I don’t understand how anyone can manage on a lathe without power feed. Aside from wanting a more consistent finish am I just lazy?
Don't use mine that often. It's noisy and if your only reducing 30mm of length it's just as quick to turn by hand. Not to mention a noisy geartrain Have a very steady hand and still get great finishes
I am with you there, only time I don't use them is when I am doing a quick face of some stock and even then if it is a biggish dia I will use the power feed. It may just come down to how easy it is to use it I suppose. If having to change gears to get a rough and finish feed then that would be a pain, I would still use it at least for a finish.
Could be the ease of use. Rarely use the topslide on the m300, as its so easy to engage feed and swap from x/y. Worth noting the Harrison M300 was available in different saddle control layouts, presumably dependant on its main use; turning or screw cutting.
Yes unless it's a big piece/lots to remove I often face by hand, really the reason for that is that I have to stop the lathe to change the direction of the feed as on my Harrison when it's set to turn towards the chuck when you switch it to facing it feeds centre out, rather than in. Given the lathe is probably spinning before thinking it through I'd usually have to then stop it, turn the direction knob and do the facing, then stop it again to put it back to where it started. Not worthwhile for facing a small part. One thing mind that Harrison do have is a good control for the power feed. It's exactly where it should be in a good, ergonomic position and it takes nothing more than finger pressure to put it in, and can be knocked out exactly where and when you want it with your thumb/finger with no effort whatsoever. Much easier than turning the wheel.
I use my power feed all the time. Having the Harrison M250 makes it very easy - I leave the gearbox set on L2 (fastest fine feed) unless I want something different and then there's one knob that you push in or out for turning (towards the chuck) or facing (towards the centre) - this seems to be different to @Bill Edwards' Harrison. One disadvantage of the M250 is the carriage hand wheel is (like the mini-lathe) on the left-hand side of the carriage. Ergonomically I find this works well, but when turning by hand (as opposed to power feed), you do tend to get somewhat showered in swarf.
When you are totally new to using a lathe and just grasp how to use it manually/doing the basics, I'd say that it's easy to become lazy in the aspect of not having to learn something else. The main fear for most is the possibility of it 'running away' and crashing into the chuck I'm sure,....only more time spent using the controls etc of the machine you have can help with that, if you are an infrequent/hobbyist user, that's going to slow down progress. I am certainly guilty of that.
There's a knob on the carriage that you pull out for facing, push in for to/from the chuck. Takes about 1 second to switch between facing and turning. The 'trouble' with mine is that when the feed is set to work towards the chuck as you use 90% of the time when you pull the knob to switch to facing the direction is in my eyes backwards - instead of facing from the outer inwards it goes from the centre outwards which usually isn't what you want. It's easily changed by reversing the drive direction at the headstock, but this means stopping the lathe. The only time it works as you want it is if you're turning the diameter down and then at the end want to face out on your final cut to the finished, clean length you just pull the knob and power feed out.
Fair enough, each to their own. When I got my lathe (after a long time of not really using one, and certainly not with any kind of power feed) I was pretty much straight to it. But like I say, with the Harrison setup knocking the feed out just requires a touch from the thumb/finger and there's no delay whatsoever, so it's just second nature to use it (for me).
Power feed - I'm much too lazy not to use it! Set the stop up, check it stops where I want it too, start cutting and I can look at other things instead of how far from where I want it to cut I am.
Yes there is a clutch in the apron, just set the stop where I want it and it will slip the clutch when it gets to it.
Maybe, but you can still do good work on it with a bit of practice, and it doesn't need a Hilux and a plant trailer to move around... Dave H. (the other one)
