2014 POTD Thread Archive

[chuckorlando]

Awesome. Teach em young man. My son was running the drill press at 4 and has his own lid for welding. Not that he welds, but like yours, awesome to see them pretend. My son plays hell on my metal stock as he fits diffrent shape stock into mating shaped holes. It's finding the holes thats key ahahaha. I can take off on my buggy and just leave a trail of crap falling out of it's perfect mating area. Engineer for sure.

cool thing is the little grinder guy wasn't shown how to operate them hand wheels haha, hes seen me throw the hood on pick up the tig torch and filler, I caught him sittin at the table at 3yrs old hood down torch in one hand filler in the other and he had the electrode touchin the part I had welded up. pretty awesome. hes still a few months away from 4yrs old in the grinder pic. lovin it..

 

[chevydyl]

My DRO on the lathe is driven by a Texas Instruments MSP430. Arduino being the alternative. Amazing what those tiny microcontrollers are capable of. I paid like 60 bucks for my DRO so far. Gotta buy one more scale (z) for it to be done.

 

[ARM]

Some more recent projects....made a tailstock tray similar to Tom Lipton's. Very useful space as I was quickly running out of room for all my toolholders. A piece of aluminum angle drilled to hold tailstock tools too.

Nice, neat and well organised !!
Good show
aRM

 

[ARM]

All the spills from both Lathe and Mill were getting to me and finally solved the problem for good - with these Perspex shields.
They do really make a difference as U can see on the Mill.
Now only left to test the Lathe one.
Thanks for looking
aRM

 

[blacksmithden]

Well...not exactly a "today" thing...more like a "the last month" thing.

The story goes something like this. I'm into black powder cannon shooting. As it turns out, it's become almost impossible to buy cannon fuse here in Canada. The one source I do know about wants $0.80 per foot for the stuff, which is obscene. As we all know, machinists can be the most patient people on earth, and if you tell us we can't have something....well.....that's just a challenge to make your own. LOL.

Here's my new visco fuse making machine. There's a little bit of machining in there...a little bit of welding.....a few purchased parts.....a few salvaged parts, and a whole lot of patience and tweaking to get the timing just right.

I rarely ever see anyone post a video here, so I had a look in the rules...didn't see anything in there about not doing it unless it's it's got a copywrite on it....well...this is my video, shot by me....you get the idea....anyway...if I'm breaking a rule, mods/admin, please feel free to drop the hammer on it...no offense taken....it's just that you can't really grasp what this thing does without seeing it in action. LOL. Oh...and I swear the song on the radio was just a coincidence. I didn't even notice it until about 3 days after I shot the video on my phone. LOL.

[video=youtube;BSvrPu7zjZc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSvrPu7zjZc[/video]

 

[JimDawson]

Posting videos is just fine.

That is quite a piece of engineering. I'm impressed.

 

[GarageGuy]

That looks like a wonderfully engineered piece of machinery! Do we get to see the cannon fuse at "work"? :biggrin:

GG

 

[blacksmithden]

That looks like a wonderfully engineered piece of machinery! Do we get to see the cannon fuse at "work"? :biggrin:

GG

Sure. Just not in any of my cannons. Something crazyness about Canadian cops not liking cannon fire in a subdivision in a major city. I know..I know...no sense of humor. LOL. My favorite has a 44mm bore, and it's a little on the loud side.

I'm currently working on a few other desk top size versions. Anyway...here's a video of a test of the final finished product after it's got it's nitrocellulose coating on it.

[video=youtube;QVOVVoB36cM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVOVVoB36cM[/video]


And a 1 foot burn rate test

[video=youtube;vm8tlD3EXu0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm8tlD3EXu0[/video]

 

[chevydyl]

so here is a job that was pretty cool, a local machine shop called me and asked what distance i had between centers, his BA Southwestern ProtoTRAK is only a 1630, i brought the drum home, it has centers drilled in it already and has a lenght of 34in, maybe 32... the first picture shows i tried chucking one end of the shaft and live center on the tail with the carriage way down on the end, with an alum insert i began to take the 1.5in shaft down to .787, only had a thou under to work with. cannot be over .787, no less than .786 the first couple passes went ok, i knew i was gonna be in for a long haul lol. the drum was for a conveyer of sorts for a fish cannery that was switching the drive mech to a gear reduction planet unit, nice. after a couple passes it was not going well, my lathe did NOT want to cut down there by the tail. (the tail stock was hanging off the bed a few inches to accomodate the drum) so i removed the chuck and threw in a dead center in the headstock and put some pressure on it, no drive dog. it spun it up, then the next problem, there was no room for my QCTP with that 6in drum, so i put on the old lantern and ground a 1/4in tool. i hit .787 and then filed and polished to .7865 and returned it to the machine shop. he was pleased and paid me, he cut a key in it as well. took about 2.5hrs taking small cuts lol. i also had to readjust the tool at a different angle so i could reach the shoulder as i couldnt get there because of the drums diameter it would hit the compound. so i turned about 3in in lenght then changed the tool angle and did the last inch and blended with file and sand paper then polished. everything done at about 600rpm heres the pics. not shown but when using centers the tailstock ram was fully retracted and hanging off the bed about 3in to hold this drum.

 

[rmack898]

Nice job, and that's the reason that you never get rid of your lantern tool post, you never know when it will save your butt by doing what a QCTP cant.