Inside Doc's Shop...

[DocsMachine]

And DONE!

Over 250 pieces, that took an average of maybe around seven minutes each. (This isn't all of them, the cart isn't big enough to hold all the bins. )



I'd have lit up the turning center to start crankin' em through, but I have about five hundred and eleven other things screaming for my attention, so maybe tomorrow. Should be a nice break to have a 2:20 cycle time rather than an 8:05

Oh, and there's gonna be some brass in there somewhere, too.

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

Man, time flies even when you're not having any fun at all.

Sorry I haven't had much by way of updates lately- it's not that I haven't been doing anything, it's just that what I've been doing isn't all that photo-worthy. You lot have seen my lathes and turning centers before.

That said, I scrounged through my camera cards and found a few things. A couple of weeks back, I finally finished up a contract run...



... Of a part some of you may recognize and will hopefully shortly be up for sale.



Most everything else was more turning...



Yet more turning...



And then scrubbing and boxing, ready to ship off to the anodizer.



One fun bit was I made a special collet, to give a part a little more support. I started with a well-used extended-nose machinable collet, one out of a big batch I got off eBay a while back...



And set that up on the Sheldon lathe. These collets for some reason weren't machined for the usual spacer pins that let you tighten the collet into the taper, but not collapse it closed. I made do with three stainless washers from the bins (as they were thinner than the regular steel ones.)



That got drilled out...



Bored precisely to size (1.004")...



And checked for fit. Damn near perfect, if I do say so myself.



For a little panache, I kicked the compound over 'bout thar, and trimmed off a bit of superfluous metal.



Like so.



Why? The collet protrudes almost an inch more from the spindle face than a standard 5C, and so helps support a longer part that sticks out a little more than others. Besides helping support the part itself, a happy extra is that the part moves away from the spindle, giving a little extra room, in some cases, for certain odd tool setups on the gang-tooled CNC.

I've only had that happen once so far, but this collet would have helped with that, too.

And so, cleaned up, deburred and buffed a little...



And installed.



I only had time after that to just start on programming the part, and I still need to make another tool (or more accurately, finish one I started more than a year ago. ) but hopefully in the next couple of days I can get this basket of parts...



...Run, finished and boxed up, and get all of it off to the anodizers.

Lots in the works this week. Probably not much worth showing off, but it's all still progress.

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

It's strange that, no matter how many tools you have, you still never seem to have the right ones.

For this project I'd already modified a collet, and when it came time to run the part, I needed to be able to chamfer an inner passage. The tool block didn't already have a cutter that could do the job, and I didn't want to have to set up and prove a whole new toolset.

What I did have was a 60-degree diamond (shape) profiling cutter...



But it's too "thick". It's not meant to fit into small-diameter holes, and so the back of the toolholder hits and 'smears' the metal.



I'd started making a tool for exactly this a while ago, but I'd made it from undersized material. I either needed to whip up an adapter bushing, or just remake the tool. The latter was only moderately easier, so I sawed off a chunk of 5/8" O-1 (oil-hardening) tool steel, and turned a 60 degree point on it.



Set up in the mill, I cut a flat along the top...



And then milled half the point off.



After that, I got out the seldom-used gas-axe, and by lucky chance (and a little laziness ) I had a can of some of the old ****** fluid left lying about. I heated the cutter to cherry red and quenched 'er in the oil- no pics, hard to juggle a lit torch, a bar of red-hot steel and a camera without either melting my face off or, y'know, burning the shop down.



Now, as anyone who has heat-treated O-1 will tell you, it tends to "grow" slightly in the process- in my case, the treated end grew almost exactly .001", and since it was already a snug fit into the tool holder, I had to turn that thou back off, very carefully.



In that pic, the cutter is moving away from the chuck- the thin darker band at the far left is the starting point. The lighter colored dull band is untreated steel, and the shiny band is the heat-treated portion.



With a little strategic sanding and polishing here and there, it fit nice and snugly. Took a little trial-and-error to get it adjusted, but she works.



Interesting tidbit there: That tool is a one-off, basically meant just for this one part. Therefore I didn't bother assigning a tool number to it. I'd used the threading tool directly below it ("T15") to very lightly chamfer the outer corners, so I simply sent it down and to the left 'til the new tool went where I wanted it.

And she worked perfectly- which is more than I can say for the camera.



Hard to tell with the overexposure, but that burred, rolled corner from the original tool is gone, with a smooth, proper chamfer in it's place.

After that, I just had to chew my way through the rest of the parts.



Still a few steps left, but with luck, I hope to have these off to the anodizers by Saturday or Monday.

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

Looks like it'll be Monday.

Whipped up a fresh program to round off the distal end...



And ran the whole lot through. Nice little run, less than one minute cycle time, everything ran smoothly.



After that... allow me to pontificate a bit. The last time I ran this part, I did the drilling on the CNC, but threaded the end (female 1/8" NPT) on the turret lathe. That was because the Omniturn can't rigid tap, and I didn't, and still don't, have a floating tap holder big enough to hold an eighth-pipe tap- and, you know, actually fit in the machine. The two I have for the big turret are the size of a soda can and weigh about three pounds each.

In this case, I've been switching over to pre-set tool sets, to make programming easier, and enabling re-running previous parts just by switching to that program. (That is, without having to re-install, re-zero and re-prove a new tool set each time.) And, of course, I don't have one set up for drilling yet- point in fact, I'm not 100% sure how I'm even going to do that yet.

But, I do still have the two turret lathes, and those are easy enough to set up, especially just for drilling, and both were designed to run things like releasing tap holders.

I'd planned to use the big Warner & Swasey, since it has the functional flood oil, but I ran into a problem. The bar stock I'd used for this run was slightly on the large size- 1.003" to 1.004", which this stuff is usually .998" to 1.000". That doesn't sound like much- and it's not, generally speaking- but in the case of the big turret, the collets it uses and the collet mechanism have very little tolerance, and no real adjustability. I can get it to lock on this material, but I have to really lean on the mechanism- using a lot more force than I'd like.

With the 5C- far more common- I have something like five different 1" collets, ranging from about .999" to around 1.005", due to variations in manufacturer tolerances- and, since I got most of them used, possibly a touch of wear. And, the 5C system has an inherent adjustment built in- you can run it a touch loose for larger material, and a touch tight for smaller- although we're talking a few thousandths of an inch.

So, I instead opted for the smaller Rivett turret- which hasn't gotten enough use this year so far anyway. I still had to use one of the big tap holders- that ********* thing pointing away from the camera, on the turret.



But, this is the kind of process this sort of lathe was designed for, and I still find it kind of fun to run these old analog machines.



Would have been faster if I had the flood oil set up on this machine, but I've been reluctant to do so since the layout and position in the shop, doesn't lend itself well to containing the splash.

Anyway, griping aside, the whole lot is done, and just needs one more finishing step. I could easily be able to have these out the door Monday morning.

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

Stolen from the internet and lightly modified.



Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

Today (Sunday) was comparatively easy. For this current run, all I needed to do was turn the OD of these parts down a few thou. So, as per long-established procedure, I chucked up a hunk of scrap in the Sheldon, turned a 60-degree point on it in place (ensuring concentricity) and proceeded to skim them down one at a time.



After a couple of hours, I had all of them run- except a couple I'm saving for something- and got them cleaned up, wrapped and boxed.



Said box, along with two other small batches of parts, should be on it's way in the morning, and it's time to move on to the next thing!

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

Doc.