2016 POTD Thread Archive

[zmotorsports]

Another kind of "odd" project last night.

While we were in Texas a few weeks ago attending an RV/Jeep rally one of the guys there had cut and trimmed down some tree limbs/branches for some of the ladies for walking sticks. He gave one to my wife while we were there.

When we got home my wife commented on how she would like to start collecting the pins from National Parks and putting them on her walking stick like my son did over the period of his youth. I decided to add my touch to the stick prior to putting the first pin on it, Big Bend National Park pin.

I cut it down to better suit her height. I then ran a DA over it with some 180 grit sandpaper on it to smooth out the bumps and rid it of some of the splinters before adding a couple of coats of MinWax English Chestnut stain (just because I had a pint on hand for something or other). Once the stain was to the desired darkness I added a couple of coats of automotive clearcoat for durability.

Here is the walking stick hanging from my lift drying after the second coat of clear.


I then had to add some machining touches to it. I dug through my scrap aluminum and found a slug to machine a top cap from.


Cutting down the OD.


I made a radius cutting tool and turned a radius on the top.


Ready to flip around and hog out the underside to fit over the top of the walking stick.


Underside machined and ready for installation.


Outside completed and cleaned.


Bottom end completed as well and both installed. I machined them so they are an interference fit as well as gluing them on and screwing them on.




The bottom end is also recessed about .170" so I need to locate some rubber, poly or UHMW to machine and install for the foot. Then all that is left is to get some leather or parachute cord and make a handle and I want to wrap the area just below the top part for her to hold onto.

Mike.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

started making a static balancer to try and balance my lathe treadmill motor

machined some bearing spacers from some scrap alu. Bearings from my "this might be useful one day" bearing box.


couple of bits of pine roughly squared and a V notch cut.


bearings installed


tonight I'll take the motor to pieces and work out the spacing to hold the shaft. I'm guessing I'll need to add or take away a fair bit of weight from the flywheel as it's seriously out of round.

 

[gr8legs]

Today's first project was verifying I did something right before committing $500 to the next step.

Within one of my enterprises I design printed circuits - and it's an interesting process but some elements are fraught with peril. Most electronic parts have standard 'footprints' included in the CAD software that are inserted into the design. Things like transistors, resistors, integrated circuits, etc.

When you need a part that's a bit non-standard you have to design your own footprint for it - the outline, the pad locations and their associated pad diameter, shape and drill sizes, etc. Usually there's a dimensioned mechanical drawing of whatever part you are adding to use as a reference, but sometimes not.

After you get the board design done you ship the finished CAD output files off to a fabricator who makes the board from your specs. This can be either a 3-week reasonably priced operation for 20-50 circuit boards or if you are in a hurry you can get one or two boards in 24 hours for a king's ransom, plus an arm, a leg, one testicle and visiting rights to your girl/boy friend, whichever is appropriate. It's a bit of a trade-off - waiting for the 3-week turnaround can be hazardous to your nervous system.

There's some tolerance for errors - but not a lot. You check the design, re-check and re-check again but gremlins are often at work. I used to roll the dice and hope the first spin of the circuit board was reasonably correct and then do spin #2 to fix my errors and refine the design. Screwups are expensive - sometimes you can hand-modify the first boards and 'get by' - sometimes they're not fixable and you've burned time and money for naught.

My current project needed an RJ-11 style phone jack inserted into the board. This time around I figured I could verify my component design using the mill in the shop.

First, I made the component design footprint from published data and holding the connector in my hand to verify. Inserting it into the PCB on the CAD system looks like this. The phone jack (P1) mounts on the bottom of the board so its footprint appears backwards from the top of the board :



So, I next extracted my part dimensions directly from the CAD drawing and re-created the part on MillZilla in the shop. So far, so good.


Snipping a bit of fiberglass PCB material and chucking it in the mill vise - then setting it up with a #60 drill bit to drill holes where the PCB dimensions said they were. This photo is the bit of fiberglass, the RJ-11 connector and the mill with the #60 drill chucked into a big Jacobs chuck - somehow, it just looks strange . . .



Now hit the 'GO' button and stand back. This next photo below is after drilling all positions with the #60, then over to the drill press to drill out the mounting lug spots to the correct size.



And, the acid test - yes, the connector will fit into the footprint correctly and I can sleep soundly for the next 3 weeks waiting for the boards to arrive! Woo Hoo!

 

[mzvarner]

Thought I would give it a try with the ball bearing idea (hope you don't mind). Brass think it started 1 1/2.

 

[dave_r_1]

Time for dueling spinning tops of doom.

 

[FOMOGO]

Perhaps Robo-Tops ?

 

[Charles Spencer]

Well, not much to brag about, but I did my first single point threading project. It's a new elevation screw for my Garvin hand mill.

 

[Tony Wells]

Hey Mike, back a year or three ago, me, my wife and daughter my daughter were Geocachers and always had our walking sticks when we were doing woodsie caches. And at the time, we did travel a bit to hit the parks. We all have quite a few medallions on our sticks, each with a memory of the trip. It's a nice thing to do. The only complication I ever found was that some of the medallions are made to fit the standard metal version of the walking stick and won't readily fit the semi-random shape and size of the wooden sticks. Some of them hand bend (either flatten out a bit, or curl up), but I have a couple that are pretty stiff and are going to take some more than gentle persuasion to fit up. The little ears where the nails go tend to bend first, so care must be taken or they will break off. Also I found that the sticks they sell at the NP's can be pretty hard, and the little brass brads won't penetrate without predrilling. All in all, it added a bit of fun and a continuously improving souvenir for out travels. Maybe get back to that some day.

 

[TOOLMASTER]

made a stand for the bike clamp arm I did yesterday..

About 98% aluminum...nice an light

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/project-bike-repair-stand-picture-heavy.46782/#post-397364





the tube i used for the stand wasn't 1 1/2 sch 40...it was an oddball i had ..it is an 1/8" smaller but will be fine for this...finally found it a useful home for it 1 1/2 od tube .

but i can still take the head and stick it on my trailer ect. that has speed rail

 

[mattthemuppet2]

nice work, I'd like to make one of those one day. Working on a bike on the floor is no fun!