POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

[woodchucker]

I made a wrench out of wood for my Clausing hi / low knob. First, I *****ed about Chinese stuff when talking about those brake rotors, well, the knob on the Clausing turned out to be a nightmare too. Not that it had to be precision, but I found out that it wasn't symetrical either. Each lobe was different, so although I made an accurate wrench, it only worked when set one way, I had to modify it on my spindle sander until it worked clocked in every direction. That was quite a pain... I was using a strap wrench, but was increasingly frustrated by it slipping off. I am not sure how it gets so tight..

 

[Charles scozzari]

Made a couple of Starrett type snugs to comple a couple of old surface gages I got at auction. The smaller one is a Brown and Sharpe and the larger one a Gem. Now they can hold the Interapid DTI’s for surface plate work.
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Nice work.

I made a wrench out of wood for my Clausing hi / low knob. First, I *****ed about Chinese stuff when talking about those brake rotors, well, the knob on the Clausing turned out to be a nightmare too. Not that it had to be precision, but I found out that it wasn't symetrical either. Each lobe was different, so although I made an accurate wrench, it only worked when set one way, I had to modify it on my spindle sander until it worked clocked in every direction. That was quite a pain... I was using a strap wrench, but was increasingly frustrated by it slipping off. I am not sure how it gets so tight..
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Just like the wheel locks that use odd shaped lug nuts like the wrench you made. Very nice work on the wrench.

 

[jwmelvin]

I made a replacement blade-guide bearing block for my portaband (the original broke in two):

 

[silverhawk]

I finished my drafting utensil case after trying the laser cutter.





I need to polish those compasses. They aren't my nicer rOtring set, and this was a way to store and protect these ones.

 

[ChazzC]

I finished my drafting utensil case after trying the laser cutter.

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I need to polish those compasses. They aren't my nicer rOtring set, and this was a way to store and protect these ones.

Nice result! Two layers of Baltic plywood on both top & bottom, one cut one solid?

 

[rwdenney]

Problem: I don’t own a mill. Several months ago I scored a milling attachment for a South Bend 16” lathe, figuring I could do what it takes to make it fit my 14-1/2. It mounts in lieu of the compound, and the SB16 has a couple of threaded holes to a cross-slide adapter or to the cross slide itself. This one was modified to fit some other lathe and has a big hole in the middle of rotation that isn’t original. I thought I’d make an adapter to fit that hole and provide the round dovetail used by the 14-1/2 compound.

But I don’t want to mount it at that location. I want it closer to the back so that the cross slide range gives me access to everything in the milling attachment vise jaws. So I decided to machine a dovetail mount like the one on the compound, and the put it wherever it needed to be on the bottom of the milling attachment. I’ll do that with probably two grade 8 3/8-16 screws plus a couple of alignment pins.

This post is about machining the dovetail.

I’m a noob, so I made some rookie mistakes. The resulting workpiece that I picture is the second one. (The first one turned out fine except the dovetail is backwards—2.5 (nominal) minus 2 is one half, which means a quarter inch on each side. Not a half inch. Dumbass mistake.)

I measured up the dovetail on the bottom of the compound. Here’s the sketch. It’s upside down—the dovetail slopes in towards the top, so that the lock screws pull it down against the cross slide.

I had a 3” bar of 12L14, and I first faced it off. I’m using the fat side of a CNMG insert for facing.

And then I turned it down to 2.497”.

I’m using a CNMG insert for turning, running about 250 RPMs. The feed rate was .005 per revolution, and the depth of cut was .020. (The lathe wasn’t happy with .030, which tells me something’s not right. I still need to rewire the single-phase motor for 240VAC. The power level seems low. It’s not the bearings in the lathe power train, which run free and are in spec.)

After getting the correct diameter, I used a cut-off tool to undercut the narrow part of the dovetail. I made sure the dovetail was oriented so that the face I just cut to be against the bottom of the milling attachment. I wanted all reference surfaces machined in one setup.

I used a VNMG tool to cut the dovetail, with the compound at the 24.8 degrees of the part I was copying, sweeping across the corner and manually feeding the compound. I took .020 cuts by feeding in the cross slide. That worked pretty well. I also used it to clean up the flat surface.

Then I measured over an extra .050 and used a cutoff tool to part it off. I had to slow it down, running at 60 RPMs in the back gear. I manually feed the tool. Halfway through the insert broke and the shards buggered up the cut. Lots of chatter. I locked the carriage between two micrometer stops, and lined up the compound to be straight on so that if it walked it wouldn’t be a problem. Results were ugly but i was going to face off the part anyway.

I turned it around in the chuck and indicated it in as best I could. And it was good enough—that face of the dovetail is not a reference surface but I still bumped it to well within a thousandth of being parallel to the other face.

