What speed do you set your lathe at when using easy wood turning tools.
[OP]
Member
What speed do you set your lathe at when using easy wood turning tools.
Member
The fastest that I can safely operate them. I’ve found that they can handle high speeds just fine, and like tradilathe chisels, the faste the RPMs the easier they cut.
Member
What Bill said. For me, that's around 2200 rpm because my cheapie lathe has a lot of vibration above that.
Contributor
From the standpoint of safety, the speed should depend at a minimum on the diameter of what is being turned. Turning something 1" in diameter at 2000 rpm should be fine. What is important is not how fast the *axis* is rotating, but how fast the *outer edge* -- where you are cutting -- is moving. A point on the outer surface of that 1" diameter spindle is moving 6000" per minute. Increase the diameter to 6" -- that point is moving 36000" per minute -- over 7 mph. And the mass of the worked piece is likely increasing even faster, which means that if something goes wrong it will be much more serious.
A general safety guideline is that diameter times rpm should multiply out to 6000-9000; that presumably would be for a *balanced* piece.
http://www.docgreenwoodturner.com/lathespeed.html
Member
Your speed ratio is spot on (6000 to 9000), but your 36000 inches/min is well over 7 mph, actually 34 mphOriginally Posted by Robert Henrickson
Making sawdust mostly, sometimes I get something else, but that is more by accident then design.
Contributor
Indeed -- thanks for the correction. I did it quickly in my head, not with a calculator. It seemed low -- I should have checked. Makes the point more compelling.
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