Todays Project - What did you do today?

[f350ca]

Thanks Tom, I seem to be getting worse with regards to taking pictures as I go. Plus the camera in my phone died (the one Ed complained about)
Was a kit from Caswell Plating, Pete. The usual chemical rusting with a sealer they supplied. The sealer smells organic, might be a linseed oil based product, dries slowly but holds up well. I was building a set of kitchen cabinets a few years back, the lady wanted black hinges, so I sandblasted regular ones and blackened them with this same kit. Was there a month or so ago and the hinges look like the day I did them.

[awemawson]

I've had an occasional failure to index properly on the tool turret of my cnc lathe. The 'curvic coupling' doesn't quite seat properly. Now there are 45 kgs of tooling on the tool disk so it has got quite a task to position properly, and the tools need to be carefully balanced so the weight isn't lopsided. Now the same servo motor that rotates the tool disk also drives the powered tooling, and I'd thought that I'd noticed an anomaly between commanded speed and actual speed measured with a reflective meter. So today's task was to go chasing and find what's happening.

OK reflective tab on an ER32 collet chuck nut - 100 rpm gave 350, 200 rpm gave about 400, 1000 rpm gave approx 1600 - what the heck?

Then, in a flash of inspiration I wrapped brown insulation round the collet nut, and stuck the reflective tab onto that. Guess what:
100 =100, 200 =200 etc etc up to 2000 rpm - absolutely spot on all the way through the range. But this itself is rather peculiar, as I've been fiddling with the Tacho scaling pot so I'd not expect it to have been so accurate.

So I wrote a diddy program to exercise the turret and try and bring on the fault. The intention being to give it long and short moves in both directions. It selects tools in this sequence 1,12,2,11,3,10,4,9,5,8,6,7,6,8,5,9,4,10,3,11,2,12 and then it cycles back ad infinitum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5bHWOefifQ

Left it running for ages and of course it never failed !!!

[TomG]

Ever figure out what the tape did to correct the problem?

Tom

[awemawson]

Simple optics Tom. The reflection was not only coming off the reflective tab, but also the bits of the chuck. Brown electrical tape, far less reflection, just the metallised tab.

[f350ca]

Spent the afternoon out on the Skidoo with my shadow.

[TomG]

Can't wait to get back out.

[f350ca]

Had enough climbing a sep ladder to get to the drawbar on the mill, so started a power one based on Tom's design. 


Was sidetracked today though. My buddy needed the fuel pump on his truck rebuilt. He got a kit from somewhere. A half hour in the ultrasonic cleaner did it wonders.



He bought the truck last summer, never said for how much. A 47 Mercury with 20,000 miles on it, totally original, even the original tires with the original air in them.


The other day I bought a convection oven of Kijiji, Canada's answer to Craigs List. Apparently the convection helps evenly heat the powder coat.

[TomG]

I didn't realize Mercury made a pickup truck back then. It's a nice looking machine.

What's going on with the bracket on the right guide of your power drawbar?

Tom

[f350ca]

Im going to attach the handle to that Tom. IT swivels on the post to activate the valve on the wrench. With the riser in my column I'll need a longer handle, was afraid the little pins on the butterfly might not be up to the possible leverage. Always seam to over build.

[Dr Stan]

Some interesting history on the Mercury PU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_M_series