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- Thread starter Blackhawk
- Start date
I was wondering if using the mill plates that are offered by CNC in conjunction with Ray-Vins documentatation would help/speedup the process of locating/drilling the holes? I am a beginer and the documentation seems pretty thorogh and easy to follow, but I was thinking you could just clamp the raw forge into the mill plates and drill all the holes, then remove them and do the surface milling (or do the surface milling and then clamp on the plates and do the drilling). What are your thoughts?
I though I posted a reply this morning... strange... lol
I would think, but having never seen the plates, I'm not sure, but I suspect that you will have to do some milling first to remove the rough edges and outer surfaces on the forging. Then drill.. I would also think that the drill guides would be an easy way to do it if you don't have a decent DRO mill to follow the steps.
I would suspect that you need to have some trued surfaces to index the part accurately in the jig, but again, I've never seen one in person and I don't wanna spend the $$$ for one, so I'm gonna just do it with the DRO and follow very carefully, measure and index twice, spot a small spot to ensure it's right, then drill away baby!
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2013
- Messages
- 18
Usually I'm a wood guy although I have access to vertical mills and was looking for an excuse to make something out of metal.
I loved my last AR15 (as a law abiding citizen with a banned-by-name lower I left it in an out-of-state storage facility when I immigrated to California and it was stolen before I could collect the upper and acquire an off-list lower), decided that recent legislative threats suggested acquiring a replacement soon, and availability issues were enough of an excuse for me to start some 0% projects.
1.5" end-mill .025" at a time with a final .010" conventional pass.
The first came out nicely, the rest did too.
On the first one I visually centered the clamping spot on one side of the forge line (oops) which isn't critical.
Operating under the theory that it'd be easier to mount each receiver on an angle plate so I wouldn't have to worry about stopping drilling/reaming before running into something solid I planned on the Ray Brandes (ray-vin.com) approach and passed on the optional clamping flats across the trigger guard front and rear that igluit4u cut.
After drilling the driver side holes in one I realized using the mill vise and a clamping pad beneath the receiver is a better idea. Drilling and reaming forces on the angle plate are orthogonal to the clamp jaws. I didn't make the rear clamp "gorilla tight" on my first one and got movement giving me 1-2 thousandths of ovality reaming my take down pin and safety holes (I first drilled 1/64" under-sized) which are still probably functional but made me feel bad. I flipped the clamp around so its pad straddled the forge line for a more secure attachment, really tightened it, and the trigger + hammer pin holes came out perfect.
I remain curious why drilling was OK with more force on the quill but reaming wasn't (Like I said - usually a wood guy).
With the forging sitting the mill vise sitting atop the appropriate pad being paranoid and setting the depth stop a dozen more times (there are seven through holes - take-down pin, rear trigger guard, safety, trigger, hammer, magazine release, and front pivot. The 3 fire control and pivot/take-down holes get drilled and reamed) shouldn't take me appreciably longer than indicating the side parallel to the ways on the angle plate.
I loved my last AR15 (as a law abiding citizen with a banned-by-name lower I left it in an out-of-state storage facility when I immigrated to California and it was stolen before I could collect the upper and acquire an off-list lower), decided that recent legislative threats suggested acquiring a replacement soon, and availability issues were enough of an excuse for me to start some 0% projects.
1.5" end-mill .025" at a time with a final .010" conventional pass.
The first came out nicely, the rest did too.
On the first one I visually centered the clamping spot on one side of the forge line (oops) which isn't critical.
Operating under the theory that it'd be easier to mount each receiver on an angle plate so I wouldn't have to worry about stopping drilling/reaming before running into something solid I planned on the Ray Brandes (ray-vin.com) approach and passed on the optional clamping flats across the trigger guard front and rear that igluit4u cut.
After drilling the driver side holes in one I realized using the mill vise and a clamping pad beneath the receiver is a better idea. Drilling and reaming forces on the angle plate are orthogonal to the clamp jaws. I didn't make the rear clamp "gorilla tight" on my first one and got movement giving me 1-2 thousandths of ovality reaming my take down pin and safety holes (I first drilled 1/64" under-sized) which are still probably functional but made me feel bad. I flipped the clamp around so its pad straddled the forge line for a more secure attachment, really tightened it, and the trigger + hammer pin holes came out perfect.
I remain curious why drilling was OK with more force on the quill but reaming wasn't (Like I said - usually a wood guy).
With the forging sitting the mill vise sitting atop the appropriate pad being paranoid and setting the depth stop a dozen more times (there are seven through holes - take-down pin, rear trigger guard, safety, trigger, hammer, magazine release, and front pivot. The 3 fire control and pivot/take-down holes get drilled and reamed) shouldn't take me appreciably longer than indicating the side parallel to the ways on the angle plate.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2013
- Messages
- 18
The one I looked at on-line indexed fore and aft via a pair of 1/4" drill bits shank first through the front pivot and rear take-down pin holes so you'd still need to do all the work-holding and positioning to correctly locate at least one of those. The same setup is used for the second pin and fire control group, and since the setup was most of the work the any gain would not significantly impact the time and effort you put into the project.
From the ar15plus.com catalog
https://www.vbd.com//noc/shop/products_detail.asp?CategoryID=104&ProductID=263
I'd speculate that the easiest way to get perfect alignment with a drill bit using one of those jigs would be with one hand on the jig and the other on the quill handle, hitting the quill lock once you engage the desired hole, clamping everything down, then drilling normally.
Navigating via mill hand wheels by coordinate is easier than that.
While DROs are the least work, just using the hand wheel scales works as long as you remember to approach from the same direction (where you were headed edge finding the butt end and deck surfaces) and sanity check with 8" calipers or a ruler to catch and correct .200" of error for each revolution you forgot ...
Nice work Drew! Lookin good! That is why I opted to use the vise, rather than the angle block. I may still for the final ops, but I prefer the vise to the clamp against the plate method.
I did my next ops on each side today, came out well using a side plate, a set of parallels and the vise...
The drivers side setup first
Holes all drilled (yep, right through the plate too.. lol) Now for some millin..
Milling completed
The passenger side setup...
A little drillin and millin and viola!
I did my next ops on each side today, came out well using a side plate, a set of parallels and the vise...
The drivers side setup first
Holes all drilled (yep, right through the plate too.. lol) Now for some millin..
Milling completed
The passenger side setup...
A little drillin and millin and viola!
