Todays Project - What did you do today?

[f350ca]

Your right Willie, haven't had one in years, dam, another project for the list.

[f350ca]

Finished the clock.

[arvidj]

Interesting that the shutter speed was slow enough to capture the transition of the seconds tube from 7 to 8.

[Pete O]

I replaced the bearings in the 1.5hp motor for the Bridgeport head, decided to also replace the bearings in the 5kw idler motor on my rotary phase converter while I was in electric motor mode. It was such a simple job and the phase converter is now almost silent, I can't believe I have taken so long to get around to this job when I've been deafened by that darn thing so often I'd come to think of it as normal.
   

[TomG]

Bearing noise definitely sneaks up on you. Another thing that acts similarly is the bronze bushing in the variable pulley sheave in the Bridgeport head. I put up with what I thought was bearing noise for quite a while until I realized that bushing was the culprit.

Tom

[Pete O]

Seeing no-one else seems to be doing anything...
I look like getting a bowhunting trip in soon so I thought i'd better finish the broadheads I made a start on last year. Not sure if I had posted a photo of the ferrules, this was taken last September after the lathe work and the slotting on the mill
   
I made a prototype blade, figured out a way to make the process repeatable by marking out a set of holes with the DRO and using these with pins to set up on the top edge of the mill vise. The prototype I finished yesterday,
   
test shooting showed better than acceptable results so I went ahead and made a batch of 5 today.
The DRO is a fantastic addition to the mill, I plotted out all the 3mm holes before cutting the blanks out of a length of RWL34 knife steel. They lined up perfectly to accept the 3mm drill rod pins.
   
the pins hold the stack in alignment and each edge is milled down to .200 above the corresponding pair of pins
   
   
pins swapped from hole to hole and all the edges and the rear slot milled
   
then off to the surface grinder to take them all down to thickness before marrying them to the ferrules.
   
The prototype got a double-bevelled edge but I've decided to single-bevel the rest. Did the first one left-handed by mistake.
The weight I was aiming for was 125 grain, I might have to sharpen this one a couple more times. Closer to nominal weight than any commercial broadhead I've ever bought though.
   
Still got to grind the bevels on two of them. I'll have to make a jig for the SG to get the bevels done more efficiently. More fun than buying them though.

[f350ca]

Nice work Pete, out of curiosity what are you hunting?

[Pete O]

The upcoming trip will be for pigs and goats.
No native species are hunted here but there are lots of introduced species that have become pests, around where I live there are deer, mostly sambar introduced from Ceylon around a hundred years ago, well established now and becoming a serious pest but incredibly elusive to hunt. More outback areas and broadacre cropping areas are infested with pigs, goats and feral cats. Anything released into the wild here seems to explode into a plague in no time.

[Pete O]

I posted a bit of my tractor refurb last year; there's been one major ongoing problem in the form of a hydraulic oil leak from the diverter valve. With a heavy implement on the 3PL, hydraulic oil leaks out between the diverter valve and it's mounting surface on the transmission top cover. I bought a 6' slasher this year that weighs a bomb, also been moving some heavy logs around with a 3PL forklift attachment and the oil leak was a real pain, especially after all the work I did on the tractor.
This is the culprit- the valve mounts to the top of the transmission in front of the operator seat, it's used to divert hydraulic power from the 3PL to the front-end loader.
   
I put the tractor back in the shed last week and pulled the top cover off and stripped it down.  I knew the mounting surface for the diverter valve was not flat so I introduced it to the surface grinder. A bit tricky to set up.
   
I swapped to a 3 1/2" diameter wheel to overcome this problem but that only led to other problems so I ground the surface with the part hanging off the front of the mag chuck.
   
   

I ground the mating face of the valve as well. Two mating faces that actually mate should be a reasonable place to start.
   

I did a bit of research into O-ring applications and it seems that the ideal 'squeeze' is about 30% so I borrowed a boring head from a friend (haven't got one in R8 yet) and ground a D-bit with a suitable end profile to re-cut the seats. Took them all down to a depth of 70% of the thickness of the O-ring. Also enlarged the diameter of a couple of them to suit O-rings from my assortment kit rather than the original oddball sizes.
   

I made a tool to hone the seats with lapping compound; a slug of aluminium bar turned to 20mm on one end so I could use collets to take the pain out of swapping it back and forth from the lathe to the mill, then turned the other end down to the diameter of the largest O-ring seat, used some lapping paste and light pressure from the quill to lap the seat. Back to the lathe and turn the tool down to the next largest diameter, back to the mill and lap that seat, back to the lathe.....got a reasonable finish on the o-ring seats- at least the scratches are all circular and not radial.
   
   

Got it all reassembled last night. I won't know if it's a success until I get a chance to put something heavy on the 3PL again. I think I'm going to have to get the blue paint out again too- had to grind the top surface of the valve to mount it to the mill table. Tried a HSS flycutter but that thing is hard as rock, wore the HSS down like butter.
   

[Pete O]

I put the slasher on and did a bit of work yesterday- the repair seems to be a success. The lack of oil leaking from up the top revealed a couple of leaks lower down, another new O-ring and a few drops of Loctite thread sealant sorted those. A sigh of relief after all the work to stop the oil getting out from under that valve, I was all out of ideas if it still leaked.