Member postings for MW

Edited By MW on 27/10/2022 16:56:34

whoa it's been a long time.

Sup yall.

I bought a Myford once.

Was okay i suppose.

Well i'm guessing not everybody can be a rich ***ser.

Aside from the cutters, make sure the plate is clamped accordingly, so that there is no possibility the vibration will throw it off.

The success of a job for milling will often depend on how securely the work is being held, the same rule applies for all machines whether it's a bridgeport or an emco doing the job.

E.g using multiple clamp pieces if directly bolted on the table or a machine vise. 

Edited By Michael-w on 06/11/2018 09:44:24

Oh boy, try and find a project you want to do and stick solely to the tooling necessary where possible. It's not easy and to be fair i have also gone astray into wallet decimation. But i did buy a lathe which i thought was as big as i'd ever need, and did more or less the same with the mill (could have been a TAD bigger but oh well).

I recall hearing, what i reckon to be pretty true, that it's probably better to approach it from a D.I.Y/maker/"home-gamer" background, because your expectations are probably in line with what the lathe/mill can do... 

On the other hand, if you went into it because it's kinda what you did at work then you're more likely to not find satisfaction without spending the same amount as your boss. The only benefit is that you're already familiar with the whole measuring and reading prints etc.. 

Having said that/ Alot of small machines now are made to a very good standard and will cut decent amounts of metal away if you take your time. I'd go for a "Seig" style machine.. 

Now technically, it is possible to get away with just a mill, if you're not too fussed about buying in shafts and bushing where necessary but i haven't seen many go down this route. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 03/11/2018 18:46:21

Also to mention as well as wear to the saddle/bedways, the grinding dust can encourage corrosion on bare metal.

A well used lathe is normally soaked in oil though..

Michael W

I can vouch for that, the advice on CuP really helped me understand what was going on when soldering, why using the right type of flux is very important etc..

I do believe CuP has written a guide you can buy, which i suspect i will do myself, in good time.

Not to be sniffed at!

Michael W

It's a good idea, i have got a 4 -2 step down, i think from arc too, and i tried one of those collet chucks to it and it still gave me poor runout,(0.15mm) i think they have a bit of a reputation for.

I have never tried actual spindle collets in them though, maybe they're a cut above the typical bunch. It could be my collets too they're not branded but came from RDG or ARC.

I take it you'd need a bloody coarse thread to tighten up an MT4 collet if it could exist? :P I used M16 to make a drawbar for an ER40 taper chuck.

This is really on the backburner but i was planning to ditch the taper idea altogether and go with a flange mounted chuck, in the vain hope i might get better result. 

Obviously the only way to guarantee a totally concentric part is to turn between centres but a collet chuck has it's useful moments for when you need to work on the opposite side of a part in two stage turning operations. 

Edited By Michael-w on 20/10/2018 15:37:25

It might seem like a benefit at first but i envy the MT3 size over having an MT4 spindle, which is so awkward because those size collets are either expensive or rare as hens teeth.

my only option is to make one myself if i'm able to which will be true to the lathe, but making it true to a nominal dia. might be a different trouble altogether!

These combined factors would make ER actually desirable for a large spindle bore in my opinion, plus i can swap them out to use on the mill.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 19/10/2018 20:42:23

You can get tube/pipe deburring tools designed to be used with a power tool such as an electric drill. I used to use these prior to loading bar into a cnc lathe bar feeder.

They seemed to work quite well so long as you kept your arm steady whilst you did it.

Michael W

One thing i would add about E.R is that it is my favourite too, but you need to make sure your tools are using atleast two thirds the depth of the collet, this is what regofix themselves have said, or you risk damaging the collet. Ideally you should be making sure the tool goes through the entire depth to ensure even clamping pressure.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 09/10/2018 19:16:48

Hi again,

Loving Octobers issue with the mike cox tailstock conversion, great work and the funny prize winner for the AAA battery conversion on a digi-caliper, nice.

