My "Learning to use a Lathe" Journal

[steam guy willy]

Another way to lay out six holes on a flywheel is to take a piece of hex stock and turn a tenon to fit the central hole in the flywheel.  Loctite or superglue it in place and use it as a locator in the mill vise to orient the wheel.  After the holes are drilled, unglue the wheel with heat.

To mark out the six holes i always use the three jaw chuck jaws as datum points and use the cross slide to scratch the datum points . then remove from the chuck and centre pop then proceed from there......I have a piece of steel to insert between the lathe bed and each chuck jaw in turn.....

[Kim]

That is a pretty cool little Gyroscope!
Completely agree - there's nothing like the feeling of making something like this with your own hands and seeing it work!
Kim

[Brendon M]

Thanks Kim, its a great learning project too. And it also makes a great ornament on my desk at work. Certainly a conversation starter!

I look forward to remaking the flywheel with brass, and I have a few ideas how to tackle the problem of gripping the small diameter rod in the 6 inch 4-jaw chuck

[Roger B]

Excellent  Finishing something that works is always a good feeling 

[Brendon M]

Thank you Roger!

I think after tackling a few miscellaneous jobs, I will start thinking about a simple stirling engine.

On the cards:

• Finish that pen project
• Repair my shimano nexus 8 speed hub
• Convert my hand powered coffee grinder to electric powered

The last one is certainly going to be the most entertaining. Eventually the electric motor may be replaced by something else!

[Brendon M]

Hello again, short post this time

I managed to correct the spindle accuracy by using a custom "holder". The holder was made using a piece of drilled out bar, and then hacksawed in half. The hacksawing was not accurate in any way, but as long as I assembled the two halves in the same direction, it had no problem holding the 1/4 inch rod in the 6 inch 4 jaw chuck.



And then I was able to get the runout to 0.01mm. After recutting the tapers, the spindle spun freely in the bearings!

Unfortunately, the gyroscope still has a vibration, caused by the fact that the 6 holes were not all drilled equidistant  only way to fix that is to remake the whole flywheel again.