| Author | Message | ||
     04xl1200c |
Damnut. I would caution you on using a mill to cut wood. The wood chips can do more damage to a milling machine(or lathe) than steel chips. Since wood absorbs water and swells it must be cleaned away very thoroughly. I suggest a good vacuuming as soon as you are done, never blow wooden chips with compressed air, they just go further into places they shouldn't be..... | ||
| Greg_e |
I've spent well over $1000 at little machine shop... It's mostly Chinese stuff, but it's decent. Enco (now MSC) offers all grades of tooling and I've gotten by with mostly the economy stuff. I need a lathe, but need it to be small and have a swing bigger than 4 inches over the saddle. Also need a building to put stuff in. But lately I've been doing plastic, not machining it but printing it. Go a little XYZ DaVinci Pro and been hot rodding it... Getting some really decent results with PETG filament. For 2d cad I had been using Seimens Solid Edge 2d free, but I'm trying to transition to Autdesk Fusion 360 which is a fully featured 3d, but still free for hobbiest and shops that gross under $100,000usd per year. | ||
| Interex2050 |
A tip if I may... Check craigslist (or similar) for machinist's toolboxes, every now and then you find some real gems. It is the cheapest method I have come across so far. Plus you have a chance of finding some high quality tools this way. | ||
| Tootal |
I was very fortunate when I was going to trade school. A machinist retired from the brewery and my he came to my father and asked him if his kid would want his precision tools. I met my dad at his house and he gave me his wooden precision box and about $600.00 in precision tools. I've been using them ever since. His statement was, "I'm not going to be doing any machining anymore and my son wouldn't know a micrometer from a C-Clamp!" | ||
| Tootal |
And now for something completely different! Who has run a wind powered lathe? About a year before I retired the boss sent me up to look at an old fan. The bearing had failed and really messed up the shaft. Somebody had already welded an extension and moved the bearing out to fresh shaft material so now there's no where to go. They wanted me to replace the shaft that had been there since the mid 1950's! Only a torch was going to take this thing apart! Not wanting to do that I went out and had a few beers that night and formulated a plan. Drink till you Think!  I remembered we had an old cross slide in the tool crib. Some of the younger guys wanted to throw it away but I wouldn't let them. Why throw anything away you might need, even if it hadn't been used in forever! Two other machinist and I started making parts. We made a table that would bolt on where the original bearings went. Move a new bearing to the end of the shaft where the pulley had ridden. Make a spacer for the opposite bearing to keep things level. Set up the cross slide and indicate it in. With four fans running in this room, if you turn one off the air reverses and spins the fan backwards. We used this to turn it. We put an old boring bar on the cross slide and turned the shaft. We ended up turning it down about .400" to clean it up. We were able to hold it at a .0005" in 7.5". We made up a bronze bushing and split it. We milled the length for a tap fit into place. Put a couple of anti rotational pins in them and slid the new bearing over the top. Since it's a taperlock bearing it just squeezed the bushing tighter. That's was probably the most fun job I've done over the years. I have a video of it turning but have no idea how to post it but here's a couple of stills when we started:   The center of the shaft is 6" in diameter. The turned area is 4-7/16". The fan is around 8' in diameter and 6'wide. In the top picture you can see the orange piping in the background. That's all ammonia. This fan blows chilled air around the stockhouse to keep the beer at 52 degrees and it's like working in a wind tunnel! Not great working conditions but much better than working on coal pulverizers in the power house!! | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
That's great! How much material were you able to take off in one pass? How much torque did that thing offer you and did you get much chatter from the cutting tool? | ||
| Tootal |
I could only take .010" to .020" because of chatter. That long boring bar is really sticking out there! It took a few days to clean up and square the ends. It had plenty of torque for the amount we could take off. I had to grind the bit with no radius or it would chatter. The cross slide was too long to mount any closer due to the bearing. I believe the fan was built in place many years ago and I really didn't want to take it apart! | ||
| Hughlysses |
THAT is a very cool story! | ||
| Loose1 |
Brad, do you have parallels, and a vise stop? A vise stop is a good small project that you will use if your making more than one part or need to take you part out of the vise for fitment. | ||
| S1owner |
Brad Tried and True tools in Fridley is a good spot also. They buy and sell used tools | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Matt, I have a set of 1/4" parallels, my niece gave them to me for Christmas! I'd not even thought of a vice stop. Great idea, I'll whip one up if I need one. I see there are a bunch of different styles and ideas for them. I also have a couple sets of V-blocks, they will really come in handy. Ken, I've been to Tried and True a few times. Their prices are all over the place, some good, some in the "are you kidding" class. They had a really decent price on a Sandvik 3" indexable face mill but good luck finding inserts, they are proprietary and cost over $28 each! There were 9 of them.. The $85 face mill just got real expensive. Greg, that is one of the coolest repair stories I've ever heard. Way cool. I'd love to see the video. I think you would have to post it to YouTube and then post the link here. | ||
| S1owner |
All I got to say is get it all set up and dialed in as you are really close to me!!!!!!  | ||
| Tootal |
The camera takes video but it was the first time I used it and I didn't realize that when you zoom it loses focus so it's not great video but it gives you an idea. https://youtu.be/Tem-o7ETtGU https://youtu.be/AFuYcUhY0x4 | ||
| Tootal |
I recently bought a quick change tool post with four tool holders for 120.95 plus shipping. It was made by Shars and is chinese but the company does make a lot of American made stuff too. The quality was nice for the price. I'm used to using Aloris tools when I was working but for the hobbyist the cost is very prohibitive. I bought it from: http://stores.ebay.com/Discount-Machine-Shop | ||
| Bluzm2 |
I just bought my 3" 7 insert face mill head from Shars. I got it with the aluminum carbides. I'll order a set for steel in the future if I need to. It came today. Very nice piece of work. I'll let some chips fly this weekend. I'll post some pics as I play around with it. | ||
