My comical CNC lathe story and does anyone have experience with gang toolposts?

[John S]

If the tool plate and ratchet have been machines accurately they it should all stay in line. You have guessed right and yes you do have to shim tools up to get on centre.

Where are you based ?

One problem with gang tooling is that the Orac doesn't have a great travel in the X axis to get different holders on.

Short term, if the bearings on this tool changer are OK and not got loads of bag in them is to replace the ratchet wheel with a wheel that has 8 ? holes in it and use a detent pin to locate it after turning by hand, like the example you linked to on YouTube.

[Rob]

Well John, I just had a long look and play about with the auto-changer and think you are right that the best way forward is to get one of the tools aligned the best I can, tighten the set bolts then drill though the first piece and partly into the cog gear, then use a dowel to secure that position. Then any other tools can be adjusted with shims.

The gang tool idea, you are also right. I could maybe get 4 tools on there but I can see it's a major endevor. Forget it for the Orac.

As for the bounce back of the wheel when the lever is on a cog gear, well, the original belt and motor hasn't shown not to work yet so I will still have an auto-changer if that works. If the motor doesn't hold it steady enough, then I have a second plan to cut out the auto changing part and use rubber bands from a hook on the casing and for each tool change I'll hook the bands over a tool on the other side effectively pulling the wheel in the opposite direction. Sure, cowboy way of doing it but I don't have a machine shop and live in the middle of no-where in rural Scotland. Came up from England to do a bit of gold panning and decided to stay, lol. Accent is Canadian, moved to UK 1990.

While looking at this toolpost I also played around with the homing controls, didn't go well. I'll have to sit down this week with the Mach3 pdf instructions and go through it. Bit by bit. Also I would like to see if I can actually get the auto-changer to change a tool, I can't figure out how to do it yet.


Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions on this, I think I can get this thing to work. Happier than yesterday :)