Before I was terminated on FB I mentioned I was going to build a lathe and a few people wanted to know how that was going to turn out (pun intended).
Well, one thing after another interrupted my plans till I had to re-evaluate a few weeks ago. So I as more or less a joke or a sign of desperation looked at what I could get on Craiglist.
Plenty of large lathes, mills and lots of those Chinese cheap 7x10 etc lathes going for about the same price used as they are now costing new. New prices have dropped a lot.
Then by pure luck, I saw a Sherline lathe for sale at an extremely low price. I mean bargain basement stuff price. I couldn't build a lathe for less. The guy posted it a couple of hours before I saw it. We emailed and SFC picked it up the next day after dropping me off at the boat. That's another story in itself involving long delays in DC traffic.
The lathe itself is pre 1999.
The previous owner apparently loved it. It has a bit of superficial rust on it that didn't affect the accuracy.
What did affect the accuracy was the previous owners lack of knowledge in setting up a lathe. It took me about two days to strip everything down, clean, oil/grease it all and set the correct tolerances on the gibs and the free play on the dials. It had about 15 thou play on the dials and about the same on the gibs but was binding as well as the gib supports were misaligned. After some realignment and final tweaking, I have the thing running smooth with just under 2 thou play overall.
The beds were in new shape. I really don't think the guy used it much at all. No wear marks on the beds, slides, threads or anything else.
I checked the accuracy of the slides and it came up about .2 thou across the full range of travel. Nothing to complain about. It's highly accurate and if I wanted to get it better it's not that hard. I'd just need a more sensitive dial indicator but I can't imagine a need for that sort of accuracy for my needs.
So yeah, I have a lathe and the upgrade to the mill is really cheap. It's a very well regarded tool although small. Not that I care. Short of having to build a prop on the Ocean it will do everything I need and has already saved me more than it cost me with the car breakdown. I've made parts, it runs great.
Here's a link to the lathe (current model though little change): http://sherline.com/product/40004100-la ... -a-b-or-c/
Mine came with a variety of other accessories and tooling bits that the link above doesn't.
FWIS3
In memory of our guiding lights - Russ, Mike and Charlie - “To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest”
Lathes and milling machines
30 posts
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by geonuc » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:05 am
Nice. You need small to fit on the boat.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:32 am
geonuc wrote:Nice. You need small to fit on the boat.
Exactly! And my idealistic hope is that it will never see the light of day while we're on the boat.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Sun Sep 11, 2016 3:20 am
geonuc wrote:Nice. You need small to fit on the boat.
It is nice. Now that it runs smooth and has little freeplay it's just a joy to use.
Apart from the car I've made two fittings for the fridge on the boat. Basically the fridge system is German made so is metric and the stuff I can get here (pipe, filters, TXV) is imperial. So I'm making metric to imperial sweat fittings to join the two systems. There are no places that sell that stuff, its a case of having to make it or get a new system which is about $700 and up.
If anyone wants to get into metal turning this is a great setup. Small, accurate, plenty of accessories. Far better made than the Chinese mini lathes flooding the market right now which have problems turning mild steel. The Sherline lathe can turn stainless and titanium accurately with ease. I've turned stainless and steel with ease using cheap HSS tool bits from China.
Here's a video of it cutting .1" (2.54mm) into steel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i249wX8QKq8
Some really heavy cuts (for this machine) in titanium etc here: http://sherline.com/test-cuts/
Thanks for all the fish.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Sun Sep 11, 2016 10:49 am
And the Sherline was developed by an Australian.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:26 am
The car repair in pictures including the lathe/mill combo.
After the belt broke yesterday I had to do things manually. The first step involved hand turning the lathe with a little hand wheel I have for it. I had to turn down about 1.8mm of steel for about 1/4 inch so I had a good reference to use an angle grinder to bring the rest of it down about 10 thou (10/1000ths of an inch). While going lower than this is possible with a grinder, the time it takes is very long. Small grinds then check. Find the high spots, grind them and check. Repeat till you want to kill something.
After I got it down to 10 thou from the reference I mounted it onto the mill and used the vise I made to clamp a tool post that the previous owner never got around to completing (I did it a couple of weeks ago) and on top of that I mounted the working tool post and offset the cutting tool to give the required clearance to machine the face off the fan mounting plate.
The initial 1/4 cut was really hard to do. It is about 2 inches in diameter and the cut I was taking was wide and completely turned by hand. I took 1 thou off each pass and each pass was a couple of revolutions. So over 500 revolutions under heavy load. I could have cut less material but then would at minimum double the time taken and I was already short on that.
The grinding was easy. I had a reference and simply cut at a level all the way around till I was close to it. No checking required and all pretty boring really.
The last stage was to face it off and make it one plane. A lot easier than the first 1/4 inch on the lathe but a long process to remove about 1/2 an inch of metal. It's flat to within 0.1mm. Not great but no problem for this application. Getting the last 0.1mm would have involved another full pass on the lathe. I didn't much care to do it since it's not going to matter.
OK, pic time:
The completed part. Although it's hard to tell on the pic the part is cut correctly and at 90 degrees.
Vise with jaws open. The gap between the jaw and the base is because I rested the jaw on the bolt. There is no gap in use. It's made from aircraft grade 7075 aluminium which I'll be covering in another boring post in this thread.
Vise with the jaw closed but not tightened. It's precision machined so that when it's clamped even lightly you couldn't see where base stopped and the jaw began. So I used a file to bevel the edges as anything that precise is sharp and likely to cut while being used. In practice with the jaws closed there is no visible light anywhere getting through. On the micrometer it's showing under 1 thou tolerance which is good enough for what I need. It clamps very well and really hard. Best of all, it's accurate enough to use the edges of the vise as a reference when setting up the mill so everything is at 90 degrees.
It's my own screwless vise design made just for the mill I have. The two bolts in the top are retaining T-nuts that slot into the mill base giving me very accurate 90Deg mounts.
