Treadmill Motor Drive and Custom Power Feed

Taig Micro Lathe II With Modifications

This whole tangent – acquisition of a small lathe – started when I had a need to make a tiny 1/8″ diameter internally-threaded sleeve for tensioning a thin aircraft cable. The aircraft cable would have a small brass collar crimped and silver soldered on the end, and the sleeve would rotate freely on the cable as it threaded onto a 4-40 rod, thereby tensioning the cable. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t chuck the small parts on my Logan/Wards 10″ lathe, but that the lathe couldn’t really achieve the spindle speeds needed to do a good job on the small-diameter parts.

For several months I had been looking for a smaller lathe – something of the Sherline variety – that would be more comfortable to work with at higher spindle speeds. I knew a little about the Taig lathe, but for some fickle reason I didn’t seriously consider it until later in the process. Early on I had also started watching for vintage Unimat lathes on eBay. A Unimat would not be the most practical choice, but I had been fascinated by them since the ’60s when their ads could be seen everywhere in hobbyist magazines and catalogs.… Read the rest