Tappet rocker arms with a centre adjuster post hole removed from big diesel engines can also make good clamps as do some types of Y shaped diesel injector holding down clamps.
In the next day or so I'll put up a picture of the clamps I've made for my drill p
ress out of a bit of a small off cut of H section girder, they will also fit my lathe tool post and lathe face plate .
I have several different length of threaded studding bar so I can use my scrap girder clamps to clamp low through to nine inches in height . have also cut a set of steps in 20 mm thick Delrin in 20 mm or so steps to allow the back end to be supported .
I thought you'd like a look at some of my homemade bits & bob I've needed to do " stuff" on my lathe and on my workbench this last four years .
The diesel injector clamp is on the long stainless steel threaded rod to the right of the 4" vice set in the bench top .
That vice is circa 1964 & made in Japan . It's bolted to a Roman shaped capital T platform that drops into a precision slit I cut in the 10 mm cold rolled steel bench top .
The lower end of the T is clamped to the bench leg with a 15 mm through bolt that runs into a captive thread welded on the back of the bench leg. That means I can take it off the bench in a few seconds and attach it to the platform of my circa 1960 Black & Decker workmate for when I want a vice away from my man cupboard .( ambiguous or what ? ) .
Another useful device is the 4 " dia vice that I have mounted on a length 16 mm key steel bar after I saw a YouTube clip on here showing how to do it ..I modified the idea slightly. So it can sit well below the chuck center line using the height adjusters on the tool holder , done so I can use the vice in a tool holder as a vertical milling clamp with a vertical travel of 3/4 " or so in total and forward & backwards movement of the cross slide to allow a little milling of things . It did a nice 5 mm key way on a 20 mild steel bar using a surplus 1/4 " shafted 6 mm parallel wood working TCT cutter.
There is also the cartridge release lever from a wrecked caulking gun .. it made a great low profile plate clamp for when I was trepanning a 75 mm hole in some 1.5 mm alu using my drill press.
Close to that are two square bars . these are fantastic for using to clamp things on the lathe face plate To the right of these are two strange off centre disc's and some special cut round nuts that run in the face plate slots . Again these are for holding things to the face plate , being off centre it's not often I can't make a quick secure clamp up .
That Dremel in the round vice on the tool holder . it's not much use save for indexed small drillings into round bar in the lathe chuck . I tried to get a precision finish on a bar end but the Dremel is neither man or fast enough. The 90 volt dc motor of an old surplus exercise machine is for a project that should take over from the Dremel as it can get some sensible RPM and have a lot of torque . Again I hope to make the drive using a flexi drive (Old truck speedo perhaps if they are still available ) of some sorts rather than a direct or belted drive as it will allow the motor to be fixed to the tailstock end of the lathe out the way .
OMG I've forgotten how to get a 6.4 meg picture from the Win 10 pictures folder and put it into the post . Can anybody help me PLEASE ?
1) Install GIMP (it's a free photoshop type program)
2) Open image in GIMP
3) Scale image to a sensible size for the web, say maximum 2000 pixels on longest direction
4) Export image as JPEG
5) Upload image to mig-welding site, Job Done.
Honestly try Screenhunter, it is simple. I always have it in standby and all I need to do is press the print screen button on my keyboard and it will allow me to drag a box around the image and then save it to a folder of my choice. You can assign any shortcut button you wish to start it but I think PrintScreen is the most logical.
You can choose what format you want, I prefer Jpg.
Here is an illustration of it working where I open a pic from my camera, use screenhunter and then open the scaled image. You can grab a snap of anything on your screen, even a still from a youtube video if you want.
Notice the image on the camera was 5.5Meg and the snapped image is only 177Kb.
Just to clarify, normally you would only need to see the programme itself once, that is when you initially set up the preferred options. Each time you start windows it will start and you just close it and it will sit waiting for you to press your preferred hot key. You drag the box around what you want to capture and that is it.
Feast your eyes on it lads , it's a rare event ….me getting a piccy on the threads ..
I don't really know what I did,
I think I opened Mig -welding .. opened a post reply made is small . nipped into pictures highlighted the picture number file , copied it to the board then came on here re grew the small reply and then simply right clicked and pasted it and here it is .
Iv'e typed the actions I took , so I can print them off for the next time . , they may even work .
Gimp made me feel a bit of a gimp after the 13 th time of trying .
As for screen hunter ….. I gave up after half an hour of hunting .
Whatever happened to the simple old fashioned photo editing progs of resize to fit an email , a thread or do a manual setting , turn it to jpeg or whatever, copy and past into the thread you were using or where ever else you wanted to shove it\?
That gimp thing looks like you'd need a six year degree course to work it .
Sfar toooo completeeekt'edd fer a olde yokel loik me .