DIY Lock Nuts

If you have a metal lathe just looking for some work, why not make your own lock nuts? That’s what [my mechanics insight] did when faced with a peculiar lock nut that needed replacing in a ca…

A 3D Printed, Open Source Lathe?

[Chris Borge] has spent the last few years creating some interesting 3D printed tools and recently has updated their 3D printable lathe design to make a few improvements. The idea was to 3D print t…

Lathe Outfitted With Electronic Gearbox

Running a metal lathe is not for the faint of heart. Without proper knowledge and preparation, these machines can quickly cause injury or destroy expensive stock, tools, or parts. The other major p…

This Tiny Steam Engine Takes A Watchmaker’s Skill To Build

When your steam engine build requires multiple microscopes, including those of the scanning electron variety, you know you’re building something really, really tiny. All of the usual tiny sup…

Tiny Orrery Is A Watchmaker’s Tour De Force

Six tiny gears, a few fancy pins, and some clever casting are what it takes to build this tiny orrery. And patience — a lot of patience, too. As model solar systems go, this one is exceptiona…

No Lathe? Build Your Own

If you need to make round things, you probably need a lathe. Can you build one as nice as one you can buy? Probably not. But can you build one that will work and allow you to do more things than ha…

There’s Hope For That Cheap Lathe Yet!

There may be few cases where the maxim that “you get what you pay for” rings true, than a lathe. The less you spend on a lathe, the closer you get to a lathe-shaped object and the furth…

Creating A New Metal Rohde & Schwarz EB200 Miniport Receiver Dial Knob

Recently [Roberto Barrios] got his hands on a Rohde & Schwarz EB200 monitoring and surveillance receiver that, despite its late 90s vintage, was in mint condition. Aside from damage to the main…

Building A Woodworking Lathe From Scratch

Today, cheap dodgy machine tools are more readily available than ever. Sometimes though, there’s great value in putting a simple and rugged version of your own, as demonstrated by [bartworker…

Stripped Clock Wheel Gets A New Set Of Teeth, The Hard Way

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from [Chris] at Clickspring, it’s that a clockmaker will stop at nothing to make a clock not only work perfectly, but look good doing it. That i…

Stepper Killer Killer Killed, Repair Attempted

The low-cost servo motor in [Clough42]’s lathe’s electronic leadscrew bit the dust recently, and he did a great job documenting his repair attempts ( see video below the break ). When s…

Producing A Pair Of Parallel Pliers

A regular pair of pliers is fine most of the time, but for delicate work with squarish objects you can’t go wrong with a pair of parallel pliers. [Neil Paskin] decided to make his own pair fr…

Wormhole Coffee Table Takes Woodworking To Another Dimension

While some people are happy with a simple coffee table to hold their snacks while watching Star Trek reruns, others want their furniture to go where no furniture has gone before. [Olivier Gomis] ha…

See What You’re In For When Buying And Moving A Lathe

Sometimes, with patience and luck, one can score a sweet deal on machinery. But for tools that weigh many hundreds of pounds? Buying it is only the beginning of the story. [Ben Katz] recently got a…

How To Achieve Knurling On A Flat Surface

Knurling is a popular way to finish handles of tools and other hardware, with a pattern of crossed lines rolled into metal to provide better grip and an attractive finish. It’s most commonly …

Custom Lathe Tool Cuts Complex Oil Grooves

Oil grooves are used to lubricate the inside of a bearing, and can come in many forms — from a single hole that takes a few drops of oil, to helical patterns that distribute it over the entir…

Junkbox Build Keeps Tesla Coils Perfectly Varnished

Admittedly, not a lot of people have a regular need to varnish coils. It’s mainly something that Tesla coil builders and other high-voltage experimenters are concerned with. But since that gr…

Cut Just About Anything With This Combination Lathe And Wire EDM

They say that if you have a lathe, you have every other machine tool too. To some degree, that’s true — you can make almost anything on a lathe, including another lathe, and even parts …

Hackaday Links: May 1, 2022

We start this week with news from Mars, because, let’s face it, the news from this planet isn’t all that much fun lately. But a couple of milestones were reached on the Red Planet, the …

VR Display Shows CNC Lathe Operations In Real Time

[Kent VanderVelden] has come up with an interesting VR system to assist operators who are monitoring CNC lathes. (video, embedded, below) The idea is to first produce a ‘frozen’ video s…