Todays Project - What did you do today?

[Pete O]

I had to rearrange the coolant drain system to interact with the X axis DRO scale and reader. The original drain system on this mill is internal, some of you guys might remember I bypassed that with a hose a while ago- when I partially stripped this machine down to clean after buying it, the internal coolant drain channels were completely gunked up with a concretion of old coolant residue, also I run coolant to the mill from the tank of the lathe. Anyway my drain hose attachment was too fat to pass through the bracket of the DRO reader so I replaced it with a length of 15x30mm rectangular aluminium tube.
   
   
   

[Pete O]

With the DRO and coolant drain all done, I got back to putting a radius on the second cheek plate for the frankenmill. I've found it difficult to clamp these to my RT, the workpiece itself takes up so much of the table that there's little room left for a clamping arrangement that doesn't interfere with the cutter at either end of the arc. I came up with the solution of spigotting the workpiece to the centre bore of the table.
A muffin-tray ingot of excess from my last aluminium casting made a good size blank for the job.
   

Turned that into a bush with an 8mm bore and an OD to match the centre bore on the rotary table. Drilled and tapped an M8 hole on the underside of the workpiece and attached the spigot.
   

With the spigot taking the lateral force from the cutter, clamping is a whole lot easier and far more reliable.
   

Don't be upset that the radius is not centred on the workpiece- there's more machining to do on the cheekplates once they are mounted.

I've no doubt this is common practice- spigotting from a blind hole on the back of a workpiece- but I had not seen it before. I suspect that simple aluminium spigot will see plenty of use in the future.

[TomG]

Most of my parts use a through hole for rotary table location, but I'm sure I've used a bind one at some point.

Did you plunge mill the roughing cut on that radius? It saves a lot of wear and tear on the end mill.

Tom

[Pete O]

(01-03-2019, 07:13 PM)TomG Wrote: Did you plunge mill the roughing cut on that radius? It saves a lot of wear and tear on the end mill.

Tom

That makes sense Tom, I'll have to remember that in future. I used an insert shoulder mill for this second part, which was only possible after I got the spigot in place. The first one I scribed the radius and cut the bulk off with an angle grinder. Plunge milling is very laborious without a quill, a problem that will be solved once this project is complete!

[TomG]

Yeah, quills are a requirement, but it looks like you are getting close.

Tom

[f350ca]

Built a bracket to mount a couple of driving lights on the bike.
Started with some 4x4x1/2 aluminum angle, had to remove a lot of it to find the bracket.
Not sure why the part shows up so shiny, used matt black powder coat.
Need to come up with a fan to run in the oven, ie convection, the small parts were suspended higher and warmed up way quicker than the main part that was lower.


Colour looks beter here. 


Lights mounted

[Dr Stan]

Nice, very nice.

[f350ca]

Started this project a couple of years ago, cut two blanks about a foot long in the shaper. 


Made up a bunch of holders and finally cut up the other blank today.

[TomG]

What happened to all the pics in between?

They look good Greg.

Tom

[Pete O]

Nice work Greg. What blueing process did you use?