- Joined
- Jan 22, 2017
- Messages
- 90
Dear All,
I decided to get into hobby machining a couple of years ago. I started off with a small refurbished British lathe. Of course, I soon decided that I needed a mill and I started looking through eBay for an affordable mill close to my home.
Eventually a lovely little BCA jig borer popped up and I smuggled it into my workshop when my wife was out. Of course, I soon found that using the little machine for anything like heavy milling was a serious abuse of the poor thing, so *another* covert operation had to be organized to get an old Bridgeport into the workshop.
So far, so good. I've been learning by doing, reading on here, watching YouTube. I've made a couple of toolposts for my lathe, some T nuts, a lot of chips. But, I've now got this little jig borer sitting in a corner of the workshop and I don't really know how to use it at all. I understand that it's good for precision work and that, these days, it's largely been superseded in industry by CNC and electronic control systems on mills. But, what I cannot find are any helpful tutorials on how to use it properly. There's plenty of material on milling and on running a lathe, of course, but nothing really on "projects for your jig-borer".
Is anyone able to offer me advice? Are there any resources I can learn from? Perhaps old text books.
I want to use the beastie, it would be a shame to simply let it rust away, but I don't want to abuse it. In short, I've bought something that I don't really understand and I've decided that it's better to confess and learn than to continue in my ignorance.
Kind wishes,
Nick
I decided to get into hobby machining a couple of years ago. I started off with a small refurbished British lathe. Of course, I soon decided that I needed a mill and I started looking through eBay for an affordable mill close to my home.
Eventually a lovely little BCA jig borer popped up and I smuggled it into my workshop when my wife was out. Of course, I soon found that using the little machine for anything like heavy milling was a serious abuse of the poor thing, so *another* covert operation had to be organized to get an old Bridgeport into the workshop.
So far, so good. I've been learning by doing, reading on here, watching YouTube. I've made a couple of toolposts for my lathe, some T nuts, a lot of chips. But, I've now got this little jig borer sitting in a corner of the workshop and I don't really know how to use it at all. I understand that it's good for precision work and that, these days, it's largely been superseded in industry by CNC and electronic control systems on mills. But, what I cannot find are any helpful tutorials on how to use it properly. There's plenty of material on milling and on running a lathe, of course, but nothing really on "projects for your jig-borer".
Is anyone able to offer me advice? Are there any resources I can learn from? Perhaps old text books.
I want to use the beastie, it would be a shame to simply let it rust away, but I don't want to abuse it. In short, I've bought something that I don't really understand and I've decided that it's better to confess and learn than to continue in my ignorance.
Kind wishes,
Nick
