Lathe Workstation

Here's a little picture tutorial of the evolution of my lathe setup/work station since I purchased it. First I have a couple of images of it before I purchased it, with the original owner.

 He had mounted short piece of wood on the back "splash shield" to hold some of the most common/larger tooling and the dial indicator.

 Picture of the back of the basic, bottom of the line, Craftsman tool box it was bolted too. There was a piece of plywood as a work surface. I made sure to secure the lathe bed with all 4 bolts. If you do this, make sure not to over tighten it, especially if the surface isn't 100% even, or it will warp the bed way.

I later upgraded the tool box to a much larger unit with ball bearings.

Alternator Installation on Tecumseh HMSK80 Engine

So I've purchased a used 7A coil and matching flywheel. The one part that I didn't discuss in my last post was the key missing component. In order to operate correctly the alternator, which generates A.C. power, need a rectifier to convert the A.C. to D.C. Then I can use an automotive style utility light which are easily obtained at local stores. Adding a battery allows me to run the light without the engine running, or when the engine is running at low RPMs.

Original flywheel is removed. This is required to install the alternator coils which are mounted underneath. The old flywheel makes a nice paper weight once it's off.

The new flywheel has 5 magnets to match the alternator coil below. I'm not knowledgeable on the effects of different numbers of magnets numbers of coils. They would most likely affect the power output and possibly frequency/amplitude of the output AC signal.

Below I've mounted the alternator to the engine.

Routing of the wires is critical as it cannot rub against the flywheel when running, nor can it crimp the fuel line. Try a few different routing options to find what's best for your setup.

Below are the two AC alternator output wires hooked up to the two channels of my scope.

 

Same thing, just overlaid.

Then I hooked it up to a full-bridge rectifier and we see the desired "DC" output is not clean at all.

I will be adding a capacitor as well as a regulating circuit to reduce the voltage to a stable 14.4V. I hope to use a switching setup rather than linear regulator. The regulator circuit will follow in my next post.