Author Topic: How do you solve your own problems?  (Read 5788 times)

Offline ieezitin

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How do you solve your own problems?
« on: January 02, 2011, 09:27:55 PM »
Peoples.

I had a three day weekend this week and when I don’t get time in the shop due to duties like work or capitulating to the old lady and her needs, any opportunity I get I hide in the den I snatch it up.

I had a couple of projects I wanted to do, so with pencil and paper in hand I sketched out what I wanted and scribbled away, every time I came to a machining procedure I had to stop and think really hard how i am going to do such tasks, I have two lathes and one horizontal mill in my inventory, more machines than some and less than others, but I have to work with what I have, sometimes I really pull my hair out trying to figure out how to achieve some tasks, but let me say my noodle really has to work in overdrive sometimes to cheat or be creative to get desired results. I find myself making a lot of fixtures and specific tooling to overcome tasks that if I had the right machines it would be done in a flash.

My question to you all is this, what is the hardest task you have with what machines you have to complete, mine is dovetailing, if I can I avoid it, with the right machine it would not be such a chaw. I am interested in your machining challenges and how you solve your problems.

All the best.        Anthony
If you cant fix it, get another hobby.

Offline Dean W

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Re: How do you solve your own problems?
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2011, 10:24:56 PM »
Hi Anthony;
I suppose just like everyone else, I do sit and puzzle through cutting operations trying to outline all the cuts for a specific piece
before I start making chips.  That does take up a bit of the room in my head, trying to get it figured out before machining myself
into a corner.

What seems to take up a good deal of time is figuring out work holding and jigs for pieces that need a number of operations.  If
I can make a jig that suits the job at hand, but will still be of some use for future work, I feel I've made good use of my time.  I
try to avoid making single use jigs or work holding devices, if possible.  It doesn't always work out that way, though.

I don't seem to have much trouble with dovetailing.  I guess my weak spot is RT work.  Not that it seems terribly hard, I guess,
but that it takes me a lot of fiddling and messing about for me to think I've got it set up right for things with a number of radii
in different spots on the work piece.  We all struggle with something!
Dean W.

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http://www.deansphotographica.com/machining/projects/projects.html

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Offline Bogstandard

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Re: How do you solve your own problems?
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2011, 03:39:02 AM »
A thing I have always done, if time is available, is sit down and study the job in detail.

A notebook works wonders. I study the part from the drawing, and machine it in my mind. Eventually I can write down the whole machining process. Then go thru it to see if there are any errors. When you come to actually do the machining, it is like you have done it all before, many times. I wouldn't use this method for a simple to make item, but if just starting out, it is a good habit to get into, making notes and quickie sketches, they don't need to be great, just so that you can understand them. Anyone looking at my notebook would be hard pressed to understand what I was doing, but to me, it is a mine of information.

Even though I do have fancy gizmos and DRO's, if it is a complicated part, I still blue up and mark it out just like if I was winging the job (cutting it out by splitting the lines). This gives me a continual checking system as I am machining to my notes. You can easily detect if something isn't going quite right. I also use datums all the time, just so that I can go back a few steps if needs be, and check things out.

One thing I really hate with a passion is using the four jaw, even though I can do it all perfectly, I just think that someone put the damned things on this earth just to annoy me, and I will go to great lengths to get around having to use one.  I find I can get just as good results by using the Keats angle plate.

Like Dean, I too use jigs and fixtures, but only if really needed. Normally I try to get the part out just by normal holding methods. Where they really come into their own is when you are making multiple parts, spending an hour or two making a fixture can save you days of work later on.

One thing I always try to do is to machine up the material I will be using into the correct size and perfectly square, rather than starting out with a hunk of metal and whittling it down to size as I go along. This is where the datum faces I mentioned earlier come into being.

Bogs
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MrFluffy

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Re: How do you solve your own problems?
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2011, 07:19:08 AM »
Boring four cylinder engine liners on my dro-less manual mill, with imperial scales, a imperial bore gauge, metric mic's and metric dimensions for everything :hammer:
I only got into trying to do it because I was so unhappy with some of the results Ive had back from the pro's. Like the time I dropped a bsa cylinder + a brand new piston made of unobtanium off so they could "match it perfectly", and when I went to collect they'd marked the piston bad and it got stuck in the bore half way up. Plus I live in the middle of nowhere, so even to find a company that would do it would involve post or two hour trips.

Ive wrecked a fair few sacrificial cylinder blocks experimenting, and slowly have developed my tooling so I can hold the tolerance Im seeking.
I make a torque plate for each stud layout now, and have spacers to match so the tooling can pass completely through but still the block bolt to the table rigidly, a little jig I can move between cylinders using, on the tooling itself Ive now gone to a rigid deep iso40 micrometer adjust solid bar rather than a generic boring head after I made a few slightly conical bores (hands up, my boring head isnt the best quality), and I make my own oversize cutter holders to get more rigidity after a holder (free with the nasty boring head) slipped and dug in then ruined a liner. You've only got to fubar one liner a tiny bit and your into a cycle of putting a new one into that pot and hoping the rest dont shift in the oven doing so and need re-fettling... Oh and Ive now got a proper rigid delapena style hone setup. Im not a proper engineer, and i spend far more time doing it than I could just pay someone else to, but at least when its done I know how right it is rather than standing there arguing the toss with bore gauge in one hand in the automotive engineers reception.

Im hoping Ive finally got it licked once and for all though, I just booked the courier to bring my xmas present to me, a proper hydraulic cylinder boring machine. Ive got to do is learn how to set it all up on some spare old engine blocks, then its got 3 bike big bore kits, the jcb engine, my son's play tractor engine, a rover v8 etc, and when that lots done, my xl600 hasnt got much compression of late, and my gpz1100 would be so much nicer as a 1266 .
I probably should have bought a dro instead mind :)