2020 POTD Thread Archive

[Tim9]

fabulous work Tim, looks really good. By all accounts grafting a SB10 reverse tumbler lever onto an SB9 workshop is a very popular mod, so it's cool to see you taking a different approach.

My wide 9 has a 10L lever on it as stock, one of the oddities about that model, not that I'm complaining

Matt.... I have been looking for the parts to do the conversion. Maybe it’s just me, but a few years back it seems like I was able to buy used parts from lathes and mills so much cheaper than the prices I now see on EBay. I have extra tailstock housings, milling table off of an Atlas mill....and all kinds of other stuff like that, that I had purchased back in the day from EBay and the prices weren’t too high. Now it’s crazy in my opinion.
I’ve been looking at EBay for a while but the parts for the conversion seem like they were going for over 200.00 delivered. Anyway, it came out pretty good. Time will tell. But I’m happy.
Thanks for the compliment. Always helps the confidence factor.
———-
by the way.... lots of videos and instructions on plating brass. Nickel is easy on top of brass.

 

[GoceKU]

Well today i spent most of the morning and later the afternoon making the forms for concrete to make the 2 other sides of the inspection pit. A lot of work and the forms are not light. I stopped just before i had to get them straight and reinforce them. Tomorrow i'll have a lot of work in from of me.

 

[GoceKU]

Today i continued working on the inspection pit, i strengthened and reinforced the concrete forms. I had to cut down all the cross braces, then i had to nail in pecise in the fresh concrete to hold the cross braces. Then i roll back my sleeves and with some help i mixed up concrete and fill it, all the sand and almost all the ciment got used, so for the third time i'll have to buy some more for the floor. I'll leave the forms couple of days and then we will see how good i did.

 

[extropic]

The part about having to buy sand three times made me smile.
I never seem to buy enough the first time either. Even when it's bags of Ready-Mix.
I think they put eronious numbers on the bag, just to mess me up.

 

[BGHansen]

POTD was making a chip shield for my Tormach mill. I made the enclosure and had a weak point for containing coolant. There are two doors that slide together with a rubber seal which works pretty well. The doors are in frames that can swing open, there's a hole about 1/4" x 1/4" at the bottom that will leak when the coolant starts flying, especially when peck drilling and the drill bit starts to accumulate chips.

I repurposed some 1/16" thick polycarbonate sheeting from an old deer blind. Base is a couple of pieces of aluminum bar stock on hand. The polycarbonate is sandwiched between the aluminum. I used a couple of rare-earth magnets to secure it to the back of the vise.

I didn't take any photos of it in use, but it did solve the coolant leak problem.

Thanks for looking,

Bruce


Spotting


Drilling clearance holes for #10 screws


3/8" holes for the magnets


Spotting the second bar


Tap drill holes


Power tapping on the Bridgeport


Cut the polycarbonate sheet on the table saw. Best to use a zero-clearance blade insert to keep from shattering the plastic. Also works great when cross-cutting veneered plywood to prevent tear-out.


Overkill for the project, but used some 10-24 Heimann transfer screws in one piece of the bar stock for transferring the holes to the polycarb sheeting. It drills okay, but planned on punching the holes instead.



Stacked the two aluminum bars together with the shield in between. Held in place by hand and mashed them together with a Rockwell vise. Nice thing about this vise is it's operated by a foot pedal so your hands are free.



Hard to see in the clear plastic, but the Heimann transfer screws left an impression in the plastic at the center of the hole. Could also have clamped the aluminum/plastic and hit it with a transfer punch. Made the holes with a Roper Whitney No. 5 punch.



Epoxied in a couple of magnets for sticking to the vise. Works great to containing the spray when using flood coolant. Especially when chips start to accumulate on drill bits.

 

[BGHansen]

Another POTD making a "Sharpie Rejuvenator". I can't take credit for the idea, remember seeing the post here from a much "sharpier" guy than me.

Arbor is some Delrin rod stock on hand. Holder for the Sharpie was a piece of EMT conduit. Plugged the hole at the bottom of the tubing with a piece of Delrin.

It works really well though the spin time depends on the marker. As you can see from the photo below, a 30 second spin cycle at 800 RPM blew the ink out of the Sharpie. About 5-10 seconds worked best. No more shaking the markers trying to get them to write.

Thanks for looking!

Bruce


Chucked up a Delrin round. Faced, center drilled, tap drilled and power tapped a 10-24 hole.





Threw the Delrin in a 5-C collet and square block to machine a round into the end where the EMT attaches. A 7/8" end mill was close enough to the OD of the EMT. You may notice the width of my square collet block written on the block. It's a convenience thing so I don't have to measure the block width and divide by 2 every time it's used. The mill's DRO is zero'd on the fixed jaw, so easy peasy to get on the center line.


Drilled a clearance hole through for a mounting screw and a relief on one side for the head of the 10-24 mounting screw



Made a plug for the bottom from a Delrin round. Turned a shoulder and parted. I know how thoroughly you guys look at the background of photos. I think the light threading was to check a QCGB out for someone on this forum with a G0709 lathe.



Pressed the bottom plug in the EMT, then spotted, tap drilled and power tapped on the Bridgeport.





Drop a Sharpie in the end of the tube and spin away. Yes, it's not balanced and vibrates some, but my G0709 weighs around 1400 lbs. so no walking across the floor.



Before and afters of a few markers. 5-10 seconds at 500-800 RPM's works well. 30 seconds, not so much unless your intent is to do some painting.

