Semi Automatic Thread Cutting: Metric and Imperial - Part 6

Single-point threading with the ELS 4 Basic is semi-automatic and so much easier than changing gears.
I purchased my ELS 4 Basic from www.rocketronics.de/en/els/

[@michaelmayo3127]

This `IS` the best conversion video that I have seen. No-frills hand-on and no constant ear-chewing chatter form the presenter👍👍 What a relief!!

[@JohnSL]

Wow, thank you!

[@johnyoungquist6540]

What a great improvement to your lathe. Very large pitch cuts for oil grooves, multi-start threads, helical drive grooves are now practical.

[@lonnalachner7344]

So satisfying to see all of your hard work come together. Outstanding job John. Looking forward to more videos.

[@JohnSL]

Thank you both. It works better than I hoped.

[@PiefacePete46]

That must be very satisfying... I can remember salivating over the Emco range when they first appeared. I'm an old codger, so that was at a time when "digital" had something to do with picking your nose! :o) Nice, easy-paced videos, full of thought provoking content. Many thanks, Liked & Subscribed.

[@lesthompson5907]

were did you parches that siystom from it dos not look as complicated as the clouelg42 . siystom do a video on wear one can Buy it from ? . i live in England & need to fit such a siystom to my 100yer old lath as it dos not have a lead screw. thank you Les England. PS I'm content to just have it cut a thread in such a way that it remans to be semi automatic so i hold on to my thread cutting skills. for example it doesn't need to position it self i as the operator can do that & slating the stat by thread indicator, also a job i can do it cud i suppose stay in thread mode & & return to stat adding cut i can do , my old lath is one used in schools in the 1960 . most had no led screws One can cut on it but one must ues the rack. An ELS system seems to me to be the answer to threading on my lathe. one can cut third wit it change gears, this is done on my lathe. by the ues of the rack shaft & six trads to the "inch pitch nut. drive. No led screw. i wuld sat thes a subject there to get your hed around. LES

[@gangleweed]

I bought an ELS kit a year back, not fitted yet, but when I checked the thread pitch plate on my old 1930 Colchester Bantam lathe I found it covered all of the standard Metric pitches you need and I don't think odd pitches are really necessary for any thread that has been invented to date, so the ELS kit is still in the box.

[@JohnSL]

If you have a quick-change tool box, I can see the value would be less. My machine requires physically changing the gears by removing and adding gears. It's a lot more work than if you have a change selector. Once I finish this conversion, by adding a stepper on the X, it will also be able to do the entire threading operation.

[@torsiondell]

Just watched your videos very impressed looking forward to the crosslide auto upgrade

[@rayblankenship432]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing John!!

[@glencollingwood]

Really good presentation. I like the 3D print prototyping. Did you ever get around to the cross slide upgrade?

[@matteo0830]

John great video, i have the same lathe. Could you share the stl file for installing the encoder on it? Thank’s

[@glencollingwood]

Some time ago I saw a video where someone did a eletronic cross slide with an Electronic handwheel. Thereby eliminating the manual handwheel entirely. Have you considered doing something like this for both axises?

[@firsttimejongbuild]

Hi John, i have the same machine basically. My question is...how is your gear train set up currently, now that you are using the E lead screw? I am quite torn on whether or not to invest in the change gear set which didnt come with my machine, or invest in the E lead screw. But before i choose either i need an understanding of the baseline of your machine. I am new to this operation since my older machine could not cut threads....any info you could share would be greatly appreciated.

[@brucewilliams6292]

Thanks for the video. I just ordered one for my lathe based upon your video. Did you get your X axis going?

[@JohnSL]

Not yet! I have some more watch videos to edit and get out, then I want to get to the X axis.

[@TrPrecisionMachining]

GOOD VIDEO

[@VastCNC]

How has this unit been treating you a year later? I'd love to see a follow up with your thoughts. I've been considering this as an alternative to a dro or CNC conversion on my little lathe.

[@JohnSL]

I haven't had enough projects to get much use out of it yet, unfortunately. I do love it, even though it's still metric only. I happen to have a second one I've been meaning to sell. There were shipping problems and the first one got lost, so they sent me a second one. Then the first one showed up and I paid for it because it didn't feel right not to. But that meant I got stuck with a second unit and haven't sold it yet. So let me know if you're interested. You can find my email address here: kzbin.infoabout

[@VastCNC]

@@JohnSL I sent you an email a while back. May be caught up in your spam filter

[@JohnSL]

@@VastCNC Woops, sorry about that. I found the email and will reply.

[@bigbird2100]

Great video 👍John nice work so the only restriction is size of bar stock and cutting inserts possibly to do square threads tripizoid but a great tool add on nonetheless .

[@JohnSL]

Yes, lots of options now. Of course, they existed before I added the ELS. But the ELS makes it so much easier and doesn't limit me to what gears I have.

[@bigbird2100]

@@JohnSL Gotta love stepper motors micro controller's etc

[@JohnSL]

Oh, yea!

[@YooProjects]

Great video dear man 👍👍💫

[@JohnSL]

Thank you 👍

[@GroovyVideo2]

Thanks

[@firsttimejongbuild]

Hi John, how much time and money would you say you've invested in this set up?

[@TroubledTimes2024]

You leave the lathe default gear set in or another set?

[@JohnSL]

I took the gears out. So the lead screw is driven only by the stepper motor.

[@danbrown586]

I'd really like to put something like this on my Clausing lathe, but its complete inability to deal with inches is pretty much a deal-breaker--all the more so because it's completely unnecessary. It's just software, it should be relatively trivial to implement this.

[@JohnSL]

I hear you. You'll see my solution in my next video (still filming). But he is working on updating the software to support both metric and impereial. And, as a software developer, I can tell you that it's harder than it would at first appear to retrofit software that shows dimensions in many different parts of the UI. It's much easier to add that type of flexibility up front rather than later.

[@danbrown586]

@@JohnSL I'll look forward to the next video, but it's encouraging to know he's working on this. Hopefully it will allow for thread specs, at least in inch mode, as tpi (e.g., 20 tpi) rather than thread pitch (e.g., 0.05").

[@jansverrehaugjord9934]

Hello there, I can "pitch in here".. :) I have the same ELS system (both Z- and X control) and fitted to several Myford lathes. My humble opinion is that this system handles imperial numbers well as long as you can live with converting these to metric, for which purpose I made a simple chart in Excel. Eg. the 8TPI leadscrew on the Myford converts to a 3,175mm lead (which is used to setup the Z-motor control). I find this to be a very simple and practical solution to input imperial numbers. Accuracywise, the system can handle inputs down to 1/1000mm increments and since the math is done in metric, there will be an accumulative error. However, I will claim this to be negligible unless you are doing a longer piece, at least well within the overall accuracy of the machines/systems and tolerances involved. For example, if there was an error of say just less than 1/1000mm, then over say 100 threads, the pitch error could approach 100/1000mm = big enough to cause an issue. However for short threads the error is meaningless. So if I have a 100 mm piece threaded and the error is 1/1000, with an 18TPI thread ie. 1,411 mm lead: 1inch = 25.39998628mm 18tpi = 1.411110349 mm pitch Error = 1.411110349 - 1.411 = 0.000110349 mm per thread 100mm rod has 100/25.4 X 18 = 70.9 threads Hence the cumulative Error = 70.9 x .00011mm =.008mm for the 100mm piece which is well within the specs of most leadscrews and manual lathe systems

[@ViceChief]

@@jansverrehaugjord9934 Hey Jan, I think this is a great solution. Would you consider sharing your chart? I'm installing an ELS this week.