# Arnold's tooling odds 'n ends



## arnoldb

Marv once suggested that one must keep a list of all the little tools that would make life easier while machining. I took that advice, and have a growing list (it'll never end!) and will peck away at it as and when I have time - or foresee a need for specific items for an upcoming build. It's easier to have needed tools before any engine build; that can save a lot of time and frustration, as well as keep a build on track.

I have also been surprised quite a couple of times when I received PMs or emails with queries about the small tooling bits I have thrown into my build logs thus far, so I decided to create a single thread dedicated to making all my small bits and bobs from said list - queries and suggestions are as always welcome. 

A lot of the things I'll be making are available commercially - or have been designed and made already by others; I doubt very much that anything new will surface here, but there will on occasion be my own twist as I adapt ideas to suit my own needs and machinery - or simply use what I have on hand to make a useful - but safe to use - item. I do enjoy making my own tools, and I think I have learned as much, if not more, about machining from making tools as I have from building engines.

Some of the items that will get done in this thread include, but is not limited to the following - in no particular order or sequence of completion:
Adjustable parallels
Small sine bars
Angle plate for the mill
Edge finders
Vise stops
Toolmaker's clamps - a diverse selection
Knurling tool - my current one is just horrible!
Pump center
Tooling plate for the mill
Collet blocks for my ER collets
Cylindrical squares
Spinning post and tools for the lathe
Lathe chuck back-stop
Cross drilling jigs
...and more...

More complex items - like a Tool Grinder will get their own threads when I get around to those.


To kick off, a lifelong friend recently asked me if I could help him make some ball knobs for some furniture he's restoring. I don't normally turn wood on my lathe, but for some people and jobs I'd do it, so cue a ball turner.
I cobbled this one together based on Steve Bedair's design, and sized for my Myford ML7; there have been a lot of them built, so not too much build details. It's based on a length of 50mm x 10mm hot-rolled flat bar and a short bit of 55mm diameter cast iron that I turned down:






I have quite a bit of round 4mm HSS blanks that I use regularly, so the toolbit for this would, naturally for me, be of the same instead of the inserts normally preferred - so the tool carrier was adapted to take the HSS with two grub screws (set screws) to lock it in place. I didn't work from the plans; I just bodged along on this one and made parts to "gut feel". All the parts done:




The head rides on the protrusion on the base, and has a boss that locates very closely in the hole bored in the base. The toolpost is also just some of the same flat bar as the base; I milled the slot in the head 9mm wide, so that I could fly-cut the icky black coating off the HRS for a slightly neater appearance. The screw I turned up from silver steel (drill rod) as it needs to be tough; I didn't harden and temper it; in it's untreated state silver steel is quite tough, so that is ideal for this job. The correct shoulder length on the screw was obtained through trial-and-error fits while I was making it - I simply turned the length down by minute amounts each time, and when the base plate and head screwed on and the base was just slightly tight to turn between the head and screw shoulder I stopped; the slight stiffnes will wear out quickly. This may sound a bit crude, but it does work. The toolbit hole is dead on center with the lathe spindle - I usually grind the round HSS toolbits I use like this down half-way at the tip, as the curve of the bottom part then gives adequate clearance in most cases.

All assembled and on the lathe:




I used some grease instead of oil to lubricate the moving parts.

Definitely not the prettiest tool I've made - I didn't file and sand down all the machining marks like I do of late... but does it work?:




Yes, even though I was too lazy to turn up a proper mandrel from steel; the brass threaded rod deflected like mad while turning, but still it only took about 5 minutes to turn that up.

And a bit of emery later:





Regards, Arnold


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## Deanofid

Your ball turner sure turned out well, Arnold. I've had that one on my list for a while, too.
My list has become so long that I've re-written it a few times. For every thing I get made,
it seems that three others get added!

Dean


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## arnoldb

Thanks Dean  
 :big: - Yes, the list does grow seemingly exponentially - I'm just kicking my own butt I haven't gotten around to some of those bits yet - surprisingly some of the simpler ones : - Some of them will get done sooner rather than later!

Regards, Arnold


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## mklotz

I find that a good approach is, after the completion of every major (e.g. engine) project, to build two tools - the one you needed on the last project and the one that you will need on the next project. That approach seems to double the satisfaction derived from the time stolen for the tool building interlude.


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## SBWHART

mklotz  said:
			
		

> I find that a good approach is, after the completion of every major (e.g. engine) project, to build two tools - the one you needed on the last project and the one that you will need on the next project. That approach seems to double the satisfaction derived from the time stolen for the tool building interlude.



