Manual Lathe 

We also watch some videos on manual lathes where we saw some safety tips like don't have your hair down and don't have baggy shirts on while working on the lathe. We also learned some tips on using a 3 and 4 jaw chuck, how to use the carriage and read the digital panel. 

Manual Lathe Challenge

I learned how to use a manual lathe, how to install the 3 jaw and 4 jaw chuck, how to face cut and turn a diameter of a metal rod. The lathe that we used was called a Acer lathe. I learned that the carriage is what holds almost everything that is used to cut the material including the type of cutter we used which was a carbide insert. Also I learned how to read the X and Y on the digital panel.

First thing we did on both the 3 jaw and 4 jaw is we faced off the edge of the part. The way that we did that is while the lathe is on I would bring the cutter on the carriage close enough so that it starts to cut the rod, then I zero out on the digital panel and pull the carriage back. After I then moved the cutter to the left 15 thou so that the face of the edge is even all across it, and I was able to get it 15 thou exactly because of the digital panel. So, after I moved the 15 thou I cut into the part and it faced the edge perfectly. If there was a little bit leftover on the face then I would just cut another 10 thou. 

The next thing we did in the 3jaw chuck is we turned a 1.45 in bar into a 1.2 +/- 5 thou. The way we did this is we had the bar rotating and we moved the cutter slowly into the bar until it barely started cutting the material zeroed and pulled it out in the y axis then we went in 0.050 thou and cut tell we got close to the chuck. Then we set zero on the x axis pulled away from the bar, and then did the same process of cutting 0.050 3 more times. Now we stopped the machine pressed the E-button so it doesn't accidentally start while we are close to the chuck. Then we measure the bar to see how much more we need to cut for us it was 0.046 more we had to cut. After measuring the bar we started the machine up again, and turned 0.030 thou more off. Then we measured again to just make sure, we had 0.014 left so we started up the machine again and turned the 0.014. Afterwards we took the part out and did a final measurement. On the four jaw chuck I only had time to clean up the outer diameter 

To put material into the 3 jaw chuck was easy all you had to do it hold the bar in the middle of the chuck and tighten it using the chuck key. (always remember to have the e-button pressed) Next the 4 jaw chuck, the way to tighten the bar into this one is you hold the piece in the middle of the chuck and loosely tighten it with all four sides until it sticks, and then you set up your dial indicator and rotate it until you find a high spot now for me the high spot was on 4 so i tighten it on 2 until on the dial it says zero. I go back and forth on those two until they are both at zero. Now I switch to 1 and 3 and do the same until all four are zero on the dial indicator, and now all four of the chuck jaws should be really tightened.