Member postings for Colin Heseltine

Recently obtained a nice Hauser 12" Rotary table

I wanted to use a chuck with this so a visit to Rotagrip and came away with a nice Pratt Burnard 125mm 3 jaw chuck. In order to do fit this I required a suitable faceplate and I could not find any of our normal suppliers with suitable unit. They were all to small to be able to bolt to 'T' nuts fitted in the table slots and also they only appeared to come with 2MT locating tapers whereas I needed a 20mm parallel spigot.

I needed to make my own and M-Machine had a nice piece on SG iron 180mm dia and 24mm thick (ground both sides) at what I felt was a reasonable price.

This was slung in the big 4 jaw chuck on the Colchester, centred and then faced. I decided to use a tangential tool holder to machine the cast iron and took the initial face cut under power without any problems. On the second cut (0.5mm) after a minute or so I heard the sound of the cut change and noticed that the side of the piece of HSS steel was blue and had just suddenly worn away. All suggestions as to why this would have happened would be appreciated.

I switched to a indexable tipped tool and had no further issues.

I roughed out the spigot to around 3.8 mm high and 100mm dia. Then crept up to to the nominal 95mm diameter. Then I took several passes until the chuck would just ease onto the register, this was at 94.97mm. Then took a further 2 thou cut of the face and the slowest speed i could set on the powered cross-feed.

Finished off by turning the perimeter sticking out of the jaws down to 180mm and put a 45 degree chamfer on the corner.

The chuck fits nicely.

Next job is to drill and tap the fixing holes.

I have had several ideas on how to machine the reverse face , but am open to suggestions/improvements.

1) Fit Burnerd Multisize chuck to the Colchester fitted with the largest collet suitable. Chuck up a piece of bar (that will pass through the chuck completely) and then true it up and centre the end. Due to the amount of stick-out I guess it would be wise to use a tailstock revolving centre for additional support. Clamp the new chuck (with faceplate fitted) to the bar, and then face off and produce the 20mm dia spigot which will need to to be around 15mm long.

2)Leave the big 4 jaw chuck mounted on the lathe, remove the jaws from the new chuck (still with faceplate fitted) and insert it into the 4 jaw chuck, center/true it up, and then face off and produce the 20mm dia spigot.

My initial thought is option 1 would be the best.

Colin

HI guys,

Thanks for the help,

Martin, I take your point. The gcode is for additive machining as opposed to subtractive machining.

Jason, When the .stp is opened in Alibre should it be dimensioned or does it lose the dimensions. f they are present somewhere how do I get them to display.

Basically what I want to end up with is a dimensioned 2D drawing I can give to a colleague for him to produce the item on his CNC mill.

If I try the F360 route will that produce a CAM file that can be used/recognised by any CNC milling machine.

Thanks,

Colin

Is it possible to convert .stl or .stp files back to a proper 2D drawing with dimensions. I have used an online converter which takes in a .stl and produces .dwf or .dxf files. I want to get back to a .dwg that I can view and print out using either Alibre Atom 3D or possibly Turbocad 2019.

The other thought is can the .gcode used to produce a 3D print be used in any way on a CNC milling machine.

Thanks,

Colin

Just a quick addendum to this post. The arbor I removed appears to be an Int-40 not a 30.

Colin

Peter,

I also have had ankylosing spondulitis since I was 24 (almost 72 now) and two knackered knees. I have maybe lost 1/2" in height at the max. Luckily I can still get into diving drysuits and wetsuits and also can slither into/climb out of my Caterham 7 car. Crawling under the house floor is a little (LOT) more uncomfortable now, but having just chatted to my plumber It looks as though I am going to have to remove all the double layers of pipe insulation of the underfloor central heating pipework (9 radiators) to find a slow leak. Not looking forward to doing this. This is likely to take several days to remove and replace.

Colin

Out of interest can anyone put approximate dates to serial numbers.

My Cowells is 1524.

Colin

Do you shut your machine down after every use? If so it is possible that the computer never actually gets enough time to finish downloading and installing all of its updates. So then every time you power it on it is downloading and trying to do updates, this can kill your performance. It may well pay to leave the machine powered up overnight to enable any required updates to complete.

