Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

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ksierens
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Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by ksierens »

I picked up a Warner & Swasey M-940 knurling head form a shop closing for like nothing, and was able to adapt it to my Craftsman 101.21200 lathe. I cut off the shank up into the body to the 1.625" bore and made an adapter out of aluminum to fit my quick change tool post set at the right height to center it. Wanted to post some pictures here in case other happen to come across one, so they know that they can be reused.

Now I can knurl up to 1 1/2" without putting any stress on the little lathe.

Image

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BadDog
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by BadDog »

Nice, I've got one much like that. I mount it in a 1" boring bar holder so it still allows something like 5/8" pass through.
Russ
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by spro »

Being both amazed and beguiled ... 8) There is more. Bumble bees can't fly either but they do. By Golly, K , great pics and work on the mount to the QC post. It's funny that I've never seen that heavy knurling attachment before. To see it so, makes me think about the particular process and the cancellation of forces. Normally, I can't see this working. I can't believe the mounting and lack of adjustment. However, coming from another side, a Unimat side,.... Working with micro level adjustments ,loupes, this is a walk in dinosaur park.
Last edited by spro on Fri Apr 01, 2016 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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ksierens
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by ksierens »

BadDog wrote:Nice, I've got one much like that. I mount it in a 1" boring bar holder so it still allows something like 5/8" pass through.
Russ, yes, I thought of that first, but my boring bar holder only takes a 3/4" max bar, and I wanted something a little larger. I bored an over-sized 3/4" hole in the aluminum adapter about 1" deep, so at least I have about 1 1/2" of pass through.
SteveM
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by SteveM »

Very cool.

Thought about running one of those in the tailstock, but figured it would just spin.

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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by spro »

Might tear the key out when it didn't spin. I sorta think this is April 1 joke but they underestimate the better minds here. We see how it Can along with cannot.
The other word is "does". The knurls are clean and this may be more theoretical.
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BadDog
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by BadDog »

Retrofitting turret tooling onto a tool post is actually a pretty good way to get access to some really cool old tools that often sell for near nothing in light of the current industrial position of turret lathes. Only the screw machines seem to be holding their own against CNC, and that is a close race in many cases. Anyway, it's not that I really use them much, some only to play with and test before they went in a box, but I've got balanced turning, box tools (which work much like a tiny follow rest built in), several knurling (both as pictured and cross slide mount), and a bunch of bushings and floating holders that I've used to mount reamers and drills in the cross slide (only experimentally, doesn't work for me on a day to day practical basis). Get a couple of extra 1" boring bar holders for the CXA QC, add a couple of larger 1.25" holders for some of the small industrial tooling with that shank (cheap!), and you can swap them through almost like having a turret setup without having to deal with the turret for daily one-off whats-its. Again, this is in theory as I've not yet come across anything that made something like that really practical, but I use repurposed turret tooling for almost all my knurling and small follow rest (box tool) turning.
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by reggie_obe »

Have you knurled anything with it? You have figured out that it was designed so that three patterns could be cut with the same set of wheels? Can't find a weight for the tool in my W&S turret lathe book, but it seems like a lot weight to be cantilevering off the compound on a small lathe.
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ksierens
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by ksierens »

No, I have not tried it out yet. I just weighed it, and it comes in at just under 6 pounds. I have a smaller scissor type knurler but it only goes up to about 0.400"
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GlennW
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by GlennW »

You may find that it will not stay on center due to the cross slide rocking.

The knurl wheels need to be on center with the stock and quite a bit of pressure applied to properly knurl.

The pressure may cause the tool to rise or fall below center due to being cantilevered out so far from the tool post.

Hopefully not, but...
Glenn

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BadDog
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by BadDog »

Another thought on those, related to your comment, and why I really don't find it practical to use mine. They can't be used anywhere but at the end of a part. As often as not, it seems I need a knurl some distance from the end. And it's so much easier for one offs to just set it "about right", feed in quickly to full knurl, traverse as required, done. These require exact size parts, careful setup and trial, end of part knurl, and quite a few parts to be made in order to be practical. So my main knurling tool is a turret machine cross slide scissor knurler. They have size designations like OSK (or something like that), and are really nicely made. I think the smaller one is a Boyar Shultz, and the larger one is some German company. Used to be all over ebay, but I couldn't find a single example at the moment, though I did see several of these turret knurling tools, and a few bump knurlers. I've got one of those bump knurlers too, picked it up somewhere along the way, but haven't seen any (even vaguely) practical way to use it on a standard engine/tool lathe.
Last edited by BadDog on Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Russ
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BadDog
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Re: Re-purposing Turret Lathe Knurling Head

Post by BadDog »

Ahh, finally found examples of what I use. Here is an old sales sheet. And here is an example. If you can find a good deal, they beat the crap out of the typical import scissor knurls that are so common. For reference, I've never even given half what that one is listed for, and the ones I got were in better shape than that one appears to be (just a finish issue, but still). But the biggest I found only approach 1", so for bigger knurls, I have a crappy big flexy (import) scissor I use.
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