What did you do today? (2014)

[maurice bennieParticipant @mauricebennie99556]

Hi Ian SC what is carbril powder and where can I get it

Maurice

[Gray62Participant @gray62]

Spent the afternoon modifying one of these

Into this

As all of my milling cutters are of the Clarkson type, I wanted a Clarkson spindle for my Quorn T&C grinder.

This will be mounted in a modified workhead in thin section bearings (salvaged from a laser printer fuser unit), to provide a free rotating spindle suitable for flute grinding. A quick lick of the spindle on the cylindrical grinder tomorrow and the bearings should be a perfect fit. I was surprised at how difficult this was to machine, these cutter holders are obviously through hardened. Was knocking the hell out of a carbide cutter (although it was a cheap brazed tip type)

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, well yesterday I cut and fitted the guide pads for my lifting beam trolley. They are made from 25mm thick abrasion resitant slippery plastic and one is bolted on the channels that hang down either side and brush against the web of the lifting beam. There is around 2 to 3mm clearance between the two of them, so there is no braking effect.

There is a small bevel on the leading edges that face the web, which was put on with one of those de-burring milling thingies using a pistol drill, as this stuff don't like being filed, and they were then burnished with a well used flap disc on my 4 1/2" whizzy thing.

This afternoon I gave it a test lift with my milling machine and it coped with the utmost of ease.

Les, I did consider using flanged wheels, but the lifting beam is only 44mm wide and it would have only given 11mm wide each side of useable flange at the very best and by leaving enough clearance to stop the trolley binding, wouldn't have left much of a safety margin in my opinion. Also I would have lost a lot more travel from one side to the other. One other thing is, even if the bearings or wheels fail, it is unlikely to fall off the lifting beam.

Regards Nick.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Graham, the locating of bee hives is quite tricky. Rightly, the lady has said, 'No way' but if the beehive is placed in a place that has 4 to 5 ft hedges and is isolated then the bees lift up and fly high over the hedges above head height. Luckily I own an orchard, just a couple of Acres but good enough to keep my 6 or so hives and allow my Nephew to cultivate at least half of it. They keep bees in the City of London on top of the main buildings. Fortnum and Masons and several other big name Companies doe so as well and they get quite a lot of good quality honey! Perhaps if you had a flat roof it is feasable to keep bees up on it.

Clive

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I occasionally have to repair outrunner type motors in various sizes.

These are where the stator stands still and the outer housing spins.They have two bearings pressed in from either end, one is shallow but the mounting end one is buried about 50mm inside.

to do the buried one I used to hold the stator on an expanding mandrel on the die cast bore of the stator and tap to run true.

However recently these have been coming thru with the diecast centre not central and often tapered which makes the use of a mandrel a bit iffy.

The one I got today in the picture is the worst I have had, 30 minutes with a soft faced hammer and getting nowhere.

So working on the opposite to hit it with a big hammer I followed the weld it where it touches school of thought.

Result ?

Greedy Jaws.

Ten minutes later, jobs a good un.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Hmm. I have an outrunner motor. It's less than an inch diameter…

Neil

[Oompa LumpaParticipant @oompalumpa34302]

Today I had to make a fill adapter for a Schrader valve. This has got to be the most ludicrous thread ever, it wasn't for the outside either (which for the record is 7.7mm OD with a pitch of 0.794mm) no, this was for the internal thread:
Metric: 5.30 mm OD × 0.706 mm pitch
Imperial: 0.209 in OD × 36 tpi.

Ludicrous. Who comes up with this nonsense? Anyway, the finished item (quite pleased with it, a perfect fit):

The one on the left of course

graham.

Edited By Oompa Lumpa on 08/04/2014 20:16:35

[John BromleyParticipant @johnbromley78794]

Got my little project a bit further on. It lives!

John

http://s23.photobucket.com/user/jmx957v/media/20140408_202437_zpsbe1253b3.mp4.html

 

Edited By John Bromley on 08/04/2014 21:21:56

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Someone must have the patent rights then on 36 TPI.

Bought another 1/2" coventry die head off that well known advert site to convert to MT3 now that the new lathe has a lever feed. Reset the lever stop and it pops the head open, brilliant and quick.

Anyway came to clean the adjuster screw up which was a bit tight and that was 3/16" x 36

You won't believe just how many odd ball taps and dies I have but that one stumped me, had to resort to a triangular needle file and a dab of fine grinding paste.