It'll also do about 75Deg which I used in this case but that was a side effect rather than a design choice. If I could choose it would have been 45Deg but then the vise would be too small to be practical and this one only has 1.2 inches of opening as it is. If I need any other angle I'll need to slot the vise and use external clamps the way most other mill vises are mounted to the milling plate. I'll be using this vise to make a bigger version. Might even make a swivel base. Depends on how bored I am at the time.
Almost finished machining. The rough part closest to the center is what I got down to with the angle grinder. Pretty close to the level required and it made the machining of that small amount easy.
The vise in action. Locked to the bed on an angle and clamping a tool post that had another tool post mounted on top separated by a large washer to get the height required. A true machinist would laugh. luckily I don't think there are any here. The fact that this setup worked is a testament to the rigidity of the Sherline lathe. Even the cutting tool is so far out to make the required distance I didn't think it would work well. The biggest problem was that the lathe chuck couldn't hold the narrow pin and it kept sliding down. Even with packing spacers it still slid down resulting in the 0.1mm taper. Thankfully this application doesn't require that level of precision.
The lathe/mill setup while I was still working on the part. At the time of the photo I was about 1/3 of the way through and figured I might as well take pics so that it will be preserved rather than lost in the ether of my minds memory. So you all get to be subjected to my day as well.
After the belt broke yesterday I had to do things manually. The first step involved hand turning the lathe with a little hand wheel I have for it. I had to turn down about 1.8mm of steel for about 1/4 inch so I had a good reference to use an angle grinder to bring the rest of it down about 10 thou (10/1000ths of an inch). While going lower than this is possible with a grinder, the time it takes is very long. Small grinds then check. Find the high spots, grind them and check. Repeat till you want to kill something.
After I got it down to 10 thou from the reference I mounted it onto the mill and used the vise I made to clamp a tool post that the previous owner never got around to completing (I did it a couple of weeks ago) and on top of that I mounted the working tool post and offset the cutting tool to give the required clearance to machine the face off the fan mounting plate.
The initial 1/4 cut was really hard to do. It is about 2 inches in diameter and the cut I was taking was wide and completely turned by hand. I took 1 thou off each pass and each pass was a couple of revolutions. So over 500 revolutions under heavy load. I could have cut less material but then would at minimum double the time taken and I was already short on that.
The grinding was easy. I had a reference and simply cut at a level all the way around till I was close to it. No checking required and all pretty boring really.
The last stage was to face it off and make it one plane. A lot easier than the first 1/4 inch on the lathe but a long process to remove about 1/2 an inch of metal. It's flat to within 0.1mm. Not great but no problem for this application. Getting the last 0.1mm would have involved another full pass on the lathe. I didn't much care to do it since it's not going to matter.
OK, pic time:
The completed part. Although it's hard to tell on the pic the part is cut correctly and at 90 degrees.
Vise with jaws open. The gap between the jaw and the base is because I rested the jaw on the bolt. There is no gap in use. It's made from aircraft grade 7075 aluminium which I'll be covering in another boring post in this thread.
Vise with the jaw closed but not tightened. It's precision machined so that when it's clamped even lightly you couldn't see where base stopped and the jaw began. So I used a file to bevel the edges as anything that precise is sharp and likely to cut while being used. In practice with the jaws closed there is no visible light anywhere getting through. On the micrometer it's showing under 1 thou tolerance which is good enough for what I need. It clamps very well and really hard. Best of all, it's accurate enough to use the edges of the vise as a reference when setting up the mill so everything is at 90 degrees.
It's my own screwless vise design made just for the mill I have. The two bolts in the top are retaining T-nuts that slot into the mill base giving me very accurate 90Deg mounts.
It'll also do about 75Deg which I used in this case but that was a side effect rather than a design choice. If I could choose it would have been 45Deg but then the vise would be too small to be practical and this one only has 1.2 inches of opening as it is. If I need any other angle I'll need to slot the vise and use external clamps the way most other mill vises are mounted to the milling plate. I'll be using this vise to make a bigger version. Might even make a swivel base. Depends on how bored I am at the time.
Almost finished machining. The rough part closest to the center is what I got down to with the angle grinder. Pretty close to the level required and it made the machining of that small amount easy.
The vise in action. Locked to the bed on an angle and clamping a tool post that had another tool post mounted on top separated by a large washer to get the height required. A true machinist would laugh. luckily I don't think there are any here. The fact that this setup worked is a testament to the rigidity of the Sherline lathe. Even the cutting tool is so far out to make the required distance I didn't think it would work well. The biggest problem was that the lathe chuck couldn't hold the narrow pin and it kept sliding down. Even with packing spacers it still slid down resulting in the 0.1mm taper. Thankfully this application doesn't require that level of precision.
The lathe/mill setup while I was still working on the part. At the time of the photo I was about 1/3 of the way through and figured I might as well take pics so that it will be preserved rather than lost in the ether of my minds memory. So you all get to be subjected to my day as well.
Thanks for all the fish.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Thu Sep 22, 2016 4:37 am
As mentioned in the above post, the vise I made was done in 7075 T651 grade aluminium.
I've never worked with this stuff before. I've used pretty average grade stuff before and 6061. In fact the Sherline lathe and mill is in 6061 and it is strong and rigid. It however is nothing like 7075 T651.
I stumbled across a bargain a while ago and got a bulk pack of assorted cut off's in 7075 (sold by the pound) as I figured I'd need to have some stock to use for the mill and lathe. A machine is useless without the raw material from which you make something. I didn't much think about it until recently when I had to actually use it to make clamps and a vise for the milling machine. So here's my thoughts on it.
Fuck me it is hard shit to cut with a hacksaw!
I've cut many grades of steel and stainless steel with a hacksaw easier than this stuff. It wrecked me. I needed to cut a 2x3 inch bar to make the vise. It took well over an hour. I ordered high end hacksaw blades because this stuff is freaking tough. The cheap (same price really) stuff at Lowes is useless. I had to get some Starrett blades from Amazon. I even tried a diamond cutoff blade that was water cooled and it was a bitch with that too. If you get some of this stuff, get 32 teeth per inch high quality hacksaw blades. Amazon has them for the same price as the cheap Chinese stuff you get at a local hardware store. If you have Prime, it ships for free.