Thats what I like to do:- spend a bit of time on tool manufacture and shop maintenance work.

How about one of these.






A small running centre so you can get up close on those thin spindly jobs.

Or






A Tram

Or






Depth foot for you digi vernier.

Or






Key way slotter.

We will keep you busey

 :big: :big: :big: :big: :big:

Have fun

Stew


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## Deanofid

Stop it, Stew! My list is already three arms long!


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## metalmad

lots of great ideas here
pete from oz


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## Artie

Ahh, Stew, Ive picked the very first one, a narrow shouldered live centre... been caught there a few times..... and so the list grows.... seriously, I do enjoy making the tooling.... seem to do more of that than actual engine work..... 8) Tah mate....


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## Lew Hartswick

Artie  said:
			
		

> I do enjoy making the tooling.... seem to do more of that than actual engine work..... 8) Tah mate....


A big SECOND to that. Tools, Fixtures, and Jigs. That is what I enjoy most. 
Find and make a BETTER way to do a job. Others can build the toys. 
  ...lew...


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## Blogwitch

I tend NOT to make tooling just for the sake of it, but when necessary.

Doing it that way ensures that the tool you have just made will get to be used, plus it is usually a welcome break half way thru a project.

Another thing is that if something is available commercially at a reasonable price, I will buy it rather than waste precious time making one. 

But it was a no brainer when it came to making the tramming tool like Stew's above, mine cost about 25 squid to make, and the commercial one was way over a hundred.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=822.0

But there are some that have to be made, because they are either so cheap and easy to do.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=1441.0

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=2175.0


Bogs


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## SBWHART

Sorry Guys but I've just got to pass this one on, 

A great design for a coax indicator by Bill over on madmodder, it gets over the length problem that you get with shop bought indictors.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=3776.0


Stew

PS sorry Arnold we seem to have high jacked your thread.


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## arnoldb

Thanks Guys ;D - Good suggestions and more to add then :big:

"PS sorry Arnold we seem to have high jacked your thread." - No problem at all Stew; the more the merrier ;D

I'm starting on a new engine build today, but I might just defer it a bit for some tooling work :big:

Kind regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

Well... So much for starting the Little Blazer engine build; I can't find the block of aluminium I thought I had for the base...

So I started on a height gauge that will come in useful for said engine build and marking out in general; I've on a couple of occasions wished I had one.
A "cheap" Asian digital caliper will do the measuring, but I do not really want to modify the caliper - the "cheap" ones are expensive here in Namibia, so I want it as backup; just in case...

There are a couple of very simple designs around for turning a normal caliper into a height gauge, but I do want a bit more rigidity from the setup, so I'm slightly over-engineering this one :big:

I have a couple of meters of 10x60mm hot-rolled flat bar, so - put some of it to use, together with a short bit of 18x40mm HRS that I found. A bit of 6mm silver steel and some 4mm square HSS completes most of the basic building blocks:




There will be some more material needed to finish the scribing/measuring arm, but I'll add that later when all the dimensions are finalized.

The HRS is pretty horrible stuff to machine, but here goes.
For the base, I set it up in the 4-jaw; just roughly on center. My lathe faces ever so slightly concave, and this makes it ideal to turn up bases for things that need to stand flat. A bearing shell is used as a parallel to get the workpiece out from the chuck a bit but flat to the chuck face. A light tap with a hammer on the workpiece while tightening up the chuck jaws makes the bearing shelll sit pretty tight. As the bearing shell cannot be taken out between the jaws it is perfectly safe to use it like this while turning. I do tie it down with some binding wire to the chuck jaws though, as I do not want it to start tumbling around and marring the chuck face should it come loose while turning:





Next the scale needed to get cleaned off the bits... On to the mill - similar sized bit sticking out from the vise on a bit of a makeshift parallel setup:





And some flycutting later:





The scale really takes a toll on my HSS flycutter, and I got tired re-sharpening it, so I decided to do an experiment. I bought a couple of carbide tipped tools a while ago; one left and one right-hand. On my lathe I'm not too happy with the results - so If I stuff up one of these it's not really a waste. I mounted the right-hand bit in the flycutter; it has an 8mm shank just like my HSS bit I use, so no fussing around needed. Then I played a bit with feeds & speeds; it turns out the cutter wants my mill's top speed (1200RPM) and a good rate of feed - about 3mm/second  - this is the result:




