- Joined
- Oct 31, 2014
- Messages
- 444
Maybe this should be posted as a POTD since it's only partly done - but it's my story and I'm sticking to it:
Our local Craigslist had a surface grinder listed - Talked to the guy and went to take a gander and well, here we are. An old Delta surface grinder - small enough to fit into my shop but missing a couple of parts and needing a general cleanup and re-wiring. Price was right so I bit. Fork-lifted it into the pickup with the seller's forklift (one of those would certainly be handy around the house, eh?) and brought it home. Craned it off the pickup and built a skid so it could roll around on the pallet jack. Almost everything in the shop is on wheels because there's no space otherwise for tools and work simultaneously.
Before getting too deep into it, problem #1 was the Z-Axis adjusting screw was long gone. We knew that from the get-go (it was a price negotiating point) so something temporary (for the next 20 or so years) was the first order of business. Without that screw, loosening the column lock could crash the grinding mechanism into the chuck and probably ruin a potentially useful tool - bad idea.
I thought about it for a while, went to the web and priced things like 3/4" Acme all-thread (not too bad) and Acme nuts (yikes!), then settled on making something out of locally available and cheap parts. Went to the farm store and got a 2' length of 3/4" all-thread (3/4"-10 tpi - 1 turn = 1/10" - how convenient is that?) and several hex nuts.
Rummaged around the junk bin and found a 3" length of round aluminum stock left over from something long forgotten - Cleaned it up on the lathe and bored through it at 3/4" to clear the 3/4" all-thread.
Then turned down a shoulder to fit into the hole in the casting on the grinder
Now for the fun part - I planned to use one of the steel nuts for the threads in the bushing I just made, so figuring out the dimensions for a hexagonal pocket was the next step. After a bit of pencil gnawing and calculating, a set of construction points was determined - so off to the mill we go!
First things first, I only made one bushing so after programming the mill I did a test cut of the pocket in a piece of scrap lumber
And amazed myself when it fit!
So next I loaded in my home-made round stock fixture (an old 3-jaw lathe chuck on a steel plate) and got ready to cut the actual part (first doing an 'air cut' to be sure things were approximately where they should be):
Looked good, so away we go!
And, after just a little adjusting, head-scratching and swearing - Voila! The nut, she fits!
So, a little more fitting and adjusting and now the grinder has a coarse Z-Axis screw and I had a nice time playing with tools - it's a Win-Win!
The hex-pocketed surface grinder bushing:
Our local Craigslist had a surface grinder listed - Talked to the guy and went to take a gander and well, here we are. An old Delta surface grinder - small enough to fit into my shop but missing a couple of parts and needing a general cleanup and re-wiring. Price was right so I bit. Fork-lifted it into the pickup with the seller's forklift (one of those would certainly be handy around the house, eh?) and brought it home. Craned it off the pickup and built a skid so it could roll around on the pallet jack. Almost everything in the shop is on wheels because there's no space otherwise for tools and work simultaneously.
Before getting too deep into it, problem #1 was the Z-Axis adjusting screw was long gone. We knew that from the get-go (it was a price negotiating point) so something temporary (for the next 20 or so years) was the first order of business. Without that screw, loosening the column lock could crash the grinding mechanism into the chuck and probably ruin a potentially useful tool - bad idea.
I thought about it for a while, went to the web and priced things like 3/4" Acme all-thread (not too bad) and Acme nuts (yikes!), then settled on making something out of locally available and cheap parts. Went to the farm store and got a 2' length of 3/4" all-thread (3/4"-10 tpi - 1 turn = 1/10" - how convenient is that?) and several hex nuts.
Rummaged around the junk bin and found a 3" length of round aluminum stock left over from something long forgotten - Cleaned it up on the lathe and bored through it at 3/4" to clear the 3/4" all-thread.
Then turned down a shoulder to fit into the hole in the casting on the grinder
Now for the fun part - I planned to use one of the steel nuts for the threads in the bushing I just made, so figuring out the dimensions for a hexagonal pocket was the next step. After a bit of pencil gnawing and calculating, a set of construction points was determined - so off to the mill we go!
First things first, I only made one bushing so after programming the mill I did a test cut of the pocket in a piece of scrap lumber
And amazed myself when it fit!
So next I loaded in my home-made round stock fixture (an old 3-jaw lathe chuck on a steel plate) and got ready to cut the actual part (first doing an 'air cut' to be sure things were approximately where they should be):
Looked good, so away we go!
And, after just a little adjusting, head-scratching and swearing - Voila! The nut, she fits!
So, a little more fitting and adjusting and now the grinder has a coarse Z-Axis screw and I had a nice time playing with tools - it's a Win-Win!
The hex-pocketed surface grinder bushing:
JimDawson can set you up with a forklift. Thay just follow him home. 
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)