I then finished the facing down to the .949 target thickness. The dimension wasn’t critical but I was trying to hit it anyway.

My regular mic wouldn’t fit behind the part and stay square. But I had recently bought a cheapie import tubing wall thickness mic from Shars, and that was what I needed I fit in the space between the part and the chuck body.

After chamfering and deburring, I measured the part with my good older Fowler mics that I bought maybe 20 years ago when they were made in Japan. The diameter is a thou and an half over, which will mean a closer fit, the thickness is within a couple of tenths, and the dovetail dimension is within 3 thousandths.

At this stage of my learning, hitting dimensions reasonably well is a good outcome.

Next step is to install it on the bottom of the milling attachment at an appropriate spot. My worry is that this is too small a mount for that 75-pound milling attachment, but time will tell. I plan to use two or three 3/8-16 grade 8 screws (tight!) and a couple of dowel pins.

Rick “4-day weekend over” Denney

I was finally able to make progress on the milling attachment last weekend.

The first thing I did was take the thing apart, clean it, and really put some time into the reference surfaces. I checked for square on the mounting angle, filed off burrs, and then stoned the surfaces to restore flatness. The attachment is pretty beat up—getting it back to some semblance of usability took a lot of work. Looking good, however, was a bridge too far, and I focused on functionality. At least the base attachment is really square and flat for sitting on the cross slide.

I then drilled and counterbored three mounting holes in the part that is the subject of the post I quoted above. I drilled it for Grade 8 3/8” socket-head screws, but I’m not too happy about the small footprint of the dovetail on the angle bracket. I’ll have to see how that goes.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to determine where to put the dovetail adapter. I want the movable vise to clear the left side of the carriage, and also maximize the work envelope around the spindle center. That meant the attachment could not be centered on its circular angle scale they way South Bend intended, at least when adapting this SB16 milling attachment to my SB14-1/2.

After figuring out what I wanted and laying it out in Dykem, I mounted the angle attachment in the drill press. This took a couple of 2-4-6 blocks, a couple of 1-2-3 blocks, a right-angle plate, a bunch of C-clamps, considerable fiddling, and a good dose of colorful commentary. Then, I aligned the drill with my layout by turning the table around the column and around its center. More colorful commentary. It sure would be nice to own a mill.

I used a transfer punch to mark the holes from the dovetail adapter in the base of the milling attachment. Then I drilled and tapped mounting holes using a countersink as a center drill, a pilot drill, a tap-size drill, a (much better) countersink bit to chamfer the hole, a 3/8-16 tap, and a tap-follower in the drill chuck to align the tap wrench.

As you can see, I’m not the first to drill holes in this beast, and I had to avoid existing holes from prior users.

Here is the dovetail adapter mounted to the milling attachment angle base (these pics were made later after I had reassembled the milling attachment):

I confess considerable relief when I mounted the base on the cross slide in place of the compound and it was actually in a good spot.

Here it is fully assembled and installed: the overhang allows me to drop the work envelope over the edge of the saddle, and the vise is approximately centered on the travel of the cross slide. (I was testing inserts on a piece of 1045 and left that in the chuck while messing with the attachment. Pretend it’s a 3” fly cutter.) the first pic is at the far end of the cross slide travel:

Here it is at the near end of travel:

Here the vertical axis is all the way down:

And here it’s all the way up:

And here’s the completed attachment (back on the bench) with the shop-made hand crank for the vertical axis screw that I scored on eBay:

Of course, it can be rotated on the cross slide same as the compound for milling the ends of long shafts and bars that won’t fit through the lathe spindle, or for milling angled surfaces.

I have not tried it out yet, but will soon, or will at least after I’ve finished playing with my new welder. I believe this attachment is more than heavy enough to allow reasonable milling operations within its small envelope—it weighs every bit of 70 pounds. But I don’t think the compound dovetail is sufficient to rigidly lock it down to the cross slide. I will certainly avoid climb cuts with this, which would tend to lift the attachment. I’m also pondering how I might incorporate additional clamping when I make a new taper-attachment connecting bar to replace the original that was damaged when the lathe took its tumble. That’s the next project.

Rick “distracted by a new welder this weekend” Denney

 

[snoopdog]

 

[NCjeeper]

^^^
You about tapped out?

 

[snoopdog]

^^^
You about tapped out?

Just about, pretty mundane stuff, but easy peasy and almost no overhead.

 

[silverhawk]

Nice result! Two layers of Baltic plywood on both top & bottom, one cut one solid?

Yes. I did two bottom cut layers for clearance, and one on the top, then just a solid panel. Cheapest stuff I could find. It was after that I thought it would work and just went ahead and used that.

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