A lathe is a very fun tool. I can and have spent many hours using mine.
A fun thing to try is, spinning metal bowls on them, a small one I made on my lathe.
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Whoaaaa.
I guess it probably requires a relatively expensive chunk to start with? I suppose you could catch the shavings and reforge them…
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Do you start with a flat disk and then just shape it? (How would you do metal?) 
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You got it Jules, it starts as a flat disk.
@jrnelson, you start with a hardwood form you turn on the lathe.
The form for the little bowl was made from Maple. Hold the form in the chuck and place a disk between the form and tail stock.
Not much metal waste at all, just a little to make it round before rolling the rim.
It does not take a big lathe to do metal spinning.
I have a used Nova DVR XP wood lathe, I bought from Northwest Washington Woodturners Club.
a short video and no it is not me, but it shows the process.
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Aha! Of course I never thought about doing it like that; I naively assumed you turned a big block of metal into that. 
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Here’s a little project that I’ve been working on for about a year…
A friend of mine is a huge Packers fan and asked me to build her an eNable / Team UnLimbited arm. After printing the parts for two arms (one in each color), I let her pick the pieces a la Build-a-Bear. Of course this left me with a complementary set of parts, so I went ahead and built that one too.
There are a few remaining tasks – stringing the “tendons,” adding straps & padding, etc., but on Tuesday she’ll have both “home” and “away” arms!
I love it when a plan comes together!
Tech notes:
- Printed on an Ultimaker 2 using PLA+ (0.2mm layers, 50-100% infill)
- Each set of arm pieces took ~24 hours across 3 days to print
- Material cost of each device was $15 in plastic and ~$10 in fiddly bits
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That’s hypnotizing! 
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Home and away arms? That’s fantastic!
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Manual lathe. That’s what makes it so fun 
Why thank you very much. That makes me feel really good
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Metal. Wow very cool!!!
My is for wood only🤗
Do not know what kind of lathe you have, my lathe is a wood lathe.
Used it to turn the wood form, get some round disk and make a couple of tools and you can do that on your lathe.
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Nice spinning there. Never tried it but it looks so fluid, must be fun!
Thanks for sharing with us.
Nice work Mary!
Thanks for the share!
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You almost make me want to explore 3D printing… very cool!
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Very nice job!! Those are amazing (Always keep extra fiddly bits in stock !) 
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Very interesting 
I will have to look into that
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I recommend a lathe wholeheartedly
Good on you for the two drill presses👍
One of those is on my list to get for my new shop someday
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We’ve decided that we wanted our Glowforge this xmas. This is what we came up with. It’s a bit small. And the laser power is 0W. But it’s ours.
Here is the picture of the honeycomb bed.
The model I made was accurate (visually) as to the actual unit. It was not really made for 3D printing. Hence why the handle for the lid came out like crap. I may give it another shot with the proper changes to make it a look better. Kinda thought about milling out the top with acrylic and what not and use black vinyl for the features shrug
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ohman, if that thing is big enough to stuff a laser-pointer down inside…
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