MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS: Watchmakers lathe custom chip shield

Custom Chip Shield on Watchmakers Lathe

Hello friends
Just completed a smaller project that has a big impact on my comfort and eye safety when using the little Watchmakers lathe. I've designed and custom fabricated an adjustable and tilting chip shield.
In the process I not only got to do some fun brass work but I also worked in Acrylic (had to make the shield itself).

Custom Chip Shield ready to use

The overall design uses a length of 5.5MM steel rod held in place behind the lathe by an adjustable arm.

The arm itself is mounted to the accessory slot I designed into the lathe base (elsewhere in this blog). The pivot mounting is also achieved using the standardized mounting brackets I also custom design and have 3D printed in bronze-infused stainless steel (also elsewhere on this blog).

Adjustable mounting arm and rail for Custom Chip Shield on Watchmakers lathe

The arm for the shield is captured in a carrier that has stops machined into it about 60 degrees apart. The carrier itself is adjustable to tune where the shield drops to as well as where it is placed longitudinally along the lathe.

Chip Shield arm and carrier

Chip Shield arm assembly on support arm and rod

Chip Shield Carrier with clamping collar

If there is any doubt why I wanted to make this chip shield just look at the amount of tiny chips thrown off on another project I had underway. Always ends up in my hair and all over the shop.

Big mess

In order to make the carrier, I had to come up with a solution for holding it on my small mill and rotating it. Not having an indexing head yet, I came up with a nifty solution that worked extremely well! I have a spare couple of lathe beds and mounted that in the milling vice. it was just a simple matter of removing the headstock from my lathe, mounting my 3 jaw chuck, attaching an old (and rather beat up but functional) tailstock and voila!

Lathe used as dividing head on mill

Note that I've also attached the custom spindle lock from a previous project.

Spindle lock in use

Additionally, the tailstocks on these old lathes are exactly 8MM in bore so they very accurately fit any of the collets that fit the headstock so I had my center to use.

The shield is already in full use and I'm very happy to feel cleaner and safer (have to protect the eyes after all).

Cheers, Kevin

IMPORTANT please read

Important Change Notice!

Hello friends and visitors. I am taking a temporary hiatus from offering the parts shown in this blog on shapeways. I have had many inquiries and a lot of effort has gone into preparing the parts for sale. Unfortunately, 3D printing of parts one at a time is not as cheap as mass market bulk castings.

There is not enough demand to have the parts bulk cast and doing so would also mean a change of material from the wonderful Bronze infused Stainless Steel.

The metal printed kits come in well under the cost of purchasing completed new parts from the likes of Levin and such but are significantly more expensive than the lower functionality antique items on Ebay.

I have found that the market is generally at the lower end of the spectrum.

I am presently reworking how I might be able to bring the costs down on the parts somewhat and will notify you through this posting when they are ready for kit purchase.

Thanks and cheers, Kevin

WELCOME

Hello Blog visitors and welcome to my blog about the adventures of creating high quality, new tools for the antique WW watchmakers lathe. Nearly a year ago I acquired an 8mm American Watch tool company lathe from a local antique store. It was not in the very best of shape but I am someone who loves to rescue machines of quality and bring them back into service. I am also an inventor and an artist and this beautiful little lathe captured my interest.

Once I'd managed to carefully bring it back to working condition, I decided I wanted to have certain functionalities for it to solve some of it's challenges in doing the kind of work I wanted to use it for. It worked so well for very small brass parts and removal of very small amounts but I wanted to do this kind of high accuracy work on some longer and more robust pieces of material.

What began as a project to make a superior steady rest has turned into many other tools adding various functions and abilities to the lathe.

The results are chronicled throughout this blog.

I hope you enjoy the process posted here.

Cheers and enjoy! Kevin Mowrer

MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS

Watchmakers lathe custom chip shield

1 comment:

Tool Grinding attachment for watchmakers lathe

Search This Blog