R8 & 3/4” Shank Tooling Holder

[erikmannie]

I finished drilling all of the 1” holes in one of the the shelves, only to be immediately overtaken with an overwhelming desire for a slice of Swiss cheese.




Edit:

On second thought, I might need to sweep the floor.

 

[erikmannie]

Here is the drilling setup. I move the ram (on the mill) out to drill the holes in the back. Also, I need to move some of the strap clamps to get to some holes near to the sides of the plate.

I move the ram rather than turn the aluminum plate around because I indicated the plate on the table. The holes are parallel & perpendicular to the edges of the plate.

The holes are set to varying distances from each other because the tooling has varying diameters.

 

[erikmannie]

Today I finished drilling holes in shelf #2 of 3. I also faced the front & rear of one shelf, so this shelf is done:




I did the very best I could with a shell mill & fly cutter, but on the back end I used a very cheap orbital sander with 80 to 120 to 220 to 400 grit.

I will upload pictures of “the best I can do with a shell mill & fly cutter of the one that I am starting now. It will take me a few hours.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

That will be an epic rack by the time you're done!

 

[erikmannie]

I had an extremely rough time face milling the steel frame on the back. My 22 year old son was complaining about the noise & looking up the city ordinance, & then he ordered a decibel meter.

At one point, I was so focused on the workpiece that *I walked away from the milling machine (workpiece in hand, walking out to the side yard) while the x-axis power feed was still on*! Fortunately, I had to come back inside to get my brush. I was absolutely horrified to see the extended quill traveling toward the 8” vise. Who walks away from a milling machine while the power feed is still on?!

I caught a very lucky break, and I was able to turn it off about 4” in x-axis travel before a terrible collision. Lesson learned!

Another problem was that I had *failed to achieve full penetration on two seam welds*. Rather than do a welding repair, I decided to remove four .125” rectangles, and then I just milled the whole thing down a total of .125”. Now what I planned to be a .250” thick frame is only .125” thick. That will teach me to make sure to achieve full pen on my welds!

Here is the cruddy result of the nightmare face milling on the steel frame. I am so glad that this will be hidden. I almost forgot to mention that I had the RPMs set to 1300 because I have been face milling aluminum prior to the steel. I kept checking the inserts because I wondered why it was performing so poorly. You would think that I would be able to tell the difference between 1300 and 600 RPM.



The top of the aluminum shelf definitely did not require face milling. All I had to do was use the orbital sander with 80 to 120 to 220 to 400 grit. It turned out beautiful.

 

[Just for fun]

Loos good to me. How are you going to mount them?

 

[erikmannie]

Loos good to me. How are you going to mount them?

I have 4 posts which are 1-1/4”, .050” wall steel tubing. These 36” long tubes will pass through the 1-1/4” holes in the corners of the shelf assemblies.

I was going to braze them, but I don’t want to heat up the ally plates, so I am just going to TIG (socket) weld them *at the bottom only* of the steel shelf frames. That is why the frames are steel. I could have used ally tubing and TIG welded the ally plates to those, but I had zero money when I started this project, and I have a lot of this muffler tubing.

Once I weld it together, the shelves will not be removable short of cutting out the tubing. I hope that it looks really slick like that because it will be obvious that the ally plates were *not* installed after the unit was built.

I have to be very careful about distortion because there is less than .005” of a gap at the socket weld (.005” is a huge gap for brazing). I will only use tack welds until the whole thing is put together, and even then I will do a ridiculous amount of skipping around with my application of heat.

The fixturing is going to be complex. I am a little worried about distortion. I should just skip around & stitch weld all of those socket welds.

My arc will be as close as .125” to the aluminum so I will have chill blocks on the aluminum. I will see if I can get it done with 50A.

 

[Aukai]

Use some kind of attachment with rings for the shelves to rest on, then the shelve can be removable, and everything taken apart. Maybe roll pins for metal washers to rest on, then the shelves?

 

[Just for fun]

I agree with Aukai, the roll pin and washers are good idea.

 

[erikmannie]

Use some kind of attachment with rings for the shelves to rest on, then the shelve can be removable, and everything taken apart. Maybe roll pins for metal washers to rest on, then the shelves?

That would sure make it easier to weld it up nice & square. I won’t be able to touch this project for the next 5 days, so I can think about it while I am at work.

I had to Google roll pins. I found this:



So what is the idea? The washers are parallel with the floor, pinned in with roll pins, & how are the shelves fastened? I only left enough room around the tubing for a brazed socket weld (I measured it, and it is .315”).

Here is the joint: