# Paying Gig Simple Pins



## Doug Gray (May 23, 2021)

This weekend in my humble basement shop I made up a wack of simple pins. These are what I would call structural pins,they get welded to C-channel. The dimensions in the drawing are more "guidelines" or "suggestions", nothing precision required. More an exercise in persistence and efficiency rather than precision.


cut to length
face one end (so it sits nice for welding)
heavy chamfer on other end
cross drill
chamfer both sides of cross drilled hole
Second photo shows a quick tool I made up for locating the hole when chamfering the second side. The shank in turned to the same diameter as the chamfering tool to allow for quick change out. Thank god for keyless chucks and quick change toolposts.
Not exciting but it got me off the couch and I made some pocket money.


----------



## AmericanMachinist (May 31, 2021)

Nice!  

I may not be thinking the whole order of operations through, but did you swap in the locating tool after drilling and first chamfering each part?  

I wonder if a fixture with a pin or bar standing vertically, clamped to the table so as to hold the hole centered on the spindle axis, and do all 2nd chamfers at once, would be a worthwhile consideration?


----------



## strantor (May 31, 2021)

They look like weld-on pins for 3pt hitch tractor implements.


----------



## Eddyde (May 31, 2021)

Paid work is always nice!



AmericanMachinist said:


> I wonder if a fixture with a pin or bar standing vertically, clamped to the table so as to hold the hole centered on the spindle axis, and do all 2nd chamfers at once, would be a worthwhile consideration?


That would certainly speed up the operation. 
Another way, how I usually do two sided work on a round bar; chuck it in a 5 collet, spindexer. A collet-block could also work.
A drill bit mounted countersink would be a further speed improvement, but probably not worth purchasing for such a short run.


----------



## Brento (May 31, 2021)

If the hole isnt crazy accurate what you could do to speed things up is make a drilling attachment to your lathe toolpost and turn it into 4th axis.

edit: still nice easy work for paid work. Wish i could get a few of those.


----------



## Doug Gray (May 31, 2021)

Thanks for the replies guys. Looking back now, yes a separate setup to do _*all*_ chamfering makes good sense. This would be speedy and allow for a consistent chamfer depth. There is a possibility I may get quite a few of these.


----------

