Question:
My QC toolpost is garbage and I'll be making one. I'm taking a lathe
class with a fantastic teacher and he's suggested I make a lantern
style post. He finds that for home stuff it'll do great. For when
he's at work at doing a lot of setups he wants the QC toolpost
however.
I was just wondering what people prefer and why. Where is one
better/more useful than the other? What are the pitfalls of each,
that kind of thing.
Answer:
Now that you've heard the "opinions" from the production shops, and
those that don't have time to enjoy just working metal for the joy of
working metal, here's mine.
My Grizzly came with one of those abortions they call a "turret",
which looks like one, but in function, resembles a turret like a trade
school grad resembles a machinist. It took me a while, but I got a
set of the Williams tool holders, and dug up the lantern post and have
only had to use the turret for my cutoff tool. The only reason I use
it for that is because I made the tool holder to fit it, and I'm too
lazy to make another one.
The remarks about tool angles etc. are fine when one is talking about
carbide tooling, but for the most part, the changes when using high
speed tools won't even be noticed except for threading. For boring, I
made blocks to hold the boring bars, and then made the bars to fit. I
don't do or even try to do production work on the engine lathe, that's
what my turret lathes are for. There are a lot of jobs that I've done
that would not have been possible with either a tool post turret or
quick change tool holders, and that's where the old lantern comes in
handy, it is far more versatile than the others. Maybe a bit more of
a PITA to work with, but more than compensated for.
