Latest Delivery

[Highpower]

(08-11-2024, 12:08 AM)rleete Wrote: I find it hard to believe, with all the poor press about the cheaper lathes and mills that someone can't make affordable small, rigid machines for the US market.

Fixed that for you. And therein lies the problem I think.

[rleete]

Yeah, Seig machines are a project in the semblance of a lathe or mill. "Real" machines are either full size and too big for a hobby shop or priced out of the range of most starting out.

I bought my 7x for less than $300 back in the day and put lots of time effort and some money into making it a usable machine. Now, these same lathes are $800 and up, but most still require that same time effort and even more money to get started machining.

Do I sound like an old fart yet?

[EdK]

(08-11-2024, 04:01 PM)rleete Wrote: Do I sound like an old fart yet?

Welcome to the crowd.  

In the end, I'd much rather have a rather wimpy mini lathe that needs a fair amount of mods than to have no lathe at all. I've seen some amazing work done on these mini lathes. But not by me, yet.  

Ed

[Highpower]

(08-11-2024, 04:01 PM)rleete Wrote: Do I sound like an old fart yet?

Patience, Grasshopper....  

Back in the day when you bought your lathe, the kids working at McDonald's weren't making $15 @ hr. but now they are. Back in the day when I bought my 7x lathe I paid about $300 as well. Later when I bought my 12x lathe I paid $1200, new in the crate. Now the same lathe is selling for $4725!  

[JScott]

Hey all.  It's been quite some time since I was able to jump in but I'm almost ready to make some steady contributions.  There is a long story that goes with it but that will be posted somewhere else.

On with the deliveries.  I acquired a mini mill and mini lathe almost exactly a year ago.  The mill came with a lot of tooling and a grinding vise.  I wanted a regular mill vise and picked one out on Amazon.  SWMBO said just pick the one you want and I'll order it.  I went through the search and picked out the usual, inexpensive Chinese vise because that's all I need to fiddle around on with this little mill.  My selection was a 3" vise that comes with the swivel base.  She placed the order and it arrived in a few days later here in Colombia (part of the long story).  Unfortunately, I didn't scrutinize her order closely enough and she accidentally ordered the 2" vise, not the 3" version.  It's a cute little vise but it's roughly the same size as the grinding vise and might be a little undersize to grab a bigger workpiece.  There's always the option of mounting the workpiece on the table and the mill came with a pallet predrilled with lots of holes.  Still, I kind of wanted the bigger vise so she said since it was her stumble go ahead and order the 3" vise.  Cool, I love you honey!  The 3" vise arrived a couple of days ago and here they are.  I threw my 12" square in as a scale reference.

   

As you can see, the 3" is almost twice the size of the 2" vise.  I thought about sending the 2" vise back, but it's just too cute and I'm sure I'll find some way to use it in the near future.  They both need to be stripped, cleaned, lubed and reassembled but on first look they seem to be just fine.  The operation of the 3" vise is much stiffer and solid feeling than the 2" vise.  Don't know why yet but I doubt it affects the "accuracy" or function.  Can't wait to start whittling but we have a month long vacation coming up in September so it'll be just a little longer before chips start to fly.

[rleete]

I made the same mistake but went the other way. I got the 4", thinking it was a nice upgrade, but the thing is huge.

[JScott]

I'm loaded up on vises now. I have these two, a 6" for the bigger mill and two grinding vises. That should cover all the bases.

[JScott]

These 5c collet blocks showed up a couple of days ago.  They'll make a nice addition to go with the set of 5C collets I bought from my friend Sherman.  The collets are a mish mash of different vendors; Hardinge, Brown & Sharpe etc.  I'm sure he collected them along the way from the different shops he worked in over his career.  A few probably came from his pals in the shops as well.  I need to polish them up with some Scotch Brite to get them nice and shiny again.  The long term plan is to build a somewhat nice wooden storage box to hold the collets, the blocks and accessories.  These blocks didn't come with a spanner to tighten the locking collars so I'll need to purchase or fab one.

   

[JScott]

These little guys showed up last Thursday.  Now I'll something better to hold those round, rolling bits that can be difficult to handle.  I'd like to add some brass pads to the tips of the bolts to help prevent marring the finish on workpieces. I'm going to run them over the surface plate to see if I can check parallelism and squareness but I'm only going to the thousandth not the ten thousandth.

   

[EdK]

(08-19-2024, 08:59 AM)JScott Wrote: I'd like to add some brass pads to the tips of the bolts to help prevent marring the finish on workpieces.

I made some small v-blocks out of aluminum to hold down the round parts. That way the bolt digs into the v-blocks instead of the part and there's more surface area with the v-block so it'll have a good grip on the part.

Ed