I was scared of the carbide tip chipping from the interrupted cuts, but it just chewed through all the gunk. And taking 0.5mm depth at a time at the speed above. The finish is not quite as good as I get with my HSS cutter, but quite satisfactory - and MUCH faster ;D

Next all the cleaned up bits was clamped together on the mill bed - to the best accuracy of eyeball MK1 - with the areas I wanted to drill and ream directly above a T-slot for clearance - then a couple of holes drilled at 5mm with the outer two further enlarged and reamed to 6mm:





The middle 5mm hole in the base plate was threaded M6; I'm right-handed, so normally start a hole with my right hand, then finish threading with my left hand, as I tend to have better feeling of what the tap is doing. I keep my arm in-line with the tap and use my wrist to turn "on the center line", usually just with my forefinger and thumb to twist the tap wrench. In the next photo my arm is not in line... - it's a bit awkward to do that and handle the camera, and I've never been known for having a rubber body :big::




This is the method I have used on hundreds of holes for tapping from M3 upwards, and have not yet broken a tap in these sizes, so it does seem to work. The one and only tap I've broken so far is an M2 last year; in some work-hardened stainless :-[ - and for M2 I use a tapping guide.

The thicker (18x40) block was counter bored and drilled out to take an M6 cap screw; I thought I had a photo of that, but don't... This was screwed to the base plate, and a 6mm drill and a bit of 6mm silver steel (my collet chuck's one locking lever actually) used to align things through the holes, and then all was clamped together in the mill vise for some more cleanup with the flycutter:




Not a great finish - but at least my mill's tramming is spot on....

The 18x40 block needed a slot milled in it where the caliper will sit. I measured the calipers I have and their thicknesses range from 2.8 to 3.5mm - for identical-looking calipers. So I decided to mill the slot at 4mm wide - anyway, my smaller milling bits can't go deep enough. I may not break many taps, but milling bits are another matter :-[ :




Fortunately I had one spare 4mm milling cutter to finish the job.

Still some work required, but this is how the caliper will sit in the slot:





Some more drilling and tapping for set screws on the base later, and this is the end result so far:





With the caliper installed:





It still needs the scribing/measuring arm and a retainer for the caliper arm to the top section.

I ended up milling a step in the mounting slot so that the caliper's slide can go down right to the bottom; this will make the measuring arm a lot shorter. This photo shows the end of the caliper and the extra milled space in the slot:





Without any changes except for the upright lengths, the stand will actually take my bigger 200mm caliper as well:





I'd hoped to finish this this weekend; maybe I'll get a chance during the week, as well as find a block of aluminium :

Regards, Arnold


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## 1hand

Arnold........ Thm:

Keep em coming, great stuff.

Matt


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## arnoldb

Thanks Matt  - I'll try to! I'm really looking forward on your progress on the A3 as well 
No Shop for me tonight; it's raining here in Windhoek for a change, and that causes a celebration ;D

Kind regards, Arnold


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## mklotz

Arnold,

When you make the scriber arm that will attach to the movable jaw on your depth gauge, drill and tap a vertical hole in it before you harden it (assuming that you will harden it). Then you can make threaded rods to fit and use your height gauge to measure features down inside a recess in a part. I've done this on several of my depth gauges and there have been numerous occasions where it turned out to be a very useful feature.


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## arnoldb

Thanks Marv - great idea! I was thinking of making the arm with a bit of square HSS clamped in for the scriber, but can just as easily make the entire bottom part of the arm from silver steel milled away as needed, add the suggested threaded hole, and then harden it.

Kind regards, Arnold


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## mklotz

arnoldb  said:
			
		

> Thanks Marv - great idea! I was thinking of making the arm with a bit of square HSS clamped in for the scriber, but can just as easily make the entire bottom part of the arm from silver steel milled away as needed, add the suggested threaded hole, and then harden it.



Another possibility for a scriber might be a small (e.g., 0.25") brazed carbide lathe tool.

http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INPDFF?PMPAGE=169&PARTPG=INLMK32

 The shank is soft so it can be machined and the carbide is already secured for you. Availability of such tools in Namibia may be a problem though.

As long as you're making tapped holes as suggested, make one perpendicular to the one mentioned above and use it to mount a (removable) DTI to your gauge. This will allow you to obtain reproducible measuring pressures when doing really accurate work.


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## arnoldb

Once again, thanks Marv 
I can get similar carbide tools down to 5/16" shank (8mm) locally, and the shanks are actually very nice steel to machine. I have a "green" stone mounted on my bench grinder, so grinding the tip to a scribing point is not a problem. It will take some work with my Dremel afterward to make sure the bottom (which is normally carbide tool's top face) is truly flat though...

