Author Topic: What I've been upto.  (Read 3141 times)

Offline latheman

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What I've been upto.
« on: November 11, 2011, 11:01:16 AM »
Hi folks,

It's been a while, 11 months to be precise, since I last posted so I thought an update might just be appreciated. Those of you who frequent another place will know something about what's been going on, but perhaps not all.

Just a bit of personal history first. Youngest son has now returned home - no job, no money, no car, 3rd class pass in Physics. Unfortunately we live in a village where personal transport is just about essential so I've had to buy him a cheap car and start to teach him to drive. And then, after he has passed his test, we can try to persuade him to look for a job.

In addition to that, my car engine blew up and the caravan water heater failed. So in total I've had to layout about £6K extra and above normal. All of which has lead to something of a cash flow problem.

Now for the engineering.

The MiniMill table was eventually found to be nicely (!) warped, so I took the plunge and have had it reground. The grinder says it was one of the worst he has encountered. In addition, I've made a start on cleaning up the slides and gib strips - a combination of scraping, lapping, replacement, additional gib adjustment screws, guide pins for the gibs. Hopefully, it will be improved when I finish it. Lets face it, it can't be any worse.

I would be interested in other peoples findings about this, but what I have found is that where the dovetail slides are easily visible, they are nicely finished off, however, those parts which cannot be seen without dismantling look as if they have been carved with an angle grinder. so any fitting was purely nominal.

Some of this work required drilling additional holes in the milling machine saddle. Unfortunately I found it was too big for my vertical drill, but a good friend of mine turned up just as I was pondering it and offered the use of his as he has a few more inches of clearance. And so the job got done, followed by me wondering if I could extend my vertical drill. After all, Alex Weiss did just that back in 1995 with what looks suspiciously like my machine. So ok, get some steel, and try to turn it. I don't know about you, but I'm not that keen on trying to turn a piece of 48mm diameter by 150mm long ms held only at one end by the 4-jaw chuck. Also I wished to face the ends. So how about a fixed steady do I hear you say? Fine, but I haven't got one, so I'm currently in the process of making one similar to Harold Hall's designs in MEW. Then I can get on with the vertical drill.

But in the meantime, my milling machine table is due back from the grinders so I can then get on with the milling machine as well.

Which leads me onto something else. In the past I've never had much success with milling in the lathe. Apparently it can be done, with care, by holding a milling cutter in a 3 or 4 jaw chuck. But not for me - too much vibration. Anyway, when I bought the MiniMill, I also bought some MT3 collets because they fit both the mill and the lathe. Guess what, all my lathe milling problems vanished just like that, only problem now being the lack of milling capacity on the lathe.

And that'll do for now. Progress is slow, too slow I sometimes think, but then I do have other things to do as well. But, it's proving very interesting making the fixed steady. In fact, I reckon about 50% of the time is spent thinking, planning and drawing, another 35-40% is spent working out how to hold the job, and then setting it up, leaving only 10-15% for actual machining. What do you think?

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw