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.
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.
