I'm building a rotary adapter for a vacuum chuck and need to know the thread size of the outboard spindle. It looks like 14mm X 1.75 but would like to know before I buy supplies. Thanks.
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Laguna 1836 Outboard Spindle Thread Size
- Thread starter Dan McLaren
- Start date
Dan wouldn't it be easier to make one that fits inside the outboard end of the spindle or hand wheel with O rings like Craft Supplies sells (someday as they keep pushing them out, now says April). I'm tired of waiting so just got my bearings and am making the body out of aluminum. Still have to get the O rings but that's no biggie. The man who used to make them recently died (Tom ? his name escapes me at the moment) but he used to sell the hand wheels for different lathes that his rotary adapter fit. I had bought the rotary adapter for the Powermatic and I bought the extra hand wheels for the Jet 1642 and my Delta 46-460. Now tired of moving vacuum system around I made another system for the other 2 lathes but needed another rotary adapter. The hardest part of this will be getting the right amount of epoxy on the bearings when assembling.
The Laguna has a threaded outboard end, so the o-rings won’t work for that lathe. Seems it was a standard 5/8-11 thread, but that should be checked with a bolt to make sure as it has been a while since I had this lathe. I ended up buying the adapter from Laguna. The price has gone up to around $100, but when I bought it it was $70. In all reality the Laguna is well made. I tried making one, but it had too much wobble for my liking.
john lucas
AAW Forum Expert
I made.a.home version of the Ez adaptor that uses lamp.rod and connects through the spindle without any fancy gadgetry. If you want a copy of the drawing email.me.
I have a General International that I bought new and had the same problem. Bought some parts from JT at SWAT several years ago and used the parts with lamp rod and it works great.
john lucas
AAW Forum Expert
I found my drawing yesterday. Hope this will help. I use something similar what Leo posted but instead of threaded I simply glued a Nylon hose insert into a large bearing. I had a machinist mill out my hand wheel to accept it. I put a gasket in there and now all I have to do is sort of plug it in when I need to use the vacuum and can simply pull it back out when I dont need to use it so I can still use my knock out bar without having to unscrew anything. I much prefer that to anything else I've seen. Here are some photos of how I've set up various vacuum adaptors. The first shows my Powermatic with it's adaptor. This was actually a vacuum adaptor sold for my Nova Comet. It was designed to use a shop vac. I filled in the holes they used to bleed air so that it wouldn't burn up your shop vac. I have since used this same method but for friends but I used standard hose to threaded adaptors. Buy the 1/2" and then buy a bearing with 1/2" ID. You may have to turn a few thousands off the insert but then you can simply epoxy them into the bearing. The last photo is the wooden adaptor I glued into my standard Delta Midi handwheel. I just put a closed cell foam disc with a hole in the center into that hole and push the bearing in and I'm ready for vacuum.
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Tom Gall
TOTW Team
I also made a homemade version of the EZ vac. When I got my "new" (1996) lathe and the spindle was longer than my old lathe I just cut the lamp rod to about 3" from the bearing unit, pushed a piece of braided hose over the lamp rod and just slid it into the spindle. It was a perfect fit on my General 260. This fit can probably be adjusted for other lathes by adding vinyl tape to the hose as necessary. Only takes about a second to slide it in or out.
Another option (I did this for my VL100 mini lathe since the ID of the spindle is much smaller) if you have a steel hand wheel you can turn a disc to mount your bearing. I epoxied four rare earth magnets into drilled recesses on the back side and glued a neoprene disc (or any closed-cell material) with a hole over the spindle. Worked better than I thought it would.
