woodturning,wood lathe,woodturning tools

OUT of CONTROL WOODTURNING
LATHE and TOOLS

This is the wood lathe I do all my woodturning on. It is a Vicmarc VL-300 made in Australia.
I bought a bare lathe and built my own stand and added a 1.5hp variable speed dc motor. The stand is made from plywood, oak, and cement. The main body of the stand is filled with bags of sand. The stand is splayed 4 feet on the tailstock end creating outriggers which are also filled with sand. Lathe and stand weigh approximately 1,200 lbs.

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This picture shows the electronics. The
box on the bottom is the motor controller.
This turns the lathe off and on, changes the speed, reverses direction and has a brake to quickly stop so the turning can be inspected. The meter above the controller displays vacuum when the pump is on. The switch (top left) shuts power off to the controller, The switch(top right) turns the vacuum pump on and off.

This picture shows the vacuum pump. It is a Gast pump with a 3/4hp G.E. motor that I bought from Surplus Center in Nebraska.
It was originally made for IBM. I had to add the start and run caps and Gast was very helpful in supplying me with a schematic.
It draws 26 inches of mercury which is more than enough to hold turnings on the lathe.

This picture shows the plumbing header. The line to the left (on the filter)goes to the pump input. The line straight up (clear) goes to the lathe spindle. The blue line (right of center) goes to the vacuum gauge. The redish (underneath) line goes to the old filter from the pump exhaust. I use this old filter as a muffler and as a filter to protect me from carbon. The valve (far right) is to control the amount of vacuum to the spindle.