The Dremel I’m using is an older variable speed model that’s wired for 110v. It’s a model 395, that runs from 5000-35000rpm. The “nose” is a screw on thread that is removable to put on the extension hand piece.
A few days ago I took off the hand piece and changed the cutting direction to cut from left to right, the results are ever so much better.
I mounted it with the 1/8″ plate, and it bounced around a fair amount. I did find that if I took out the delay, and simply set the motor speeds down to a value of about 10 – things ran smoother – the cuts look good, and the feed rate didn’t cause any slippage on the pattern (that I could see). However, after a while, I found that running in SINGLE mode would cause some slippage, and reset things to use DOUBLE mode.
Lee was right about the 1/8″ plate for the motor – it needs to be stiffer in any event, I switched it back to the 1/4″ plate yesterday. In the process, I had to rework the mounting hole to countersink it from both the top and bottom, to allow the drill and the screw cap to engage with the threads (it’s pretty close to the edge).
I set the mandrel increment to 200, and let it run about 1/2 hour to level out a blank – it does do it, but it’s never going to convince anyone not to use the lathe :).
The attached images are with the drive speeds set at 10 – my blank length is about 160 drive steps. I wrote the ratios on the blank above each pattern to give a feel for what they looked like.
(the drive speed is only used in the cutting actions right now, the rewind is without the speed limit)
this is officially fun now!
Brian's Workbench 