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Thats a very nice looking little lathe Jo. Thanks for the write up and pictures.
Its Soo clean, i must be doing something wrong looking at the state of mine
Never having used a shaper I do have a question, then I will stop derailing Jo's thread. How is the depth of each pass set? Does the wheel on top need to be turned for each increase in depth?
Thanks for the details of the toolpost Jo. I was just going to ask over on the yahoo group and found you had already posted it. Is the post itself an original Cowells?Chris EDIT: Seems this is also answered in the thread and it is the official Cowells one.... humm, don`t think I can afford that for now!
What about the other micro lathes such as Sherline, Taig, etc? Are they better than the Cowells?
He did say that he has a Derbyshire and that is a fine lathe.
Try cutting an M16 thread in stainless on a Cowells
If I really want to do big stuff I do it on the Colchester which is happy to cut from 0.25mm pitch to 6mm pitch by sliding the levers on the gearbox (6mm pitch is M68 )Jo
Now, if you can lift your Colchester onto the kitchen table, I'd be impressed
Jo,He did say that he has a Derbyshire and that is a fine lathe. http://www.lathes.co.uk/derbyshire/What size collets does the headstock use 8mm WW or 10mm D collets? I would go for buying or making the feed gears if you need screw cutting.The Cowells has a metric lead screw so it can only do approximate inch threads. Jo and I worked out a compound gear system for the Cowells that will approximate inch threads but I think the Derbyshire is a better lathe from what I have read.Dan
The headstock is a Model 750, taking 3C collets up to 1/2",