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

[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 :)