Todays Project - What did you do today?

[TomG]

Nice job Mike. Fabrication is fun.

Tom

[EdK]

Hey Mike,

Is that your truck that's labeled "holmes on ohms"?

Ed

[Hawkeye]

I work for Holmes Electric. He'll use any good idea to bring attention to the company.

[Hopefuldave]

Today I mostly wound a set of three 10 milliHenry inductors and measured them to make sure that's what they are... I should have spent a few Local Currency Units for a cheapy inductance meter, the dining table was covered :(
Load reactors for VFD to Dahlander-wound motor pole switch (three-speed, size of a dustbin, irreplaceable!)

And learned a bit of Multisim and Ultiboard while refreshing VFD control gear (needlessly complicated, some might say!)

Dave H. (the other one)

[Roadracer_Al]

I finally completed new dies for my Hossfeld-clone JD2 bender. 5" round, with the roller and offset holder block.

I went to my local metal merchant who sells drops & surplus material (in addition to new material) and picked up some mystery metal - a 2.5" thick x 6.5" round for the die, a 3' length of 2" round, and a rectangular block about 3x4x5.

Turned out the big round (which needed 1.5" taken off the OD) was some kind of wicked, evil, nasty stainless alloy. I was using my ABOM79 style HSS roughing tool (5/8" square tool stock, it's burly!) and it was putting out these stringy chips.... smoking hot 3/8" wide stringy chips @ 33 rpm. :) That's a huge grin, and the 7hp machine isn't even breaking a sweat. It all went to heck in a handbasket after I tried to put a chip breaker onto the tool - a slim groove just behind the cutting edge. The edge began breaking down, the chips were getting hotter -- in fact, so hot that I had a squirt of low-sulphur cutting oil burst briefly into flame! Couldn't seem to get my mojo back with the roughing tool and switched over to a carbide tool with geometry for a shallow cut. Took forever, but it worked out OK.

Then the drilling fiasco. Center pop - went fine. 1/4" drill - went fine. 3/8" drill - after putting a fresh edge on it, went fine. Dropped the speed, and went up to a freshly sharpened 3/4" drill, and managed to thoroughly melt it within 1/2" of drilling! I cut it off and set it aside for sharpening later. Switched over to a 5/8" drill and that went fine. Then switched over to the carbide boring bar to open the hole to 1" This also took forever, but worked out OK.

I'll try to load pix tomorrow when I make bends for a railing I'm working on.

[f350ca]

Not much metal working going on again so we'll force some wood on yah.
Still at the tool boxes. Getting a finish on them now. First coat was a heavy cut orange shellac rubbed in with steel wool to help fill the grain. The steel wool cuts the surface and packs the cuttings into the open grain and seals it there. Then hand rubbed varnish. Have two coats on now. Not sure how many my attention span will take. Quality control is getting bored with the process.






Truth be we got distracted on a couple of real projects in the machine shop. This one is oversized OD bushings for an excavator. The bushings came loose and egg shaped the arm, so we had them line bored over size and I made these out of hardened 4140 to fit. Afraid I can't get the dipper warm enough for a shrink fit so we're going to try cooling these in dry ice and mildly warm the boom.

[haroldmulder]

Well at least your quality control inspector had a nice bed to sleep on

[TomG]

You've been busy, Greg.

I never heard of using shellac as a base filler, or that it was compatible with varnish. Guess I'll have to try it on my next wood project. Dogs sure are attracted to wood shavings. My son's GSP does the same thing.

I actually did a simple wood project myself, although I'm almost embarrassed to post it next to your tool chest. It's just a simple knick-knack shelf for the wife. I made it out of 3/4" plywood and cherry veneer to match the living room built in I did a few years back. A strip of LED lighting underneath lights the couch below and three coats of tung oil make it pretty. Still have to add a dimmer and an electrical box to plug it into.

Tom

[Pete O]

(03-16-2017, 07:51 PM)f350ca Wrote: so we had them line bored over size

Ok Greg, nice cabinets and everything but the real take-home point from your post is that you need a line-boring setup.

[Dr Stan]

Very nicely done, especially the finger joints.