| Damnut |
Ok so I need some help here. I've been tasked by my company to be the "machinist" for prototype and R&D pieces. I had no machining experience before getting our end mill but spent some time watching and asking questions with the guy that used to do our stuff. Now I've been doing some simple parts and want to get into more complex cutting. We have just the basic tooling here so I'm not sure what to buy to get this done so I'm asking for help. What do I need to make round pieces on an end mill? A rotary table? Any advise on this would be great.  Here is the mill that we have. http://www.machinetoolonline.com/PM45MMill.html | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
I can't imagine doing something like that without a lathe. Most machine shops have both a milling machine as well as a lathe. I never tried to make a circle (or anything else) with a rotary table. The one time I tried to use a rotary table, the real machinist came up to me and asked me what I was making. When I told him, he said he'd take care of it. He then took the job over to the lathe and made me feel dumb with how fast it was. So our rotary table still sits on the floor and I'll never know if it would have worked or not. | ||
| Damnut |
It would be nice if we had a lathe. I can only work with the tools that are available to me and a lathe isn't one of them | ||
| Tootal |
I've done several jobs using a mill and a rotary table. Some things are either heavy or not easy to set up in a lathe. From your print I would get the rotary table and measure the inside of the hole in the table. It would be nice to have a lathe to make a plug to fit the center hole in the disk. I would drill that 1/2" hole in your part and then using the plug to both indicate the mill in and to center your part. Technically if you mounted a tool bit in a vise and put your plug material in the chuck you could turn diameters like a lathe. Bottom line is to get a rotary table and go from there. I will be glad to help out as you get more questions. | ||
| Damnut |
All the inner holes I wouldn't have an issue with, it's the outer circles that I can't do given the tools at my disposal. This piece is going to a machine shop and my hopes of a rotary table or a proper lathe are going with it. lol There is a push from some of the guys that I've been doing pieces for to get me some tooling to make more things. Let's see if the big boss will allow it now that it's coming from someone else. We bought the end mill initially to rework pieces that came from various machine shops that we use so we wouldn't have to wait. A few months ago I mentioned during a meeting that I could probably make a part we would have had to wait 2-3 weeks for and everyone agreed that it was worth a shot. Now they are having me make all of our prototype pieces. I'll tell ya, I've only been at this machining stuff for about 6 months here and there but am really enjoying making something from nothing. The learning curve is tough especially since there's no one around that know any more then I do, which isn't much. I've made about a dozen parts and test fixtures so far and still have all my fingers so so far so good.  | ||
| Tootal |
If you have a digital read out, dro, it makes it really easy cutting very accurate circles with the rotary table. A carpenter friend asked me to put a plastic cover around a router table bit. Looked like a bit broke and damaged the table so I set it up on a rotary table and cut one diameter all the way through and then a second one half way through. I then took some plastic and set it up on the rotary table and made the insert. It was so tight you had to keep it perfectly level and go straight down to insert it. My carpenter friend wanted to use a hammer! I took some grief for not making the plastic insert in the lathe but since my dro was already set up it made it easy to repeat the numbers plus the diameter of the cutter ofcourse! If I had to choose between a lathe and a mill I think the mill would be more versatile but both is easier! | ||
| Damnut |
Yeah I have a 3 axis dro and one on the quill. | ||
| Greg_e |
I'm just going to ask, what material and how big is that thing? Yes I've done a bunch of stuff on my rotary table (since I don't have a lathe) and I also do a lot by setting up bolt hole circles with overlapping holes. What I would do is drill all the holes. Make a jig to attach to the rotary table that has the same holes (but threaded) and bolt the stock to the jig. Start wearing out your arm and go round and round with the cutting until done. Might use a roughing mill to help easy things along, then clean it up with a 4 or 2 flute mill. Yes it sucks, but yes it will get the job done. | ||
| Tootal |
Well it's not even 2-3/8" in Outside diameter. If you machined a plug for a turntable and indicate the table in you could easily make the center of the center hole your zero point. Use the dro to make all your holes from there. Four of them are on the X or Y axis, do them first. Then rotate the table 30 degrees counter clockwise and do the other two holes on the Y axis. Then put in an end mill and feed it out to the radius of the part plus the radius of the endmill and zero your dro. Now feed out and cut your diameter until you reach zero, Done. | ||
| Damnut |
The material is aluminum and the measurements are in inches. We do all of our parts that go into our machines out of delrin or aluminum. The machines we build have electromagnets on them and some of them can go up to 8 tesla so not much heavy metal is in them. So in that aspect it is great that I am able to learn on soft material. Since I don't have a rotary table we sent that particular piece to one of our machine shops but a RT is on the "things to get Jim" list along with a bandsaw and lathe. It'll be a while before I see any of it though. | ||
| Greg_e |
You could do it without the table using bolt holes. A long process but it works. | ||
| Loose1 |
Brad, how's the machining going? Matt | ||
| Bluzm2 |
A bit slow Matt, I've been so busy I've not had a lot of time to play. I really need to get a Z axis DRO on the beast. I think I've got the drill down for doing my table legs. A hole saw works fine as long as everything is clamped down. A drill press isn't rigid enough, the mill works perfect. Very little metal waste. I really need to get a rotary table... | ||
| Loose1 |
Here's a cheep option. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Igaging-6-150-mm-Digital-R eadout-Read-Out-DRO-w-Remote-Magnetic-LCD-display- /141056505284?hash=item20d79f75c4:g:sxQAAOxyoMxSK9 AD | ||
| S1owner |
Thats not a bad deal. I was just watching diy vids on using cheap digital calipers to make DRO read outs on thecmini mills. |
