Turning dodecahedrons inside the sphere #2: Third Chuck

First chuck (see my previous blog) I upgraded from two screws to three T-Bolts.

Still gives me a lot of positioning flexibility from the front where I can check the center and from the sides. Later I realized, any jigs like this should not be removed from the face plate. Re centering A to B takes very, very , very long time

T-Bolts from the face plate view.

More stable Sphere Chuck #3 design. Biggest advantage of this chuck is speed of centering and locking the ball in.

Started with two peaces from the home hardware store. I’m not exactly sure what they for but they have right size and can be screwed in. Reminder: Mark the peace when you first time put in the lathe. In my case, my lathe chuck has letters, so I always align my A-A.

Cut them a bit to make them smaller.

Two other peaces made from four layers of fiberglass and epoxy.

On two waxed half-balls I spread vaseline then cover with fiberglass cloth, spread epoxy then cloth then epoxy and so on to create 4-5 layers. To create ridges marked on last two pictures with blue arrows I had black pipe cut-off placed on the top (make sure vaseline is on all parts that don’t need to be glued-in, including the half-balls footprint!). Takes 24 hours to cure and a bit of fighting to separate half-balls from fiberglass. Here is the result:

No gaps, perfect fit

With a few layers of the same fiberglass cloth I glued peace of aluminum to screw in center bolt.

To the center bolt I can screw in wooden plugs/pegs if needed. I will get to that on the next blog when I finish this ball

Also check Stefang's blog on how to make the chuck from wood.

Yuri

-- Live to Learn