- Joined
- Dec 31, 2010
- Messages
- 937
I need T-nuts for my 8" rotary table so a piece of magic iron was selected and shoulders were milled. Need to cut 4.5" bar in 3 places but don't want a real wide kerf like on the vertical band saw so started looking at slitting saws. Can't find the one inch arbor to mount a 40 tooth X 2.75?
blade, haven't tripped over the arbor yet and did stay inside during colder weather.
Warmer now so dug through tooling that came with an Atlas horizontal mill, found a 0.035 X 3" 32 tooth blade for a 7/8" arbor. Got the mill workwise (or so I thought) and cleaned some rust off the saw blade, found it was broken and not usable.
Commented to the SIL about making the T nuts which prompted him to bring out 9-10 aluminum blocks made from 3/4"x 3/4" stock, all cut to 7/8" length and drilled and tapped 1/2" x13 tpi. In the Atlas mill tooling is a 1/4" wide rotary cutter that I thought would cut the shoulders for his T nuts in short order. Started milling but the arbor quit turning; last 4 threads on the draw bar were stripped.
Cut the remaining 1/2" of the 3/8" stud off the drawbar the drilled and tapped it for a longer 3/8" x16 tpi stud then finished the first nut for the SIL. Waiting for feedback on fit on his mill table.
Back to the T nuts for the RT, measured and found 3/8" studs would work so drilled and tapped (Leaving last 2-3 threads undersize) then broke down and cut them to length on the band saw. Some milling left to get them all to equal length.
The net result of this rant is that it takes me a long time to make T-nuts. Fortunately I was able to learn a lot about the Atlas mill and move onto working on my indexer and an end for the coolant pump in my tool grinder.
Have a good day
Ray
blade, haven't tripped over the arbor yet and did stay inside during colder weather.
Warmer now so dug through tooling that came with an Atlas horizontal mill, found a 0.035 X 3" 32 tooth blade for a 7/8" arbor. Got the mill workwise (or so I thought) and cleaned some rust off the saw blade, found it was broken and not usable.
Commented to the SIL about making the T nuts which prompted him to bring out 9-10 aluminum blocks made from 3/4"x 3/4" stock, all cut to 7/8" length and drilled and tapped 1/2" x13 tpi. In the Atlas mill tooling is a 1/4" wide rotary cutter that I thought would cut the shoulders for his T nuts in short order. Started milling but the arbor quit turning; last 4 threads on the draw bar were stripped.
Cut the remaining 1/2" of the 3/8" stud off the drawbar the drilled and tapped it for a longer 3/8" x16 tpi stud then finished the first nut for the SIL. Waiting for feedback on fit on his mill table.
Back to the T nuts for the RT, measured and found 3/8" studs would work so drilled and tapped (Leaving last 2-3 threads undersize) then broke down and cut them to length on the band saw. Some milling left to get them all to equal length.
The net result of this rant is that it takes me a long time to make T-nuts. Fortunately I was able to learn a lot about the Atlas mill and move onto working on my indexer and an end for the coolant pump in my tool grinder.
Have a good day
Ray