I’d like to hear how people are fixing wood to the headstock for rotary turning.
My background is conventional woodturning. On a woodturning lathe I’d use a four jaw chuck, a spur drive, or a jam mount. The tailstock of this unit doesn’t really lend itself to ‘jamming’ a piece up against the headstock. The headstock itself is incredibly beefy but the jaws are a little foreign to me. So I’m wondering how others have accommodated to the Avid headstock for turning?
Somewhat related, does anyone know the OEM for the headstock? I’d be curious to know if there are other jaws that can be swapped into the chuck.
1 Like
You can get spurs with straight (i.e. not MT’s) shafts that can be clamped in the 4 jaw chuck, but I just grip the end of the wood with the 4 jaw chuck, and jam the tailstock live center in at the other end. Haven’t had any issues with that yet.
Thank you Jim.
I think with spindles that is going to work fine. My primary application will be using the jaw in ‘expansion’ mode. Basically. holding the inside of a milled out hole. What is scary is that there is only about 3/8" holding surface, then another big chunk of metal at the next jaw step. That is an accident waiting to happen.
The good news is the 4th axis is more-or-less permanent, so I will set up a precise WCS for the headstock. But if I’m using a 1/2 ballnose mill, I’ll end up leaving a lot of wasted stock on the piece to avoid collision. If I had longer fingers on the jaws (as I do on my lathe jaws), I can have adequate holding yet still leave a gap.
I agree, this is more of a metal working chuck, and the jaws really aren’t adequate for holding wood without the tailstock.
I agree that the chuck jaws are not very adequate, I have been screwing a 3.5" square block to the stock and chucking up, but I have hit the screws many times as well. I like the “inside the hole” Idea.