[Alantron]

Hey guys i know this i a cnc forum and all but ive been trying to do some research before i buy, and of all the resources you guys seem the most knowledgeable in these mini lathes. I mainly want it to make custom parts for cars for me and a couple buddys, cool knobs, maybe shift knobs, sometimes the cars we work on use special bolts/spacers/studs that are hard to find etc.

BTW, none of us have any experience with this type of equipment, we always work on old cars so we do some crude fabbing and welding to make stuff work but nothing like this.

After seeing a couple videos on youtube i can see that if we were to turn a shift knob, for example the straight part is easy but lets say we purchase the 7x10 how could we round the top? I read that you can move the tail stock to taper the bottom part but does that mean itll have to be pretty much pulling the piece sideways? wouldn't that oval out piece even if it does taper? the shift knob were trying to build looks a bit like this





Dont worry if we can make these pieces manually for now well come back and bug you for help on converting it to cnc lol. Thanks in advance guys

Also, another thing that worried me is that i saw somewhere that the 7x10 is actually a 7x8 so does that mean we wouldnt be able to turn a piece (ill use the shift knob again as an example) thats 9 inches overall

[pippin88]

You can use the compound to turn short tapers.
On manual lathes the 'carriage' moves along the work / ways. The 'cross slide' is on the carriage and moves in and out, across the work. The 'compound' suits on top of the cross slide and the angle of the compound can be adjusted. The movement range of the compound on a mini lathe is only a few inches. You can turn tapers within this distance limit.

I'd advise getting the 7x12 or 7x14

http://www.mini-lathe.com is an excellent resource.

[Alantron]

So in your opinion can you see this being done by a person with no experience? Would this be easier to do on a 4 axis router? I looks like there not many people that use these mini lathes compared to the small scale DIY routers

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[pippin88]

Cylindrical shapes are definitely lathe work.
The ones in the pictures wouldn't be too hard to do. The most difficult part is rounding off from the cylinder to the flat face. That could be done by a short taper, filing or Samsung or a communication.

EDIT: Autocorrect fail! Should read: That could be done by a short taper, filing or sanding or a combination.

You won't get it right immediately but acquiring any skill takes time.

[Alantron]

Thank you. Sounds complicated lol

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