The Home Machinist!

I'm using a plunge indicator and coming into the tailstock taper mouth at an angle. I don't *think* droop could be an issue. I'll give that some thought. I'll snap I pix of my hillbilly way of doing it and post it up for the sake of amusement. :) You don't *think* it can be an issue? You're in for ...

I'm using a plunge indicator and coming into the tailstock taper mouth at an angle. I don't *think* droop could be an issue. I'll give that some thought. I'll snap I pix of my hillbilly way of doing it and post it up for the sake of amusement.

I have a fairly beat Logan 2557 VH. Got it late last year and had to put it to work right away, which was fine as most of the parts I made were close to the chuck and involved working on all surfaces, so the overall alignment of things wasn't crucial. In the fullness of time I'm intending to make th...

I have a 12x36 Logan that has obviously seen some use. It'll still hold a thou no problem; probably tighter as the TIR at the spindle is teensy. I've had to put some work into it but it's already made me money. I want my next lathe to weigh 3000+ lbs. Either a used US iron or bigger Grizzly. Tough c...

Opinions? Got a 12x36 Logan that came with one. Trying to decide if one of the other QC setups would be an upgrade.

The MultiFix has worked fine for me so far.

Howdy folks. Thanks for the replies. So no coaxial plunge indicators, eh? :) What prompted my question was some large (6" OD) round stock clamped onto my rotab, which was in the vertical position. So I didn't have a fixed jaw to reference off of. The degrees of precision required in this case w...

A straight plunge indicator, coaxial to the spindle, in a collet or good chuck seems workable- but the guy at the tooling place looked at me funny when I asked if they had one. I've seen those Y-shaped things in catalogs.

How do the cool kids do this?

The thing is, if I could buy a NEW American lathe for say $10k, verses Chinese for $6k, I'd be very likely to go American. As would many of us no doubt. But buying an older used American lathe doesn't do a thing to help any American worker or company. In fact, bizarrely enough, the argument could be...

I'll be in the market for a 3000 pound, $5000- $8000 lathe in the next year. I'll keep the fantasy alive of a minty-clean Nardini or whatever... run only on aluminum, and then only rarely, by a gentle, apron-wearing, old world craftsman who was obsessed with maintenance... but failing that, will lik...

Gentlemen, thank you. It occurs to me that Shuddering Logan sounds like a band name. Or, a horrible venereal disease. Just thought I'd share that. I'm going to need to spend some quality time with my schnozz in the innards of the VS drive, I can tell that already. The bottom belt has physical damage...

I've got a Logan 2557 VH that was gifted to me. It has a new motor. Something in the drive mechanics seems to induce a shudder from time to time- like a resonance. I suspect it's that the motor was improperly installed (belt too loose maybe?). How hard should it be to crank the varispeed around? See...

Ike, I have a 3102 I'll sell ya. It literally has less than an hour of use; bought it new a couple months ago. Long story. Thought I needed to squeeze my new machine shop into a very tight space, but things worked out differently, so I got a big beast of a 10x54 mill. I cleaned the shipping grease o...