[Les Jones 1Participant @lesjones1]

Finished making my toolpost mounted drill. Made from old cordless drill, a lump of aluminium from melting down the extrusion fro our old patio windows (Not very nice to machine.) and assorted bits of metal I had in stock. I did have to buy some suitable bearings.

Being used to drill holes in its cover.

Indexing plate.

Drill with cover fitted.

Les.

[julian atkinsParticipant @julianatkins58923]

i silver soldered the tubes into the inner firebox of my 5"g current build LBSCR terrier STEPNEY.

the LBSC method of fitting silver solder wire rings (silverflo 55) over the tubes on the water space side and heating from inside the firebox was used.

cheers,

julian

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Hi Les,

I have something that looks remarkably similar, right down to a switch on the end. The planetary gearbox is now housed inside a bit of steel bar and the plastic end cover is an old spice pot. Great minds eh?

Neat work, Julian.

Neil

[Les Jones 1Participant @lesjones1]

Hi Neil,
The drill was a cheap one with the label "Cougar" which I bought from Asda well over 10 years ago. On this drill the torque limiter works by allowing outer of the planetary gearbox to rotate. It is prevented from rotating by a number (6 or 8 I think) spring loaded balls that engage with dimples in the end of the gearbox casing. The pressure on these springs set the torque limit. I removed this as it gave a nice cylindrical section to mount it. Removing the chuck was the difficult part as there was no way to grip the output shaft from the gearbox. I had to remove the motor and all the gears and make a tool that fitted over the three output gear spindles. I thought these might shear off when I tried to unscrew the chuck but thy survived. I did not have a switch of suitable size and current rating hence the start and stop button. It is a variation on the SCR latch that I suggested on the thread about a stop button for a VFD. Now the SCR drives a power MOSFET . Your Article about using a 63 tooth gear enabled me to cut the 3/8" 24 (UNF) threads to match the chuck. You can probably see the 63 tooth gear from Arc Euro on the view of the indexing disk.

Les.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Hi Les, I'm well chuffed about that

What did I do today? Well I finally grabbed the bull by the horns and remachined the dovetails on my cross-slide. the DTI in the chuck and bar in the dovetail trick confirmed the magnitude of the error, so I pulled all apart again.

To set up on the mill took several attempts at finding a solution. It appears the inverted-V is where the error is, as unlike the top dovetails it isn't square to the machined faces of the slide – so I had to find a way of clocking true to the inverted V itself.

In the end I superglued a bit of ground square stock (from a dot matrix printer) to the mill with the assistance of a decent sized square on the bed. At the second attempt it clocked true. I then superglued a 1/2" or 5/8" silver steel bar in the inverted V and was able to align it up against the square guide. A clock on the dovetail showed it was 7-thou out over 6", which was of the same order as the errors I have been getting (and in the same direction!) Clamping was easy with a standard clap kit from each end.

I set a dovetail cutter to 2.5 thou above the horizontal bearing surfaces and fed in until it just cut at the narrowest part of the dovetail and running at a good speed I hand fed along the dovetails taking about 5 1/2 minutes each side. Final finish looked pretty good (the cutter is still fairly new) better than an unused slide I have seen but no better than the 'worn-in' finish I had before.

After deburring corners and cleaning off superglue I repeated the test cuts on a 2 3/4" EN1A disc. This time the result was as flat as a ruler could show me, better than when new and MUCH better than of late, so I call that an improvement.

What I can't understand is how the error appeared to have got significantly worse. 15 years not to heavy use and wear had only put a polish on the slides, surely not enough to cause such a big error. (For those who haven't seen the other thread I have checked and the spindle is within a thou of parallel over 8".

Neil

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, well today I managed to make four big spacers for my traveling lifting beam in my garage, after a bit of a slow and troublesome job yesterday afternoon. I used a bit of octagonal bar that was large enough in diameter as it was all I have at the moment without swafing down a lump of 4" bar, however it turned out to be a bit harder that I had anticipated. After taken about a hour to saw off a couple of short lengths and struggling to get a big enough hole drilled through one of them to get my indexed carbide boaring bar in, it then took a long while to make the hole big enough and took the edge right off the carbide tip.

I was beginning to think that I may have to hack down a bigger diameter bit, but I wasn't ready to give up, so I made a makeshift furnace by stacking together some refractory bricks that I have and then heated up the second bit to a nice bright red heat with my O/A tourch and then covered it up for the night with a couple more bricks.

This morning I put the heat treated bit in the lathe and although it was still a bit tough, I'd drilled a hole in about tem minuites, using about five different sized drills big enough to get the boaring bar in. Having much more success drilling this bit than I did the other bit yesterday, I then cut off two more bits using a thin cutting disc rather than my power saw and then heated these two and the one I was having trouble with yesterday and then covered them to cool slowly.