The only bonus is that this stuff won't work harden like some iron based metals. So if your sawing technique is not the best, at least you won't harden the stuff to the point that a hacksaw will no longer cut it. Filing it is not too bad though all I have is one crappy flat file, a very course round file, plus a set of tooling files (tiny things about the size of ladies nail files). All did well with it.
Drilling is pretty good and tapping is excellent. You need a very sharp drill or you'll be wasting your time. Tapping is smooth and effortless. Probably one of the easiest metals I've tapped. Lower grades of aluminium can gal easily but this stuff won't. It doesn't like to stretch and it's yield point and tensile strength are close with minimal elongation. So perfect for tapping but failures are spectacular. As I found out when I wanted to bend a small bracket I made for the temporary vise I used to make the final vise. It simply broke after a hell of a lot of force was applied with the bench vise (the drop forged steel one) and no bending was observed at all.
Strength wise, this stuff is stronger than 316 stainless steel which is a marine industry standard and stronger than many steels. It's also 1/3 of the weight. Originally I was going to buy stainless steel stock on the boat if I needed to fabricate something but this stuff is stronger, lighter, easier to machine, easier to drill etc. The main significant difference for me is that it won't work harden. On a boat it's easy to get bumped and accidentally work harden stainless and with a cordless drill stainless steel is not a good pairing at all. After that it's a pita to remove the hardening and start again. By that stage the tool you're using to cut/drill/mill it with is destroyed and some of that stuff is expensive.
So out goes the 316 stainless and in comes the 7075. The best part is that I can make nuts and bolts in almost any size metric or imperial if I need to with the lathe and it's so easy to machine, 1/3 of the weight and strong. Luckily the place that sold me the stuff originally has more. So I'll be ordering some plate to go with the lathe stock I have. Y'all know what budget restraints I'm on and I'll be getting some of this stuff because it's going way below market price and exactly what I need to do things on the boat and to have as spare stock when I need it. e.g I need to machine turnbuckle pins (sure I can buy them but it's way cheaper to make them, WAY cheaper) and some port hole lockdown pins that they made from a poor grade aluminium that sheared and is now allowing rain water into the boat. You can't buy that stuff and to replace the port hole is over $200. I can make the part for about $0.05 so it's a no brainer to get stock.
I'll be making step mounts for the mill, regular clamps for the mill, a 4 jaw independent chuck for the lathe and some raisers for the lathe so I can work on parts 6" OD, and a rotary table. Probably an indexer as well. I can also convert the mill I have into an 8 axis mill for no cost other than time. Save about $1000 on that one and very handy when you need it. In short, I can actually see a practical and functional workshop on the boat meeting all the requirements I wanted for almost no cost other than time and once I'm on the boat I'll have plenty of that. Other than a cracked block/head on the engine or a broken mast, I can make almost anything to keep going or have a work around for it.
Summing up:
If you need something stronger and more corrosion resistant than steel (though it does tarnish badly in time), this is the stuff to get. If you don't need it to be super strong you can get 6061 which is easier to work with, more corrosion resistant and easier to cut but it is about half the strength and elongates a lot more from the yield point which may or may not work for you.
A very big thumbs up on this material. It is expensive as sin if you get it new (I wouldn't recommend new unless you are making rockets or aircraft) so find a place that does off cuts and get it for about the cost of scrap aluminium. Find sellers that sell it by the pound rather than the shape. Then bust your ass and make the shape you need. That vise cost me two days in time but about $1.00 in material plus the bolts which were about $1.00 so a bargain considering they are selling for about $70 in steel. Getting one in 7075, I have no idea and for me weight is a real issue.
I've never worked with this stuff before. I've used pretty average grade stuff before and 6061. In fact the Sherline lathe and mill is in 6061 and it is strong and rigid. It however is nothing like 7075 T651.
I stumbled across a bargain a while ago and got a bulk pack of assorted cut off's in 7075 (sold by the pound) as I figured I'd need to have some stock to use for the mill and lathe. A machine is useless without the raw material from which you make something. I didn't much think about it until recently when I had to actually use it to make clamps and a vise for the milling machine. So here's my thoughts on it.
Fuck me it is hard shit to cut with a hacksaw!
I've cut many grades of steel and stainless steel with a hacksaw easier than this stuff. It wrecked me. I needed to cut a 2x3 inch bar to make the vise. It took well over an hour. I ordered high end hacksaw blades because this stuff is freaking tough. The cheap (same price really) stuff at Lowes is useless. I had to get some Starrett blades from Amazon. I even tried a diamond cutoff blade that was water cooled and it was a bitch with that too. If you get some of this stuff, get 32 teeth per inch high quality hacksaw blades. Amazon has them for the same price as the cheap Chinese stuff you get at a local hardware store. If you have Prime, it ships for free.
The only bonus is that this stuff won't work harden like some iron based metals. So if your sawing technique is not the best, at least you won't harden the stuff to the point that a hacksaw will no longer cut it. Filing it is not too bad though all I have is one crappy flat file, a very course round file, plus a set of tooling files (tiny things about the size of ladies nail files). All did well with it.
Drilling is pretty good and tapping is excellent. You need a very sharp drill or you'll be wasting your time. Tapping is smooth and effortless. Probably one of the easiest metals I've tapped. Lower grades of aluminium can gal easily but this stuff won't. It doesn't like to stretch and it's yield point and tensile strength are close with minimal elongation. So perfect for tapping but failures are spectacular. As I found out when I wanted to bend a small bracket I made for the temporary vise I used to make the final vise. It simply broke after a hell of a lot of force was applied with the bench vise (the drop forged steel one) and no bending was observed at all.
