The Workshop Progress Thread (2017)

Finally finished the Dynamic Tool post grinder I got for Christmas. There are still a few bits to do like finishing off the internal grinding spindles and the guard for the cup wheel but the basic machine and the all important wheel dresser attachment are done. A quick test today on some hardened silver steel shows promising results. Still need to decide what colour to paint the logo on the belt guard.

I was planning to write this build up but due to a failed memory card in the camera I am missing several important pictures so that has been put on the back burner for now,

Edited By Graeme W on 19/02/2017 16:42:07

Graeme, there are recovery utilities on the web for dodgy cards.

You may also find the card is readable if their is a slot on your desktop or laptop.

Neil

I only picked up the aluminium for the base plate of the Horizontal steam engine yesterday but once I had enough holes in that decided to give the engine a try.

I'm still waiting for the flywheel casting so used a Unimat 3 chuck to add a bit of rotating mass, valve rod guide is not in place and there are no piston rings, gland packing or gaskets yet but seemed to run OK .

Time for a lick of paint

> I'm still waiting for the flywheel casting so used a Unimat 3 chuck to add a bit of rotating mass

Well that's a new one on me...

Nice one Jason,

Neil

Yep, already tried both options, so far no joy but not given up yet I have some images that I took on the iphone, might have to 'mock up' some of the operations to show how things are done.

Finally got around to making a milling/drilling attachment for the lathe. I didn't want this to be a big complicated project, nor did I have any suitable motors or other bits in the junk pile.

I did keep the mini-lathe vertical slide when I bought a bigger machine, and it seemed sensible to have a collet spindle. So, I bought an ER11 spindle motor, and adjustable power supply, mount and collet set off Ebay for about £80.

This replicates the mini-lathe slide mount, and can be positioned anywhere along the cross-slide:

Slide in position, although it does need more support along its front edge:

The extra holes allow the spindle to be fitted along the lathe axis:

or across it:

The slide tilts and the mount rotates, so all sorts of weird angles could be created. 

And a quick and dirty test piece using a 6mm ball cutter and indexing the chuck jaws by eye:

Used with a headstock dividing attachment(my next job: one of the stepper motor types) this will allow easy cutting of the clock wheels that were the real reason for making this, keyways, milling squares and hexes, fluting and drilling on a PCD without having to move the workpiece to the mill.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 19/02/2017 22:41:45

I guess that's part of the problem - I have a lathe here but its VFD, chucks etc are on the other side of the Pennines for now, so it won't be working for a while. In fact most of my tools are there, so I'm having to make do with a small subset. However, we plan to hire a van and recover them this coming weekend. The other part of the problem is that I will then be in China for 3 weeks travelling the length of the country. So this particular genie will be out of its bottle for a few weeks yet.

At least I've ordered a couple of SKF replacement bearings. Not cheap but this is possibly not the time for a Chinese ebay special.

Murray

Well in the end it was really rather simple. I took a couple of cable ties (an extra one for safety) and formed a loop around the ribbon at the large end. Then simply kept sliding the tie around the base, each turn pulling another loop of the coil into the base. Finally after 20 turns or so, the whole thing was completely compressed again. Genie back in bottle, no need to stick a broomstick up its jacksie.

The whole thing took less than a minute and there didn't seem to be any risk of getting cut or bopped by it. Actually very little compressive force required. So I removed the other one and repeated the trick. Now I have both ready to go back on. Slide them over the ballscrew, release the cable tie and Bob's your auntie.

They look a bit like metal swallows without heads. Or is it just me?

Murray

That's a result! But a bit disappointing there wasn't at least one jack-in-the-box moment.

Andrew

Well done, Muzzer - although disappointingly simple. I'll lend you my nut-cracking sledgehammer!

John

To get the other one back on will require the brief removal of the radial ball bearing at the far end of the ballscrew - the coiled up spring won't fit over it. Naturally it is held on with a circlip so tomorrow I will need to pick up some circlip pliers. I see Toolstation do a set for £4, although for some reason they call them snap ring pliers - very American. I know I have several in Harrogate of course....