 

[BGHansen]

POTD was adding magnets to the bottom of a couple of nut drivers. I'm a quality engineer at the GM Lansing Delta Township auto plant in Lansing, MI. My primary troubleshooting involves the Door assembly line. We make heavy use of T15 Torx-drive, 7 mm and 10 mm fasteners in the doors. Most of my work is done in our engineering garage; our technician doesn't mind the engineers borrowing his tools, but. . . I bought a no-name set of nut drivers off eBay for the 7/10 mm sizes and much to my chagrin realized they didn't have center magnets for holding the fasteners. I borrow enough of our tech's tools, don't need to borrow his "magnet on a stick" to retrieve stuff out of the bottom of the doors too.

So, back to eBay for some small rare-earth magnets. Seems like the magnets are usually in a brass sleeve for pressing into nut drivers. Gotta be to protect the surface of the magnet from compression(?). Started by turning some brass down for a bushing. Then center drilled and drilled a hole for the magnet/brass bushing and Loctited in place.

Thanks for looking,

Bruce


Nut drivers and magnets off eBay



Faced, turned to diameter and drilled out the brass bushing for the magnet. I stacked two magnets in the bushing, used them to set the depth for parting (little short of the magnet height).





Center drilled and clearance hole drilled the nut drivers for the magnet/brass bushing





Bushing/magnet ready for inserting into the nut driver. Used some red Loctite and a chunk of CRS for an arbor. Lightly tapped in place with a small ball-peen hammer I made when I was 10 or 11.

 

[hman]

The brass is actually functional! Recall that lines of force loop around from one pole to the other. If the magnet were closely surrounded by the steel fo the nut driver, the lines of force from the buried pole would "short circuit" to the outer pole, reducing the magnetic field past the end of the magnet. By separating the periphery of the magnet with the equivalent of an electrical insulator, the lines of force from the back of the magnet get "conducted" to the area outside the front face. When they loop back to that face, they must do it "in the air" above the brass sleeve. These loops are right where the head of the fastener will be, so they help attract it.

Not sure if the above was extremely clear, but it's the best I can think of without drawing a lot of diagrams. Hope it helps.

 

[Tim9]

Another POTD making a "Sharpie Rejuvenator". I can't take credit for the idea, remember seeing the post here from a much "sharpier" guy than me.

Arbor is some Delrin rod stock on hand. Holder for the Sharpie was a piece of EMT conduit. Plugged the hole at the bottom of the tubing with a piece of Delrin.

It works really well though the spin time depends on the marker. As you can see from the photo below, a 30 second spin cycle at 800 RPM blew the ink out of the Sharpie. About 5-10 seconds worked best. No more shaking the markers trying to get them to write.

Thanks for looking!

Bruce


Chucked up a Delrin round. Faced, center drilled, tap drilled and power tapped a 10-24 hole.
View attachment 342948
View attachment 342949
View attachment 342950
View attachment 342951

Threw the Delrin in a 5-C collet and square block to machine a round into the end where the EMT attaches. A 7/8" end mill was close enough to the OD of the EMT. You may notice the width of my square collet block written on the block. It's a convenience thing so I don't have to measure the block width and divide by 2 every time it's used. The mill's DRO is zero'd on the fixed jaw, so easy peasy to get on the center line.
View attachment 342952

Drilled a clearance hole through for a mounting screw and a relief on one side for the head of the 10-24 mounting screw
View attachment 342953
View attachment 342954

Made a plug for the bottom from a Delrin round. Turned a shoulder and parted. I know how thoroughly you guys look at the background of photos. I think the light threading was to check a QCGB out for someone on this forum with a G0709 lathe.
View attachment 342955
View attachment 342956

Pressed the bottom plug in the EMT, then spotted, tap drilled and power tapped on the Bridgeport.
View attachment 342957
View attachment 342958
View attachment 342959
View attachment 342960

Drop a Sharpie in the end of the tube and spin away. Yes, it's not balanced and vibrates some, but my G0709 weighs around 1400 lbs. so no walking across the floor.
View attachment 342961


Before and afters of a few markers. 5-10 seconds at 500-800 RPM's works well. 30 seconds, not so much unless your intent is to do some painting.
View attachment 342962
View attachment 342963

Okay....since we are discussing sharpies I want to pose a question to the forum’s readers. I know that years ago I read somewhere that sharpies could be rejuvenated with some chemical. Alcohol....acetone.... MEK ??...not quite sure.
Does anyone know what chemical rejuvenates sharpies ??

======
And Bruce....that’s a great post and exactly one of those projects that’s been on my mind. I’ve been giving some thought of some sort of simple magnetic pick up tools. Right on time for me. In fact, I even purchased a cheap Northern Tool magnetic pickup just yesterday.
it’s just a rare earth magnet with a bendable steel or zinc alloy wire. Anyway I’m going to roughly copy that design Bruce because I never have enough magnetic pickup tools. Constantly dropping stuff behind or under something in my cramped shop.
And the brass bushing is perfect... Like Hman says....it keeps the magnet strong since it insulates the magnetic pull.

 

[BGHansen]

Okay....since we are discussing sharpies I want to pose a question to the forum’s readers. I know that years ago I read somewhere that sharpies could be rejuvenated with some chemical. Alcohol....acetone.... MEK ??...not quite sure.
Does anyone know what chemical rejuvenates sharpies ??

======
And Bruce....that’s a great post and exactly one of those projects that’s been on my mind. I’ve been giving some thought of some sort of simple magnetic pick up tools. Right on time for me. In fact, I even purchased a cheap Northern Tool magnetic pickup just yesterday.
it’s just a rare earth magnet with a bendable steel or zinc alloy wire. Anyway I’m going to roughly copy that design Bruce because I never have enough magnetic pickup tools. Constantly dropping stuff behind or under something in my cramped shop.
And the brass bushing is perfect... Like Hman says....it keeps the magnet strong since it insulates the magnetic pull.

Found the original post from "darkzero". Much nicer looking than my rendition.

Bruce

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