While they were cooling I then proceeded to boar the one that I had just drilled out, but before doing that I wondered if I could touch the edge of the carbide tip to save destroying another edge. Having ground it on my green wheel, I poped it back on the lathe and started to boar the hole out at 5 thou to start with the spidle running at 850 rpm, it was cutting happly producing a steady stream of blue swaf, I then put on 10 thou each time and it was still happly cutting away. With three holes to do, I only had to retouch the tip slightly once.

The photo above shows my makeshift furnace, the rest of my bit of bar I cut the spacers off and three of the finished spacers, one of which is on one of my modified cam rollers.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 10/04/2014 00:13:09

[HowiParticipant @howi]

Hi all. Decided to have a go at a tangential tool holder + grinding jig, an afternoons work and total cost of less than £5.00 most of which was for the 1/4 HSS.

Cut and finish on brass and ali superb did not have time to try other materials.

I used a rather crude design but it works so well chuffed.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Nick, are you sure the octagonal bar is not a crowbar, that would explain the toughness.

I spent this afternoon rebuilding my low temperature hot air motor. Last night I decided to give it a good run, so I sat it on a pot of water on the stove, and set it going, I left it a bit long (a couple of hours), and the pot boiled dry, the motor over heated, and its foam plastic displacer melted, it was 6" diameter, now 2.5". Its up and running again.

Ian S C

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Ian, if it was part of a crowbar, I wouldn't want to pick a fight with the guy who may have used it, as it's about 2" across the flats and the couple of foot I've got is heavy enough. I think it might have been a drive bar of some sort as it came from where I used to work a few years ago. It was last used as a drift, because one end had the corners ground down and was slightly mushroomed and the other end is rather more mushroomed where it's been hit with a sledge hammer.

Regards Nick.

[WindyParticipant @windy30762]

Been putting a very light fiberglass skin on the latest hydroplane hull and while waiting for the epoxy to dry had a trip to a steel stockholder for some EN24T.

They are only stocking tool steels now but found an offcut of EN24T 120mmØ x 230mm at a giveaway price.

Its for my redesigned cylinder head to sort the problems of last year.

It stressed my lathe cleaning it up then parting a slice off but will get two heads out of each slice.

I now have plenty of metal to play with for experimental heads and valve designs.

Nice to get back to metal munching after wood butchery on the hull.

Paul

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Nicholas Farr on 10/04/2014 20:21:09:

one end had the corners ground down and was slightly mushroomed and the other end is rather more mushroomed where it's been hit with a sledge hammer.

Sounds like a classical wrecking bar to me. You just lift it up a couple of feet and bring it down point first as hard as you can. Not many things stand up to that. Great for smashing up concrete floors etc before they invented those Kangol things. They are best used by themselves without a sledgehammer – the bigger and heavier, the better.

Murray

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

They tend to use those here attached to the end of the boom/jib of a mechanical digger.

When I built my workshop hoist, I used 4 ball races for the wheels, the rail is 2 bits of angle iron back to back, I use it to move my chucks off and on the lathe, 8" chucks are heavy. Ian S C

[Alan .204Participant @alan-204]

Fitted the new riser block this afternoon and also finished of the quill stop with scale, all works very well a big thanks to Gary Wooding not only did he make the riser block he also sent me a name plaque for it and a PDF file with his drawing for the vertical stop, thanks Gary really appreciate you help and advice.

Al.

Riser block and scale, just need to put the plaque on the riser block.

The light is brilliant reminds me of a spaceship when I look at it.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Alan,

I have one of those lights on the Bligeport but a bit larger and I find mine is OK with the quill fully retracted but once it's out a bit the tool is actually is a circular centre shadow.

I have fitted mine to the bottom of the head, not the quill as I often need to get the quill close into what I'm machining plus going onto the head means I can fit the biggest one they do at 6" to try to remove this shadow

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

Hi Alan,

I have just made my own version of the angel eye ring light myself. It is brilliant and is so much better than directional lighting. My version is here:

http://mikesworkshop.weebly.com/ring-light.html

Mike

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Mike, Do you find the further down you go with the quill the more the tool is in shadow ?

I see in your picture that there is shadow at the end of the cutter, mine isn't so bad but at 150mm diameter itprobably won't fit many desktop machines.

I do have a couple of those LED arrays 6 x 5 or similar at the back angled downwards and the two together does help.

[Author]

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