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

[macardoso]

You'll love a DRO on the lathe for accurate positioning along the Z-axis. Cutting to a shoulder depth, groove position, etc. is so much nicer. I have a 2" indicator on my Clausing with a magnetic base. It works, but punching in the number is more convenient.

One thing I haven't done on mine yet is a suggestion from I believe @macardoso. Most of the DRO's have something like 200 datums on them. He plugged in offsets for his lathe tools for the diameter/radius. Nice feature as you should be able to swap tools, plug the new tool number in the DRO and your radius/diameter cross feed position automatically adjusts for the new tool.

Bruce

Yup, I do that often. I don't have a permanent tool table on my lathe since I move the compound/toolpost too often, but it only takes a couple minutes to set up the SDM table for several tools to use on a job, so I'll do that whenever I have more than 1 or 2 parts to make at a time. It is something that seems tricky your first time through, but gets to be second nature once you get the concept.

 

[wachuko]

Thank you for the suggestions!!

Well folks, looks like I made my first tapered cut!!!! Laugh all you want, but it took me a few minutes to get my head around how the heck this needed to be setup to do the cut at an angle...





But by golly I did it!!





I read here somewhere, that better is the enemy of good... So I did not try to make it better by trying to get rid of that visual transition...

On to the next step for this part...

 

[tjb]

POTD turned out to be TWO POTD. That’s what happens when I have to fix something before getting my actual project started. Ah, it’s shop time so what the heck!

The intended POTD involved using my Tennsmith stomp shear on some 16-gauge galvanized. The shear blade has a rake on it, the shearing starts on the RH side and works its way to the LH side. Since the pulling action is from right to left, I usually put my material up against the LH side graduated edge so the material is pulled into the stop.

My blank was about 24” wide and started to cut, but only made it about halfway along the edge. It’s a pretty simple mechanism; step down on a pedal that pivots off an axle. There’s a linkage on either side of the pedal that attaches to the shear bar. You get about an 8 to 1 mechanical advantage so at my 175 lbs., I get about 1400 lbs. of down force on the shear bar.


Houston, we have a problem when the stomp shear only scores a piece of matte board?!?
View attachment 408418


What the heck?!? I stepped on the pedal with nothing in place and saw the shear blade making it past the bottom shear bar. I set in a piece of matte board and it wouldn’t shear. Then I noticed as I stepped down that the pivot on the LH side was lifting up. Moved some crap out of the way and discovered the 1 ¼” diameter pivot pin between the shear’s frame and the back of the pedal was missing!


Ah, here's your problem. . . The axle pin for the foot pedal is missing!
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RH side for comparison
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The hole measured 1 ¼” diameter; figured on sticking in a piece of CRS. I shoved a tape measure into the hole to get a rough length and heard the pivot shaft sliding in the back tube. I stuck a magnet through the frame and tube and was able to get the pivot pin back up to the frame. Turns out the pin is threaded 3/8”-16. Ran in a bolt and was able to manipulate the pedal tube and slide the pivot pin back in place.

The RH side pedal frame is threaded; looks to be a headless set screw run through the tube and pivot pin. Don’t know if a previous owner changed things on the LH side, but the pivot pin was held in place with a ¼” roll spring pin. I was able to rotate the pin back into alignment, drive out the old pin and pound in a new one.


I was able to run a 3/8" bolt into the end of the axle and pull it back into position
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Looks like a piece of spring roll pin
View attachment 408424

Temporary fix is a new spring pin. I'm of the school of thought that if it failed once and there's no assignable cause, it will fail again. I will be replacing the roll pin with a cap screw. This pin carries a lot of torsional load; makes more sense to have a solid pin that a spring pin.
View attachment 408425



Curiously, the Tennsmith manual shows the pivot pin and retaining pin, but doesn't not list them in the manual. I'm thinking the pin part# 61 should be solid instead of a spring pin.
View attachment 408426

View attachment 408427


For belt and suspenders, I made a plastic bushing that screws into the pivot pin. Started with 2” polyethylene. Faced, center drilled, drilled a 3/8” central hole, cut a shoulder on the face which would bear against the pivot pin and parted. Ran it down with a 3/8” button head cap screw with a drop of Loctite.


