Cadflat Tube Bender Project.

[Esteban]

My lathe is only tiny for such a heavy piece of metal and the swing is past its limit.
The slug comes to me at a diameter in excess of 8".
I feel somewhat ashamed to admit that I have spend more than 10 hours in front of my lathe to make 1 form.
I must run slow speeds and take steady for fear of breaking something or hurting the operator....

Congratulations your work.

And don't feel ashamed for the time invested. Only true passion can explain it. That is the reason I follow your fabrications.

[Oddbod]

Thanks Esteban.
I could not afford to pay others to fabricate and make the items I do at home myself.
That last form that I machined cost me $20 for the material and 3 cutting tips.
Of course there was an original set up cost using scrap metal to fabricate my radius cutter etc at home again.
Probably another $30 divided between two forms that I have made.

I saw about a 1 year ago, similar forms for sale from China at about USD$500 each.
I know if I tried to get one made here in DownUnder if I could find somebody interested and they provided the bar stock, I'm guess it would be more than the Chinese items.
Way too rich for my taste...

As you can see from the attached picture I can barely reach around the size of the metal slug and eventually have to turn it over the face each end.

[Oddbod]

A further update, I've been off the radar once more with a good healthy dose of Covid.
Lucky me...
Could have been worse I guess, but I sure have no plans to go back for seconds.

With respect to my lathe progress, it has been slow, but no rush for now as I still have the Hercus lathe running.
A swap over will require more energy than I currently have.

When I purchased this lathe, a sheet metal rear screen/apron came with it.
It was not fitted but appeared to be fabricated with that intention.

The time has come for me to see how well it does fit and what might be required to finish it off.
As it turns out it is a pretty good fit and looks like it may have been used as a temporary fixture but never really installed.

The first thing that I noticed was it was made too darn tight to clear the electric motor, in fact it covered the airflow end of the motor and I figure that it would have been only a matter of time before it would suffer from over heating problems or worse.
The other issue seemed to be that one of the attaching screw location was not accessible to fasten.

So, I decided to cut and widen the apron at the rear to create better airflow for the motor and chamfer the motor bulge to provide access for the attachment screw.
I've put a 50mm wide piece of 2mm flatbar in as the widening material and so far it has all fallen into place.
There was a few moments during the cutting and widening when everything was pretty darn floppy and a real handful to keep in alignment even with a brace tacked in.

I'm not finished yet, but mostly only welding, grinding, priming and painting to go.
I figure that I will paint it a light colour to help with visability and it should be easy to wipe down and keep clean.

Thanks for your interest...

[Esteban]

Sorry to hear about the health issues. Hopefully you're out of the woods now.

The apron looks like a must to keep things clean in your shop around the lathe. Great.

[Oddbod]

Thanks Esteban, yes feeling much better, just trying to shake off this feeling of tiredness always.
The mind is willing, but the body is struggling to go along...

Well, I got some paint on the lower portion of the apron and fitted it up.
I'm pretty happy with it.
It kinder looks too good to get it dirty or so my wife tells me. Hahahaha!!!

[Oddbod]

Here are pic's of the lights I have chosen for my lathe.
I am no expert in this regard, so what ever I choose, I am stuck with I guess.

The 2 x 600mm LED's ($18 each) I will use as back lights at the top of my apron and the small 300mm LED ($31), I plan to attached to a flexible stem some how and that will be my primary work light.

My first piece of advice to anybody else buying lights is make sure they come with some attachment clips or brackets or look at the light to determine whether it is easy to attach it to whatever you have.

In my case the 600mm lights came with plastic clip on brackets lets call them and it looks to be a straight forward process to attach them, knowing full well nothing ever ends up straight forward...

With the smaller 300mm light, I discovered once back home that it came with no clips/brackets and it was not going to be an easy attachment although not impossible, just time consuming for little reward lets say.

What attracted me to the 300mm light was the fact that it had externally that switch that can adjust the light brightness settings as my buddy had mentioned.
I've tried to include that in my picture attached but white on white it is not so visible...

Anyway, next step now is to figure out my attachments and wiring.

[Oddbod]

Well folks, I have lighting.
I really need to do a few little tidy up thjngs but I'm sure you get the general idea.
I guess I will not be 100% sure how successful this exercise has been until I start using this lathe.
I'm going by how unhappy I was with my small lathe lighting and have tried to improve on it.
The most significant difference is that I had added back lighting alomng the top of the apron.
The trick there is to shade the light source so it does not shine in the operators eyes.
The work light appears to be better than I had anticipated so I feel quietly confident that I maybe close to achieving decent lighting.
Now I just need to move the old lathe out and pretend to be a machinist... Hahahaha.

Oh, one last task is to shape and add a small piece of sheetmetal as an infill to the apron on the LHS.
Not sure if it is needed but I just hate swharf spilling out everywhere so this will prevent any headed in that direction I guess.
I'll post that when its done.

[RiverPatrol]

That's some impressive engineering for lighting. Nice work.

[Oddbod]

Yes River, it has worked out pretty darn good, a lot of luck involved to be honest.

I've now made and installed the end fill in piece that finishes my apron off.
Fiddly stuff but done now...

Dont want to be politically incorrect and hope I dont offend anybody, because that is not my aim, but I'm busting to show off my wall art surfboard project.
If you are old enough and have seen the movie "Apocalyspe Now", you will know what I'm talking about.

It is going up on the wall in my garage with my old license plates etc...

[RiverPatrol]

Cool surfboard.