T Nuts started this

[rock_breaker]

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

 

[Ray C]

Yeah, that's par for the course on some days... Sad but true.

Yesterday, I was about to swear-off machining for the rest of my life. That little do-dad I'm holding took 3 tries and almost 2 hours to get it right. Sheesh!

The original had a sloppy fit and the little pin was waaaay off center. It wasn't bent, it was machined wrong. How they screwed that up is a different mystery all together.

The Saga of the rotary table replacement part:

Prelude: The roll-pin fought me tooth and nail during disassembly.
1st try: I matched the dimensions of the old one perfectly -sloppy fit and all.
2nd try... I was parting it off and put the blade on the wrong side of the scribe line and made it 1/8" too short.
3rd try... when hardening the tip, I got it too hot and dunked it too fast -and the tip cracked.

4th one: 1 Hour, 45 minutes later... Finally got it right.

Should have been 30 minutes start to finish -tops.



BTW: Every time I use a rotary table or dividing head, I just marvel at the little brass spinny-thing that helps register to the next hole. Man, whoever came-up with that was on the ball that day!

Ray

 

[RJSakowski]

One of my first milling jobs was making T nuts for my new mill/drill. The mill/drill came with a clamp set but the T nuts were 1/2" instead of the 9/16" that the mill required.

I started with a bar of steel and milled it to the correct width and height. Then I cut the two shoulders. Next, I marked out the locations of the holes, allowing for the saw cut, and drilled and tapped. The final operation was to cut them apart to length with the band saw. In relatively short order, I had six T nuts to fit my mill.

 

[Asm109]

RJ that is clearly fake news and a made up story. No body will believe nothing went wrong.

 

[4ssss]

Why not just get the right width and height stock of the bottom of the T, drill and tap them, and cut them off. The upper end of a T nut is useless anyway except for some extra thread.

 

[Eddyde]

Why not just get the right width and height stock of the bottom of the T, drill and tap them, and cut them off. The upper end of a T nut is useless anyway except for some extra thread.

In most T slots, the bottom of the T nut alone would too thin to engage enough threads for a secure connection.

 

[benmychree]

Yeah, that's par for the course on some days... Sad but true.

Yesterday, I was about to swear-off machining for the rest of my life. That little do-dad I'm holding took 3 tries and almost 2 hours to get it right. Sheesh!

The original had a sloppy fit and the little pin was waaaay off center. It wasn't bent, it was machined wrong. How they screwed that up is a different mystery all together.

The Saga of the rotary table replacement part:

Prelude: The roll-pin fought me tooth and nail during disassembly.
1st try: I matched the dimensions of the old one perfectly -sloppy fit and all.
2nd try... I was parting it off and put the blade on the wrong side of the scribe line and made it 1/8" too short.
3rd try... when hardening the tip, I got it too hot and dunked it too fast -and the tip cracked.

4th one: 1 Hour, 45 minutes later... Finally got it right.

Should have been 30 minutes start to finish -tops.

View attachment 264364

BTW: Every time I use a rotary table or dividing head, I just marvel at the little brass spinny-thing that helps register to the next hole. Man, whoever came-up with that was on the ball that day!

Ray

We call those spinny things sector arms.

 

[rock_breaker]

Making the sector arms is why I need the rotary table, corners must be rounded. More to the rant; I have a new unused tilting table that I wanted to use to slope the leading edges where the plunger goes through to get into the indexing holes, guess what, different sizes of T nuts are required. There are days when I feel like a wheel, you know- goes in circles and rolls through stuff in the barnyard.
Have a good day
Ray