KWentling
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2002
- Messages
- 1,145
- Location
- Rozet, Wyoming
- Tractor
- Kubota BX22, Kubota ZD21, Kubota M7060
I do this stuff for a living, but our smallest lathe is an 18" and I could do this in no time. Not knowing what you have for tooling makes it kind of hard to make a recommendation, but a bimetal hole saw to rough out the hole would probably be the quickest. Like was said, slow and lots of cutting oil, and you will need to clear it of the chips frequently to keep from ripping the teeth off. Then finish the hole to size with the boring bar. To hit an accurate size for the finish (provided your lathe is capable of that), I take three equal cuts. Say, rough out to .030" undersize, and then touch off and take a .010 cut. Mic the hole and then take the rest in two equal cuts. The last cut might be slightly more or less, but the idea is to have the same tool pressure or deflection. Another possibility, if you have a face grooving tool, (probably not) is trepanning the hole close to size. It could certainly be done by using facing cuts to open the hole up big enough to get the boring bar into the hole and then taking cuts to get to size, but if you are using high speed steel tooling (as opposed to carbide) and limited to light cuts due to lack of power and rigidity of a really small lathe, the hole saw would be the way to go.
Kim
Kim