Colin

I have had my Prusa I3 Mk 3 for around 3 years. It has not been very heavily used at all. It even has the original spool of filament. I have had no issues printing using this spool. I did 4 8.5hr prints around 2 weeks ago and they came out with no issues, no breaking filament or anything. I am using the originally supplied Prusa filament. The reel is still wound beautifully and has not unwound itself. The printer is located in my 1st floor office at home which is possibly the warmest room in the house (according to my wife).

Colin

I also have a Cowells ME90. This also had the M14x1.5 spindle. Because of the various chucks and tooling for my Cowell milling machine, Aciera and BCA machines I opted to upgrade to the later M14 x1.0 spindle. I can now move chucks, faceplates, collets around between all machines including my Myford Super 7.

Enjoy your Cowells lathe, they are great little machines.

Colin

I needed a crane to pick my indexer on its mounting plate which weighs around 90Kgs. The indexer along with rotary tables are on a trolley. The crane is used to pick them off the trolley and lower them onto the mill table (table being moved to extreme left hand position. I had an Aldi/Lidl hoist and bought a jib from Ebay. I needed longer jib than that supplied so swapped out the inner section for a longer one. I would have liked it longer but decided this was not a good idea. One of the guys on this site did some calculations to confirm it would handle the load.

The steel scaffold pole is located in a metal plate on the floor and the upper location is provided by a steel plate bolted to 41x21mm thick wall Unistrut. The each length Unistrut is bolted to at least three roofing joists and is also clamped to and supported by the overhead RSJ girder.

It had a little more flex that I liked so a large steel clamp was machined up and bolted to the wall with long rawlbolts.

It may not look over pretty but certainly works.

If you want a 2 metre reach I think you will have to significantly increase size of support pole and beam.

Colin

Wish I could find a skip like that

Colin

As well as the F.J Edwards guillotine I pictured above, I also have a Gabro 3M2 guillotine and the Gabro BF620 folder. They are both very good machines. I could really do with the blade being sharpened on the 3M2 as previous owner tried to cut rod or similar and put tiny notch in the blade. (it will not stone out). Luckily it did not affect the material I was cutting to any significant degree.

Colin

John,

Yes it is mine.

Up to now I have only used it for brass and steel shim stock. Originally the foot pedal would have been like a brake pedal on a long arm and would give much more leverage that the step type pedal fitted by previous owner.

To be able to try 1mm material I may need to bolt it to floor temporarily. I am a bit stuck for space so cannot put a large plate on the base to stabilise it.

There is a slightly smaller version of it for sale on Ebay at the moment item#125110115176 (£90 or best offer)

Colin

Possibly it is worth looking on Ebay for a guillotine similar to that shown below. I accept it is floor mounted but you could possibly move it around.

Colin

This one really needs bigger pedal but I have not got round to it. You could set depth stop at front and feed in from the rear.

Colin

Thanks Jason.

When I try to upload an image to my album I get the following message:

Sorry the page you requested cannot be displayed at this time. Please try again later.

The image was taken with iphone. Apple in their wisdom have created a new image format which I have never heard of called HEIC. Photos are automatically created in this format. Microsoft then required me to pay £0.79 to download the correct codec to enable these photos to be opened in Windows 10. I was then able to save it as a .JPG. The .jpg opens and views ok. I jiust cannot upload it.

Any ideas.

Thanks,

Colin

Colin,

Pleased you have managed to get it offloaded safely.

Have fun.

Colin

I cannot fault my Royal Mail posty. Some kit posted by Gloster Tooling yesterday, delivered this morning.
colin

20 years ago we had a similar crane and a full size low loader when my dad sold his Cincinnati milling machine and large lathe. They had to pick up from outside garage and lift over phone lines.
colin

To my mind that looks a very nice condition drill. If that has come from a college it does not look as though it has been abused. It has what appears to be the original hole in the table and one extra unintentional one. The paint looks in good condition with very few chips or dents. The chuck key is sitting horizontal which to my mind shows the chuck is not very worn, had it been the key would tend to droop in a worn hole. Style wise it looks quite recent. Current Meddings bench top drills are over £2100. You could check the serial number with them.

If it was me I would be going for it. It would be worth trying to get the price down a little if you could.

Colin