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how the DTI setup would work. Would this be used more in a "comparative" mode - i.e. measure one piece or section; get the reading off the caliper as well as the DTI, and then when measuring another piece (or section of the same workpiece) check to see if I get the same readings on both ? For now this might be overkill in my shop; I try and work to 0.01mm (.0005") for the most part. That is also the lowest resolution at which my digital calipers will work - with an accuracy of only 0.02mm anyway. On rare occasions I bring out my M&W micrometer for something better...

As an aside; I had an appointment at the optician today - broke my pair of glasses over the weekend, so back on an older stand-by pair : The last time I was there I mentioned to him that I've started on model engineering, and he seemed mildly interested, so today my "Elmer's Tiny" went along. He liked it but commented that the 2mm thread and nut I used on the pivot pin was "large" compared to what he is used to working with ;D I couldn't let the chance go by; so I asked him how he deals with smaller screws and threads, and I was invited to his "workshop" for a show & tell ;D I must admit I was VERY careful not to get drool over some of the machinery in there. After getting shown all the machines and tiny screws and taps, he asked me if I want small taps and screws... According to him the taps they use are a bit "expensive" because he gets them from Germany as cheapies just does not work - that was no new news to me! The last time I priced M1.2 taps here, all the tool suppliers except my favourite one literally laughed in my face. The only quote I got was for N$ 650 for a set - at that point it was US$ 81 - excluding transport & taxes for carbon taps. My optometrist today offered to get me HSS taps from Germany - and after all costs / taxes etc, for N$ 210 per set - and with the now lower US$, that comes out at US$ 30 ;D I'll be getting some small taps soon woohoo1. I'll just buy screws and nuts from the optometrist, so a die is not needed yet.


Regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

Some more work on the height gauge... 

For the arm I cleaned up some more HRS flat bar, and marked it out. Don't know what I was thinking though; I've become pretty much used to blacken up the entire part and then use very light scribe marks - but today I didn't, and used heavy marks. Some of them will remain on the arm to remind me not to do it in future:





Off to the band saw to get rid of most of the excess - much quicker than milling it all out, and there's a possibly usable off-cut left:





Then on to the mill to clean up to final sizes:





Milling a slot in the bottom that will fit over the leg of the caliper. This was a bit difficult, as I had to have the milling bit fairly far out of the collet for the head to clear the upright "leg" on the workpiece:




I left the caliper in the photo to show that the caliper leg (the one next to the workpiece against the vise jaws) is tapered - well "DUH" - I should have milled the slot on a taper then clearance with the chuck would have been much less of a problem.

A quick rotate later, and milling at the approximate angle of the caliper leg:





The finished slot. It is not centered, as I wanted to leave a bit more meat on the side where the retaining screw holes needed to be made:





On to the scribing tip. A piece of 12mm silver steel (drill rod) clamped up in the vise with the quicky-set of matched V-blocks I made a while ago. I used an old business card behind the v-blocks to ensure they were clamped evenly; this is a great use for old business cards. My vise unfortunately does not have a suitable V-groove; that has to wait for a while still:





Then I milled the top and sides of the silver steel to square and size, and drilled a 3.3mm hole (for M4 threading) on one side; this will be used for Marv's suggestion for threaded rod for measuring depths. Next I drilled and countersunk two holes for M4 countersink screws. I made sure that the holes were countersunk deeply enough that the screw heads will be well below the top level when installed. All this faffing around was to make sure that I can have this side of the workpiece truly flat, as it will become the bottom of the measuring tip:





Next I sawed the partly completed measuring tip off the parent stock and milled the left-over semi-round bit (that was on the bottom in the previous operation) square. It's not imperative that this cut is 100% parallel length-wise to the bottom, but it must be as darn accurate as possible parallel cross-wise to the bottom of the tip-in-making. Then I milled a step into it at the "scriber" end where the threaded hole is, and pivoted it at an approximate angle of 45 degrees and milled the point down. The result - top view:





And bottom view; I did flat-lap all machining marks off the bottom on a bit of 1200 emery - taking as much care as possible to keep it truly flat:





Assembled thus far the lot looks like this:





An example use of Marv's suggestion - I just turned a screw into the hole on the tip, zeroed at the rim edge of the flywheel, and measured the depth of the web:




Of course, it would be best to use a lock nut on the top side to lock down the screw/threaded rod.

I hoped to finish this project today, but the top vernier arm retainer is still left to do, as well as hardening the scribing bit. 

