Member postings for Chris Mate

Hi, I basicly will try to mill from a piece of aliminium as described before a one piece lid & functional oil catch plate, so the lid becomes a see through catchplate one piece with a manual mill.

Before this I used/made a wooden square like lid with a 6mm glass fitted to see through what happenes.
-Then I watch through the gears how the oil splash, and noticed mainly 3 patterns of splash through all the gears.
-I then made a contraption of 3x catchplates from 3mm thick aliminium strips. I then experimented over few weeks with hole sizes & angle of fitment relative to gear shafts, not to a right angle, I catch more oil if at angle.
-I then assemble this contraption and it rest below the wooden lid with 3x contact points over the gearbox and it deliver oil catched to a horizontal channel leading to both spindle bearings, there holes in the gearbox castings above the spindle bearings, so now the oil positively flow trough the spindle bearings back into gearbox.

So instead of having various pieces doing a job(s), which could be a risk if a 3mm bolt comes loose etc, I am attempting to make all function in one piece. Nothing has to be critically accurate, but I will have to think carefully about each next step milling from both sides of the blank thick plate.

If I had a CNC machine was knowledgeable about say Fusion 360, I assume it would have been easy.

-So this may take some time to do. Where I need to I will make some experiments on seperate aliminium piece, like hole shapes.
-An interesting aspect of catching oil like I do, is your very catch hardware is allso a barrier except for the holes and, hole size also matters, I think 12mm is a good size, too large you have too much hole for too little hard surfaces, too small and the oil will not go through it well. So its a best effort hit and miss affair with no moving parts like a extra pump.

I will post a photo when I get to the angles, at moment its just straight forward milling basic shape.

 

Edited By Chris Mate on 08/10/2022 20:22:55

Thanks for the advice, I was thinking too complicated.

I think I can get it done just like its clamped now flat to the table with front side to the right .
By tilting the head & moving in the Y-Axis(Short one towards the head, I can get my angles). I can also get a slight angle by swivelling the bed. The catch areas to be milled out is at a slight horizontal angle, apart from two other angles with number of holes in each, with a 6mm groove in the center, directing the oil caught towards the main groove between the two spindle bearings and this is where the oil ends up going.

The trick to get splashes in lower gears is I overfill the gearboc with 68(20 weight) oil to splash high enough at lower gears(No extra gear on input shaft sitting high).. In higher gears to splash is very good and the surplus oil is overflowing into a small thank(Plastic) in gearbox with 3x 4mm holes(68 Oil) to drain.This method keeps the extra oil in suspension(Tank stays full but drains at same time so oil level is normal and dont drag the gears at speed) while running in higher gears, I thought about this for a few days initially.

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Heres another question:The holes shape(Top)
The oil is splashed through holes and in lower gears my catching is not 100% possible, but enough. The holes are tapered(Like reamed) from the botton, but have a sharp protruding corner on top, so oil lands there, but rather flow over than back and thats how it is catched. So by milling, I can ream a hole from the bottom, but how do I mill the top of the hole that it have a sharp corner, something like a valvestem sticking out-?
-I was looking at a woodwork cutter cutting like dowls....
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I found how oil wants to flow interesting(Surface tention etc) and that I can make it happen without moving parts or bolts in lid that can come loose and fall in gearbox, so if lid is removed, the idea is removed, except tank.

---Just want to mention any good lathe will not have a problem I imagine, although one will only know for sure looking at it through a glass window, I was surprised at what I saw in this case, therefore this attempt.

Hi, I started to mill manually a lid(With 6mm glass see through) for my lathe.

Measurements are roughly 340x 400 x 25mm. Milled it square all sided, them drilled the 4x holes to bolt it down, now busy milling the 6mm depth to accept the glass to see what going on. I have a prototype working, but want to make this out of one piece, no moving parts to catch the oil and deliver it to the spindle bearings.
-I have to mill from both sides to get 3x catch areas made up, in lid.
-Now nothing is exactly precise, but I need to mill at various angles, from 3-10 degrees to get the effects of the oil catch & flow going.

What is the best way clamping down and holding a 340x 400 x 25mm piece of aliminium on the mill bed and mill it at angles in certain sections.
Whejn finished there will be no oving parts, no biolts inside, and you will be able to see the gears run, where the oil splash, how its caught, and where its delivered.

How would you hold this secure, any suggestions. A lot of material will be removed.

