What Did you do Today 2022

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by John Hinkley on 19/11/2022 21:49:42:

[…]

Having difficulty sourcing 12mm thick aluminium 180 x 180mm at a price that I can justify.

 

.

I obviously don’t know what you can justify, John … but I found reasonably-priced ‘offcuts’ of Tooling Plate were available from Richard Austin Alloys

MichaelG.

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I suggest you have a word with your nearest branch:

https://raaltd.com/aluminium-products/aluminium-plate-products/#casting-tooling-plate

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 20/11/2022 09:29:56

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Craig Brown on 19/11/2022 20:06:51:

Spent a couple of hours making a part you can buy for £1

Am I seeing this wrong or did you just remake in brass a steel component that failed in tension?

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

Posted by Mick B1 on 20/11/2022 10:59:07:

Am I seeing this wrong or did you just remake in brass a steel component that failed in tension?

You could be forgiven for thinking it was a steel part, it was a brass item that had been plated. It fixes the plug strainer to the waste pipe on the sink. The plug slides in and out of the centre bore and it had seized in the old one and the screw snapped trying to remove it

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

MichaelG,

I thought that I'd posted a response to your suggestion for aluminium supply but I can't have pressed the add posting button. Thanks for the lead to raaltd.com. They have a depot in Leeds, so not so very far from me . I'll send an email enquiry on Monday.

John

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I got a call from my brother to say one of the brackets on his extension ladder had broken and could I make him a new one.

Rather than suggest he use JBWeld to fix it I said put it in the post and I'll see what I can do. When it arrived I took a photo and imported into Alibre and then just drew a few lines over the image, extruded those then added a few fillets to suit the cutter 4mm I intended to use

Thought it best to make him a spare while I was at it so nested two together and then ran the CAM in F360 before cutting from 10mm 6082 on the KX-3 making use of the two holes to screw the plate to a piece of scrap. Just needs sawing apart and a bit of filing to square up a couple of internal corners.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Craig Brown on 20/11/2022 11:47:16:

Posted by Mick B1 on 20/11/2022 10:59:07:

Am I seeing this wrong or did you just remake in brass a steel component that failed in tension?

You could be forgiven for thinking it was a steel part, it was a brass item that had been plated. It fixes the plug strainer to the waste pipe on the sink. The plug slides in and out of the centre bore and it had seized in the old one and the screw snapped trying to remove it

Ah. I saw tiny yellow glints in the top countersink and the thread flanks, but thought they might be a trick of the light, or streaks of some deposit…

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Helped move a Colchester Triumph 2000 long bed lathe across a warehouse ready for collection this week to go to my mates house.

Yesterday went to collect 50 off Clarkson end and slot mills, all either resharpened or new. Whilst there I was offered a further collection of 230 off, end/slot mills and drills. About 180 of these were new Tungsten carbide end/slot or drills, the rest being HSS. These were up to 18mm dia long series tungsten carbide mills. Decided to have the lot and split them with my mate. Having looked at prices of tungsten end/slot mills, I had a very very very good deal.

Now need to sort all my milling cutters

Colin

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

Finished off a table to use my rebadged Femi bandsaw in the vertical position. Thanks to member JohnF for pictures and drawings of his

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

Milling a piece of train rail to see how squzre I can get all surfaces to each other. Its not hard throughout, but I did see sparks fly milling the sides it was cut off.

Any extra ideas what to make of it for future uses as one piece-?

[MichaelRParticipant @michaelr]

Posted by Chris Mate on 25/11/2022 17:42:21:

Milling a piece of train rail to see how squzre I can get all surfaces to each other. Its not hard throughout, but I did see sparks fly milling the sides it was cut off.

Any extra ideas what to make of it for future uses as one piece-?

