This shows the other side of the circuit board.
The processor chip, a PIC 18F4620 sits in the middle of the board with a couple of half bridge stepper motor driver chips off to the side.
A large number of SMD components were already soldered to the board with the through pin devices needing to be applied by the kit-builder.
I bought a kit to make an Electronic Leadscrew for my lathe. This shot shows one side of the assembled circuit board.
This side has the LCD display and operator pushbuttons.
The project is an open source one with the kit being produced by John Dammeyer
There is also a Yahoo Group that initially started the development of this ELS (E-LeadScrew)
This view shows the layout of the assembly. The toolpost has a diagonal slit. One half is clamped with the hex nut down to the lathe top-slide. The other part is allowed to pivot around a steel rod. The two sections are then clamped together thus gripping the toolholder in place.
The toolholder has a 12mm square shank index carbide tip tool in place.
Still showing some marking blue and lots of milling marks but they can stay till the post has proved its worth.
This shot shows the toolpost with one finished toolholder slotted in.
The height of the tool is set with the knurled wheel and means that each tool can now be set to its optimum height without having to mess with different thickness shims.
The toolpost was faced off all around then a matching dovetail slot was milled to suit the tool holders.
This shot shows the toolpost with the one finished toolholder slotted in.
There was some play horizontaly but that is of no consequence as the following operations will remove that gap. More importantly the vertical gaps were almost spot on.
The finished article! Just one toolholder block finished. The others will wait till I have constructed the actual tool post.
Shown with a carbide insert toolholder. This will be paired with the tool holder for the rest of it’s life!
Just one toolholder block finished. The methods were all noted down so that the others get the same treatment
The lathe tool is shown clamped up into the QCTP Holder. A knurled wheel to adjust the height needs turning but I will now turn my attention to the tool post itself.
Having marked out the blocks on the slab I set to with my hacksaw.
Took a while to cut them all off! Good exercise but I’m glad I don’t need to do this every day.
Any more and a chop or band saw might need to make an appearance.
After fumbling enough with shims trying to get my lathe tools at the correct height, I decided to have a go at making a Quick Change Tool Post for my lathe. For a first effort I thought I would go with an all aluminium construction. If I find that the most used items wear then I will replace them with steel.
So here is a slab of aluminium on my mill after cutting dovetails on each long side.
I had to cut this block to fit my mill. It would have been good to have cut two or three more at the same setting.
The main boiler bushes were started by drilling and tapping the phosphor bronze bar to a depth sufficient for the three bushes that are threaded.
This photo shows the tailstock being used to hold a guided tapping fixture to ensure that the tapped threads run true.
The end result was three tapped bushes and one blank bush! Amazingly I managed to get them all to correct size first time!
Just a quick video of part of the turning process. Difficult to video when operating the lathe at the same time!
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YouTube Link toBronze Bush Turning
My first components for the live steam locomotive ‘Eric’ as described in Brian Wilson’s book “Steam Trains…. In Your Garden.
They are a pair of phosphor bronze bushes for the boiler connections to the water level sight glass.
I had been making tooling and other accessories to get up to speed on the new machine but they were my first production components from my new lathe.
Well, look what arrived in the post today! Cadge has scurried it away after I snatched these quick looks.
This will keep me busy for the next 20 years or so!
I have just got my mill skills up to speed and feel that I know my way around it now but this will need a whole bunch more skills and toolage to boot! I can see some dreams of Christmas presents passing before my eyes already.
Maybe a lathe for Christmas 
Well it all went together in the end. I found the build process for the setting box somewhat frustrating. Having to work from effectively three templates that all had to match up was just a waste of time. Best to cut whatever needs cutting once, with everything that has to match being cut at the same time.
The baseboard idea just prolonged the build process and introduced a source of error. Best to just drill and mount everything from the front panel.
By all means use a scrap board to hold everything together while soldering it all up, but then throw it away!
The various resultant screws on the front panel would be covered by the overlay anyway.
Circular push-buttons would have been a lot easier to fit. Drilling a circular hole wins everytime over cutting rounded-corner square holes. What a bind that was.
Anyway The items have now gone to their prospective user and I can only hope that they fulfill their purpose successfully.
10kohm pull-ups fitted across the +5v supply line and the control signal outputs.
The photo reveals some blobby soldering here but these resistors are not dropping off any time soon!
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YouTube Link to Kit 75 Servo Twitch
The Acoms AS-16 twitch is cured with a 10kohm resistor fitted across the +ve and signal lines. The Hitec servo still twitches so probably needs a pull-down solution.
As it is intended to use the Acoms AS-16, the 10kohm resistors will be fitted on all four outputs.
