- 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 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
I'm looking forward to learning some things from here.
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 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
I'm looking forward to learning some things from here.