Strength wise, this stuff is stronger than 316 stainless steel which is a marine industry standard and stronger than many steels. It's also 1/3 of the weight. Originally I was going to buy stainless steel stock on the boat if I needed to fabricate something but this stuff is stronger, lighter, easier to machine, easier to drill etc. The main significant difference for me is that it won't work harden. On a boat it's easy to get bumped and accidentally work harden stainless and with a cordless drill stainless steel is not a good pairing at all. After that it's a pita to remove the hardening and start again. By that stage the tool you're using to cut/drill/mill it with is destroyed and some of that stuff is expensive.
So out goes the 316 stainless and in comes the 7075. The best part is that I can make nuts and bolts in almost any size metric or imperial if I need to with the lathe and it's so easy to machine, 1/3 of the weight and strong. Luckily the place that sold me the stuff originally has more. So I'll be ordering some plate to go with the lathe stock I have. Y'all know what budget restraints I'm on and I'll be getting some of this stuff because it's going way below market price and exactly what I need to do things on the boat and to have as spare stock when I need it. e.g I need to machine turnbuckle pins (sure I can buy them but it's way cheaper to make them, WAY cheaper) and some port hole lockdown pins that they made from a poor grade aluminium that sheared and is now allowing rain water into the boat. You can't buy that stuff and to replace the port hole is over $200. I can make the part for about $0.05 so it's a no brainer to get stock.
I'll be making step mounts for the mill, regular clamps for the mill, a 4 jaw independent chuck for the lathe and some raisers for the lathe so I can work on parts 6" OD, and a rotary table. Probably an indexer as well. I can also convert the mill I have into an 8 axis mill for no cost other than time. Save about $1000 on that one and very handy when you need it. In short, I can actually see a practical and functional workshop on the boat meeting all the requirements I wanted for almost no cost other than time and once I'm on the boat I'll have plenty of that. Other than a cracked block/head on the engine or a broken mast, I can make almost anything to keep going or have a work around for it.
Summing up:
If you need something stronger and more corrosion resistant than steel (though it does tarnish badly in time), this is the stuff to get. If you don't need it to be super strong you can get 6061 which is easier to work with, more corrosion resistant and easier to cut but it is about half the strength and elongates a lot more from the yield point which may or may not work for you.
A very big thumbs up on this material. It is expensive as sin if you get it new (I wouldn't recommend new unless you are making rockets or aircraft) so find a place that does off cuts and get it for about the cost of scrap aluminium. Find sellers that sell it by the pound rather than the shape. Then bust your ass and make the shape you need. That vise cost me two days in time but about $1.00 in material plus the bolts which were about $1.00 so a bargain considering they are selling for about $70 in steel. Getting one in 7075, I have no idea and for me weight is a real issue.
Thanks for all the fish.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFiFisher » Thu Sep 22, 2016 1:44 pm
You are the Ultimate DIY man. I am beyond impressed with your ability to make almost anything. 
"To create more positive results in your life, replace 'if only' with 'next time'." — Author Unknown
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Thu Sep 22, 2016 2:04 pm
SciFiFisher wrote:You are the Ultimate DIY man. I am beyond impressed with your ability to make almost anything.
And now you know why I'm willing to sail across an ocean with him.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:06 pm
I can make basic shit, but can't sail. lol
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:43 pm
vendic wrote:I can make basic shit, but can't sail. lol
What?
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by geonuc » Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:49 pm
SciFi Chick wrote:vendic wrote:I can make basic shit, but can't sail. lol
What?
Rut roh ...
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Thu Sep 22, 2016 7:59 pm
Yeah, sfc didn't get that joke either. If I have to explain it, the jokes on me. 
Anyway, the car is fixed. Took it for a test drive, checked the distance between the edge of the pulley and the belt and we have a little clearance. That's all we need. Job done other than get a new belt to replace the one that got frayed by a 30 mile drive. Changing the belt takes all of about 2 min on this car. One of the easiest belt changes I've ever done. No spanners, no weaving around the fan. It just takes pulling the belt up and letting the tensioner compress while slipping it over the idler pulley. So about 60 pounds of force or so I'm guessing.
Thus endeth the broken rodeo fan mount issue.
Now we go back to our regular scheduled program of working on the boat and me being a hermit. Starting Tuesday.
Anyway, the car is fixed. Took it for a test drive, checked the distance between the edge of the pulley and the belt and we have a little clearance. That's all we need. Job done other than get a new belt to replace the one that got frayed by a 30 mile drive. Changing the belt takes all of about 2 min on this car. One of the easiest belt changes I've ever done. No spanners, no weaving around the fan. It just takes pulling the belt up and letting the tensioner compress while slipping it over the idler pulley. So about 60 pounds of force or so I'm guessing.
Thus endeth the broken rodeo fan mount issue.
Now we go back to our regular scheduled program of working on the boat and me being a hermit. Starting Tuesday.
Thanks for all the fish.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Thu Sep 22, 2016 8:10 pm
It got frayed by a ten mile drive, but other than that, your report is accurate.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Thu Sep 22, 2016 8:18 pm
SciFi Chick wrote:It got frayed by a ten mile drive, but other than that, your report is accurate.
The closest place (Walmart) is 14 miles return. The Foodlion is about 19 return.
I also did a trash run with that belt so I'm figuring there's another 10 there.
Either way, it was a short run.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:28 am
vendic wrote:SciFi Chick wrote:It got frayed by a ten mile drive, but other than that, your report is accurate.
The closest place (Walmart) is 14 miles return. The Foodlion is about 19 return.
I also did a trash run with that belt so I'm figuring there's another 10 there.
Either way, it was a short run.
Are you on drugs? The Food Lion is about a mile from the Walmart.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFiFisher » Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:30 am
SciFi Chick wrote:vendic wrote:SciFi Chick wrote:It got frayed by a ten mile drive, but other than that, your report is accurate.
The closest place (Walmart) is 14 miles return. The Foodlion is about 19 return.
I also did a trash run with that belt so I'm figuring there's another 10 there.
Either way, it was a short run.