How about an Anvil see Link

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, didn't really do anything in the way of engineering, as this morning I had to get some charge back into my car battery so I could go a fetch a new one, but even with charging it for well over two hours yesterday afternoon and at least an hour and a half this morning, I also had to use my jump starter as well. When I got back, just did some catching up with stuff on my old laptop. This evening though I watched a programme on TV about the Hollies reflecting on most of the performances and some of their trials and troubles within their group. Most of the early songs they played, took me back to my secondary school days when they really started to get a headway into the top ten, and the old black and white performances which were on TV. Although I do have a CD with most of their songs on, it was good to see them playing.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 26/11/2022 21:57:13

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Posted by JasonB on 20/11/2022 14:20:52:

I got a call from my brother to say one of the brackets on his extension ladder had broken and could I make him a new one.

Rather than suggest he use JBWeld to fix it I said put it in the post and I'll see what I can do. When it arrived I took a photo and imported into Alibre and then just drew a few lines over the image, extruded those then added a few fillets to suit the cutter 4mm I intended to use

Thought it best to make him a spare while I was at it so nested two together and then ran the CAM in F360 before cutting from 10mm 6082 on the KX-3 making use of the two holes to screw the plate to a piece of scrap. Just needs sawing apart and a bit of filing to square up a couple of internal corners.

Very good. With a 3d probe you could just capture the outline and export as a dxf!

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

I started milling a piece of trainrail with the intention of making a V-Block higher up from mill bed to clamp smaller round parts to mill or drill at. After some battle I managed to mill al surfaces square to each other, battles with two sides with hardened spots in it. The rail is too small for an anvil. Used facemill with brazed carbide inserts so far, now to swich to 4x flute carbide 12mm endmill for this.

Today I managed to get it setup at 45 degrees. After some trail and error and eventually I came up with a concoction to hold it tight. Decided to use a dril lvice that came with mill, it wedge the bottom part of rail between jaws which was able to grip it. By turning the handle I can dial in the degrees up to 45, a bit of repetion as I tighten the chosen tight down spots.
-2x clamps holding vice.
-2x larger clamps pressing trainrain in jaws.
-123 blocks used to provide a fence for vice not moving.
-1x HSS tool bit to clamp top of trainrail down.

The whole setup seems sturdy…I am chewing on it today, will mill the corners if I decided to tomorrow with 12mm carbide endmill.

Edited By Chris Mate on 27/11/2022 09:17:29

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Chris Mate on 27/11/2022 09:16:35:

I started milling a piece of trainrail …

Advanced work! Railway line is on my 'avoid' list because it's difficult to machine.

Rail is made of a manganese-steel alloy formulated to resist the very strenuous wear and tear applied by heavy trains running over it for about 20 years. It takes an extra serious hammering on bends, and is made to a tight specification because of the high cost of replacing it.

So, tough stuff, made by rolling red-hot metal, and cut with a grinder, not sawn. Apart from railways it's popular for making small anvils, the size needed by jewellers, because it takes a beating better than most other steels. Unfortunately it's toughness means it doesn't machine well; rail puts up a fight and cutting tools soon lose their edges.

There are no tough spots, it's all tough! I think what you're seeing is the cutter struggling.

Making V-blocks, it's considerably easier to work with a hardenable steel. It's machined in the soft state, then hardened, and further finished if necessary by grinding. Machining the steel before it's been hardened drastically increases cutter life, and the softer metal can be removed faster with less skill.

Worthwhile for the experience of machining a difficult metal, but it's an expensive way of making v-blocks.

Apparently in the fifties and sixties many model engineers had trouble with angle-iron from scrapped bed frames. The story goes that large quantities of scrap tram-line lifted before WW2 were re-rolled into angle-iron and used to make beds, an operation that didn't involve much machining. The trouble started when poor old Model Engineer tried to reuse it, little realising it was a manganese steel was from the same family as armour-plate!

Dave

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Is there not a friendly scrappie who would take in your rail in part exchange for a bit of plate which would at least be easier to mill – but why such a large bit needed for a V-block as the general problem with small mills is lack of headroom.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

The post war bed frames were made from a specific high tensile angle so they could use less material when we were very short of that commodity.

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

There are no tough spots, it's all tough! I think what you're seeing is the cutter struggling.

One of the projects I worked on in a former life was the supply of a large Butler planer converted into a CNC planer / shaper for a manufacturer of of points and crossings for railways.

