I am very new to the lathe and have a question about parting. Do you ever use a live center when parting? Yesterday, I was parting using a live center, my work piece jammed up, it was ruined, bent the hole work piece like 10 degrees. I read that these problems can also occur when the parting tool is not 90 degrees to the work piece. So in short, do you ever use a live center when parting, and was this likely the cause of this? Sorry if this is a noob question, but I have to start somewhere lol.
No, you cannot use a center when parting off a part. Using a center will cause the freshly cut piece to pinch the parting blade which tends to end badly. If the item you are parting off has a hole through it, which sounds like that might be the case since you had a center in it, you can use a piece of wire or a screwdriver through the part to catch it. If the part is too small for that or does not have a hole, you can put something underneath it to catch it when it falls. Or, if the part has a surface finish that will not eat your fingers, you can just lightly grasp it while it is spinning and catch it with your fingers when it is parted off
I often use a live center when parting, never had any issue. I don’t put an extreme amount of force on the part with the live center, but enough to keep everything in the right place and not chattering… I am not too strict on keeping the parting tool at the perfect 90 degrees and have not had that cause an issue, but it could be a huge problem. I am using a carbide insert parting tool on my lathe as it seems to work better than the old kind for me. Good luck!
I have seen people run a high speed steel party tool lower than center in an attempt to get it to cut better. The main issue with running lower than center is that if there is an appreciable amount of backlash in the cross feed screw, as the nub starts to get smaller, it can pull the tool under the work. Depending on how the part is held it can write up over the parting tool and come loose from the truck. Not good for the part, the tool, or the operator’s pants.
Edit: geez I didn’t realize how badly the voice to text had butchered that! I’m leaving it though. It’s more fun to read.
Depending on how deep I have to go with The parting tool, I may or may not use cutting oil. If I am using cutting oil, since I don’t have flood coolant, I will sometimes put a drill in the tail stock and use that to catch the part
