A customer ordered 100 PVC bushings, so I needed a quick & dirty way to make them. 2 inches long, OD ~2.38, ID 2.00. Schedule 80 PVC pipe is 2.375 nominal OD, by about 1.95 ID, so very close to the finished ID dimension.
So first cut a little a little long in the chop saw, well not quite that long
, but you get the idea.
My 25 year old Black & Decker/DeWalt is still going strong.
Then over to the mill to the ultra expensive MDF dual fixture. 3 layers of 3/4 inch MDF, screwed & glued together. About $2 in materials, and about 30 minutes to draw it up and build it. Pocketed to fit the OD, the halves attached to the soft jaws so it opens up when the vice is released. I made the fixture in one piece, then took it out of the vice and split it on the table saw. The flat head cap screws relocated the fixture in the vice.
I did it this way because if I put them in the 3-jaw chuck in the lathe the pieces would deform unless I made a set of soft jaws for the lathe that form fit the parts. Then I would have had to do all of the work manually, doing it in the mill, I can load the parts, press go, and walk away for a few minutes and work on another project. I machined the vice soft jaws at 1.5 inches high so the 3rd layer of MDF would sit flush on top of the other two. I rarely use hard jaws on my vice, and just make soft jaws as I need them out of steel or aluminum.
And this is the way they fit. Face off one side, then flip over and run the finish height cut and bore all with the same tool, a 1/2 inch dia, 2 inch DOC, carbide tipped, router bit.
Repeat 50 times
, then change tools and corner round the ID. Total time per each is about 6 minutes. A little long at $5 each+materials, but that's what the market would bear. Sometimes you can't get what you want, but it still helps support my tool habit.
