- Joined
- Apr 8, 2013
- Messages
- 2,021
A friend was cleaning out an area in his shop where an old machinist used to reside before the work was outsourced. He called me and said "help yourself". I got a 6 inch Bridgeport brand vice, a cupla dozen R8 colletts, various die holders, and some shell mills. I also scored over a hundred pounds of drill bits and reamers up to 2 inch. It was all kinda grody looking but it's cleaning up nice. There were two nice 3 inch shell mills (straight and 45degrees) with arbors and a 2 inch that had no arbor that fit it. I did have an extra arbor that was too big to fit that last cutter so I decided to machine it down to fit. I pressed out the 2 locating pins then attempted to machine the hardened core and threaded retaining piece down with a 60 degree carbide insert. Despite taking light cuts (a file slid right off) the first insert literally disintegrated on my second pass with associated flames and fireworks. I had nothing to lose so I broke out my trusty CNMG tank buster. I was able to take 20 thou passes and got a nice fit on the bore of the cutter. The outer retaining piece was hardened also but I got it turned down ok. The inner shank was too long but I was afraid to shorten the hardened threads and possibly ruin the part so I made a mild steel spacer. It's done now and runs nice and true. My first hard turning and I'm a happy camper.
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