Are you on drugs? The Food Lion is about a mile from the Walmart.
Zee... take my advice. Just tell her she is right.
"To create more positive results in your life, replace 'if only' with 'next time'." — Author Unknown
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:57 am
You're right hon. Google maps and me are completely wrong.
Thanks for all the fish.
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFiFisher » Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:51 pm
vendic wrote:You're right hon. Google maps and me are completely wrong.
I bet you fail the "does this make me look fat" test too.
"To create more positive results in your life, replace 'if only' with 'next time'." — Author Unknown
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
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SciFiFisher - Redneck Geek
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by Sigma_Orionis » Fri Sep 23, 2016 4:14 pm
SciFiFisher wrote:vendic wrote:You're right hon. Google maps and me are completely wrong.
I bet you fail the "does this make me look fat" test too.
I think yer speaking from previous experience
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
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Sigma_Orionis - Resident Oppressed Latino
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFiFisher » Fri Sep 23, 2016 6:04 pm
Sigma_Orionis wrote:SciFiFisher wrote:vendic wrote:You're right hon. Google maps and me are completely wrong.
I bet you fail the "does this make me look fat" test too.
I think yer speaking from previous experience
True Story posted in Humor. We really should have a dark humor category.
"To create more positive results in your life, replace 'if only' with 'next time'." — Author Unknown
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
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SciFiFisher - Redneck Geek
- Posts: 4889
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFi Chick » Fri Sep 23, 2016 9:17 pm
My husband is good looking, sexy, and intelligent. That's why he gets away with this shit. He pretends to be dumb, and he doesn't like to be complimented. But he deserves to be complimented after that performance.
"Do not speak badly of yourself, for the warrior that is inside you hears your words and is lessened by them." -David Gemmel
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Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Mon Sep 26, 2016 10:51 pm
Please ignore the wench above.
Today I screwed up while multitasking. Seems cooking and running a milling machine at the same time don't go so well.
I burned the beef and drilled a hole too large to be tapped by the bolt I was using.
Truth be told, I was multitasking more than just the milling machine and the cooking.
I was also drinking a beer and a scotch.
But I have a plan to make sure there is no repeat of today.
I'm no longer planning on cooking at the same time as milling.
On a separate issue, the milling column I have had a problem. It worked well at 90 Deg and 0 Deg as it has a key to lock those two in position. But the rotating scale was laser etched too small a radius and couldn't be read once the headstock was mounted to it.
I emailed Sherline and they are sending me a new milling saddle laser etched correctly. I don't even have to return the old saddle. Which means I can use it to make what I want.
As soon as I decide what that is, I'll make it.
Today I screwed up while multitasking. Seems cooking and running a milling machine at the same time don't go so well.
I burned the beef and drilled a hole too large to be tapped by the bolt I was using.
Truth be told, I was multitasking more than just the milling machine and the cooking.
I was also drinking a beer and a scotch.
But I have a plan to make sure there is no repeat of today.
I'm no longer planning on cooking at the same time as milling.
On a separate issue, the milling column I have had a problem. It worked well at 90 Deg and 0 Deg as it has a key to lock those two in position. But the rotating scale was laser etched too small a radius and couldn't be read once the headstock was mounted to it.
I emailed Sherline and they are sending me a new milling saddle laser etched correctly. I don't even have to return the old saddle. Which means I can use it to make what I want.
As soon as I decide what that is, I'll make it.
Thanks for all the fish.
- vendic
- PIA
- Posts: 1762
- Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2014 2:57 am
Re: Lathes and milling machines
by SciFiFisher » Tue Sep 27, 2016 3:13 am
Somewhere in that last post there is a dirty limerick or two.
"To create more positive results in your life, replace 'if only' with 'next time'." — Author Unknown
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Law
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SciFiFisher - Redneck Geek
- Posts: 4889
- Joined: Mon May 27, 2013 5:01 pm
- Location: Sacramento CA
Re: Lathes and milling machines
by vendic » Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:04 am
More in the lifestyles of the poor and unknown.
Not sure who is reading this or what their skill levels are so I figured I'd make some basic points as I go.
1) Getting a lathe or mill or both is step (0)
2) You need stock to work with before you can do anything. Stock is the term used for raw material. In this case, rod or bar in various types of material.
3) You can't make shit without tools
4) Tools are fucking expensive.
5) You make your own tools unless you are a Walton and have a metal fetish.
6) The more tools you make, the easier it is to do things when they come up.
7) No matter what job comes up, you won't have the right tool.
8) Whatever tool you have for the job is useless without the right stock and you can only have one or the other. Never both at the same time unless you've been doing this for the last 1000 years or so, or your name comes with millions of dollars of disposable income and you like to torture yourself for no reason at all.
9) You can never know enough.
Having the basics down I can now give practical examples.
I got the lathe/mill cheap. It had issues, came with some basic stuff and no stock. To get any use out of it I had to make my own tools. If you ever wondered why there is a job called a "tool maker", now you know.
So here's how I started. I had a lathe/mill with a basic 3 jaw chuck and a 1/4 inch tool post, a drill chuck and a faceplate and lathe dog. With that set up you can build almost anything you need, but anything you need to build is hard work.
For a start, I had no clamps. So milling wasn't going to be easy. Milling requires you to clamp the work as the tool spins. A lathe spins the work and the tool is clamped via a tool post. That's as basic as I can get it. I had a tool post for the lathe but no clamps for the mill.
Since I had no clamps I had to make them before I could use the mill. Of course you can buy all this stuff but what you are doing is trading money for time. Depending on which you have the most of, you balance it in some meaningful way that sounds right good at the time but usually in hindsight was the worst possible decision you could have possibly made.
So here's my first clamps. ok, sure it's only one. The other was the same but I reused the metal as spacers. They were real garbage to be honest but enough to get the job done.
Clearly that is a pos but it took much of the day to make without any clamps to begin with and as it was the first job I did I also had a lot of tweaking to do on the machine itself.
They enabled me to make a vise as shown earlier in the posts.
