R8 & 3/4” Shank Tooling Holder

[erikmannie]

I was too tired from my work week to even touch this project yesterday. Today (Sunday) I drilled the 3/4” and 1-1/4” holes in the last shelf.

I also did a quickie (flap disk) knocking down the high points (which were the high parts of 3 bolt heads) on the back side of the shelf.

Now I am going to make the last 3 posts. These are made from 1-1/4” muffler tubing. So I spent about 5 hours of my day on the knee mill, and my evening will be on the engine lathe.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

That will be the collet/ tool rack against which all will be judged when you're done!

 

[erikmannie]

Here I have finished the half of the tubing that is in the spindle. I am using a medium finishing carbide insert in a LH tool heading away from the chuck.

The tube is deflecting in the middle, but 2 spring passes take care of that. This cut is a radial .004”. My RPM is 900 and my feed is .004”/rev.

 

[erikmannie]

Tube #2 was barely good enough. The deflection with that setup above did allow me to remove the rust, but the OD varies by up to .010”.

Lathe filing and abrasives saved the day: 60 and 80 grit Emery cloth, green and tan Scotch-Brite pads, and finally just a lint free towel.

 

[erikmannie]

For the last 2 tubes, I am going for a deflection-free setup. Instead of doing the tube in two halves, I will probably have to do 4 sections.

All things considered, that will be better because the deflection is bad practice and a machinist shouldn’t spend that much time sanding!

 

[Aukai]

Follow rest?

 

[erikmannie]

Fallow rest?

I do have a follow rest right here. There is no reason not to have used it.

 

[tq60]

If you want to make it interesting and to appear weldless for shelves and to allow for teardown, just in case you decide to change layout of a shelf, or add one later...

Coaxial legs.

Center of leg is your existing everything.

Now get a tube that just fits over that and cut to the distance between shelves.

How to holding all together?

Countersink the top and bottom plates.

Make a plug that looks like a flat head screw with some length to allow a deep but not through hole to be drilled and tapped so a chunk of all thread can be used between the.

The bottom ones can be taller to form feet and allow you to get torque to secure it.

Top ones just flat with surface.

No welds anywhere,

Tear down easy.

Can change shelf position by changing tubing length.

Can add shelves by changing inner tube and all thread.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[mattthemuppet2]

that is a clever idea!

A tip on managing deflection (other than using a follow rest ) - step rough to 5 or 10 thou shy of your final dimension using the CCMT insert you have in one of your pics, then do one or two full length clean up passes with a CCGT insert. Way way lower cutting force = less deflection and a beautiful finish.

 

[erikmannie]

I have been too tired from my day job to do any work on this project for over a week. Today I got the day off with permission.

I spent about 7 hours redoing many of the holes. The 3/4” inch holes were not big enough to allow a 3/4” shank to fit in there comfortably (or at all). I used a 7/8” square end mill to make them larger, but then the bore had a terrible finish.

I used medium and large boring heads (see photos) to bore all of the holes in all 3 plates that had a poor finish. About 6 holes were not complete with regard to passing all the way through the steel frame, so that needed fixing. The boring made a *huge* improvement in the surface finish of the holes.

I also bored three 1-1/4” holes to 1-1/2” because I have some 1-1/2” shank tooling.

After all of this, I had to refinish the tops and bottoms with an orbital sander. I used a lot of 400 grit. I also sanded the sides and put a chamfer on the top side. I am such a huge “abrasives cheater”. One day I will get it done with a fly cutter.