Many of you might be thinking I've been a bit blasé about accuracy thus far... - and so I have, except for the bits I pointed out. It all comes down to some simple steps at final assembly that I'll show, well, at final assembly.

Regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

I finished the height gauge today ;D - and used it for the first time as well.

First up - the top caliper retainer. Another bit of HRS sawn off, and lightly cleaned up, then clamped to the top guide for drilling for a couple of M3 cap screws:






I just drilled the holes 2.5mm for threading, then separated the lot and finished the retainer on it's own by enlarging the holes to 3mm for clearance, and counter bored with a 5mm end mill to recess the screw caps for a neater look. A cutout slightly wider than the caliper shank was milled into it - but not as deep as the caliper shank is thick. Then overall dimensions were milled to size, and the result:





The scriber tip was then taken outside - together with a can of oil, and heated red hot and dunked in the oil to cool down. This left it nice and black... So I cleaned off some of the black with emery, and gently heated it again only on the thick side till the cleaned area changed to a light yellow-orange colour close to the scriber tip. I then left it to cool down; that should be enough tempering. Then I cleaned it all up again, and lightly stoned the bottom of the piece on the sharpening stone, followed by quite a bit of stoning on the top angle to get it nice and sharp. It's pretty hard so takes a bit of effort to sharpen up:




Trying to get rid of the black left in the screw recesses seemed too daunting, so I left it :

Now for final assembly 
A flat reference surface is needed; a surface plate would be ideal, but I don't have one. I do have the glass sheet that I use instead, so I thoroughly cleaned an area of it, as well as the underside of the base of the stand and the bottom of the scribing tip.
It's important that the caliper shank stands as close as possible to vertical - but if it's out of vertical by, say, 0.1mm over the 120mm range my caliper has, it would make the princely error of being out by about 0.00005mm over the measuring range... - way more accurate than can usually be measured in a home shop. So I just used a square against the protruding caliper tips to set it vertical in the stand:





Setting the scribing bit level and flat with respect to the base is more important. I did this by holding the scribing arm with the foot flat on the glass, and raising the caliper's top leg into the machined slot. Then a light tighten of the middle screw, followed by the outer ones, and that's that:





To make double sure, I measured the shank of a broken 1.4mm drill both at the tip of the scriber foot:





As well as at the back:





Finally; good to go; I'll get some shorter set screws to replace the ones holding the arm when I get to the nuts and bolts supplier next time:





In use for the first time on my next project:




MUCH easier than jiggling the workpiece to scribe some lines on it with a normal caliper ;D - I think I'm going to like this tool!

Regards, Arnold


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## mklotz

Great work, Arnold, and a very nice construction presentation for future readers.

Yes, they are handy tools. When I started out I couldn't grasp their utility but, after impulse buying one at a sale, I began to really appreciate their usefulness. Now I own three of them and use all of them regularly.


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## Maryak

Arnold,

Another great project comes to a successful conclusion. :bow: :bow:

Best Regards
Bob


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## arnoldb

Marv & Bob - many thanks!

For those wondering where the images are, it appears that my hosting service's server is down, and as a result all the images are unavailable at the moment.
I hope they get it back online soon. Server's back up

Regards, Arnold


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## doc1955

Very nice Arnold!
 :bow:


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## Deanofid

Well done, Arnold. Your usual instructive thread and good pics, and a useful tool for your shop.


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## arnoldb

Dean, Doc - Much apologies for a very late Thank You! - Don't know how I missed your posts :-[


My shop time has not been as much as I'd hoped for the last month, so not much was done...
On Saturday I managed to find some time to do a bit of recycling to sort out the mess I had around my mill and to gain some storage space. A discarded printer stand on casters from work, a sink cut-out from a counter top, some salvaged pine shelving installed in it, a couple of old 3 1/2" floppy storage containers to sort out and organise all my end mills and a pine block drilled full of some holes to hold cutters that are in frequent use yielded this lot after a bit of work:









I have a couple of days off, and actually wanted to carry on with my experimental locomotive today, but there's going to be a lot of small bits that will need holding down for the next machining operations, so I decided to detour a little and make a tooling plate that will make life easier. Besides, I also wanted to give the milling cutters I received from Richon Tools a go.

I dug a well-weathered bit of 65 x 12mm mild steel flat bar from my scrap:




Did say "well weathered : - I have used bits of this in the past, and while it machines fairly easily, it is a right bummer to try and get any kind of even half-decent finish on.