This machine was specifically modified for machining manganese steel castings and they were awful to machine, due to the propensity of the material to work harden while being machined. One of the design requirements of the new spindle assembly was it had to have 30KW at 100 rpm – slow rotation of a 16" inserted facemill to face the underside of the castings at low speed to try to avoid heat build-up that hardened the metal. If the inserts dulled, then hard spots developed that were then too hard for the remaining inserts to tolerate & the lot failed. The work hardened area had to be ground out below the surface to continue machining after re-tipping the cutter, or the fresh inserts would fail on contact with the hard spot. The milling head was deliberately set "out of tram" in the fore & aft direction to avoid back cutting – only the leading edge was in contact to avoid rubbing. One pass was prefrable, as the surface hardened during succesful cutting. Surface finish was not important, neither particularly were dimensions close tolerance – the manger said that "if the foundy could cast these to drawing, they wouldn't need machining on the base at all", it was just a case of making the base flat.

But the same company also produced items from rolled rail section that were planed using normal brazed carbide tools & I don't recall there being anything special about machining them – just normal planer slow-ish table travel & nice chips peeled off. I have an offcut rail section in the garage awaiting turning into an anvil at some point & IIRC that was cut off with a bandsaw. This will most likely be a Boxford shaper project when I get a Round Tuit, but if milled I would be looking at sharp tools run slowly, well cooled & avoid rubbing should work OK – the same methods used by other customers on difficult to machine materials like Zeron stainless steel.

Nigel B.

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

I filed this rail before I started and it filed ok where I tested it. It milled ok enough, except a few areas(10% guessed) on one side where it was cut off.
I watch some other video of a guy in funny way milling a rail, breaking his carbide cutters, now that one look hard. Maybe the latest rail tracks of say last 30 years with better equipment and knowledge is a different story, maybe this one was very old piece, I would say its not brutally hard. I can maybe examine the 4x brazed carbide bits and take macro photos of it, the chips did came off hot and some in hard areas red hot glowing. This is why I used this cutter and not my new Walter shoulder mill, inserts expensive. I took .2mm cuts.

I am waiting for duplicate set of 4x flute carbide endmills, maybe Monday, then I want to use the previous 12mm endmill and see how it compares to this brazed carbide facemill ones, I used it a lot on aliminium and metal recently, I would like to know seeing the place contacted me with carbide specials on cutters, so its way cheaper. So far I was impressed with them, 4mm to 12mm set. If this endmill has no problem, I continiue, otherwise I call it some experience on clamping on this one. I did gained experience on clamping.

Theres so much I must still buy, so I try to use what I got.

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Actually the last three days, but helped a friend rip out their old central heating system, retrofit a double pipe system which is compatible with their existing combi boiler, but will be heat pump ready to future proof it, and commission the system…

Lots of crawling under suspended floors at ground level and general tomfoolery with lifting and laying floorboards, and the pièce de résistance…

Just as we got the whole system sorted, the only radiator they were retaining from the old system (a custom double angle bay window jobbie) burst open with a thumb sized hole as we brought the system back up to pressure turns out it was extremely badly corroded at a weld. Cue desperately draining the system and running around to find extra towels and buckets.

As of this morning, no leaks, and the house is the warmest it's ever been by some margin, even with the bay window radiator just capped off. Apparently modern type 22 rads are a hell of a lot more efficient.

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

The 80mm brazed carbide facemill cutter tips does show wear but not broken. I will need to redo them.

[IRTParticipant @irt]

I finally finished a cabinet for lathe tools and got it up onto the wall.

I thought I should take some pictures before it gets sprayed with oil:

[Jim NicParticipant @jimnic]

By eck, that's a grand looking tool cabinet. Is it all your own work?

Jim

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Not big enough, it only holds 20+ holders.

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

Posted by IRT on 27/11/2022 18:56:50:

I finally finished a cabinet for lathe tools and got it up onto the wall.

Lovely piece of cabinet making!

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

IRT a neat cabinet for lathe tools.

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