Hi folks. I just purchased a Jet Mini Lathe. I have a question that some of you might find silly but what the heck. The instructions that came with the lathe are not very clear. I would like to know if you can, and if so how, do you attach a Jacobs Chuck or drill chuck to the tailstock of the lathe? I can get the tail stock spindle out, and the center for the live center will pop out, but after that I am lost completely.
Can any one help a complete newbie out here?
Thank You,
Al
"AWood70928" wrote: (clip) how, do
Does your Jacobs chuck have a Morse taper on it? That's what you need. Just slip it into the tailstock the same way you insert your live center, or any other gadget.
You should be able to purchase a screw in taper shaft that would match a Jacobs or other chuck. Take your live center to any regular machine shop and they can identify the taper No. in order that the one you buy will fit in your tailstock. They may even cite you a source.
The piece you remove from the tailstock with the live center on it should be a tapered piece (I'll call it a "morse taper" within the text of this post so the purists don't beat me to death with the proper term). Sears (for example) sells a threaded morse taper that you can install a Jacobs chuck on, then slide back into the tapered hole in your Jet Mini tailstock. Take your old morse taper with you so you get the right one, probably a #1 or #2 morse taper. I paid $12.99 for mine at Sears & $4.99 for a Jacobs key chuck @ Harbor Freight.
Grandpa
AWood70928 wrote:
Your drill chuck needs to be mounted on a number 2 morse taper shaft and will look like the one in the picture
I can't thank you all enough. I was having a fit trying to figure out how to get the Live Center out of the tail stock spindle. Anyway, I got home from work tonight and took another look at it and used a wood dowl and hit it with a rubber mallet and it poped right out. Now I can go get a drill chuck. Thanks again.
Al
A kinder, gentler way to remove the tailstock center is to use the handwheel to retract the tailstock quill until the center drops out...............Barry
Ah Ha. And said with so much tact too :) Never once called me a gorilla :) I will give that suggestion a try. Sounds a lot easier on the equipment. Live and learn. I always keep a rag handy to wipe the egg off my face.
Thanks.
While this certainly does work for this brand lathe, it doesn't work for all lathes. Not all of them have this auto-eject feature. Just a heads-up for the new lathe owners out there.
- Andrew
Or with every taper. Some are not long enough to self-eject. Fortunately, a bit of time with some brass or aluminum and a lathe will produce an extension to make a non-ejector into an ejector.
Dummied up on the buttons. Also want to mention the wedge method, where a piece of wood is placed between the edge of the chuck and the tailstock, popping it out as the wheel is rotated to retract.
Fortunately,
Wanna borrow my egg rag? I always keep one handy................Barry
True........but it works on Jet Mini Lathes...........
Ummmmm ..... yeeeessssssss. As my statement of "While this certainly does work for this brand lathe" should have alluded to. At least I had hoped it would have.
- Andrew
al: on many NEW jet minis, backing out the live center using the hand wheel will be a bit tough for the first time ... put the live center back in and try popping it out with the hand wheel ....just keep turning and it will pop.
This doesn't work on all MT-2s. I have one Live Center that it doesn't work on - The taper has to be long enough to reach the eject device.
mike
That must be a pretty short live center taper! Good point though. How long is that taper you're talking about?
I have a couple of tapers on devices for the tailstock that are too long. Not that they don't auto-eject but that they take up an additional 1.5" of tailstock travel that they really shouldn't have to. One of them is on a Jacobs' chuck. When I get some more time, I'll hack off a bit of that taper but I don't want to go too short either.
- Andrew
Nope. Think about it. If they're designed to be able to bore through them, they'll lack the self-ejector.
That's why I mentioned two methods of extraction.
For example, the Nova is a non-ejector.
!) What does your comment have to do with the quote from my message concerning the length of a particular live center taper?
2) Why would the ability to bore through the tailstock negate the self-ejector feature of a piece of equipment (live center for example) inserted into it's morse taper? I personally have a few lathes where all are designed to bore through the tailstock and some are self-ejectors and some are not. No problems boring through the tailstocks on any of them. Or are you talking about the live center itself? I don't see where that would be relevant either as that piece of equipment doesn't have anything to do (except, obviously, it's length) with a "self-ejector" feature. Please explain yourself.- Andrew
You probably have noticed, at least once, that the self-ejecting feature is an extension beyond the ~ 3/8 diameter portion of the #2 taper.
Now, read carefully - with some centers you can bore through the CENTER , not just the tailstock, gaining extra stabilization for the piece. I even mentioned one of the type. This, unfortunately requires the center be shorter to accommodate the hollow. I have already mentioned two ways to overcome the (pun intended) shortcomings of such centers in this thread. You also use the hole in the Nova to knock out the various end appliances. There are also solid tapers, I think most I've seen are the 60 point degree metalworking kind, with no self ejection which respond similarly to the extraction methods I mentioned. The chuck which was the subject of this thread - not Andy's offended sense of importance - was probably designed to be used in one of the Taiwan drillpresses, and therefore lacks the ejection tang.
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