Faced, center drilled and drilled a through hole for a retaining bolt
View attachment 408428
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View attachment 408430

Turned a shoulder to around 1.10". The pivot pin sets subflush to the frame by about 0.090". The face of the shoulder will bear against the end of the pin while the larger diameter will keep it from walking into the frame. Way overkill on my part as the root cause of the problem was likely the previous owner swapping in a spring pin for a solid pin.
View attachment 408431
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The shear works great though I will be replacing the spring pin with a cap screw. Now onto the real POTD.

Thanks for looking, Bruce

Interesting post, Bruce. I've spent most of the day on a similar challenge. One of my son's has a rack that holds foot pedal switches for his electric guitars. I'm sure there's a fancy name for these pedals but I have no idea what it might be. His rack is about 18" x 5" and will comfortably hold four or five of these foot pedal. I'm making one twice as big - two rows about the same size on a single rack - to accommodate more switches. The frame was easy, and I have a large enough piece of leftover 16 or 18 gauge sheet metal that will suit his purposes fine. What I DON'T have, however, is a stomp shear. So I got creative. I set up a fence on my mill and used step block clamps and 1-2-3 blocks to rip two 1-3/4" x 18" strips. Tomorrow I'll need to measure for a center strip that's about twice as wide. I'll post some pictures when I get closer to done.

Stomp shear would have saved quite a bit of work. Wanna sell yours? And deliver it? And set it up? And stay for dinner?

Regards

 

[tjb]

My refuse in my shop. My wife’s refuse is her garden.

Interesting. Same thing around here. I go to the shop; she goes to her garden. She's a certified card-carrying Master Gardener. I'll try to post some pictures of her setup - several large raised beds, a chicken house, green house, outdoor sink, fire pit, etc. etc. etc. In a prior life, I trained horses; when common sense dictated I needed to quit (getting too old for the young ones anymore), we converted the riding arena to her garden. It's pretty close to the size of a football field. When I was running a herd, we raised our own beef as well. There've been many times when everything on the table except the salt and pepper was grown on the farm. Right now she's in the kitchen saute-ing some cabbage and squash she just picked, and we're about to cook some venison backstrap from this past hunting season. It's smelling good in there.

I eat like royalty.

Regards

 

[extropic]

@BGHansen

I don't think your shop is your refuse at all. Refuge maybe, but not refuse. LOL

 

[mattthemuppet2]

I need an adapter to fit a USB camera to one of my stereo microscopes at work so I can make some sort videos for an experiment. We do have a very fancy stereo scope (supposedly around $100k) in the department, but IT wiped the hard drive when they fixed a different problem and professor who's lab it's in has lost the imaging software disk

So, made this out of a small piece of round and a piece of pipeand it looks like so on the scope



But I need the inside black to cut down on reflections, so I anodized it. First try came out gunmetal

So I stripped it and tried again. Got a nice deep black, but also patches, either from an incomplete strip or from not cleaning it properly before putting it in the acid tank. Either way, the inside is nice and black which is what matters!

Now I need to strip and redo the bike l bracket, we'll see how that one goes!

 

[francist]

Refuge maybe, but not refuse

I’m not so sure — you know what they say about one man’s trash…

 

[jwmelvin]

But I need the inside black to cut down on reflections, so I anodized it.

Have you described your anodizing setup and process online? I’d like to experiment a bit myself.

 

[woodchucker]

You'll love a DRO on the lathe for accurate positioning along the Z-axis. Cutting to a shoulder depth, groove position, etc. is so much nicer. I have a 2" indicator on my Clausing with a magnetic base. It works, but punching in the number is more convenient.

One thing I haven't done on mine yet is a suggestion from I believe @macardoso. Most of the DRO's have something like 200 datums on them. He plugged in offsets for his lathe tools for the diameter/radius. Nice feature as you should be able to swap tools, plug the new tool number in the DRO and your radius/diameter cross feed position automatically adjusts for the new tool.

Bruce

How does that work for the compound, if you move it, or rotate your qctp


Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[mattthemuppet2]

it's easy, mix a hefty portion of magic with a generous amount of voodoo, a sniff of chemistry and a handful of luck Acid bath temperature is really important, but in mysterious ways - lower temperatures can give more "pop", I think by producing a thinner oxide layer, whereas higher temps can give a deeper colour all the way to "crayon/ lipstick". I'm slowly getting there, but it's still a bit hit or miss.