There is no way I was going to introduce new toolbits to that lot; there is all kinds of crud embedded in that rust, so I first brought out the flycutter with a right-hand turning tungsten tipped lathe tool in it, and started by cleaning off both long edges of the workpiece:





Then started facing off the rust and crud from one face; nothing very accurate here; I merely aligned things by eye and had at it with a couple of 0.5mm deep passes. This is after the first pass:




There was some funny crud amongst that rust... Left a constant shower of sparks going. And HOT chips; I was doing a silly dance in between brushing those off :big: But then, I was cranking along at about 6mm per second; I've found my mill has no complaints when getting pushed along a bit.

Then I tried the 12mm carbide mill I got... Decided I'd be bold and go for it. With the cleaned workpiece face against the fixed jaw, and the mill running at its max 1200rpm, I took out a 5mm wide x 4mm deep edge cut in one pass. Started with a slowish feed rate, and increased it; that carbide mill just took away metal happily at up to 6mm per second ;D:




Left some nice golden-coloured and equally sized chips... I think it could be pushed even harder... I LIKE it ;D 

With the milling spindle left locked in the same setting, I removed the workpiece, de-burred the slight burr raised (visible in the previous photo), flipped the piece end over end, and milled the other edge off as well. The carbide mill's cutting flutes are a bit short, which is a pity, so I swapped it for one of the new 16mm HSS 4-flute end mills, slowed the mill down - it is HSS after all - and faced the ends. I took two photos, and neither was in focus where they needed to be : - so a bit of a fuzzy pic:




That end mill left a really nice finish ;D

With the workpiece clamped on the steps and tapped down on top of the mill vise, I started facing off the top with the flycutter. After a couple of passes with the tungsten cutter:





And a finishing pass with the HSS flycutting tool - I left some finger prints on there "testing" the surface:




There's still some cutting marks visible - as you'll see more clearly in further photos. If this was aluminium or brass, I'd be looking at my ugly mug on that surface; like I said earlier in the post, this steel is horrible to get a good finish on.

When I removed the workpiece from the vise, I was careful to mark the left side, and after de-burring, I stamped an "L" on the left side:




This is for a reason. Because the plate was just clamped on the top of the vise - where it's normal usage position will be, the movable vise jaw will have lifted a tiny amount (no matter how good quality your vise is!). It was machined square to the spindle on top with this slight lift in play. If one rotates the plate, and mount it in the vise with the original "left side" on the right, the error from lifting is in fact doubled, and the tool plate will be higher by double the vise movable jaw lift at the side of the movable jaw. There are other factors that also come into play, such as how hard the tool plate is clamped, how much wear occurs on the vise and so on, but IMHO the lift in the vise jaw is the main player. It will never be 100% accurate on re-clamping, but for 98% of my work it will go back accurately enough if oriented correctly. For the other 2% requiring the optimum accuracy, there are other ways to address the issue. Incidentally, I measured the difference on the front and back sides, and my vise lifts by about 0.02mm at that width.

Then I clamped the workpiece back in the mill vise, and drilled a grid of 5mm holes in it. Didn't bother with spotting the holes first; I just chucked the 5mm drill bit in the collet chuck with about 15mm of it sticking out to allow for some clearance but to keep it "stiff" and poked the holes:




I don't know how many will be convenient in future; that's a lesson of learning on the job. For now, I just used convenient spacing - 30mm apart in X (10 turns of my mill's x handle) and 20mm apart in Y. I set the mill dials to zero on the top left hole - that was my reference and co-ordinate drilled from there, counting turns.

The drilling was followed by a good dose of counter-sink in each hole:





Then on to a new process for me... I have not tapped under power on my mill yet. : - well, I haven't even had it for a year! :big: It has a "tapping" function, which cuts power when the quill indicator reaches maximum depth, and prevents forward rotation to be switched on, but does allow reverse to be turned on. This has actually annoyed me in the past, as on many occasions I would have liked to adjust the quill indicator to use it as a stop to repetitively drill down to an exact depth without the spindle stopping. Today, some of that frustration was alleviated ;D - I'll re-wire the mill later on to allow me to switch the feature on and off though - but for today it was just great ;D

Before embarking on this power threading learning curve, I sat down and thought it through. I have not seen any detailed write-ups on the process, but then, neither have I searched for any. 
I decided to treat it exactly like I do hand-tapping. Go through the entire set of taps, cleaning the tap and squirting some cutting fluid on it before each hole. For the machine part, mill at the slowest (80 RPM), and a light one-finger down-feed on the quill handles; that should let me feel when the tap "takes", with the 
down-feed kept on while the tap is doing it's business. When the machine stops, lighten the one-finger feed, to allow the quill to pull up, but not at full strength.

