2016 POTD Thread Archive

[mmcmdl]

Had to make a pin setting gage at work last night with four .250 slots equally spaced at 11.000 . Our shop mill ( Clausing Kondia ) has a 48" table with a non-working x axis readout and x axis power feed . Wouldn't you know it , couldn't get the 33" travel I needed . So , I put 2 tooling holes in the 67.5" long gage and had to pick them up and work backwards , then forwards and also compensate for the backlash . After cutting these slots , the boss realized we had a bigger mill in our lower shop with a working DRO that I could use to check the true position of the slots . I had 3 perfectly spaced slots at 11.005 instead of the 11.000 needed . Leadscrew error ! Tonight I will make the 4 blocks over , then take and re-machine the slots on the bigger mill . After the results , the big man said he will allocate the $$$ and we will now be getting a new workable DRO for our mill finally . Hot darn .

 

[HBilly1022]

I finished the mounting plate for my new QCTP.


Here it is with the old one on the left, the plate that came with the QCTP in the middle and the new one on the right.


and mounted in the compound.


the QCTP mounted on the compound and all looks good


until I check the tool height. With the adjuster set as low as possible it is still too high.


I took 0.065" off the bottom of the tool holder and all was good again. Then I welded a cap on a steel pipe and concreted it into the ground for basketball hoop for the grandsons. One of them helped by painting the pole, helping dig the hole and mixing the concrete.

 

[JimDawson]

I had to rework a few plastic parts I made for a customer. What happened is that I made them on the router out of a 48x96x1 sheet of UHMW. There were stresses built up in the plastic and when I machined the top features, the plastic tried to curl up across the width and I lost the vacuum then things really went to he!! before I caught it and screwed the parts down to the table. The edges were messed up so I had to take a profile cut on the outside to clean it up.


So how to hang onto a part and touch all of the outside edges? The good news is the the parts have six 1/4 inch screw holes in them. So I grabbed three 3/4 inch aluminum drops off of the shelf, drilled and countersunk them and bolted them down to the table. Then took a cleanup pass to provide a flat work surface.


Then drilled & tapped a 1/4-20 hole pattern to match the part hole pattern, I used flat head philips screws so that the countersink taper would tend to center the part on the holes. Easy to install and remove with my little Botch 1/4 drive impact. The parts finish at about 0.020 undersize, but this is a non-critical dimension so no problem. I'm not about to buy another $1000 sheet of plastic just for this little issue.

 

[intjonmiller]

The only thing to come out of my shop today was frustration and a deeper realization of just how much I have to learn. Nothing like spending an hour+ to prep a tool only to snap it after 10 minutes of use.

I'll try again tomorrow. If that doesn't work maybe I'll go back to just woodworking. But I doubt it.

 

[JimDawson]

Maybe tomorrow will be better!

 

[savarin]

started cleaning mine, arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[dave_r_1]

The only thing to come out of my shop today was frustration and a deeper realization of just how much I have to learn. Nothing like spending an hour+ to prep a tool only to snap it after 10 minutes of use.

I'll try again tomorrow. If that doesn't work maybe I'll go back to just woodworking. But I doubt it.

Someone, somewhere, had a tool snap on them resulting in a significant portion of it winding up inside them. Today, that person was not you.

Tomorrow, who knows?

 

[Billh50]

savarin,
don't get too much into cleaning. It will only look like it does now in a short time. trust me....I know from experience.

 

[Charles Spencer]

started cleaning mine, arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I like cleaning my little shop. Yesterday I took a couple of hours for cleaning and maintenance. The day before I had gone to Lowes and looked for metal for the first time. The prices weren't bad so I bought a few bars. Then some aluminum I had ordered came in. I put that away and noticed that a couple of my chip trays (cookie sheets) were getting kind of full so I emptied them. I had recently put an old Atlas drill press together and that had reminded to lube the one in my shop. So then I cleaned both my lathes and oiled them thoroughly. I had done the same to my mill about a week or so ago. And of course I swept up and put everything away.

Today is supposed to be a beautiful day here. After I run a couple of errands I will walk into my nice clean shop, leave the door open, and make things while listening to the afternoon baseball game on the radio. Fun!

 

[intjonmiller]

Someone, somewhere, had a tool snap on them resulting in a significant portion of it winding up inside them. Today, that person was not you.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Fair enough. Though my good habits of safety gear and standing out of the path of a tool's arc as much as possible certainly help reduce the odds of that.

I have dozens of parting tools which are all 0.100" too tall for my tool post. I currently have a budget of whatever is in my loose change jar for a qctp or new parting tools (obviously I will go with the former) so I figured out how to mount my t-style T15 tool steel cutoff tools upside-down in my screwless vise, level and protruding from the top of the vise without owning a set of parallels, and I ground down the bottom in the surface grinder. Do you know how long it takes to grind 0.100" of T15 CPM on a surface grinder? Do you know how many other operations I would have preferred to be doing? But I was determined to make it work with what I have. I only got halfway through the 4" aluminum.

I had thought my skills were sufficient to make a 4" aluminum cylinder for use as a sacrificial glue chuck. Apparently I'm not even there yet. I'll finish with the hacksaw today so at least I can keep going on this part. Wishing I hadn't loaned out my sawzall...