Threading on Mini Lathe - illustrated guide

When I first started with my mini lathe, I was extremely puzzled about the process required to produce threaded objects. I did not initially understand how to use the lathe to cut a thread.

This page, and those that follow, contain some photographs that show an example of the threading process on a 7x12 mini lathe.

One - Find something to thread

In this example we are going to make a thread without portfolio. I am going to cut a thread in a piece of 1 inch aluminium round bar. There is no purpose for cutting a thread like this, its just an example.

On the left you can see the raw piece of round bar. I cut the bar in half and mounted it in the lathe. I used the live center to steady one end of the work piece.

Here is the work piece mounted in the lathe with a tool loaded and ready.

Two - prepare surface for threading

Using a tool I clean up a section of the bar. This makes sure that the outside surfaces of the bar are smooth and parallel to the center line of the lathe. This does not have to be polished perfection, however, aiming to get a fairly smooth finish helps. I make several passes increasing the depth of the tool by only a fraction of a 1/1000th each time with the lathe on a pretty high speed setting. During the initial phase, the edges of the bar will not be parallel with the lathe - therefore the lathe should be run slowly so that the knocking of the tool on the highpoints does not shift the job in the lathe.

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Mini-Lathe Beginners