Hello welcome to Enots engineering I'm Alan in today's video we'll be making
some modifications to the Fixed steady on the lathe by adding some bearings.
So let's go to the workshop and see how we do it
What I want to do is change my fixed steady so that I can put some bearings in.
This is my fixed steady jaw this is the project I want to do today which is to fix a
bearing onto a bush, the bush must hold the bearing in position and clear
the bearing from the washer and the head of a cap head. A cap head will go through the bearing
into the steady and hold the bearing just proud of the end of the steady.
and to do that I need three bushes three cap heads that go through here.
I need to drill and tap an M6 thread on the end of the steady jaws
I've marked up the sizes here 8mm is the bearing bore size 12mm is the
inner bearing size so the bearing will be held on the bore and the inner
bearing just leaving the outer to rotate and the thickness here is 3mm to clear the washer,
7mm for the depth of the bearing and then when the cap it goes on there
it will hold the bearing in position by locking up on the center of the bearing
This is the fixed steady it comprises of a base which has a Vee in it that fits on the the bed of the lathe.
The clamping bolt goes through this hole to hold it down to the lathe bed and clamp it in position.
That's why it's called the fixed steady it doesn't move once it's in position.
You've have three I'll call them jaws
That just touch the job and support it when you're machining a part.
So what I want to do is just do is to drill and tap a hole M6 in the end of each jaw.
All I need to do is undo the three cap heads take the three jaws out.
Mark the position for the center these parts are cast iron.
I've measured the the jaws from the bottom to the top
and they're all the same height even this one the height is the same,
and I've come in 8mm from the highest point.
Now I did that by measuring the overall height taking 8mm off just using the bottom with the caliper.
To measure the distance from the bottom to there and scribe a line on each one so
that's the line where I want the hole now all I have to do is get the centre,
they're all the same width,scribe a line and that's the center point on each one.
It's not critical because you can adjust each bearing.
All you need to make sure if you do this is that when you have the bearing in the centre.
The edge of the bearing overlaps the top in this case it comes up above the top of this by 3mm.
What I've done here is I've bolted a block of wood with
the piece of aluminium as a support to the table at the end of the jaw.
What I will do is I've got the position on this one drilled it slide this out.
The next one will slide in touch the block of wood and be in the same position.
The distance from the block of wood to this drilling point will be the same
on all of the jaws
6mm tap
and that's the only modification I'm doing to the steady.
If it doesn't work I can still use the steady as normal it hasn't affected anything.
When center drilling if you turn your centre drill so that this forms of V
You get then when you want to put some cutting fluid or oil you can just put a
bit in the the V hole there whereas if you put the center drill anyway it could
be like that you've got nowhere for this fluid to hold
Now I'll set my parting off tool I'll touch it on the face set my compound slide to zero.
Move it across 6mm because I know my parting off tool is 3mm wide
If I move it across 6mm
I know I'll have a 3mm head on the flange
I'll change the collet for an 8mm collet turn it around and
held it on the 8mm part and I'm just facing off the face.
Where coming to the assembly part. What I did was took the jaw of the steady.
Put the bearing on the bush and use the jaw to press it in.
By tightening down
and then with an Allen key screw the allen key in and it pushes a bush
into the bearing and then it will lock up when the bush is right the way through
and all you do is undo it turn it around
I'v used button head screws for this because their profiles would be lower
So the reason why I made a gap under the bush is so when you clamp your
movable jaws you can go right under there with the clamp as long as it's not fouling the bearing.
These screws are 6mm button head screws.
and they're about 15mm long.
So now you can see
you can adjust those to your diameter.
If you want to change these are sticking out too far all you need to do
is undo the jaw turn it around
it puts the bearing then in the center
so you can either have them on the outside
or in the center.
I've fitted the steady by the chuck
I've just puts a piece of steel in, steel bar that's probably three foot long.
it's sticking out the back of the headstock
Now I've got bearings I will tighten these bearings up
now we've got those fitted what I'll do
drop my speed down to 350 RPM turn the adjustment until I see the bearing move
Just mark the nearing with stripes so you can see.
The bearings just started to go around
The same on the second one.
same on the third one
Now I've got all three bearings revolving I will stop the lathe.
Undo the clamping screw
Undo the bolt that claps the steady to the bed.
slide this down into the position I want and then move the bar out to where I want it to be.
tighten this up again
lock the steady to the bed
Fold the top down and clamp the top
Switch it on
You can see all the bearings are moving and this is
steadying the bar at this end
and the nice thing about this is
I haven't got to put any oil on there to keep the bearings cool.
Well that's another little project done I hope that's useful hope you enjoyed it
and we'll see you next time on Enots engineering