What did you do Today 2018

I feel for you Mark. It's always a shame breaking a larger cutter. As long as the job's not ruined things could be worse.

I had a computer monitor failure yesterday. New SOTA thing arriving today, plus replacement electrolytic capacitors for the old one. In my experience a dead monitor is nearly always a dried out electrolytic and at £3.22 for a complete new set I have to try.

Well I'm all smiles again as I turned on the pc and all is well. Ran several tests on the drive with nothing untoward showing, it looks like I'm getting due to a windows reinstall. When are they going to produce an operating system that's reliable. There's also no point in considering Apple or Linux as some of my software is windows only. B*##!y Bill Gates

To be fair, most of the problems with windows tend to be caused by additional software and drivers. Those that aren't tend to get patched for free, and the number and frequency of patches is comparable to those of other operating systems.

I'm not seeing windows through rose tinted spectacles, I ran up to 6 dialects of unix since 1982, windows since 1996 and linux since 1998 at work and home and the latter two at home since leaving work in 2016.

Edited By Mark Rand on 11/09/2018 13:55:43

I found two sources of problems and have applied appropriate slapping upside of my head!

What I thought was a radius on the roughing endmill was where it had been run into something hard before I 'rescued' it from work. That made it run hot and rough (wasn't cutting at all on the corners). Even that wasn't a significant cause of problems or the inability to climb mill:- I went around this morning, after finding another endmill, to check that everything was adjusted properly. Tightened the bolts on the ram, head and pedestal and went to set up the first cut. Then I realised that the table was pivoting as I moved it in the Y axis! The gib screws had all worked lose by a half-3/4 of a turn. Since there's very little play on the feed screws (adjustable backlash), I've got into the habit of not bothering to lock the unused axes...

Adjusted everything and it's not working like it should be. The lesson was probably worth wrecking the milling cutters, just to make me remember next time.

And below is why climb cutting is nice and why roughers are nice. No recurring of chips and nice safe 6's/9's type chips rather than lethal splinters:-

I finally finished the water tank for my Burrell-Boydell engine today. It is made from 1/16" brass sheet with brass angles and reinforcements for the pumps inside, and no end of 1/16" diameter snap head rivets followed by soft solder to seal any gaps. There are four pumps to be fitted, one each side for filling the tank, one on the RH side, worked from the boiler filling pump, to feed the boiler and, with luck, another pump on the rear, worked by hand to fill the boiler and to provide back up to the engine driven pump. I say with luck because the ram will need to be horizontal to fit in the space but I'm hoping that a nitrile ball and a soft spring will work.

Brian

Made a thumb nut

Nice. Did you mill the 'serrations' or drill them before turning the diameter down?

Thanks Mark. I milled the serrations by clamping the stock vertically on the rotary table (or BCA table in my case), and plunging with a slot drill. Then back on the lathe to clean up the diameter and part off.

(Apologies for the wonky photo)

Nice work David!

I think I’ll make a couple those to replace some knurled ones which really don’t have enough grip.

These are some I made earlier. Flutes done on mill, rotary table by plunging down with endmill Ian P

Spent the morning yesterday making handles for woodturning tools, it's a while since I did any wood turning. I then made the tools.

Ian S C

Got the cam follower radius aid finished and had used a recently bought Vertex 6" rotary table with a Myford 3 jaw chuck on it to machine a non critical dimension.

I knew the chuck was a couple of thou out but would not be too important for what I was doing

Found the 2 Morse taper chuck holder was out as well this was bought with the new table.

Chuck register 0.0015" small and when turned in Myford headstock 0.004" on DTI checked a genuine old 2 MT chuck holder and DTI hardly moved.

When I first saw this holder I was suspicious as it was shiny (all that glitters is not gold)

Good job when using the table to machine my cams it was on a home made 2 MT holder.

Some of these tool accessories today are not always accurately made an ER collet chuck bought some years ago had to be replaced as thread was very undersize.

I know industrial tooling is very expensive compared to hobby stuff but still should not to out of accuracy by as much as the chuck holder.

A lesson learnt if possible check if running true with DTI etc. new accessories.

Edited By Windy on 14/09/2018 20:40:39

Machined radius on test piece cam follower with a carbide cutter will try the Alexander grinder on it tomorrow with a light skim.

I put a test bar in the chuck first and found the jaws need truing as slightly tapered another grinding job.

So used an ER collet chuck I had modified to fit the Myford thread to hold the follower radius aid.

As a first attempt to Tig stellite apart from an inclusion probably a bit of tungsten electrode when I touched with electrode it 's better than I thought it would be.

So this weekend 3 blanks to build up with stellite after have been to see record attempts at Elvington.

A French World record attempt contender will be there with a custom 500cc bike.

Over the last few days I got that piece of wood on the bottom of the toolbox, made the front and mid brake hanger pedestals and bottom cross bars, and rounded over the corners of the sandboxes. The photo of the sandboxes shows one straight off the machine and the other one after about 10 mins with the sandpaper. The ends of the sandboxes look rough because they were done with a roughing end mill.

The rounding over was done with a 12mm end mill as I don't have any corner rounding end mills.

David.

How many passes did it take to do the corner rounding?? Better results than cornser rounding endmills often give.

I set the stepover at 0.25mm and used both vertical and horizontal passes. I think the horizontal ones were unnecessary.

Even so it only took about 8 or 10 minutes for each setup I think. Pretty quick and easy.

There is some weird faceting where to two radii meet on the corners but nothing a bit of sandpaper doesn't fix.

All up I was very pleased with the result. I'll be honest and say I don't fully comprehend the settings I used in the toolpath setup dialog. I basically told it to not touch any face near the fillet, do anything between 0-90 degrees, give it the fillet radius, set the step over, and clicked the 'also do horizontal passes' checkbox. I just kept fiddling until I was happy with the toolpath in the simulation. Then I did a short trial run in the air, took a deep breath and let it go on the part.

For the last couple of days I've been trying to learn how to use the slotting head on the mill. I've had it for several years but hadn't done anything with it apart from cleaning and oiling it. Having spent two days making the tool (on the shaper, since the mill head is poorly) and practising on a bit of scrap aluminium, cutting a 1/4" keyway in the 3.5" thick aluminium lump that will become a step pulley was almost an anticlimax. The hardest part was filing and stoning off the assorted burrs from the motor shaft it is due to fit.

Celebrated by boring out the hole in the blank for it's matching pulley.

Used my old Royal Shaper to put a nice finish on this bracket i'm making.

Cast it using lost foam in an open mold. The furnace was an old gas cylinder and the crucible a stainless pot from The Range.

3D printing in Nylon for a change - I need some flexible (low-)friction pads.

I've discovered a temporary bubble-wrap cover greatly speed up heating the bed to 90 degrees (the 60 degrees used for PLA is not hot enough for Nylon).

Neil