What have you done in your shop lately?

Lately, I was using my horizontal mill to do face milling an old aluminum adapter that I am modifying.

The cheap set of ER32 collets I got was working well. The horizontal mounting was a bit odd, especially with the odd shape of the aluminum piece I am working on and a lack of a vertical vise holder.

Someday, I will make a piece like a lathe milling adapter, but this doesn't need adjustment, since it already has vertical cranking. So it's basically a very large rigid angle metal bracket.

I fabricated some additional t-nuts using a very crude method of welding a nut to a drilled rectangular metal piece. I drilled it first so I don't damage the nut's threads. I then line up the hole and thread with a 5/16 piece. Once done, I tap into the metal piece to extend the nut's threads with a 3/8". That worked very well, and it's a instant gratification things, since I ordered some online. They came a day after :) I then ordered some more, from China, which is really cheap, but will probably take a few months to come. I don't know if I will ever need so many t-nuts.
 
Today, I used a razer blade to clean up the way under the mill's bed, mostly on the left and right ends where turning it is pretty rough. I also used it "kind of carefully" clean the lead screw (using the blade's back). That took out a lot of gunk. Finally I can turn into both ends without much effort, still not butter smooth. I read somewhere to use soft thing to clean the lead screw up. Probably it's better than a razer blade.
 
Today I needed to cut some copper tubing. When using the "dialing" cutter, it kept wandering off. So I looked into the round cutter and it had a lot of side play. I have a very thin sheet of stainless steel I harvested from a larger rolling tape from a machine. It's almost like a tape measure, but flat, not bowed, and stainless. Probably much thinner than regular retractable tape measure. So I drilled it and cut it into a tinny round washer/shims. Took two to work very well. Excited, I made one more for a larger tube cutter, but this time only needs 1 shim. The new cut is way better, no multi-line tracing at all. This is especially important for a little curve soft copper line or rolled up brake lines. Since they're a bit curved up, it can wander off. I know for the brake line, we needs to make it straight first so it would flare correctly.
 
I bought some Cat40 boring tool but haven't gotten to them yet. Today made a drawbar with one end 5/8" coarse thread and the other welded on m16 bolt. I cut out the hex bold head and welded it in. I don't have metric conversion gear. The draw bar works well and flipped over, I would have standard thread drawbar.
 
I tricked out my mill with spiffy LED strip lights this weekend:

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I looked at getting a microscope ring light, but the size was actually an issue - couldn't find LED that would fit and was affordable. Then I remembered that I'd purchased a 1' section of high intensity LEDs on a flexible sticky back strip (many years ago!).

Worked out really nice, I had to cut the strip in half (it had a cut point at 6") and solder a jump wire between each section. I also removed the factory spindle lock - it was in the way and didn't work that well anyway. I may add a better spindle lock topside if I feel I really need it.

Funny thing about the LED strip is that I bought it long enough ago that I think it cost $50 - $70 with the wall wart power supply! Anyhow, it's finally found a use.

-Dave
 
I wish I have a verticle mill. I was aligning an oil cooler on a horizontal mill. It is like a contortionist monkey juggling 3 balls.
 
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I had some random pieces of 0.040 aluminum lying around. I have a corner notcher and box brake, so it was only a few minutes to notch and fold up a few "parts trays", that I never seem to have around when I'm taking something apart. Now there's a stack of them, different sizes and depths.Parts Tray.jpg
 
Cleaned up and rearranged the shop. Expecting a new SG this week. Amazing how alittle clean up and moving around can make the space you need.
 
Started 2 projects, the first is a replacement yoke for the feed drive shaft on my Atlas horizontal mill. I have the collar turned to the required diameter qnd have the yoke milled out. Put that project aside to make the puzzle that has bolt heads on each end with a nut on threads in the middle. Didn't get it done in time for the family reunion today. I tried using a homemade triangle and a short precision level to use on the short edge of the triangle with the level on the hypotenuse,. Obviously I didn't get the bubble in exactly the same spot which led to a 7 sided bolt head. On the way home a solution came to mind; draw a circle dived in 6 segments on the compute, print it, r then use a pointer on the mill table to index the 6 flats on bolt head. I now have a six sided bolt head that a 13/16" wrench will fit. The other end will get finished tomorrow I hope.
Have a good day
Ray
 
Ahh, the ole seven-sided bolt trick eh. A puzzle in itself then, no? ;)
 
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