Tom Keen
02-26-2008, 2:57 PM
Steve Schlumpf's "how I built.." article inspired me to take the plunge and make a vacuum chuck. I pretty much followed his plans, including ordering the adapter from Tom Steyer.
The adapter is a first class piece of work. I swapped a few emails with Tom and a it arrived within a week. Very nice machined aluminium and extremely easy to use. I plugs into the hand piece on my Jet 1642. I cant say enough nice things about the service I rec'd Tom . I encourage anyone looking at doing a VC to consider this adapter.
The pump is made by Gast and cost $89. I ordered it from the Surplus Center along with the guage, petcock and silencer. The rest of the plumbing piece came from a local plumbing supply store.
The only real changes I made in Steve's design was to mount the everything on a hand truck and I have a 12 feet of tube running to the lathe in order to keep the qizmo well away from me and the lathe.
Steve's goal was to keep cost at or below $200. I ran about $20 over. But I think this is a very reasonable.
It works great! I put a larger Ash bowl on the lathe and I could not dislodge it. It felt very safe at 1000rpms (for the picture), though I doubt if I will ever run it that fast again.
Thanks Steve.. you were great help!
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The adapter is a first class piece of work. I swapped a few emails with Tom and a it arrived within a week. Very nice machined aluminium and extremely easy to use. I plugs into the hand piece on my Jet 1642. I cant say enough nice things about the service I rec'd Tom . I encourage anyone looking at doing a VC to consider this adapter.
The pump is made by Gast and cost $89. I ordered it from the Surplus Center along with the guage, petcock and silencer. The rest of the plumbing piece came from a local plumbing supply store.
The only real changes I made in Steve's design was to mount the everything on a hand truck and I have a 12 feet of tube running to the lathe in order to keep the qizmo well away from me and the lathe.
Steve's goal was to keep cost at or below $200. I ran about $20 over. But I think this is a very reasonable.
It works great! I put a larger Ash bowl on the lathe and I could not dislodge it. It felt very safe at 1000rpms (for the picture), though I doubt if I will ever run it that fast again.
Thanks Steve.. you were great help!
82656 82655
82658 82657
82659