I was concerned about the second and third taps not "taking" properly and cross threading - that didn't happen; they picked up the previous tap's thread just fine - I could feel when that happened quite distinctly on the feeding "finger". Needless to say, things worked a treat and saved me a lot of wrist-twisting ;D :
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAkQUfk9op0[/ame]
There was one brown-pant moment though... When I changed from the first to the second tap, I left the tap sticking out a bit longer than the first and forgot to adjust the cut-off... Nearly ran the tap shank into the hole before I realised and hit the E-Stop. Didn't forget to change for the last tap though :big:

The result of about 4 1/2 hours work in total from a bit of rusty metal:




Not pretty - No surface grinding or scraping, but a bit of tooling that will come in very handy in coming weeks ;D

Regards, Arnold


----------



## arnoldb

With some designer's block on my Experimental Engine today, I opted for some good old-fashioned chip-making.

The tooling plate is great to use, but I've had some issues clamping things to it; mostly because I don't have "clamping things"  :big:
Normally, I use any old thing to cobble together a solution, but it gets annoying having to dig and scratch to find suitable bits 'n bobs, so I made up some clamping bits...

A bit of 10mm thick x 60mm wide x about 80mm long hot-rolled flat bar was lying around volunteered.

I just squared up all the edges and started carving an angle on it:




That's a 16mm HSS 4-flute end mill I bought from Richon Tools; and it does a very respectable job of just taking out chips - Thanks for the pointer Bogs !

With the angle milled off, I poked some 5mm holes in the plate - spaced 12mm apart:





The holes were then power tapped M6, and some more 5mm holes drilled:




Drilling goes quicker than milling ;D

And slots milled out to 6mm:





Then off to the band saw:





And a bit of exercise with my friend the file to get rid of the saw marks - here nearly done:





Heat 'em up and dunk in oil, and the ugly but functional result:





It would be useful to have "elephant's foot" adjusters in use, so I played with a bit of 12mm aluminium:




The first three knurls are not up to scratch; don't know what I was doing while making them  :-[

I then ran a 5mm drill right through the lot, and then section-by-section tapped each bit to about 3/4 way down with the 6mm plug tap before parting off. That left a nice tight thread to jam bits of 6mm high-tensile threaded rod into. No loctite required; the rod jams solidly in the aluminium.

A mock-up of in use; the outer two elephant foot adjusters are in their proper place. The ones closer to the center can only be used like this for laying out purposes or holding down something for operations where there's not going to be a lot of force involved. For machining, I'll be using M6 cap screws or high tensile threaded rod and nuts instead:





So, not pretty, and far from a full clamping kit, but useful bits none-the-less and I got to make chips without busting my brains  :big:

Regards, Arnold


----------



## mklotz

Keep your eye peeled for some springs that will fit over the lock screws on your clamp. With one in place on the screw, the clamp body will remain "elevated" without having anything under the clamp. Much easier than growing that extra hand when trying to do a setup. It also simplifies the process of swapping parts into and out of the clamp fixture when doing multiples.


----------



## arnoldb

Thanks Marv; great idea! I might even make up some springs if needed, as I have quite a bit of music wire, and getting more from some friends who have a band; they are saving up broken guitar strings for me. And I'll be sure to make a proper spring winding tensioner before I make those springs; I haven't forgotten 

Kind regards, Arnold


----------



## steamer

This is an awesome thread Arnold!  I love the sub-table and the clamps! It looks like your new height guage is a real winner!

I've been tempted to build a small sub-plate to go with some of my other tooling.  ........TOO MANY PROJECTS!

 ;D

Dave


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## arnoldb

Thanks Dave ;D

You do have a lot of projects going on, and I'm unashamedly stealing tips from them :bow:

I love the height gauge; don't know why I waited so long to get around to it!

The sub table and bits are really nifty as well; I'm using it more and more, as it's really convenient to clamp awkward bits down:




(I'm invited to a theme party tomorrow evening and need a "cowboy" belt buckle :)

Kind regards, Arnold


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## lazylathe

LOL!!! Love the belt buckle!! ;D

Hope the rain has stopped and the wood is dry enough for a lekker braaivleis!!!
Have a Windhoek for me!!!!