That vise allowed me to fix the car and make other tools.
One of those tools was the new clamps shown below. These are far more practical and look almost professional. They work extremely well in actual use as opposed to the first clamps that were made for one purpose and that was to make a vise to build better tools with.
Another tool was a cut off saw arbor so I can cut the aluminium bar down to size. The saw is 60 thou in width and carbide toothed. It has 60 teeth over 7.5 inches so is pretty fine cutting too. I didn't make the saw blade. I made the thing that attaches it to the lathe spindle and stops it flying off under high rpm.
It makes very fine and straight cuts right through 2 inch aluminium bar effortlessly. The saw blades themselves are so cheap it makes sense to buy them and cut them up to make carbide tipped lathe tools. Many people do this as the lathe tools themselves cost significantly more. Supply and demand in action.
It makes me happy as it took hours with a hacksaw to cut the same bar stock and I never got a straight line like this gets.
Pic of it here:
It's a close tolerance tool. About 1/1000th of an inch to fit a 3/8" milling bit holder that fits the lathe. When it's running at whatever speed, visually there is no deflection at the blade. It runs very true. The finish is almost like a fly cutter finish. I'm very happy with it in all respects other than I'd like it made out of tool steel instead of 6061 aluminium.
The latest tool to the collection is a kind of a Frankenstein tool. It's part boring tool. Much like the author. The other part is a fly cutter. It's not well suited to either role, but does both close enough for a lot of jobs. I'll be making dedicated boring bars and fly cutters later but for now I just need something that can do either job close enough for a few jobs I have to complete on the boat.
Here it is:
A boring bar is kind of like an adjustable size drill bit. The main difference is that unlike a drill bit, the boring bar requires a hole already drilled that can fit the tool. The boring bar can then make the hole bigger. It cannot make a hole from nothing. In this tools case, the hole needs to be just over 3/8" in diameter or the bar won't even fit in. The advantage however is that I can make over 4 inch holes using a boring bar if I need to and the cost of a selection of drills in all the sizes to 4" is in excess of about $500 if you want anything decent. Of course you can get only the most popular drill sizes but then if you need an odd size you either need to buy it or make a boring bar. I figured why screw around and just make the bar. It gets more complex if you want metric and imperial and you want to drill holes for tapping later (putting an internal thread into the hole). All up you can be up for thousands or you do what I just did and which every self respecting machine shop does.
I'll be making a smaller bar that requires only a 1/4" hole later so any size between 1/4" and about 4" can be made. Considering the cost to make a boring bar is about $3 (for my 3/8"-4" bar) it's pretty clear you want to go down this path instead of dedicated drills. For the record, a boring bar with that range is very unstable. You want the bar to be close to the final diameter to give good stability and minimise deflections and vibrations. The above bar at full extension might be completely unusable with some materials. This is why machine shops have many different sizes of boring bars. It gets more complex than that so if you know what I wrote is not "quite" correct, don't bother to correct me. I know it too.
Drills of course are far easier and quicker to use but next to impossible to have the right size and sharp on hand.
A fly cutter is very much like a boring bar except that the cutting tool isn't usually at a right angle to the tool length. It's purpose is not to cut holes but to make an uneven surface flat. As it rotates it cuts a strip in the same plane each pass. If the tool is moved across the surface (using a mill) then the surface becomes very flat. Not as flat as surface grinding but acceptable for many applications.
If you observe the picture of my boring bar you'll see it's at not at an angle of 90 degrees. So it's more like a fly cutter than a boring bar. The difference is that fly cutters usually have a larger diameter end to hold the tool, they have milled channels and are retained at minimum by two set screws. Mine is basically as rigid as a boring bar (not as rigid as a fly cutter) and can be used as a fly cutter on softer metals or lighter cuts. Heavy cuts or harder metal will cause deflection and it won't perform that well. Since I intend to cut aluminium with it, it should present no problems. That's the theory anyway.
I also made a dedicated cut off tool post. The one I had was ok but it could only cut just over an inch in diameter. The one I made today can cut off well past the swing of the lathe even after I make risers for it. So it's future proof. For the record, cut off tool posts are a bit of a bitch to make right. It's way easier to make a standard tool post.
There's a few more tools I need to make before I'm ready to really start to get serious on the boat stuff. A bigger vise that's more practical. Some raisers so I can have over 5 inches of swing on the lathe bed. Right now the lathe is very limited in diameter of the work piece (1.7" over the cross slide and 3.5" over the bed). I have a one job I that need more than the swing I currently have.
I also need to make a 3/8 to 1/4 high precision reducer so I can use my 1/4 inch center/edge finder on the mill. I found the center/edge finder cheap a long time ago and figured if I get the 1/4", making a reducer for it is far easier than making a tool to go up in diameter. We'll see how that planning went later when I try to make it.
I should really make a rotary table but those things are a pita to make. Maybe once I'm in Florida. In the mean time I'll most likely make an indexer which can give me 1 degree rotations over a 360 degree turn. I have devised a plan to make an indexer for 0.1 degree steps which makes it almost as accurate as a rotary table with a little more setup time. Far easier to use on the boat so I might go down that path. It is a lot more effort than the 1 degree step indexer.
Before I do that I'll probably build a qctp (quick change tool post). Not because I have a need for quick changes but rather on a boat swapping small tool bits is not easy. Adjusting them is harder. They are very easy to lose etc. A qctp allows me to have certain tools already mounted and adjusted and swapping them out takes seconds. It's large so it isn't easily lost. The other thing is that when I make the risers the tool posts that I have become redundant as they will be too low. I can make the qctp holder higher so it can be used with the current setup or any future setup. It's also not that hard to make if you have a dove tail cutter. Which I couldn't justify buying so I'll be making. Not that it's terribly expensive being about $12-20, but if I bought every single tool I need every single time I'd run into thousands of dollars. So if it's a one off job, I make the tool. If I need it regularly, depending on the price, I might by it.
