# TAIG as watchmakers lathe



## clockworkcheval (Mar 13, 2021)

Horology is the name of my game, but mostly tooling up for it. As lathe I use the solid and precise 60-70 years old lady Schaublin 102 VM. Its design is of the 1930's. In my first machineshop it was used for precision parts and when you wanted to avoid grinding as 2nd operation. My early model has revs from 80 - 2000. With a frequency regulator this is adaptable to a more useful 10-3000 revs. But it gives under diameter 5 mm with HSS tools not nearly enough revs for the many small arbors in clocks. Also the regular appearance for training of my three grandchildren aged 11-15 in my shop calls for a second lathe. The vintage watchmakers lathes in my country are at about $ 2.000,- for a 40 year old survivor too expensive in my opinion, and I like some Chinese components and tools but I definitively dislike their machinetools. The Californian TAIG gets many positive comments so I ordered one. A good friend who as a pilot is regularly in the USA was so kind to fetch it for me, thus avoiding tripling of the cost thru transport, insurance and an array of duties.
I needed four things to commission the TAIG 1) a solid base 2) motorizing based on 220 Volt 3) metric reading of the inch handwheels 4) a working height that lets me work standing up with a straight back.
As base I used a 500 mm length leftover U-beam with 180x60 mm cross-section. For the motor I got out of the robotics world a 300 Watt DC motor with up to 6.000 revs. With speed-control and pully-ratio 1:3 to 3:1 this gives a for me revolutionary range of revs. I put it at the back of the U-beam on an ordinary door-hinge. A knowledgeable friend of mine suggested to mount the electronics to the underside of the U-beam, using it as a heatsink. Closing the beam with simple wooden end-planks provides a wel protected space for the electronics. The metric reading I solved with installing light non-glass DRO's. I wanted to keep full use of the slide and the cross-slide, so I installed the DRO's at the back-end of the slides. This was a bit of a challenge and required precise connectors of funny shapes. The DRO's I used have separate display units what allows for mounting in the line-of-sight of the operator. I got the required working height by mounting the TAIG on a top-bench. 
The whole thing works quite satisfactory so far. See some enclosed pictures.


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## nautilus29 (Mar 14, 2021)

Nice setup, I'm in the process of converting that same lathe into a cnc.  I ended up using some granite from a sink cutout as my base.


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## clockworkcheval (Mar 18, 2021)

Protection of the DRO's had to wait for the right Aluminium profiles to arrive. This took some time as DHL decided to throw the package over my neighbours fence behind one of his sheds. After a couple of days he went there for some reason and found the package. The x-axis DRO is protected by a 35x25x35x2 mm U-profile and the y-axis DRO is protected by a 40x23x2 DRO. Both profiles are at one end held by a single or double sunken head M3 bolt and at the other ende loosely supported by the DRO reader. After adapting the toolpost to hold 8 mm square HSS toolbits the whole contraption was ready for testing. Precision works fine. It is no problem to hold a diameter within +/- 0,01 mm tolerance. I find that I must keep the motor at maximum revs to avoid a drop in speed when cutting. But given the smal components my TAIG is intended to handle this will pose no problems. Some pictures of the finalized DRO's:


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## nautilus29 (Mar 19, 2021)

Is your motor variable?


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## clockworkcheval (Mar 21, 2021)

Yes it is. Basically from stand-still to 6000 rpm. I did not measure yet what the reality is. With my first cuts I find there is not a lot of power left at the lower revs, so I run it at topspeed, which is fine for the small diameter parts I plan to do on the TAIG.


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## nautilus29 (Mar 21, 2021)

I ended up changing the pulley ratio on mine to give it a little more lower end power.  I also changed to a wider belt.  Those too things helped a lot, but I still have some issues with low end power.


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## clockworkcheval (Mar 23, 2021)

The first job on the TAIG was making 4 pillars from brass hexagon 5,5 mm, cutting and facing at length 90,0 mm and tapping thread M2,5 mm at both ends. The machine works OK, everything is close to hand and has a solid feel. It was a pleasure to get in quick change-over the right speeds: 4000 revs for facing, 8000 revs for drilling diameter 2 mm and back again to 120 revs for threadcutting M2,5 mm.
Some issues to solve are that I demolished the y-axis reader at assembly what leads to unexpected wildly random readings, and secondly that the read-outs are not only placed nicely in line-of-sight but also very much in the line-of-throw of cutting-oil. Maybe a plastic screen will be helpful.


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