First post. New Member

Mike6158

Mike6158

Random Pixel Generator
H-M Platinum Supporter
Joined
Dec 26, 2017
Messages
60
Man... I've been thumbing through this forum and the posts in the Beginners Forum don't sound very beginner- ee... :) I'll do my best to dumb things down a little for the future members that are really beginners like me...

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and 2018 is outstanding.

I'm very new to this but I am a certified Machinist YouTube Channel Watcher. Joe Pieczynski, Abom79, OxTool, Keith Rucker, Keith Fenner, and my favorite - Dave Richards Old Steam Powered Machine Shop. There are others but I only have an 8 bit memory and the overflow flag is true... So, with that said, I have a very large virtual experience base :grin big: and no practical experience base. (there's a politician joke in there somewhere but I'll leave well enough alone)

I have always liked metrology (Starrett boxes are pretty) so I have had mic's, calipers (dial and digital), etc for a while. Back in the 70's I mic'd crankshafts in engines that I overhauled... actually I mic'd plasti-gauge. My friends held it up to the little card and eyeballed it and I used a Starrett mic.

Earlier in 2017 I finally bought a LMC Model 5200 mini-lathe. Right off the bat I figured out it was too small to do the things I want to do but I'm having fun with it and the scale of my screw ups is smaller than it would be if I had a larger lathe. I do very simple things with it. I think it needs to be set up better. There is a lot of backlash in the cross slide. Baby steps.

Examples of simple things- I've made some thick brass washers that need to be a specific thickness. That wasn't exactly complex machine work and it went ok. Not great but ok. Today I drilled the primer flash hole out to 9/64" on 50 rounds of .308 brass. Again, not exactly tough machine work.

When I bought the lathe it came with a 3-jaw chuck, I bought (and use the most) a 4-jaw chuck as well as a collet chuck. I swapped the 4 jaw out to the collet chuck for drilling the flash holes last night. It was my first time to use a collet chuck and I like it. It's too bad everything isn't round.

So now I'm looking ahead to buying a mill. I need to build a shop before I buy a mill so I have time to look around. I've got my eye on a PM-25MV. Is that decent for a start? Recommendations?

I guess if I wait until the shop is done and I could look around for a Bridgeport but that might be akin to taking drivers ed in a formula 1 car. I'm in no hurry... well... I kind of am but there's no sense in buying a mill right now... I don't have room for it in my kitchen :oops:

I'm looking forward to learning some things from here.
 
Mike6158 said:
So now I'm looking ahead to buying a mill. I need to build a shop before I buy a mill so I have time to look around. I've got my eye on a PM-25MV. Is that decent for a start? Recommendations?
Click to expand...

Welcome to HM, Mike!

Before you can receive an intelligent response, you need to tell us what kind of work you intend to do on the mill. A PM25 is perfect for small stuff but if you need to do bigger projects then no, it isn't the right one. See what I mean?
 
Thank you (both). That makes sense. It follows along with what I've learned so far with my lathe. Since I don't have one I'm not sure what I would do with it. Keying shafts, some gunsmith work (the lathe is more useful for that), cutting gears (not sure how often I would do that but you never know. Eventually I want to build a good telescope mount). If I had a mill... I would put it to work. Sometimes the tool is the basis for the idea.

I wish I had a better idea... I just know I bought too small when I bought the lathe but I bought something that I had room for. More space begets bigger equipment lol
 
Here are my thoughts:
First, welcome.
Second, just get out there and make chips.
Third, we all wish for the bigger toys. If I could, I would go for a monster machine. But the reality is that I do not have the space. So, I bought small lathe and have had a ton of fun with it. But, as Ulma Doc pointed out a new machine found me and I picked it up for a super good deal. Yes, it's bigger but I wasn't looking for a new lathe.
Ok, I'm sure none of that answered your questions.:immersed:
Did I say welcome to the forum?:encourage:
 
Thank you.

I have turned brass round stock quite a bit since I bought my lathe. Nothing much came out of it at first. I got a wild hair and tried to turn a piece of 1" round stock into a cube. When I was done I had a mathematician look at it and when he was done he yelled "Eureka, the secrets of the universe have been discovered" and then he died. Apparently... I created some new mathematical shape that has connections to other dimensions... There isn't a square plane on that thing. It's the most non-cube cube you will ever see and it's sitting in front of me as I type this. It might look like "poo" but it's the first real thing (failure) I've made on a lathe :grin big: I call it art :cool:

:grin: Technically my newbie question can't really be answered but it must be asked (he said in a zen voice, whatever a zen voice is)

It's weird how I ended up on this path. A friend asked me if I would restore his grandmothers 1948 Arvine tombstone radio (the case is shaped like a tombstone). That was almost 2 years ago and I still haven't started it. I told him there was a lot in front of it.

Anyway, he said it was in "great shape". Great, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder... The plastic dial faces, there are two, inside the radio, were all but gone. I was able to put some of the pieces together and make a 1:1 scan of what was left of the dials. I checked around for someone that could make them and struck out. So I decided I would just get a lathe and cut the circle out on it (my lathe is too small and it's the wrong tool for the job). I'd also make new hubs (the lathe is perfect for that) and instead of pinning the dials to the hubs like the original I would drill and tap small holes in the face of the hub, put holes in the dial, and attach the dial to the hub with screws (mill and dividing head seemed appropriate for that but this doesn't seem like a very good idea anymore). I even installed Fusion 360 in case I found someone that could make the dials from g-code.

Take note at this point. See where my 1.2 neurons were taking me? Ask me what time it is and I'll tell you how to build a watch. I can make the simple become complicated at the speed of light squared.

The dial face can probably be printed on clear plastic with a sticky back, stuck to some thicker plastic, and then cut out. But then I wouldn't have a great reason to buy a lathe and a mill :) I still don't know how I'm going to make the dials. And now I just want a mill and a bigger lathe. :grin:

Ironically I think the lathe is going to come in handy for "restuffing" the kagillion can capacitors the radio has in it. I can "gut" the cans by taking a light cut on the bottom and pulling the guts out. From the top of the radio the can will look like it always has. That is, unless that idea doesn't work either.

So from tubes to metal turning... pretty good ricochet. Which brings me to- I would love to be able to do my own gunsmith work... Someday maybe.
 
Last edited:
I used to have an RF-25 mill. After a house fire, I got an RF-30. I was amazed at how much stiffer the 30 was. When the time comes, if there is any way you can afford the difference, I recommend getting the 30/31 size of mill/drill.
 
Get your priorities straight... There's noting wrong with having a mill in the kitchen. With the right attachments, it can also be used to knead bread, scramble eggs etc... Open your mind a little and start seeing the big picture if you want to hang-around here. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top