2016 POTD Thread Archive

Yes! My wife doesn't understand that. I spend half my work day sitting. I am very good at my job, so I do in roughly one third the time that my counterparts at other locations do. That leaves me with a lot of time to study about machining and such. Then when I get home I want to use that knowledge and actually practice. Make a cool needle file handle or something. I just can't stand to spend that much of my day not doing anything really productive (just waiting for more work to be ready for me), only to come home and still not do anything. Here I am at 5:30 am wishing I could get away with turning on the machines and getting to do something before work.

^^^^You got the bug in a bad way^^^ I haven't been cured in 33+ years so its terminal haha.
Learning, applying, practicing and sharing is rewarding to say the least.
I'm away for 24 hour stints (sometimes 36) and I find myself repairing things around the firehouse just to satisfy my craving.

finished turning down the pulley hub for my countershaft. 0.05mm oversize, which is about 2thou, for a 1 1/2in piece.

picture of the sleeve, cut from the original treadmill roller


I put the hub and shaft in the freezer and the sleeve in the toaster over at 350C, then pressed them together. They went together very nicely!


excess cut off, faced and chamfered


poly-v pulley pressed on. Didn't have time to mount it or the flywheel (just visible in the background) last night so I'll get to it tonight. Really looking forward to trying it out.

I'm still working through some troubleshooting and/or understanding of the surface grinder (I'll ask more questions when I'm done thinking it through myself), but I did this on the only-mostly-prepped magnetic chuck (mystery steel, I think in the 4140 ballpark??). One quick pass (wider wheel this time) to knock down a couple burrs, one quick pass to bring it all down to approximately the right level, then one moderately slow-feed (in both directions) pass to see how the finish would look. Much better than yesterday, but still not perfect. Not sure yet if that's because I didn't go deep enough to remove all the junk or if there's something else at work here. I didn't have time before work to investigate further. Hopefully tonight...

The "before" shot is actually the back side, selected because it was in better shape, requiring less stoning before beginning. I forgot to do a proper before shot. Sorry.



The center was the most heavily pitted. I thought my final pass was deep enough, judging by the finish on the near edge when I started, but by the middle I could see I was mistaken. Oh well. I was just testing/playing.

Setup my new Bridgeport today and mounted the rotary table. ;-)

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http://www.bg-cnc.com/wordpress/?p=1505

I'm guessing a 3" face mill is out of the question
That's a cool Bridgeport, did u make it.

Sweet! Are you going to do a CNC conversion?

hope i never get that bored.

Wander if they are hand scraped. Nice but I have to many other projects to even think of something like that.

Like most people here, I'm always in need of more tool storage space, but it's gotten really bad since I bought the mill. Unfortunately the shop is 99.95% full, but somehow I managed to clear-out enough room for a Harbor Freight 18" end cabinet. I've had the HF 44" Red Roller for a few years now and it's been a good toolbox.

Of course, I don't have enough room to just hang the end cabinet off the 44" cabinet as intended, so I had to make a frame for some casters so it can be used as a stand-alone.



I welded some 2" square tubing for the frame as it fits the bottom cavity perfectly. Also cut some 1" tubing at 45's for the corners to catch the 4th hole of the caster brackets. All the holes were drilled and power-tapped on the mill for 1/4-20 bolts for the caster frames. The tubing is just 1/8" thick, but there seems to be enough threads for this application. The 5" swivel casters are from Home Depot and have a nice feature in that the lock brakes the wheel AND the swivel.



Before rolling the end cabinet into it's cubby-hole, here's a shot of it standing beside the 44" cabinet. Looks like it came-out at about the same height.