I use paint many times . I open two paint pages. The one is going to have the selected info, the other one I use to past the printscreen into....From this one I select, cut & past what I want into the other paint file. When all the bits are stacked beneath each other, I can do more to it--add notes etc etc, or save it as page-1, page 2 etc so the result is displayed as you want.

Note:I found that pasting the screenprint 1st in paint file give it the right size, then repat this after opening the 2nd pain page. Now select all in the 1st one and delete all, then its ready to receive your selections from the other one serving as a clipboard.

-Save as BMP for record and save as .JPG for the use as you required.

Edited By Chris Mate on 07/10/2022 19:41:07

So I did my 1st real not straight forward accurate job on lathe for the mill. Modify MT4--BT18 arbour by removing the MT4 to 20mm and shortened to fit ER20mm collet.

I went to a show and run into the people who sold me the mill. They set me up with ER32 collets & MT4 chuck + x collets. It did cost me a penny.

So yesterday I discovered an extra MT4-BT18 arbour for the drill chuck B18 1-16mm that came with the mill, and modify this to fit in the ER31 20mm(-1) collet. I machined this removing the taper by fitting the BT18 large end into chuck and ligned it up with the tailstock centre, it run ok.

1st attemp was a fail. It whobbled a bit but I could drill with it to 3mm not breaking the drill. So I thought about this and today I decided to chuck up the side I cut to 20mm yesterday straight machined.
-Put in 3 jaw chuck
-I then make the 3 jaw chuck run true, I modded it with 3x adjusting screws. So now the collet side is running true in chuck, with a runout on the B18 side. Fitting the drillchuck theres enough room left to correct it., so I go ahead and trace the B18 taper, set lathe compound rest at angle and machined and polished it. Fit the chuck, and theres 2mm space left.

-To test it I fit assemble to Mill ER32 20mm collet, tighten. The runout with a spot drill fitted is now 0.03mm to dial test indicator. I think I am happy with this.
-To further test I could drill up .8mm drill without breaking it, the chuck is 1-16, but took the 0.8mm drill.

So I am not sure in your world how accurate this can be considered, but I doubt I will get it better easy.

My mill has a concrete base with welded metal structure to make it higher so I don't bent my back too much, same with lathe, some advice I got. The mill is bolted on 6x 20mm bolts and the purpose of that was to get it level for coolant flow and a sturdy base, just the way I decided to do it. If it was not for that I would just placed the mill on the floor.

While on the subject of levelling, the lathe is another story, but there are lathes on ships too, so its more about the bed twisted than levelling, but theres coolant involved maybe too. The interesting thing is if you bolt a smaller lathe down to anything, you have a problem, then you must shim it and hope your surface bolted too is stable enough.
Bolting it may twist the lathe bed.....Something to think about.

I bought one of these box levels recently on a show, however it times out before I can set it up after zeroed for a comparison to make an adjustment, so that was that. I don't know if I open it up there may be aplace to disable the timeout. Maybe it was not the best type.

I think a good measure would be to measure the amps(220V) the motor draws as its loading up. I have done that in my lathe experimenting with oil thickness and it was interesting as well as higher speeds through a gearbox, this can easily be seen. As the speed gets higher it draws more current just to pull the gearbox with no load applied externally like cutting. For example in my lathe gearbox 90 oil will burn out the motor quickly in higer gears.

I gave that a lot of thought, so 1st thing comes to mind is a ship with a workshop.

My mill is level for coolant reasons and ease thereof(Not 100% accurate), if coolant design is to flow with mill table level, but I will not use that for any accuracy achivements, seeing the indicators will be more specific and accurate and more easy, than using spirit levels. Using spirit levels(Digital) you zero it and work relatively,

I would have liked to have a 330 swing lathe with high precision and no gear changes to cut threads, but the weight & cost was too much. The Chinese is an old nation and still there, I think they pretty much make anything for you to your "agents-requirements".....So I blame my agent, then my lack of enough money.

Edited By Chris Mate on 21/09/2022 02:15:22

Thanks for advice, its 2HP motor, it came with cheap 80mm 4x brased inserts facemill, mainly aliminium.

Hi, I am so happy with a 40mm Walter shoulder mill with 6 inserts, that I want a face mill of the same nature maybe 7-8 inserts, however the inserts will not be the same between face and shoulder mill.

Thinking about it, why should I not just buy another larger 70-80mm shoulder mill(Called shell mill by some I think) instead, if It could use the same inserts than the 40mm, to limit the amount of different inserts to cope with-?
I tried the 40mm shoulder mill as a face mill on large flat aluminium plate, and it seems good, just too many passes.

