Centering the "Worm Screw".

[bgam65]

I have had difficulty centering the worm screw in my Nova G3. It took many tries to get it on plane. Is there a trick to getting it flush/centered the first time or is it practice, practice, practice?

[jsburger]

I have had difficulty centering the worm screw in my Nova G3. It took many tries to get it on plane. Is there a trick to getting it flush/centered the first time or is it practice, practice, practice?

A picture would hep to see your problem. It will never be perfectly centered. That is what the lathe does. You use the lathe cutters to turn the project round.

[reible]

Not quite sure what the issue is. I like to mount the screw in the chuck first then screw the wood on. Is that what you are doing?

Ed

[rpd]

I have had difficulty centering the worm screw in my Nova G3. It took many tries to get it on plane. Is there a trick to getting it flush/centered the first time or is it practice, practice, practice?

It should be easy and repeatable.

I have a SuperNova2 chuck (the bigger brother to the Nova G3), but the jaws and woodworm screw are the same.

First lets look at the parts.

woodwormscrew.jpg (282.51 KiB) Viewed 6000 times

The woodworm screw has three sections.
1 - the screw - where the work-piece will mount.
2 - the groove - the inner edge of the jaws will sit in the groove to prevent movement along the axis.
3 - the other end - note the four flat areas, the inner end of the carriers (the parts that the jaws mount onto) on the chuck will clamp there.

wschuck.jpg (298.9 KiB) Viewed 6000 times

Here is the chuck

Note the inner edge of the jaws and the carrier.

woodwormscrewandchuck.jpg (267.4 KiB) Viewed 6000 times

And here is the woodworm screw mounted in the chuck,
Note the edges of the jaws nested in the groove and the flats line up with the jaw mounting screws.

So the procedure is

1 - insert woodworm screw in chuck with inner edge of the jaws lined up with the groove.
2 - slowly tighten while turning the screw back and forth so that the inner edge of the carriers will align with the flats
3 - mount the work-piece on the woodworm screw and tighten till the back face is tight and flat against the outer face of the jaws.

if you don't want woodworm screw to penetrate that far into the work-piece it is possible to put a spacer (a disk with the appropriate thickness) between the jaws and the work-piece.

[bgam65]

Man oh man. a picture is worth a thousand words but in this case, both answered my problem. Thanks so much for the input.