04-12-2017, 05:41 AM
I've been making a little more progress on my toolholders (don't know how those Chinamen do them for the price...)
Got the long dovetailed piece sawn up into a bunch of blanks. 13 minutes per cut, 5 cuts, that's about 65 minutes of wishing for a coolant system and auto cutout switch on the bandsaw. Another project on the list.
I trammed my two mill vices to get these done two by two, ditched that idea in short order. I needed to get the first reference face- either the top of bottom of the holder- square with the dovetail. This was fiddly enough doing one at a time. I ended up taking one vice off out of the way.
I don't know what this forklift tyne material actually is, it's tough to machine and I decided that, not just for the squaring process but especially for horizontal milling the channel for the tool, I would need to set up the flood coolant system on the mill, another thing that has been on the to-do list for ages. That became today's spinoff project. I don't want to use the original system on the U2 that has the coolant drain through the machine and into the base- two reasons, I don't ever want to have to clean out the base of the machine again and when I took the swivel table off a while ago the passageways for the coolant to drain through were completely clogged up with a kind of cement made from dried coolant and swarf. The mill is nice and close to the lathe so I have set it up to use the lathe coolant reservoir and pump and to drain back into the lathe. I used some kneading epoxy to modify the drainage outlet in the table to take a hose- only photo I took of the coolant project.
Spinoff project complete, I set about squaring up the toolholder blanks. Got three of them done, although I have not done the ends yet as I'm planning on picking up a long 1" endmill for the purpose. The stuff takes a reasonable finish, whatever it is.
That's about as much as I expect to get done until after Easter.
The coolant system has made another project necessary. Splashguards.
Got the long dovetailed piece sawn up into a bunch of blanks. 13 minutes per cut, 5 cuts, that's about 65 minutes of wishing for a coolant system and auto cutout switch on the bandsaw. Another project on the list.
I trammed my two mill vices to get these done two by two, ditched that idea in short order. I needed to get the first reference face- either the top of bottom of the holder- square with the dovetail. This was fiddly enough doing one at a time. I ended up taking one vice off out of the way.
I don't know what this forklift tyne material actually is, it's tough to machine and I decided that, not just for the squaring process but especially for horizontal milling the channel for the tool, I would need to set up the flood coolant system on the mill, another thing that has been on the to-do list for ages. That became today's spinoff project. I don't want to use the original system on the U2 that has the coolant drain through the machine and into the base- two reasons, I don't ever want to have to clean out the base of the machine again and when I took the swivel table off a while ago the passageways for the coolant to drain through were completely clogged up with a kind of cement made from dried coolant and swarf. The mill is nice and close to the lathe so I have set it up to use the lathe coolant reservoir and pump and to drain back into the lathe. I used some kneading epoxy to modify the drainage outlet in the table to take a hose- only photo I took of the coolant project.
Spinoff project complete, I set about squaring up the toolholder blanks. Got three of them done, although I have not done the ends yet as I'm planning on picking up a long 1" endmill for the purpose. The stuff takes a reasonable finish, whatever it is.
That's about as much as I expect to get done until after Easter.
The coolant system has made another project necessary. Splashguards.
Lathe (n); a machine tool used in the production of milling machine components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.