Some of my recent lathe work

[elongmoss]

Just thought i would stick up some pictures of some lathe work i have been doing recently
on a few throttle bodys
Firstly hears the lathe im using

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Its a Colchester Triumph 2000 not in bad nick everything works as it should but it looks like its had some abuse over the years.
Anyhow stripped down and mounted up the first throttle body

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And an Action Shot

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I Managed to turn them out to 70mm much better than the 64mm they started as
now for the butterfly plates first a huge lump of brass turned down to 70mm

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And was left with these enough for the ones i was doing and a few extras just incase

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Then put them all back together and finally fitted one to my car has made a lot of difference less lag and faster pick up so well worth doing
so far i have done Two C25XE and two X25XE throttle bodies the only small problem with the X25XE type is that after 69mm it broke through into the coolant chamber underneath but as im not using it and a little chemical metal filled and smothed everthing was fine.

[Brian_S]

I'm getting used to the lathe up our garage now too. It's a Denford Orac, which has been gutted and is now running from a PC running Mach3 (and EMC2)



Made this tonight:

[Tathan]

Nice work both, few things I love more than making things out of metal

[Brian_S]

I like having a CNC lathe. It works while I drink tea! lol

[Tathan]

Brian you need to get a barfeed one for ultimate production vs tea drinking time lol

[Dom]

I've now got 2 lathes, neither of which are servicable at the moment but will make a nice project when I get some other stuff sorted out.

Also got a 1HP inverter and 1/2HP motor to stick on when I get the time.

[Brian_S]

Dom, get yourself some ballscrews and steppers and make one CNC. It makes things a lot easier, and you can get some great results with a converted lathe running on Mach3 or EMC2.

You'll love it when it's doing it all for you!

Tathan, a bar feed would be nice. I would probably die of a tea overdose though if I had one of them! lol

[Lugy]

Good stuff, we've got one of they Colchesters at work, fairly decent machine it is.

Bar feeders are good but the most boring thing ever when they let you do 1000 hydraulic couplings and you need to remove the swarf from the boring bar on each part lmao.

[Dom]

Dom, get yourself some ballscrews and steppers and make one CNC. It makes things a lot easier, and you can get some great results with a converted lathe running on Mach3 or EMC2.

You'll love it when it's doing it all for you!

I have the steppers and threaded rod - that will get me going until I can sort out some decent ballscrews. I need to get the rest of the workshop built to house it all first lol.

[Tathan]

First person to get a hobber in their garage gets man points.

[king nero]

hobber = gear cutter?
if so, do you get man points for regularly working on one of those? not at my garage, though...

[888dan]

Nice work on the above , i have a lathe like that in our works and they are usefull .
How do you find the round throttle butterflies work as i have found most of them are actually oval as when they seal they are usually on an angle
Im partial to a little turning too although its mainly bigger stuff i do enjoy the small stuff too


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sorry to hijack the thread with pics , i could not resist . I love to munch metal ..........

[Brian_S]

Awesome! Proper engineering!

I'm loving the DTI on a tripod! Plus, any lathe where you can stand on the toolpost while it's working is just plain MANLY! lol

What type of tool do you use to do the poly-v belt grooves on pulleys like that? If I tried to cut it with a threading tool or something my lathe would probably judder itself off of the bench! lol

Great photos!

[888dan]

lol thats still a toy lathe compared to the one i saw a while ago . the one above will swing 40 ton at a push . The one i saw the other week would swing 150 ton and the guy using it was putting over 50mm a side cut on . The chippings were like tennis balls !!!!

for the "v" grooves i profile them out to get a decent finish , was a right pain to program as it has little rads at the top of the v section to remove burr's . I use a really sharp indexable tip type tool holder , ill post the code when i find the tool again . You can cut them in one as you said but you really have to feed it in to load the lathe up to stop the bounce .

Ill get some pics up of more of my stuff but ill make my own thread and stop hijacking others


how accurate is your Denford ?

[elongmoss]

888 dan
the round butterflies work fine i have a 70mm one on my V6 and its changed the pick up so much
The butterflies have to be about 0.001 larger than the housing so that they get a good seal heat up the housing and freeze the butterfly for easy assembly then they seal well on a slight angle as you mentioned but if done well there are no problems at all a mate bought one off egay and the butterfly was 0.5mm smaller and didnt seal causing his engine to idle around 2.5k with the idle valve fighting to stabilise it thats what got me started on trying to do them as re machined his

[davecavcon]

elongmoss...........do you want to open up my xe throttle bodie?
ive got a few you can do and also a few 1.8E throttle bodies if your bored?
how much money you thinking?

[888dan]

elongmoss
sounds like its worth a try then bud , every standard plate i have measured has been oval but if round ones work then game on . I know they will not work on the z20let bodies as standard they seal at about 13 degrees to the bore and this needs to stay the same due to how the electric bodies work .a round plate in a bore the same size , sat at 13 degrees = big gap.
I love big TBs on cars - to a point obviously . they due pick up a lot better on WOT

i may end up having a play with a v6 body as thats the engine im going for in my astra too

i may also end off tapping you up for some usefull tips since you already have a v in yours if thats ok too

[elongmoss]

888 dan
thats no problem i think i can remember most of the problems i encountered but overall its a fairly straight forward conversion i would say go the extra mile and use a omega 3.0l v6 like i have done rather than the 2.5 vectra one.
davecavcon
are the xe ones you have cable throttle or electric as electric are harder to do what size are they as standard??
i can give them a go probably be around £40-45 including return postage

[davecavcon]

they are c20xe cable ones mate
the 1.8E are from a 1983 cavalier sri

still sound ok?

[stuboy]

used to love using the lathe at college....

[vxlgsi]

First person to get a hobber in their garage gets man points.

got 2 but not in my garage :O)


Not bad for a machined finish



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[888dan]

certainly a nice finish , what surface speed and turning tip was that achieved with . I always end up using too little rake when turning ally

[corsa_club]

very nice result there

[Brian_S]

lol thats still a toy lathe compared to the one i saw a while ago . the one above will swing 40 ton at a push . The one i saw the other week would swing 150 ton and the guy using it was putting over 50mm a side cut on . The chippings were like tennis balls !!!!

for the "v" grooves i profile them out to get a decent finish , was a right pain to program as it has little rads at the top of the v section to remove burr's . I use a really sharp indexable tip type tool holder , ill post the code when i find the tool again . You can cut them in one as you said but you really have to feed it in to load the lathe up to stop the bounce .

Ill get some pics up of more of my stuff but ill make my own thread and stop hijacking others


how accurate is your Denford ?

Ah cool, I'll have to get some profilling tips to have a go at some poly-v stuff then. It hurt to pay £50 for an alternator pulley last time I needed one! lol

The Denford is pretty good, and is pretty repeatable now. It has been gutted, but retains the original motors. It could probably do with some new ones really as they are from the '80s and stepper motor design has come on a long way since then.

Now it could just do with some decent CAM software to do cutting paths from either conversational input or even easier, a profile.

[Tathan]

Brian, if you have a .ac.uk email there's stuff you can get for personal/edu use. ProE/Creo has CAM modules and free like this.

I'm sure a man of your resources can figure something out