I'm restoring an enormous 6" bench vise that i picked up and took home from the market for a bargain, using it to replace my tidly 2-3" vise thereabouts. I will post some progress pictures along with a before and after shot. It's got a bit of everything to do, stripping old paint, wonky jaw to fix up on the mill etc.. I might make a brass or nylon faced set of jaws as well.

The jaw had been machined before me, but was at a wonky angle so i needed to set it straight with an endmill, none of my cheapo HSS would touch it, not even carbide, i needed to use my ultra speciale NACO coated carbide tool which finished the job. Creeped up on the cut for a nice finish and took the opportunity to square off the ends, shame the jaw recess on casting itself isn't flat either, but not alot i can do about that. So i'd definitely recommend those blue coated carbide choppers.

It has a very big 6 x 6" anvil on the back and i want to take the dents off and polish the surface, was slogging it with rough ali-oxide paper, getting nowhere, then i remembered i bought a corded milwaukee angle grinder, and remembered you could skim the face with the edge of a metal cutting disc. Boy those things can cut metal.

The journey continues!

Michael W

They're not brilliant and really they are only meant to make a shallow witness mark.

Edited By Michael-w on 23/09/2018 21:04:34

I actually use those chunky glass kenco coffee jars that have a very thick push fit lid for holding the ol' woodscrews. They seem to be slightly over engineered for coffee.

Jars for extraneous storage, who'd of thought it.

Michael W

I have heard that ideally on a parting tool you want the sharpest corner/edge to be on the right side, so that the stock you're cutting off is going to have the clean face, rather than whats left behind. So that it kinda has a right skew. 

So that geometry kind of resembles a wood turners knife/parting tool. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 20/09/2018 14:11:44

Hi,

I actually have this particular lathe and like martin, i would say the same, it can make very decent parts.

I would agree that my main gripe with it that many have overlooked in favour of simply bashing on the chinese, is the old fashioned design of using a fixed leadscrew saddle traverse, very reliable but damn slow. You can tell in some rare, hard to obtain variants of this machine, (such as grizzly or warco) that they have tried to overcome this problem by adding a rack and pinion feed but they really are rare as hens teeth and not many of them about.

But in terms of what you can make with it, it's got a hefty centre height of 5 1/2" and the skill and level of setups you're willing to do is going to ultimately determine how accurately you can make things.

Now i'm trying to overcome said problem with traverse by adding a feedscrew motor, probably the easiest thing to do, as i've looked extensively at the leadscrew area and theres not alot of room on the casting and funny angles make it awkward to fit any kind of rack and pinion mod.

Also, note on the plastic gears thing, the idea is that cutting a fine pitch screw isn't going to impart alot of force, so you can get away with having flimsier gears. Thats the logic anyway, but i'm glad mine are all metal.

I think for the same money now, i'd rather sacrifice the extra headroom for an easy traverse on a warco lathe, brand new especially so. But hey, that's not to say i'm not happy with it, shes a hefty beasty. Everything about it just is chunky. It's not for the feint of heart. 

If i was you though, for goodness sake, get the CL430 instead, lathe only model, and try to get an independent mill. The crossover thing doesn't justify the extra bucks. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 17/09/2018 20:14:05

As a fiend for scrap i am, i would have to suggest using a known material to begin with. I guarantee you'll be spoiling less of those tools you spent your hard earned on.

Michael W

+1 That's life!

Generally speaking it's not actually that bad to control sizes, especially if you already have what you want to fit it to, to hand.

For example, you're machining a bar to fit into a cylinder of sorts.

You don't really even have to be concerned with numbers too much at that point. Just creep up on the nominal size that you know the other is and keep checking it by hand against the matching part after each and every light cut.

You can then go from either a force fit to a push fit to a sliding fit, if it feels a bit tight to begin with, just let it wear into it for a short while.

This is why you didn't have to be a walking calculator to successfully manage sizes years ago.

It obviously changes and gets tricky when you want to make lots of bits for parts that you don't have to hand, that repeatability is what industry continually wrestles with.

There would be people who really don't like that idea but in actual fact this is the way craftsmen used to work, by feel and intuition. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 03/09/2018 12:15:53