I recently moved to Holland, and know no one here. Came across your fabrication table build the other day and then noticed you're in Holland as well. I'll come over and help you clean if it means making an open house / BBQ happen
Above 1200 Sq/FT Industrial Express Welding and Machine Shop
- Thread starter dr_clyde
- Start date
Wokspaces above 1200 squarefeet.
I recently moved to Holland, and know no one here. Came across your fabrication table build the other day and then noticed you're in Holland as well. I'll come over and help you clean if it means making an open house / BBQ happen
I will be sure to holler if we need an extra hand.I recently moved to Holland, and know no one here. Came across your fabrication table build the other day and then noticed you're in Holland as well. I'll come over and help you clean if it means making an open house / BBQ happen
Hopefully we can get everything wrapped up here for a BBQ in late July.
PDX
Well-known member
Might have to swing up for that...
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slodat
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Been a long time. Any updates?
Nothing dramatic, still in the same shop. Spending the day cleaning and doing some maintenance things.
Added a few things here and there, moved some stuff around, you know. Shop tetris.
We're probably destined to hang here for another year or two, it's not really feasible for to move to a larger space right now. We looked and there just isn't anything local that fits our budget or our needs. Ideally, we'll build something when we're ready.
Currently working on fixing the lathe, we had the main disconnect switch go bad and it messed up the main transformer pretty bad. Replaced the main transformer, but now I have to reload the parameters on the turret and tailstock drives, as the batteries were almost dead. Being down for the two weeks for the transformer killed the remaining battery life. Not the end of the world, but still a pain in the ***. I fortunately have the parameters in the manuals and paperwork for the machine, so I at least have the info.
Once I get the mess cleaned up a bit I'll get some pictures of the re-arrangement. May take me a bit, got a fair amount of clutter to clean up.
My neighbor from the shop next door came by the other day trying to sell off some NIB surplus bar clamps he’d found in the shop. I bought a couple and we were making small talk when he said they had some available spindle time on a couple of their bigger horizontals coming up and if I had any work to send it their way.
I said I’d been meaning to get the Acorn Platen table skimmed off a few thou to smooth it out and take out some of the gouges and dinks from over the years. It also had a somewhat rough surface from sandblasting it years back when I got it.
Either way, it got a facelift courtesy of a Toshiba HBM. Cool stuff these big mills. Handy thing to have next door.
The ol’ girl is better than new. Flat to within a few thou, nice and smooth. Should be good for another few decades.
I said I’d been meaning to get the Acorn Platen table skimmed off a few thou to smooth it out and take out some of the gouges and dinks from over the years. It also had a somewhat rough surface from sandblasting it years back when I got it.
Either way, it got a facelift courtesy of a Toshiba HBM. Cool stuff these big mills. Handy thing to have next door.
The ol’ girl is better than new. Flat to within a few thou, nice and smooth. Should be good for another few decades.
zmotorsports
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Beautiful finish. I'm green with envy.
Small job we did for a customer recently. Fabricated a replacement fuel tank for a 50’s Bentley. Apparently these tanks are really hard to find used and expensive as all get out when/if you can find one in useable shape.
The original was rusted out and had a few leaks. Customer decided to have us make a replacement out of stainless steel and update the fasteners to threads commonly available.
We used common NPT fittings for the drain and pump return but I had to machine a new ring for the level sending unit.
The original sending unit ring is brass and was brazed into a stamped dimple. I was unable to dimple the tank to make the ring flush so when I machined it I turned a relief matching the wall thickness of the tank so after I welded it in the sending unit would sit in the right spot.
The original was also formed from one piece and only had one seam on the end and the ends stamped and edge welded. I ended up having to form this in two halves and weld two seams and outside corner weld the ends. Should be more than ok for this one off. I can’t justify the crazy amount of work it would take to match the original weld joints and the customer didn’t care so we went with what worked easier.
I try not to work on car stuff, but this project isn’t really in the capacity of a typical repair shop. The customer is a family friend so I was willing to bend the rules and take on the project although I try not to do automotive work as a rule.
We used 14ga 304 sheet for the tank body and baffles, and I had a piece of 2-1/2” sanitary tube on the shelf that was perfect for the filler neck.
Turned out pretty nice I think, hopefully it fits well and works like the original.
The original was rusted out and had a few leaks. Customer decided to have us make a replacement out of stainless steel and update the fasteners to threads commonly available.
We used common NPT fittings for the drain and pump return but I had to machine a new ring for the level sending unit.
The original sending unit ring is brass and was brazed into a stamped dimple. I was unable to dimple the tank to make the ring flush so when I machined it I turned a relief matching the wall thickness of the tank so after I welded it in the sending unit would sit in the right spot.
The original was also formed from one piece and only had one seam on the end and the ends stamped and edge welded. I ended up having to form this in two halves and weld two seams and outside corner weld the ends. Should be more than ok for this one off. I can’t justify the crazy amount of work it would take to match the original weld joints and the customer didn’t care so we went with what worked easier.
I try not to work on car stuff, but this project isn’t really in the capacity of a typical repair shop. The customer is a family friend so I was willing to bend the rules and take on the project although I try not to do automotive work as a rule.
We used 14ga 304 sheet for the tank body and baffles, and I had a piece of 2-1/2” sanitary tube on the shelf that was perfect for the filler neck.
Turned out pretty nice I think, hopefully it fits well and works like the original.
zmotorsports
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Fantastic job on the tank dr_clyde. Thanks for sharing your work.
Machining some thrust bearing housings in the Mazak today.
Customer needs some weird blocks with a lot of internal features that are easy on a lathe but something of a pain in the mill. Tapers on the transitions, an ID groove, and .0005” tolerance on diameter. Piece of cake on the lathe. Plus I can get nicer finishes with turning than milling.
Problem is the blocks are square. I don’t have a great way to hold square parts in my CNC lathe, so we had to go old school.
I just put an old plain back 4 jaw independent chuck in the hard jaws of the hydraulic chuck. Works great. Just have to indicate in each part. I faced them and bored a pilot hole in the Hurco so I had a flat surface for reference and a hole reasonably centered and smooth to indicate from. The blue tape is holding on some little square of aluminum, the jaws bite in like the dickens and gouge the block really badly.
Now they’ll go back in the mill for bolt patterns and mounting features.
Customer needs some weird blocks with a lot of internal features that are easy on a lathe but something of a pain in the mill. Tapers on the transitions, an ID groove, and .0005” tolerance on diameter. Piece of cake on the lathe. Plus I can get nicer finishes with turning than milling.
Problem is the blocks are square. I don’t have a great way to hold square parts in my CNC lathe, so we had to go old school.
I just put an old plain back 4 jaw independent chuck in the hard jaws of the hydraulic chuck. Works great. Just have to indicate in each part. I faced them and bored a pilot hole in the Hurco so I had a flat surface for reference and a hole reasonably centered and smooth to indicate from. The blue tape is holding on some little square of aluminum, the jaws bite in like the dickens and gouge the block really badly.
Now they’ll go back in the mill for bolt patterns and mounting features.