What are you machining?

[E T]

That turned out quite alright .
Milled just over 4mm of the base and made a T- nut so I could use the original clamping lever to clamp it to the mill table.
It's still a smidge high, but with a 0.15mm feeler gauge under the rear of the base the test bar was dead on parallel.

 

[galooph]

I've got a Sieg C6 lathe, and the compound on it is not particularly rigid! I'd never had success parting off, and had often thought about making a Gibraltar style toolpost to improve the rigidity. I'd spotted that Arc Euro stocked a milling table that looked like it might save some work, and after some measuring, I thought that I could get away with a larger wedge toolpost on top.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the counterbore worked in my drill press! I went with shallow head socket screws to minimise the depth I had to cut.

As a first test, I tried parting off some aluminium bar, and successfully cut some nice thin slivers - progress!

The old compound can soon be swapped back, if I ever need it.

 

[Kram]

I have been tidying the shed and now have access to lathe.
We have a grabber thing, pole with handle one end and jaws on the other, it needed a repair, so I set about making a new tube holder for it out of 22mm aluminium.
It has a 1/2" slot for the trigger handle. It was a challlenge to work out how to hold it. Using a ER40 chuck in a MT2 adaptor, in a 25mm bore toolpost holder, sticks out a little bit!
I didnt have enough cross slide travel so had to move the toolpost right on the edge with a G clamp to help secure it.

Went better than expected !

 

[Cheesie]

I had the slots cut out yo machine down to size so far everything is coming together ok

 

[Kram]

Sparkplug adaptor. A bit optimistic with 11mm off diameter in brass.

Turned the tiny retaining swage off this bosch plug and the ceramic near enough fell out. Brass 6mm goes through and 2mm hole up the middle to keep its volume low.

My setup for tapping, baby 50mm 4 jaw SC chuck, it worked quite well, on a 10mm hss bar, in a just sliding loose er40 collet.

 

[tigdlo]

That’s the last pattern done. Just need to flip it over and skim it to finished height on Monday

What's the material? Is it specifically for casting patterns?

 

[Cheesie]

Stud and nuts came today it all fits

 

[Kram]

Whats it for?

 

[Cheesie]

Whats it for?

It's for a radius brake, I've a bit to go yet plenty to mess up yet, it will be adjustable for different diameter of tube, I plan to bolt them onto the sides of the table I made for welding on that now just gets filled with crap

 

[Cheesie]

Pins started

 

[Hood]

 

[Kram]

Looks good, hub or some kind rubber cush drive? Big for an AT? Boat?

 

[Hood]

Looks good, hub or some kind rubber cush drive? Big for an AT? Boat?

Guy has an R&D flexible coupling on the prop shaft of his boat but it keeps failing so he is wanting to put a solid spacer in. There is not enough room to feed bolts in that would go right through so I made that up so it will use 12 shorter bolts instead of 6 longer ones.
OD is 5.75" and registers are 3", width is about 2".

 

[Woody.v8]

Some pivot pins that are greaseable from one end, made out of 1-1/2" chrome ram rod.

 

[m_c]

Having already destroyed two hydraulic ram rod seals trying alternative methods, I actually used a manual lathe earlier to produce this little widget-

(what looks like two longitude scratches, is actually the reflection of my CNC router gantry!)

Just long enough so that when installed on the rod, I can screw the piston on to keep it in place-


And after a bit head scratching of how to mount it in the current press, since somebody gave away the old press along with the cloverleaf plate, I have the first ram rod assembled-


Now just need to put another new seal in the other gland, and repeat.

 

[Martin Hocking]

Back to basics for me.

I wanted to get my tail stock aligned again on my little M type lathe so I set about making a between centres test bar. I’ve made one before but it was crap and has gone rusty so time to make a new one.

Having become a little irritated with the ‘meh that’ll do approach‘ I often take and the mediocre results that often come about from it. I thought it’s time to take inspiration from the excellent work so often posted here and actually try and make something worthy…emphasise on the try part!

I’ll cut a long story short aside from the obvious goals of a parallel piece with good surface finish. What I was actually looking to do is find my way back to settings that make the little lathe sing again. I haven’t had time to use it very often since I moved and have really struggled to get nice results. So here we go…

Spindle taper wasn’t quite bob on so I used a makeshift centre in the 3 jaw. And a regular knife tool to cut with which worked great on the ends held in a steady but again struggled to get a nice enough surface finish…



Hmmm. Coupled with my John Bull gauge going sticky meant I got a bit lost adjusting the tail stock. I was quite cross at this point.

Anyway I have another tenths gauge which is just for best so I thought if not now then when.



After grinding up a finishing tool with a tiny flat on the end and not having a sticky gauge things were looking up…


The tool is super sharp so I went to the lightest of light cuts and about 200rpm and finally a finish I was happy with. Success!

Now to the meat of the matter. The photo above was 3 tenths different one end to the other. Which I think is close but not quite within Schlesinger limits. Boo!
So I moved the tail stock 1 tenth and took one final cut and it’s nearly 4 tenths going in opposite direction to how I adjusted! Argh!

It’s at this point I stopped, whilst annoyed, I’m a lot closer to alignment then before and I’m a few thou over a useful diameter of 1.100 inches. Before I try again when the mood takes me I’ll get a new dead centre instead of using the live centre which is one of the potential problematic areas.
For now I’ve got a accuratish shiny piece of metal under my bed!


*All measurements on ye olde inches.

 

[dieselsamurai]

Been wanting a fixture plate for the mill since i got it and had a nice lump of 30mm ally plate that was looking bored so decided last week to crack on with it

The grid was just to get an idea of what i could fit onto the plate, every thing measured off the DRO really gave ABS and INC a good workout, settled on a 50x50 grid of M12 tapped holes



Power tapping in back gear through ally is so much easier , I found a m12 1st tap that on first cut gave a great fit to a M12 stud plus as the tread isnt fully formed at the bottom stops the stub before it winds through the plate



Almost done just got to mill the back face and sides , pleased with the finish on the front face .
There are counter sunk allen mounting holes and i have dotted 10mm dowel pin locations around to help lining parts up



A lot of swarf though from drilling some over 10ft from the mill !

 

[dieselsamurai]

One of the reasons for making the plate was for this job but its going to be used mostly horizontal as like this for light cuts or drilling.

This is so I can add a Dro to my Mill/drill just got to drill the mounting holes now



Finish is better than it looks but TBH just needs to be parallel

I was debating wether to keep the 8" riser block on the mill but i couldnt have done this job without it

 

[Cheesie]

A bit more done, first test peice

 

[dieselsamurai]

Finally finished a couple of riser bars for my fixture plate i made , was more a test of my technique and how accurate an old Bridgeport i had . I got to within 0.02mm max in each dimension and for the sort of stuff i do more than close enough

I forgot how tricky it was squaring off a bar in a vice