Crafts made of wood and copper in a round shape are good to make on a small home lathe. What do a lathe and a drill have in common? For an ordinary person, far from production, nothing. But for the modern Kulibin, this is a real Klondike of ideas. A person with imagination and skillful hands can easily make his own home lathe from a drill.
Buy or homemade lathe - which is better?
The cost of small factory-made lathes makes one think of an alternative solution to this problem. A self-assembled turning machine can be much cheaper. To bring your idea to life, the most expensive thing you need to buy is a drill or a hammer drill that has the function of a drill. Consider the option of making a lathe from a drill with your own hands for a private home business. The simplicity of manufacturing such a necessary and useful equipment is amazing. The simplest lathe can be made in one day "on the knee". In the manufacture of the most unpretentious lathe, you will needwooden blocks, plywood, tin, good glue and other materials.
Materials for making a lathe
Before thinking about how to make a lathe, you need to calculate whether the cost of the necessary materials will turn out to be more than the cost of a factory device? To do this, it is better to look at a list of all the necessary materials and equipment, determine what is available and calculate how much you need to spend on the missing items.
A set for a lathe from a drill looks like this:
- electric drill;
- a sturdy table or workbench;
- at least three clamps;
- self-tapping screws;
- bolts, screws and nuts;
- files;
- cutters;
- sandpaper.
But if your home based business has grown and requires high productivity and precision steel fabrication, then you need to shell out and get an industrial made lathe with a powerful electric motor, rigid bed and tooling mounted on it.
What is a lathe made of?
Any lathe has the following main components in its design:
- The bed of the lathe. Foundation in machine tool building.
- Headstock with a power unit, in this case a drill.
- Tailstock. Its location along the axis must correspond to the axis of the headstock. Otherwise, marriage will come out during work.
- To install the cuttingthe tool needs a stop. Its location should be as close as possible to the workpiece set for processing. It is desirable to make such a support table that will allow you to safely work on a homemade lathe from a drill.
- The machine bed determines the main location of the lathe units and ensures the reliability of the entire unit. A powerful bed, equipped with reliable legs with correctly installed and coaxial nodes, is a full-fledged lathe. A small bed can be installed on a massive table or workbench. The assembled lathe from a drill on this type of bed is easy to carry and transport.
- Purchased factory equipment in the form of cutters will make it easier to work on a lathe from a drill.
It should be noted that the processing of materials on the received device will be limited. On such a home-made device, you can process wood, copper, aluminum and its alloys, that is, any soft materials. On a do-it-yourself lathe, a steel part cannot be machined from a drill.
Workflow
A piece of thick plywood works well as a bed. It has a flat surface, which will help in coaxial installation of the headstock and tailstock. The drill can be fixed by any available method. The main condition is that it must be hardwired. In our case, consider an example using clamps.
Let's prepare the main element of power traction. For the convenience of assembling a homemade lathe from a drill, we will prepare a clamping fixturefor fixing the drill. Let's take a metal clamp, after altering it a little.
It is necessary to fix the clamp, which will later clamp our drill. Let's fasten it to the frame. Clamp the drill with a clamp attached to the clamp. Thus, a rigidly fixed headstock with a power unit was obtained.
Support for lathe
In a similar way, we will make the tailstock of the lathe from a drill. It is necessary to install the tailstock using a second clamp, always in the same axis as the front. For ease of use, a bearing with a pressed-in axle, sharpened under a cone, is perfect for the tailstock. A chuck can also be used as a fastener for a part.
The third clamp we need for the support table. This is the so-called caliper by professional turners.
For the convenience of moving the caliper along the axis of the part, it is desirable to make a rigid groove on the base of the bed. The manufacturing method is as follows:
- Two even strips are cut from plywood along the length of the lathe.
- Then they are rigidly attached to the bed.
- The caliper base is inserted between them, ensuring its reliable movement along the axis.
Such a simple and reliable tool for easy machining of parts.
The ideal caliper for a lathe from a drill is one when the caliper has the ability to move both along the axis of the lathe and across it. With it, the turner will be able to freely hold the cutter inprocessing. The caliper is brought close to the part, which ensures complete safety in operation. If the stop is far from the workpiece, then the turning tool can be pulled out of your hands.
Tool needed to machine the part
You can process a part fixed in a lathe with cutters. This is especially true for those parts that consist of various alloys. The cutter is securely mounted on a support, which allows you to grind copper, brass products and parts from other soft metals. As a cutter for processing a wooden workpiece, a sharpened locksmith's file - a rasp is suitable. Will cope with the work and file. A well and properly sharpened piece of car spring also works great as a cutter.
How to clamp a large diameter workpiece on the machine?
To mount large-diameter workpieces on a lathe, you will have to stock up on a washer plan, which is mounted in an electric drill chuck. Its use makes it possible to grind parts of large diameters.
On a home-made machine, you can carve balusters for stairs, make wooden dishes with your own hands and at your discretion. The machine is perfect for making round candlesticks, and indeed any round wooden product and products made of soft types of metals.
How to replicate wood products from blanks?
To replicate balusters to a staircase under construction, for example, you can use a copier. What is a copier and how to work with it? All upsimply funny. The necessary product for the stairs is being made. An additional device is made from a drill to a compact wood lathe, on which a baluster made in exact dimensions is attached. The second copy is made according to existing sizes.
Many have seen how masters work on duplicate keys. A "native" key is inserted into the copier, and all the bulges on the workpiece duplicate its bulges. There is no need to constantly measure the part. The machined part is an exact copy of the original. The principle and approach are the same.
Drawings of a lathe from a drill
By adding just a few details to a homemade lathe, you can significantly expand the functions of such equipment. With it, you can paint a part or carve a twisted mesh along the entire length of the workpiece. You can use the unique capabilities of a drill not only in a lathe. You can also make a drilling machine on the same bed, which will work no worse than a factory one. The diameter of the drill depends on the chuck in the drill. Adapters or drills with shanks suitable for the cartridge will help to increase the diameter. Making a milling machine, having learned and understood the capabilities of a drill, will not be difficult.
Electricians will appreciate using a homemade lathe to wind transformer windings at home.
In conclusion, we can state: a seemingly simple power tool withcompetent and correct use can expand its capabilities and become indispensable equipment in home production. The main thing is to be patient before trying and learning how to make a lathe.
