Todays Project - What did you do today?

[f350ca]

Broke my sawmill today. One of the bearings on the band wheels has been noisy for a bit, a shot of grease would silence it but today the Chinese bearing grenaded , never saw an inner and outer race both fail. Its 1 3/4 bore with only about 4000 pounds side load and less than 50 hours on it

[TomG]

Wow, that must have been noisy. Hope it didn't take out anything else.

Tom

[f350ca]

Not noisy for long, pretty much just a bang / crash. No other damage, but probably pushed the blade into the guard, won't know till we try sawing.

[Mayhem]

One for the wall of shame! How much damage is there to the shaft? It looks like a decent gouge in the picture but these things can be deceiving.

[dallen]

its the ones up in the 4 to 5 inch diameter size I always hated having to change after they did that when I was working specially when the drum was sitting with mix in it getting cold.

DA

[f350ca]

Looks far worse than it is Mayhem, just some light scratching on the shaft. It was one with an eccentric locking ring, the eccentric part sheared off and is still embedded in the lock ring at the right of the photo.
Know what you mean dallen, changed lots of big ones when I worked summers in the steel mills. What a horrible place to spend a summer. Remember changing split roller bearings on the line shafts of the overhead cranes. The inner and outer races were split to replace them in the middle of the shaft. The joint in the race was fingered together with lock collars on the outside edges. Can't imagine what they would be worth.

[EdK]

I grabbed a piece of 1/2" copper pipe I had laying around and cut off two 4" pieces, deburred them and hung them up to hold my lathe chuck keys. That makes room on the shelf for tooling.

Ed

   

[PixMan]

Nice idea Ed! I think I'll do something like that myself.

[dallen]

(08-09-2013, 08:29 PM)f350ca Wrote: Know what you mean dallen, changed lots of big ones when I worked summers in the steel mills. What a horrible place to spend a summer. Remember changing split roller bearings on the line shafts of the overhead cranes. The inner and outer races were split to replace them in the middle of the shaft. The joint in the race was fingered together with lock collars on the outside edges. Can't imagine what they would be worth.

yea their always fun to do when there way to heck up in the ceiling.

Was on a plant in Denver when they trashed both the bearings and broke the headshaft in a 500 TPH Drag Conveyor about a 100 feet up in the air. And no I don't miss those days.

DA

[PixMan]

Quite an adventurous and industrious day.

I had answered a Craigslist add two weeks ago and got a few tools at a commercial shop in Fitzwilliam NH that was closing. The owner, Ralph Neimela, had his own product lines, one of which were bench, machinist, pipe and combination vises he designed, manufactured and sold almost exclusively through GSA (US government General Services Administration) contracts.

At my first visit I came home with a few good buys on tools that were mentioned here in another thread. The item I wanted but was ill-equipped to pay for on the spot was a huge 6" bench vise with auxiliary pipe jaws. I met Ralph, his daughter Racheal (yes, that's the right spelling) and his son-in-law Arnold. All really nice people. I e-mailed Racheal when I got home that day and asked if she would consider holding or taking a deposit on the vise.

After my business trip to Wisconsin this week, I'd be up there today (Saturday 10Aug) to pay and take it away. And so that was my trip this morning. It was a bit steep for a slightly dinged one, but it did have the sliver painted highlights on the cast-in text, adding to the value and "bling factor." We had to take it down to the three major components to be able to fit it in my car; the swivel base, the sliding jaw and the main body. All together, the vise weighs upwards of 175 pounds (80kg).

I got back to the shop and began the project. First order of business was to remove the vise my dad had bought used, and (mostly) hated. It was a Chinese vise that rotated 360º and had separate pipe and regular 6" jaws. It never seemed to lock in securely, despite his having taken it apart to rework it twice. He'd have been glad to see this thing be removed.



Next, before I mounted the new vise I wanted to make ONE little modification. The GSA contract never specified having an "anvil-like" surface, but there behind the main solid jaw was a block of cast iron just screaming at me to be milled flat.



And so I did, using hand feed at 260 rpm with a 3" 45º lead carbide insert face mill:





The surface now flat, time for installation and reassembly.



Note the beefy 1-1/4" (32mm) ACME threads on the jaw movement. There seems to be thrust bearings on the assembly as well. The handle alone is 3/4" diameter, and the big ends on the sliding handle are each double pinned onto the shaft. They are NEVER going to pop off as you drop the handle down (like my 5" Starrett vise does.)



Fully assembled, it has at least 9" opening between the jaws, though rated for 8". I love how it has such depth from the top of the jaws, and the mass of it counters any flex it might have had because of that height.



I'm so proud to own this, so happy to have met the guy who designed it, made the casting patterns, and machined all the components. Ralph is around 80 years old now, but in seemingly good health. They are never to be made again, as the foundry in New York who made the castings had burned to the ground a few years ago and the patterns went with it. It's a work of art!