cast

this was my first time machining cast i knew it was dirty stuff but i didnt know this bad its taken me 3/4 of an hour to clean up its certanly something i will be avoiding in the future blxxdy horrible

kevin

Imagine what it was like working in a machine tool manufacturer's machine shop, where that was the bulk of the work !

My first job after finishing my apprenticeship was Broadbent Machine Tools of Mytholmroyd - it was easy to spot machinists who had just come back off holiday, as they were a different colour after a couple of weeks away. The cast iron dust gets deep into your pores & you go grey over time - it takes a couple of weeks to wash it out.

I was an electrical technician, mainly doing panel building & machine wiring on new build machines (heavy duty lathes initially, CNC vertical milling machines later) but also repairs on the plant & building. The job I hated most was cleaning the machine shop lights during the annual works shutdown - working off the top of the overhead crane to remove & clean dozens of 8' double fluorescent fittings, 4 rows across the width of the building & each row almost end to end over the length of the shop (at a guess) a couple of hundred yards long. It took two of us over week full time & the fittings & tubes were covered in the finest dust that made it's way to the highest point in the building - like black talcum powder.

Nigel B

Cast iron is awful stuff but it's so useful.

My first job involved crawling down 14"inch diameter cylinder bores with integral cylinder heads to polish up the inside of the head with a windy grinder.

Terrible job with no decent facemasks, bike clips on ankles and wrists and a damp towell around the neck.

I've had iron castings made from Meehanite and this is better that grey iron, but not much.

Edited By Brian Hutchings on 09/12/2016 18:56:23

I believe that cast iron dust is the one thing that must be cleaned off a lathe. I was told a story, which I believe, of someone who left a nice pile of cast iron dust on the ways of his lathe because he was lazy. He returned to his slightly damp workshop a couple of weeks later to find the dust was solid and he could not remove it.

Be warned!

JA

If I'm doing a big CI job I clamp the hoover pipe so that it picks up the swarf/dust straight from the tool. Cover as much as possible with paper, not rags in case they get caught up, and don't use coolant. I actually like machining cast iron unless it has chill hard spots in it when it becomes a right pain. Brazed tip carbide with a big nose radius can help.

Wonderful stuff, so much more stable to machine and for the finished article. Just keep on top of the "Housekeeping"

Bewarer, machining cast iron is addictive. You could end up sniffing iron fillings off the bonnet of a Porsche through a $20 note...

You can certainly end up with a hanky as bad as any snuff user by machining it

When I was part way through my apprenticeship, I spent six months in the maintenance section, I too had to clean flourescent tubes, but from a scaffolding tower, I lost count of how many times I went up and down that thing in a week, as you had to come off it to push it along, the electrician with me stayed on the ground and supervised!

Angus

Not for the sake of my own gratuitous pedantry; but In view of opinions expressed on other recent threads: It is interesting to note that both the thread title and the opening post omit any reference to Iron.

Assumption [or do I mean Presumption?] continues to prevail over evidence.

Note: Other cast materials are available.

MichaelG. 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/12/2016 14:58:44

The electricians workshop where I worked was next to the spotting presses, after a 10 hour shift the shampoo in my shower was streaked with dirt from the cast iron grinding in the spotting presses. I had a lot more hair in the seventies which held an awful lot of dust. The piles of cast iron on the milling machines would rust into solid lumps, they used coolant to wash the cast iron off the job and into the screw conveyor to the scrap bin but piles would collect in odd corners and set like concrete.

Mike

All you soft southerners complaining about black iron dust , should have spent a year or two in a foundry. Anything put down would be lost under black dust, even a packet of fags in 5 minutes. Cutting off risers with a big old windy grinder !

Cast iron machining was the order of the day today. Turning the four wheels for my little narrow gauge quarry loco from these four.

Lovely to turn with absolutely no hard nuts at all. All four roughed out with two wheels complete and two left to finish.

The lathe is filthy (it’ll clean) and my nose is claggy (it’ll blow).

The finished loco will be named “ARFUR”.

Rik

.

Nicely done, Rik ... Looks good material, and I guess they should be pretty well-balanced.

MichaelG.

Put a strong magnet in a plastic bag somewhere beneath the tool. It will attract a lot of the iron dust which will be trapped in the bag as you turn it the right way out to retrieve the magnet. Obviously it wont collect the carbon component of the dust, but every little helps!

Maurice

That in itself is an advantage of grey cast iron. The carbon make it very much self-lubricating, unlike steel.

That will be a weight off his mind

Neil

I can certainly attest to this addiction, during machining a Hemmingway kit. It took me weeks to rein myself back in and clamber once more up onto the armchair. It was tough but i'm doing alright now!

Michael W

Hi Brian, The main benefit I found was a better cast surface finish, resulting in far fewer hard spots to knock the corners off your end mills when getting under the skin of it. It also seems to retain a bright machined finish for a long time, that surprised me.

Michael W