Edited By Chris Mate on 17/09/2022 00:44:08

I put a Walter shoulder mill 40mm MT4/6 inserts to work. Its unbelieveable how free its cutting and surface finish good, cranking the mill as fast as I can by hand. I had a block of aliminium placed vertically on bed clamped to two small type 1-2-3 blocks 400mm x 400mm x 25mm, no noises, no vibration clamped from about one third or less of its vertical size, so large stick out.

The 3rd party practice, is a concern.

Well I think on an individual basis, if you stop having to ask other shops from doing something for you, you are big enough however small it may be.

When I enquired about it, the swing was mentioned(330 in my case) this guides you to a maybe suitable toolpost setup. Then the centerline of the spindle was important and eventually the toolpost you get will allow you to get certain sizes of toolholder with insert tips actually on centre. I can get 6mm, 10mm, 12mm, 16mm on centre, I think i must shim the 6mm, but however if you have enought QCTP toolholders its not an issue anymore. My QCTP Toolholders has a gap of 20mm, I have not tried a 20mm toolholder, it will probably not work, cannot shim down.

I assume various makes will not have the same variances possible even though they qwote from a swing number, was confusining initially.

We as humans are concentrators in every way you can think of, with the result that if problems of scale develops, we study, try to solve after the fact, some of which we olny reach at over certain population numbers.

We chose to accommodate multiplication in Vertical Concentrated ways like how cities are constructed, much humans per square meter, as oppse to a farming community with open spaces, so many humans per kilometer rather, and in between we have smaller to larger towns horizontally constructed but small plots.

So our multiplication to 7 Billion plus has not taken these factors into account, now we have the problems we do. It may not fixable at this scale with our best and finest knowledge, and it certainly look this wa over last 30 years.

We may have been caught up in tunnels of complicated knowledge taking our lifetime to acquire and experience and live out, but in the process and over time we loose common sense and direction regarding the bigger picture in a closed system like Planet Earth.

I think our best knowledge cannot save us from our concentrated was of life on eart, its like a pyramid scheme of life we only started face now, not saw it coming as a race.

To make it worse quickly the Planet can play it own tricks of scale existing in the Universe.

Edited By Chris Mate on 12/08/2022 15:33:25

Nature is about give and take, it restores itself in ballance, how it happens we may not like as time rolls on.
So thinking you 100% green with zero consequences is most probably wrong. We as human beings are still going to be concentrators, we take resources from nature to produce our living standard.
For me the difference between the Oil/Coal engergy AND Green Energy, is the OIL/Coal developed with population growth up to 7 Billion plus, while the Green Engergy is let loose on the Globe at 7 Billion plus scale.
The problem is if the Oil/Coal is discarded and the Green Energy which seems wondeful on Digital Paper Projections should fail over medium term time, because its unproven at a scale of 7 Billion plus, we have an Economic pandemic on us, and at 7 Billion I dont want to see that unfold.

The current Oil/Coal was in general neglected over the globe over last 30 years......So it looks bad now. If the basic resources like Water, Electricity, Fuel, Transport, is not cheap, it loads up monetary systems to a point where it exponentially eats into itself and destroys itself from the inside out, no matter how much money you print/create ,depleating resources fast as well.
You can only be as rich as the resources to your disposal.......

Edited By Chris Mate on 09/08/2022 20:25:57

I have a benchtop of 3x 22mm MDF glued together(66mm) with a 4mm aliminium layer on top. 2x benchtop drill presses mounted on top left and right side plus a vice.. So far it lasts and work good. It provide great resistance on hammering something on top.

Edited By Chris Mate on 09/08/2022 05:10:27

Nigel Graham 2: If I buy another 3x toolholders for my quick change toolpost(Got x at moment), it would be less of a problem, however I have to buy too much stuff for the mill so that must wait. I may consider modifying them seeing I got the mill. I use the 10mm set also with the quick change toolpost when space is not a problem.

Cutters with inserts:Difference I noticed:

10mm set:
I bought a set of indexable 10mm cutters. When I checked and you lined them up all the tips are the same height, including tread cutter and parting/grooving tool. This means if you place any one in the toolholder the height is the same.
As a result I made a smaller fixed toolpost for this set to get nearer to small parts, all always on centre.

12mm set:
I also bought a 12MM set with insert cutters. This set was not all the same height, so I have to keep on adjusting the height if I insert another one in same holder.