I bought 3/8" tool steel (oil hardening) that was specifically purchased for making HSS cutting tools and the dove tail will be one. The boring bar above was the first. I have a special 3/8" precision tool holder with run out about 1/10th of a thou (as measured) so everything I use I try to base on 3/8 which is a very popular size in the industry and with that sort of precision it makes sense to do so. I have a 3 jaw chuck but it's only good for a couple of thou. Close for some stuff but for close tolerance work it's useless. I need to make a 4 jaw independent chuck asap.
Ever seen the price of reamers? Holy crap they are expensive. It's not that hard to make one with the tool steel and the tool steel is dirt cheap (like $2 a foot of 3/8"). Most tools are a couple of inches long so it's well under a dollar to make them. If you need larger diameter you need to get different stock. See what I mean about needing stock. Since I need a couple of metric reamers I'll be making them instead of buying. I can make the things faster than it takes to buy or ship them in.
In other news, I'm dismantling the 3D printer as it has wooden ply framing. The milling setup I have has all the degrees of movement I need for a 3D printer and all I need to do is make stepper motor couplers to the handles. It's not that hard to do. In return I get a 3D printer with greater accuracy but smaller work space. The reality is if I need more space I can make up a frame if/when I need it. This leaves me more space to store stuff and I also then have a CNC lathe/mill. Not that I particularly care about that as the lathe/mill is teaching me patience. Everything has to be done right and all the way to the end. As they say, if you are cutting a 100 tooth gear, you can't mess up the last tooth and say you did most of it right. It has to be right from start to finish and concentrating so long on really boring (pun intended) stuff is one hell of an exercise in patience. You need almost as much patience as those of you who read this whole damned thing! The wife just shuts off when I talk machining. I see it in the glazed look of her eyes. As does the mil. I'm very thankful I have cats that will listen to me. I always get a slow blink of approval from them as I tell them what I am doing.
Anyway, I'm drinking scotch and rambling.
Probably more for my sake so I can come back to this thread and remember what I need to do.
Not sure who is reading this or what their skill levels are so I figured I'd make some basic points as I go.
1) Getting a lathe or mill or both is step (0)
2) You need stock to work with before you can do anything. Stock is the term used for raw material. In this case, rod or bar in various types of material.
3) You can't make shit without tools
4) Tools are fucking expensive.
5) You make your own tools unless you are a Walton and have a metal fetish.
6) The more tools you make, the easier it is to do things when they come up.
7) No matter what job comes up, you won't have the right tool.
8) Whatever tool you have for the job is useless without the right stock and you can only have one or the other. Never both at the same time unless you've been doing this for the last 1000 years or so, or your name comes with millions of dollars of disposable income and you like to torture yourself for no reason at all.
9) You can never know enough.
Having the basics down I can now give practical examples.
I got the lathe/mill cheap. It had issues, came with some basic stuff and no stock. To get any use out of it I had to make my own tools. If you ever wondered why there is a job called a "tool maker", now you know.
So here's how I started. I had a lathe/mill with a basic 3 jaw chuck and a 1/4 inch tool post, a drill chuck and a faceplate and lathe dog. With that set up you can build almost anything you need, but anything you need to build is hard work.
For a start, I had no clamps. So milling wasn't going to be easy. Milling requires you to clamp the work as the tool spins. A lathe spins the work and the tool is clamped via a tool post. That's as basic as I can get it. I had a tool post for the lathe but no clamps for the mill.
Since I had no clamps I had to make them before I could use the mill. Of course you can buy all this stuff but what you are doing is trading money for time. Depending on which you have the most of, you balance it in some meaningful way that sounds right good at the time but usually in hindsight was the worst possible decision you could have possibly made.
So here's my first clamps. ok, sure it's only one. The other was the same but I reused the metal as spacers. They were real garbage to be honest but enough to get the job done.
Clearly that is a pos but it took much of the day to make without any clamps to begin with and as it was the first job I did I also had a lot of tweaking to do on the machine itself.
They enabled me to make a vise as shown earlier in the posts.
That vise allowed me to fix the car and make other tools.
One of those tools was the new clamps shown below. These are far more practical and look almost professional. They work extremely well in actual use as opposed to the first clamps that were made for one purpose and that was to make a vise to build better tools with.
Another tool was a cut off saw arbor so I can cut the aluminium bar down to size. The saw is 60 thou in width and carbide toothed. It has 60 teeth over 7.5 inches so is pretty fine cutting too. I didn't make the saw blade. I made the thing that attaches it to the lathe spindle and stops it flying off under high rpm.
It makes very fine and straight cuts right through 2 inch aluminium bar effortlessly. The saw blades themselves are so cheap it makes sense to buy them and cut them up to make carbide tipped lathe tools. Many people do this as the lathe tools themselves cost significantly more. Supply and demand in action.
It makes me happy as it took hours with a hacksaw to cut the same bar stock and I never got a straight line like this gets.
Pic of it here:
It's a close tolerance tool. About 1/1000th of an inch to fit a 3/8" milling bit holder that fits the lathe. When it's running at whatever speed, visually there is no deflection at the blade. It runs very true. The finish is almost like a fly cutter finish. I'm very happy with it in all respects other than I'd like it made out of tool steel instead of 6061 aluminium.
The latest tool to the collection is a kind of a Frankenstein tool. It's part boring tool. Much like the author. The other part is a fly cutter. It's not well suited to either role, but does both close enough for a lot of jobs. I'll be making dedicated boring bars and fly cutters later but for now I just need something that can do either job close enough for a few jobs I have to complete on the boat.
Here it is:
A boring bar is kind of like an adjustable size drill bit. The main difference is that unlike a drill bit, the boring bar requires a hole already drilled that can fit the tool. The boring bar can then make the hole bigger. It cannot make a hole from nothing. In this tools case, the hole needs to be just over 3/8" in diameter or the bar won't even fit in. The advantage however is that I can make over 4 inch holes using a boring bar if I need to and the cost of a selection of drills in all the sizes to 4" is in excess of about $500 if you want anything decent. Of course you can get only the most popular drill sizes but then if you need an odd size you either need to buy it or make a boring bar. I figured why screw around and just make the bar. It gets more complex if you want metric and imperial and you want to drill holes for tapping later (putting an internal thread into the hole). All up you can be up for thousands or you do what I just did and which every self respecting machine shop does.
