Member postings for Neil Lickfold

This is what I did for my lathe. I am making another box with a bigger drive, 2.2kw for my FR45 clone. Not the same as a Bridgeport. But the concept is similar. Where the motor controls are not connected to the original switch or carbonate. Some place are bringing in motors with longer shafts, maybe that is an option for the Bridgeport.

I think your best option, is to replace the current motor with a suitable 220V 3phase, and then make a new control panel that has a variable speed pot, and a forward reverse switch. It is essentially what I have done on my Myford lathe. I am going to make a similar setup for my new to me ZX45 mill. It is a clone of the RF45. Like the lathe, I will set up a micro switch that I can use when tapping holes. So when it gets to the desired depth, it stops. How quick depends on the deceleration settings on the VFD box. So if I ever wnat to put it back to it's standard configuration, I can just put the original motor back on, and reconnect all the wires etc.

Neil

So I decided to add the oil grooves on the X Y sliding block of the ZX45 Mill Drill. After removing the main block, noticed that on the milling table it was not flat. Set it up on the surface plate at work and a rod in the Fixed dove tail slot. I then set about shimming it around until it looked as close to zero as I was going to get it. The rod was just a piece of centre less ground commercial hard chrome bar that fitted into the vee. Then I took the plate and it's corresponding shims to the surface grinder and did a minimum clean up. Then turned it over and ground the other side parallel. Then rechecked, to my surprise the other vee was within 0.01mm , so was happy with that. Total height change was 0.16mm off the stack height. Then went onto a mill and set about cutting the grooves for the oil supply feed, on the Y and the X axis. I drilled on an angle with a pistol drill to connect the oil gallery to the fitting(M5). Drilled 4mm diameter, then used a counter bore tool as a spotface tool. Then redrilled to 4.2mm for the M5 Tap, and used that to connect to the vertical drill hole. While set up on the mill, I milled across the end faces while it was dialed in. Then set up an angle plate, and drilled and tap M5 for options for mounting the scale for the DRO, and on the other end, just did the back leg M5 for mounting of a manifold/distributor block for the oiler. In the end, for the oil I just used a plate and did 2 circuits , one for the X axis, and one for the Y axis. Testing showed that gave a better supply with 2 separate circuits. Also added a centre M8 tapped hole for a table lock in between the current 2 gib locks. While having it apart, set the backlash on the nut to the leadscrews before placing them into place. Also replaced the thrust washers as they felt a bit rumbly on the handle.

I am happy with the results. Photo's are in the album as well. I always forget about pics until it is too late,.

Neil

Last side to be ground to a minimum cleanup.

Cutting the Y axis oil groves

Ready for the top slide to be reinstalled, after already pre installed X axis and set the nut position on the bench. Then taken apart, fitted the tubing and fixed into position. Also tested the flows to see how even they were . Oil manifold is visible bottom rht, and across the top, can be seen the bar for holding the glass scale, with a cut out for the handle casting, and also has a cut out for the gib adjustment screw. The oil is supplied horizontally from an oil gun and used M6 grease nipples. The oil lines are 4mm Nylon with M5 thread fittings. Nylon can be bent with a bit of hot water to make it hold it's position/shape.

A lot of the stunt/aerobatic engines used the long series plug with a head that when the standard plug is fitted is flush. The long plug protrudes the head shape surface, and puts the hole of the glow plug about 1.5 mm or so closer to the piston. As wrong as it sounds, it prevented the very rich fuel setting from putting out the glow plug and made for a more consistent flight. K/B made the long series and the standard plug, with the long being K/B 1L or a K/B 1S, with the S being for standard, not short as far as I remember. There were many brands of glow plugs in the late 70's and early 80's. Now not so many around. Now there are 2 main taper seat type plugs. One has the 60 deg included seat angle, the Turbo plug,from the mid 1990's, with an 8mm body thread with 0.75 pitch. The other is the Nelson taper seat plug,(early 80's) with an 11/32-32 tpi thread body and the seat taper is 110deg included taper. There were also in the 70's the flat seat plugs , from the likes of Super Tigre, that used an M8X0.75 pitch retainer nut for the plug insert to be retained.

Neil

You will not regret buying a good quality 4jaw chuck. One that will hold the workpiece reasonably close to the lathes centre line. From my experience, the cheap chucks are just that. You spend more time setting up the job and with the time saved could buy the better chuck and not get frustrated by the poor quality one. You don't have to buy the Burnad chuck. There are plenty of good quality chucks out there. I would not buy any chuck sight unseen, but that is just me.

Neil

Canadian Hard Maple is a very good choice for Wooden props as well. Find some with straight grained will make a great prop.

That can happen if the box does not have oil in it.

It is the PDF of the Manual that came with my Myford S7. So I'm happy that I now have both.

Has anyone else replaced the difficult to get to saddle oil nipples with 4mm hose and a gravity oil feed pot? I replaced the oil nipple that is under the compound slide and the one at the back of the cross slide on the saddle with ones that take the 2.5mm id 4mm od tube, and ran a 2 BA die nut down the M5 threaded connectors. I just got tired of oiling the points quite often, especially when trying to make the piston trim . When not in use I just drop the pot to the height of the cross slide. When needed, I lift it about 300mm above the cross slide. It keeps the area on the bed wet all the time.

Next I am wondering what oiling if any, and how do people oil the cross slide and the compound slides?

Thanks Neil

I would take the spindle out, and then put bearing blue on the spindle,(remove the felt oiler, but remember to put it back in for final assembly) . And see what the bearing blue looks like and where it touches etc. Then go from there. Scraping takes a while to get right and experience learnt in scraping is a good skill to learn anyway. I did mine many years ago and still have a spare S7 tapered bush that I have never used yet, lol I did the scraping and refit while the bearing was on it's way out here. an easy way to monitor the scraping is to put a #2 morse taper inthe spindle and leave it there. Then get a test bar, or make one on another machine etc, then as you blue and scrape, set the test bar between centres and run you indicator along the front and across the top to see where you have to take away the material. This is assuming that the tailstock was in the correct centre line position of course. Between centres, you can aslo check that the tapered section of the spindle shaft is round and concentric as well. If not, it can be lapped, or sent to a machine shop and have them cylindrical grind and make the taper concentric to the inner #2 morse taper and round again. It all depends how good you want the end result. Making parts to a roundness of 0.002mm should not be any issue if the refurbishment of the spindle is done correctly.

Yes this will happen when turning soft materials with large loads or large cuts and highish feed rates. It just takes off at the helix rate of the ground tool. So when grinding the tool, to get the top rake, use a dremel or what ever and create a mini chip breaker that emulates what you see on commercial finishing carbide inserts. It can still take off, so small cuts that you can control is a good way. Not many manual lathes have the feed wheel like a Myford so finding a way to manually feed at some point of the turning process is essential. Your issue occured because you had too big of a cut and too high of an initial feed rate. Like mentioned above, brass will do this to a regular drill bit. To stop the brass from biting, most will put a small flat on the cutting edge. Another way is to just drill at a slow feed rate like at about 2 thou per rev or so. If you try and go at 6 thou per rev it will want to bite. Sometimes low feed rates is your friend.

Thanks For posting.

Neil

So you can get a dremel or similar, and use bearing blue, and just keep trying and grinding the areas that are touching. Eventually it will be a nice even blue every where. It is either that or making a fixture to grind it to the form of the taper cone. With a bit of experience you get to read the blue and how much to take off at a time and where to blend to etc. GUD bearing blue is very good for this. The thin ones like dykim? dykum? are difficult to read when you have more than 0.001 inches to remove, but is good when you want to be in the tenth's of a thou. Getting a little magnet and gluing to a kebab scure works well for removing such items.

You will need to refit them. Depending on how they are. If you can share a picture of the pusher parts, the bits that push onto the cone, then better advice can be given. Sometimes it is small things like a bur from manufacturing etc or an edge that is not rounded etc.

Neil

There was a guy in England some where , making 4 stroke model diesel engines, that use the ether, kero,oil type model diesel fuel. So where a glow plug would go, was a contra piston that could be adjusted to increase or decrease the compression slightly. Worked quite well and they had a fairly specific fuel mix to get them to work well.

I think they only made 1 batch of the diesel's. Here is a picture of the 70 or 80 size engine a couple of pics down from the top. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1054975-Model-Diesel-Engines/page109

Muzzer it depends how you make them. Yes some is a radius that then has a small parallel section then has a relief. These are most of your commercial inserts. You can also make you own that has a very small section that does burnish the section. To burnish it can only be very small radial change, like 0.005mm is a lot. If you try to burnish like 0.01mm per side that is a whole lot and will make a galled up looking mess. Often the wiper flat is quite short and in general is equal in length to the radius on the insert.

So you have a radius, that instead of being a complete radius , it finishes at tangent to the work surface and stays parallel for about that radius in length, and then the tool has clearance from there.

Neil

The wiper flat behaves like a burnishing tool. It will also enable higher feed rates on straight turned parts. But of no use to profile turning. When profile turning a better finish can be obtained with a different surface speed to the 1st pass and with 1/2 or 1/3 of feed rate. For regrinding the carbide inserts, the best is to use a diamond grinding wheel.

Neil

The secret with silver steel or O1 steel cutters is in the heat treatment. Don't get it too hot on the initial heating, Let it soak at temp for quite a few minutes before taking it to the bright cherry red. Dunk into oil for O1 and water if it is W1 Stubbs Silver steel. With the tempering, it wants to be at about 150 c for like 20 mins, dunk into boiling water, then back into the 150 c again and then let cool slowly. This process works very well. Keep in mind that the Carbon steel cutter has about 1/2 the surface speed of HSS cutters also, and perform best when they are water coolant flood cooled.

Neil

If you want to surface grind piston rings on normal surface grinders with general use mag chucks , it is best to make and inner and outer ring. The outer ring wants to be a good fit to the piston ring, and the inner can have upto 0.05mm clearance. It will make a magentic loop and keep all the parts together as you grind them down. Once you get thinner than 2mm there is not that much holding it in place. But can be done with care. I have also seen where ring were faced using 2 sets of clamps. One clamped from the centre and you could turn from the outside to the centre clamp. Then an outer clamp is used and a boring bar to turn from the inside to the outer clamp. You could also make a special collet and an inner crush washer to support the inside of the ring , with the outer holding the outside of the ring. Then just very carefully turn it back to thickness. You could make the depth of the collet the finished thickness, so when you just touch the marker pen, it is size. Marker pen is about 1 thou in thickness.

Neil

The rods look really nice.

2363 is the other name out here for A2 tool steel.

For materials, Smiths metals have the largest range I know of and will sell to the public. I brought some Li based alloys and some Maraging steel steel off them. Not cheap but is available.

They have new alloys and the older ones as well.

Neil

https://www.smithmetal.com/