Steady rest slightly different for my small Lathe

thingiverse

Unfortunately accessories are no longer available for my small lathe as it was last sold at least 20 years ago. It is a pre-China French made Minilor TR1 which was sold like todays Chinese models in different colors under different names (Minilor, Variolux, robbe and more). Mine is branded robbe romat Vario 300. To safely handle longer parts a steady rest is very important and I originally wanted to mill it from aluminum but didn't have the material at hand. As there are only radial forces on the device it should also hold up well printed in PLA if a suitable design is chosen. I also wanted it to not require constant lubrication while it still rubs groves into the rods, in other words: ball-bearings. As designed it can hold rods from 3mm to 80mm and by just changing the bottom plate and the clamping block it can also be made to fit other small machines with 80-85mm chucks. If 80mm max. is sufficient it could also be adapted to larger sizes. Required parts besides the PLA stuff: 3 Ball bearing, 626ZZ 6 Allan screw, steel, M6x20mm 2 Allan screw, steel, M6x30mm 3 Hex head screw, steel, M6x20mm 3 Allan screw, steel, M4x20mm 3 lock nut, steel, M6 3 washer, steel, M6 6 fender washer, steel, M6 8 Threaded insert, M6x10mm (for wood) Epoxy or Superglue gel Installation of the ball bearings is hex-head screw->bearing->M6 washer-> arm->lock nut. The STLs for the bottom piece and clamp are most likely useless for other lathe models but I added them to show how they look and to make it easier to design it for a different lathe. The threaded inserts are screwed in, then removed and inserted again with Epoxy or superglue gel. The frame is held in place with 3 M4 screws where the thread is cut directly into the PLA and I also would add some Epoxy or superglue gel into the grove. The parts were printed with no support and oriented as in the STL files. Infill cubic double line and 15% except for the arms where I used 25%. Print time for all together was well above 20h on my low end printer.