I'll be making a smaller bar that requires only a 1/4" hole later so any size between 1/4" and about 4" can be made. Considering the cost to make a boring bar is about $3 (for my 3/8"-4" bar) it's pretty clear you want to go down this path instead of dedicated drills. For the record, a boring bar with that range is very unstable. You want the bar to be close to the final diameter to give good stability and minimise deflections and vibrations. The above bar at full extension might be completely unusable with some materials. This is why machine shops have many different sizes of boring bars. It gets more complex than that so if you know what I wrote is not "quite" correct, don't bother to correct me. I know it too.
Drills of course are far easier and quicker to use but next to impossible to have the right size and sharp on hand.
A fly cutter is very much like a boring bar except that the cutting tool isn't usually at a right angle to the tool length. It's purpose is not to cut holes but to make an uneven surface flat. As it rotates it cuts a strip in the same plane each pass. If the tool is moved across the surface (using a mill) then the surface becomes very flat. Not as flat as surface grinding but acceptable for many applications.
If you observe the picture of my boring bar you'll see it's at not at an angle of 90 degrees. So it's more like a fly cutter than a boring bar. The difference is that fly cutters usually have a larger diameter end to hold the tool, they have milled channels and are retained at minimum by two set screws. Mine is basically as rigid as a boring bar (not as rigid as a fly cutter) and can be used as a fly cutter on softer metals or lighter cuts. Heavy cuts or harder metal will cause deflection and it won't perform that well. Since I intend to cut aluminium with it, it should present no problems. That's the theory anyway.
I also made a dedicated cut off tool post. The one I had was ok but it could only cut just over an inch in diameter. The one I made today can cut off well past the swing of the lathe even after I make risers for it. So it's future proof. For the record, cut off tool posts are a bit of a bitch to make right. It's way easier to make a standard tool post.
There's a few more tools I need to make before I'm ready to really start to get serious on the boat stuff. A bigger vise that's more practical. Some raisers so I can have over 5 inches of swing on the lathe bed. Right now the lathe is very limited in diameter of the work piece (1.7" over the cross slide and 3.5" over the bed). I have a one job I that need more than the swing I currently have.
I also need to make a 3/8 to 1/4 high precision reducer so I can use my 1/4 inch center/edge finder on the mill. I found the center/edge finder cheap a long time ago and figured if I get the 1/4", making a reducer for it is far easier than making a tool to go up in diameter. We'll see how that planning went later when I try to make it.
I should really make a rotary table but those things are a pita to make. Maybe once I'm in Florida. In the mean time I'll most likely make an indexer which can give me 1 degree rotations over a 360 degree turn. I have devised a plan to make an indexer for 0.1 degree steps which makes it almost as accurate as a rotary table with a little more setup time. Far easier to use on the boat so I might go down that path. It is a lot more effort than the 1 degree step indexer.
Before I do that I'll probably build a qctp (quick change tool post). Not because I have a need for quick changes but rather on a boat swapping small tool bits is not easy. Adjusting them is harder. They are very easy to lose etc. A qctp allows me to have certain tools already mounted and adjusted and swapping them out takes seconds. It's large so it isn't easily lost. The other thing is that when I make the risers the tool posts that I have become redundant as they will be too low. I can make the qctp holder higher so it can be used with the current setup or any future setup. It's also not that hard to make if you have a dove tail cutter. Which I couldn't justify buying so I'll be making. Not that it's terribly expensive being about $12-20, but if I bought every single tool I need every single time I'd run into thousands of dollars. So if it's a one off job, I make the tool. If I need it regularly, depending on the price, I might by it.
I bought 3/8" tool steel (oil hardening) that was specifically purchased for making HSS cutting tools and the dove tail will be one. The boring bar above was the first. I have a special 3/8" precision tool holder with run out about 1/10th of a thou (as measured) so everything I use I try to base on 3/8 which is a very popular size in the industry and with that sort of precision it makes sense to do so. I have a 3 jaw chuck but it's only good for a couple of thou. Close for some stuff but for close tolerance work it's useless. I need to make a 4 jaw independent chuck asap.
Ever seen the price of reamers? Holy crap they are expensive. It's not that hard to make one with the tool steel and the tool steel is dirt cheap (like $2 a foot of 3/8"). Most tools are a couple of inches long so it's well under a dollar to make them. If you need larger diameter you need to get different stock. See what I mean about needing stock. Since I need a couple of metric reamers I'll be making them instead of buying. I can make the things faster than it takes to buy or ship them in.
In other news, I'm dismantling the 3D printer as it has wooden ply framing. The milling setup I have has all the degrees of movement I need for a 3D printer and all I need to do is make stepper motor couplers to the handles. It's not that hard to do. In return I get a 3D printer with greater accuracy but smaller work space. The reality is if I need more space I can make up a frame if/when I need it. This leaves me more space to store stuff and I also then have a CNC lathe/mill. Not that I particularly care about that as the lathe/mill is teaching me patience. Everything has to be done right and all the way to the end. As they say, if you are cutting a 100 tooth gear, you can't mess up the last tooth and say you did most of it right. It has to be right from start to finish and concentrating so long on really boring (pun intended) stuff is one hell of an exercise in patience. You need almost as much patience as those of you who read this whole damned thing! The wife just shuts off when I talk machining. I see it in the glazed look of her eyes. As does the mil. I'm very thankful I have cats that will listen to me. I always get a slow blink of approval from them as I tell them what I am doing.
Anyway, I'm drinking scotch and rambling.
Probably more for my sake so I can come back to this thread and remember what I need to do.
Thanks for all the fish.
- vendic
- PIA
- Posts: 1762
- Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2014 2:57 am
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