South Texas Mill Work Needed

[cdhknives]

I have a small project and don't want to ship and would prefer to work with a hobbyist or home machinist instead of the local industrial oriented machine shops... I don't own a mill of any kind and don't have any local machinists as buddies.

I need this rough casting for an Atlas cross slide machined. I see 4 steps: Machine bottom flat, cut dovetail, machine top flat, cut t-slots. I can drill and thread the gib holes. I can provide the existing cross slide for dovetail dims.

http://www.statecollegecentral.com/metallathe/A-11.html

I am willing to pay cash but would prefer to trade some clear (few to no bug holes) well (4+ years in the garage) seasoned 2"+ by 12"+ by 36"+ thick slabs of mesquite that are cluttering my garage/shop.

Anyone interested? I'm in Corpus Christi Texas.

 

[jneidig]

I did one of them for a South Bend a few years ago, nice little project..... I hope you can find someone close by to help you out.

 

[4GSR]

I offered my services to make the slide for Clayton. The slide is finished, just have the gib to fix up for him.

If anyone ever wants to machine one of these castings from State College Central, at least I believe that is what they call themselves, I highly recommend them.

As with any cast iron, it is nasty machining material. Machines very good using carbide tooling, which I used for face milling all four sides and used an inserted Dorain inserted dovetail cutter for the dovetails. The casting has been stress relieved several times. I did not encountered any warpage from machining. I was quite impressed with that. If anyone decides to machine one of these, buy you two tee slot cutters and don't skimp on quality. The Shars brand of cutter held up ok, but did not want to cut properly. The only thing I could figure out is they are not sharpen correctly. My semi-dull German made tee slot cutter cut much better but dulled completely. In my spare time, I'll put them on my T & C grinder and resharpen them. Use dry air from a spray mist unit to blow out chips while cutting. Do not cut wet or use cutting oil!

Anyways, I'll post pictures in a bit of the work I've done.

Ken

 

[wa5cab]

Ken,

That's an excellent idea on the spray mister. I probably never would have thought about doing that.

 

[cdhknives]

Really looking forward to getting this installed...thanks Ken!