Last year I bought a Cazeneuve HBX-360 which I restored to a working condition. The lathe is not entirely complete, but what is there works perfectly and the lathe is accurate.
One of the parts that was missing were the 'curved nuts' which are used to clamp a hydraulic tracer unit at the back of the sled. After asking for a quote with the local caz dealer, which came to 45,- a piece (!!), I decided to try to make them myself.
Because I'm a software engineer and not a skilled machinist, it was less than trivial for me how to make these things; the drawing shows the little plan I came up with:
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The drawing was made in OpenSCAD (OpenSCAD - The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller).
The actual "drawing" in openscad format, for those interested, can be downloaded here: https://gist.github.com/mrvdb/566899.../ringnuts.scad
Given the tools I have (no dividing head, no mill) this seemed to be a feasible method to get something that would work.
I bought a 13mm disc of S355J2 steel and turned the basic ring on the HBX
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After scribing a centerline with the lathe for the position of the holes, I made a little helper paper template as to where the holes were actually needed and drilled and tapped them.
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Sawing them in pieces was done with a saw arbor, which was actually my first project on this lathe:
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In the background of that last picture the slot in which the nuts are to be used is just visible.
After cleaning them up by hand, here's the end result:
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and of course there are 5 sets of 4 which are leftovers, because of the way I made them. If there's anyone interested I'd be happy to send them at cost.
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One of the parts that was missing were the 'curved nuts' which are used to clamp a hydraulic tracer unit at the back of the sled. After asking for a quote with the local caz dealer, which came to 45,- a piece (!!), I decided to try to make them myself.
Because I'm a software engineer and not a skilled machinist, it was less than trivial for me how to make these things; the drawing shows the little plan I came up with:
The drawing was made in OpenSCAD (OpenSCAD - The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller).
The actual "drawing" in openscad format, for those interested, can be downloaded here: https://gist.github.com/mrvdb/566899.../ringnuts.scad
Given the tools I have (no dividing head, no mill) this seemed to be a feasible method to get something that would work.
I bought a 13mm disc of S355J2 steel and turned the basic ring on the HBX
After scribing a centerline with the lathe for the position of the holes, I made a little helper paper template as to where the holes were actually needed and drilled and tapped them.
Sawing them in pieces was done with a saw arbor, which was actually my first project on this lathe:
In the background of that last picture the slot in which the nuts are to be used is just visible.
After cleaning them up by hand, here's the end result:
and of course there are 5 sets of 4 which are leftovers, because of the way I made them. If there's anyone interested I'd be happy to send them at cost.
