https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Js8erWbsDQ
video description text:
Want to see more tools like this? Im a finalist in the Prusa awards and winning would fund literally dozens of tools like this and help me keep the files free!
https://www.printables.com/awards (vote for the ball vise, its bright orange :) )
Parts: Uploading tomorrow morning
Music: Minecraft soundtrack
Like subscribe all that stuff
0:00 intro
1:12 build
4:30 concrete time BAYBEEE
6:01 ready to use
9:58 thoughts My name is Chris, I am a 3D printing hobbyist from australia. I dont really specialise in anything specific, but 3D printed tools and tabletop accessories are some things youll probably seen quiet often. I do all my 3d printing on a Ender 3, which I highly recommend as a budget printer. Currently I only run 1 printer but I hope to expand that in the future. Recently acquired a photon 0 to do resin printing with. I like to share all my 3D printing ideas for free although I do plan to sell stuff in the future. Most of my projects will be mostly 3D printed with a few non printed components included, these can often be found on ebay. I actually use the cheapest filament I can get for all my projects, again I hope to change this in the future.
I’ve been watching Chris’ lathe builds for awhile. This concrete pour seems like a really useful idea. The lessons learned and advice given here are valuable insights into the practical aspects of this technique.
My main underlying curiosity is what happens when such a methodology is used to create automated single purpose machines.
Man, that’s cool! Concrete is a heck of a lot cheaper than epoxy granite resin and is perfectly suitable for a low-precision tool like this lathe.
I do hope that he finds a way to shield those bearings. You really don’t want metal chips or sawdust making its way in there. Any damage they sustain will cause runout, which will lead to increased chatter and parts that are out of spec. Plus, a matching pair of tapered roller bearings can be quite expensive!
EDIT: to be clear, I mean no disrespect when I say low-precision. Not every lathe needs to have slides and handwheels. I have a little Sherline lathe that I’ve used like this in the past (using gravers, not tools in a tool holder). It’s great to quickly turn something or to put nice decorative details on a part. Precision is possible with a lathe like this, but it requires fairly strenuous effort.
Nice, but be sure to check out the Gingery lathe (and the whole series) before building - Gingery did a few things that would improve this if done. (and this does a few things that would improve what Gingery did)
Casting is much harder to access now in many urban settings. I wish I could but have no space for it where I live.
I said check out his book, not follow his patterns. There are some great ideas in this build, but also some things Gingery did better - and since Gingery explained why he did a lot of things like he did you will likely in turn be able to adapt the good ideas to this build. The way Gingery does the head stock is much better than this cast in place option for example. Combine the two and you will get better results.
BTW, if you are serious about building a lathe I’d recommend epoxy-granite not concrete or castings. Something more to research before building (or maybe just stop someplace and build - your choice)
Where did you say “check out his book?”
They didn’t…
It was implied
This is the ball vise fella, right?
Dude is a legend
That is heckin cool
Holy shit
Concrete lathes are far from a new idea. During WW1, the US needed more lathes than we had. It could take years for a cast iron casting to age enough sitting outside before you could do the final machining to actually build a lathe.
So concrete was tried as a substitute for cast iron. It has some good properties, it cures quickly, is rigid enough, and dampens vibrations pretty well. The downsides are you require a physically larger machine that takes up more floor space, and they are difficult to move making resale difficult, and they don’t last as long in that usage, so they aren’t cheaper in the long run.
Concrete lathes had their day and quickly died out to be forgotten.
It could take years for a cast iron casting to age enough sitting outside before you could do the final machining to actually build a lathe.
What?
The short story is that all materials have internal stresses when made. Whether it’s lumber or steel or cast iron, they all have stress that need to be relieved before you can expect them to hold their shape. Some materials are worse than others. And anytime you cut or machine them, they can move in unexpected ways that can make your parts not fit together as required to make a working machine.
A “green” iron casting has a LOT of internal stresses created by the rather violent process of making the casting. Even way back in the day, they understood the problems that those green castings had. And if you want your lathe to be stable enough to hold those tight tolerances to build a train steam engine or bore an accurate cannon barrel you needed to get as much of that stress out of those lathe bed and head-stock castings as possible before you carefully machine and scrape the ways on your lathe into perfection so that the casting becomes as stable as possible.
The best method of relieving those stresses from your raw castings was to repeatedly heat and cool that casting. And the easiest and best way to achieve that was to literally store those castings outside for a few years to let them naturally heat and cool with the changing seasons. If you go on YouTube, you can find videos of British steam engine manufacturing from start to finish. And at some point you will see their outside yard filled with raw castings aging in the natural heat and cold of the changing seasons.
We still age cast iron to today to make it stable enough to use. But we now use accelerated methods of stress relieving metals that are much faster, but more costly.
That’s really neat! Thanks for teaching me something today.
That’s great! I hope you learn something new everyday!