Murray

Open them a bit too much, and you find out why "snap ring".

Ian S C

I heard that one of our members has just taken delivery of a hefty casting set so keep your eyes out for a new build thread starting soon, just what the forum needs a bit more swarf production

J

Today I finished making the parts for the Jowitt poppit valve engine drawn by Jason B. I’ve made few changes from Jason’s build log, mainly in materials to suit what was to hand and fabricated flywheels rather than use castings, but it’s taken a while longer than Jason did.

All (all??) I have to do now is get it running and paint it up.

Looks like a very good job so far.

I have finished this magnetic backside for a cheap indicator I had bought a long while ago. Works like a charm both for my mill and my lathe.

Edited By John Stevenson on 22/02/2017 15:45:05

Today I finally got one of the batch of Wire Wheel Hubs I am drilling for somebody done after recovering from a nasty CNC crash. This was caused by me making a Freudian slip when I entered a Z value in my g-code as 48 instead of 84. I could see that the spindle was going to hit the work if I didn't stop it but I had the camera ready to take a picture and by the time I put it down it was too late.

The spindle contacted the work, snapped the drill, rotated the threaded hub anti clockwise and while it was doing this it pushed the adjustable angle plate out of alignment and ground the ER collet nut up a bit. The hub seized on the thread and took a lot of effort to get it off the faceplate fixture. I had to take the fixture off the rotary table, put it in the lathe 4 jaw chuck, fit the three jaw chuck on the small diameter and using metal bars and a 3foot long cheater bar on the end of one of them work the hub free. Much to my amazement there was relatively little damage to the threads on the fixture or the job and I was able to dress this with the Dremel. The outer diameter of the hub was badly marked and I had to re-machine this to get rid of the damage but I don't think this is critical so all in all a good recovery.

The job is not as straight forward as it looks because the spokes are drilled at an angle through the small end so the two rows of holes at that end are drilled separately with the angle plate set at 14 degrees then 13 degrees respectively. They are also drilled with an offset from the centre line. Getting the angles sorted out and drawing the hub was the biggest part of the job. I still have to countersink the holes which I will do as a separate programme but at least the main bit works.

Edited By Bob Rodgerson on 23/02/2017 11:05:36

Edited By Bob Rodgerson on 23/02/2017 11:14:50

The time between tool to metal contact and hitting the E-stop is the shortest period known to man; and is always positive.

Hooray for CNC I say.

Andrew

A couple of major milestones today. The electricians came round to test and sign off my second fix wiring for the workshop, dining room, utility room and karzi. Also connect the supply to the dedicated dual-RCD workshop consumer unit. This has its own non-RCD feed and thus avoids unauthorised outages (outrages?) in the house if bad things happen out there. No major issues found and no requirement to rework any of it. Good result. Now I just need the building regs guy to witness the smoke (actually mostly heat) alarms, extractor fans and door closers and the whole extension business will be formally signed off on the council website. Bargain buckets.

With the new wiring all done and dusted, I found the CNC milling machine works fine. Running it from a 20m long 13A extension wasn't working out too well, especially with two 3.3kW isolation transformers (providing the 55V and 110V supplies) and a 5kW spindle VFD on the end. Now it comes up without tripping anything and just.....works. With the new bearings on X and Y axes, it's really smooth and quiet. As an added bonus, the spindle has started working now, so I can only assume the soggy mains was causing some sort of undervoltage trip previously. The ancient controller uses odd G code which makes it quite unique but luckily I have the manual with some demo programs and I was able to type in a short circular pocket cycle. Program storage is by cassette(!) and the memory space is only 128K or so. At least I know the basics are there before I start to replace the ancient bits with something more workable.

All in all, a reasonable start to the weekend!

Murray

Edited By Muzzer on 24/02/2017 17:59:48