Hi Bob
It sounds like a case of one step forward and one back with the workheads. Does yours take a drive pulley? I like the adaptors to take square lathe tooling, something that I am going to have to think about.
Thinking about using a chuck on the workhead brings me back to one of those little dilemmas which I have never resolved. When I bought the Centec it came with this dividing head, a 6" backing plate that matches the thread and a new 100mm Chinese chuck, this chuck looks and fells quite good but I have no way of really knowing how much runout it has. The backing plate also matches the thread that is on the Hercus workhead. The spindle thread on my Lantaine lathe is however quite a lot bigger.
Attachment 350424
I think that there would be value in being able to move a job, in a chuck between the machines. There seem to me to be a couple of ways of getting to this point.
1 Make a adaptor to fit the Lantaine spindle and the Hercus backing plate and use this to machine the backing plate to fit the 3jaw chuck that I have. At this point I begin to wonder how good a generic Chinese 3 jaw chuck is and whether I would be better with a small 4 jaw? The 4 jaw from the Lantaine is too big for the dividing head.
2. Make two adaptors to fit the spindles of the dividing head and the Hercus workhead to bring them up to the size of the Lantaine spindle. I could then use a Lantaine backing plate to mount the small 3 jaw and or get a small 4 jaw. The 4 jaw from the Lantaine is too big for the dividing head.
I am fortunate in having several Lantaine backing plates as the previous owner used the lathe to do brake work and made a number of fixtures onto backing plates.
Regards
Ian
Attachment 350424