line with the test bar again. This
will become such a simple task that you will no longer
fear setting the tail stock at any other position from
center.
Another area where the tail stock could possibly
be off line is the tail stock height. You may have the
tail stock perfectly aligned but somehow you are still
ending up with tapered cuts. This will more than
likely be caused by a tail stock that's too high or
low. If the work being held between centers is higher
at one end than the other, the tool will cut at
different levels along the work, instead of along the
center line like it should, resulting in dimensional
inaccuracies even though everything seems to be OK.
While you still have the test bar mounted, just set
the indicator so the stylus is running along the
center line of the work from above. If the tail stock
is a bit too high, the reading at the tail will be
corresponding higher and viceversa. The only thing you
can do about that problem is to shim or very carefully
lap the under surface of the tail stock assembly,
removing the excess material until bar is held at the
same height as at the head spindle. There is just one
more quick check you can perform and that is to check
for radial misalignment. That is whether the
horizontal axis of the tail stock, ie. the axis that
the ram travels in or out of the tail stock bore
relates to the lathe bed. It is supposed to be
parallel. If it is not, then every time you attempt
to drill a deep hole with the tail stock, the drill
bit will be forced to the right or left. Obviously not
a good situation. The least that can happen is a hole
of differing diameters, getting wider the deeper you
go since the twist bit will flex. The worst scenario
is a bad jam, broken drill bit and thus, a ruined
workpiece. Some tailstocks on expensive lathes may
have a provision for radial alignment. If your does
not, you can very carefully scrape the offending areas
of the "V" slot on the underside of the base in an
attempt to get it back to a parallel condition with
the ram travel. Cheap lathes will suffer from movement
of the ram in a lateral and possibly radial direction
as well as you lock them in place. This occurs by a
sloppy fit of the ram and the tail stock bore. Higher
quality machines will not have that problem.
Since my lathe is of the "imported" variety, I
am well aware of some of these problems so I have
learned some preventative methods that I use while I
work.
Say I want to machine a cylinder that is well
over 4" long and it must not differ more than a
fraction of a thousands along its total length. I will
os course have mounted it between center and have just
finished taking a preliminary cut along most of its
length. With an indicator on a magnetic base and
vertical rod, I set the indicator contact at center
height and I take a reading along its length but from
the rear of the work. If I take it along the front
edge it will of course show a perfect reading as the
front edge will always be cut parallel to the
carriage travel. Taking the reading against the rear
the back of the work will immediately show you any
errors as a reading away from zero. Say I set up the
indicator contact so it is taking a reading from the
spindle end of the work and I then zero the indicator
dial. As I slide the carriage toward the tail stock I
begin to notice that the indicator is showing a
gradual change of diameter resulting in a total of
.002" too large. You then adjust the tail stock in the
correct direction to correct it by the half the amount
of the error. In my situation, since my tailstock ram
suffers from a slight case of slop. I adjust the
tension of the ram lock while watching the reading on
the dial. Usually a level of lateral tension against
the ram will be found that will nullify any small
amount of error initially encountered. My particular
machine's tail stock ram can be made to move about
.0015" to the left and right of perfect centered
position by adjusting the ram lock tension while
watching the indicator needle. This is a situation you
cannot detect or feel without taking a direct reading
from the workpiece's side. Make one more light pass
and check once more. The indicator will either show no
deflection or a very minor movement. You must now
determine just how much allowable error you or that
particular part can live with. If the part is destined
to become a decorative column, then you are really
wasting valuable time splitting hairs. If on the other
hand, you are making a piston and rod assembly or a
crank shaft whose journals must be parallel to less a
couple of tenths, then you should spend the time to
tweak out as much accuracy as possible. Remember that
you can actually produce more accurate work than the
overall accuracy built into the lathe. You could use
your equipment to actually manufacture a more accurate
duplicate tool. That's the way machine tools have
evolved from rather crude, not so accurate machines to
very accurate ones. So the moral is that if you work
very carefully and know how to determine when great
accuracy is imperative and when it is not, you can
have a much more enjoyable and productive time with
your machine tools. And remember that it's not the
tool, but the tool operator that determines the
quality and accuracy of the work!
E-mail Jose about this article
Jose
Rodriguez
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