Andrew


----------



## Noitoen

Moenie die boerewors vergeet  Pardon my Afrikaans


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## bearcar1

Don't forget to say "Howdy", "Ma'am" and the ever popular and highly over rated "Ya'll" to every body at the party Arnold. It's so quaint. Some how I am getting this comical vision of you wearing a checkered shirt with fringe on the sleeves, a red paisley kerchief tied around your neck, a gun belt with six-shooters and a pair of worn out pointed toed boots with only one sporting a star wheel spur. :big: :big: :big: Oh yes, and a broken cig hanging out of one side of your mouth. "Howdy there ma'am. Now don't you fret yourself ya'll none. I'm a lover, not a fighter" ......   smooooth! Rof} Rof} Rof}

Well, maybe not like that but you have to forgive my overly active imagination and fascination with Gene Autry and some of the other great ones. 

Anyway, that buckle certainly shows off your imaginative flair, not to mention, talent for making bits come to life. Have a great time at your party tomorrow and let s all know how it turned out. HI-YO-SILVER!!!!!! AWAY!!!!!! Thm:

regards

BC1
Jim


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## arnoldb

;D - Thanks guys!

Andrew, the rain has stopped for a while - and it's not often a Namibian will complain about too much rain!
And yes, there will be a Braai, and there's a keg of Windhoek Draught on tap and the beer mugs are in the freezer - I'll be sure to have one on you!

Helder, there will definitely be Boerewors  - an no need to apologise for your Afrikaans; I only know a couple of words in Portuguese and those are not polite to repeat in public 

 :big: Jim, at least you got the bit about worn boots right; though they aren't even pointy-toed... :big:

<Off Topic>

For Andrew: the completed belt buckle; not a work of art, but looks OK from a distance:





And for Jim: I've never been a natty dresser - So a minimal outfit... A red tail feather donated by Shrek the parrot to jazz up my normal outdoors hat - showing signs of wear -, scuffed boots, a pair of jeans, and the most-patterned shirt in my wardrobe :big::




Pretty minimal then, but should do; after all, I am bothering to wear clothes :big:
Oh yes, the feather was picked up in the cage; I'm allowed to lightly pull Shrek's tail feathers and he'll just say "aauw", but if I were to dare to pluck one I'd end up leaking a lot of red stuff myself ;D

</Off Topic>

Kind regards, Arnold


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## lazylathe

Thanks for the pic Arnold!!
Looks like your African Grey took one for the team!

Hope you had a good time and the babelaas is not too fierce!!!!

Andrew


----------



## bearcar1

I apologize Arnold, I let my imagination run unchecked there. No insults were intended. I do really admire what you did for that buckle though, that much is for certain. :bow: 

BC1
Jim


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## Cedge

Jim.... we gotta find a way to get you out of the house a bit more....LOL. Quaint?.... maybe so, but a good soft spoken southern drawl is worth a whole week's worth of ladies buying all the drinks, in your part of the world. Damned hospitable ladies,too.... must be the cold that made em so cuddly.....(grin)
Steve


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## arnoldb

Jim my friend, there is absolutely no need under the sun to apologise! I was not insulted in any way; quite the contrary, I had a good laugh at your description and was dreaming along. I love your interjections in posts! 
I'm terribly boring and conservative when it comes to dressing and took a dig at myself, and that seems to have come across the wrong way, so please do accept my apology for the confusion 

Hmm, from what Steve says, a visit to your area sounds like fun ;D - There's just this dang poor US$ to N$ exchange rate... Maybe one day though!

 :big: The belt buckle surprised me; it proved to be a hit... "Where did you buy it" was a regular question even from friends who know I build little engines : I guess that sorts out the question of birthday gifts for a while, though I'll have to jack up on engraving skills :big:

Kind regards, Arnold


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## steamer

You can make one like that for my birthday any time you want! :big:


Glad you posted that! Thats cool!

Dave


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## arnoldb

:big: Thanks Dave - now, when's your birthday then ?

Back to tooling for a change - just a minor bit, but useful none-the-less.

As said, I love the tooling plate, and it would be extremely useful if it could be mounted to my rotary table easily.
All of my "small" clamping kit is based around M6 threads, so the holes in the tooling plate are all threaded M6, but so are all the T-nuts I use on my Myford and the rotary table.
This means I can't directly bolt the tooling plate to the rotary table, so I modified a couple of high tensile cap screws of appropriate length by turning of a section of thread long enough to allow it, with a washer, to screw through the tooling plate and then spin freely in the hole once the thread clears:





There's no need to turn it down right to the head; the bit left is just thinner than an ordinary M6 washer.

Then it's a simple matter of catching T-nuts fitted to the slots in the rotary table, and the tooling plate easily bolts on to it:





Of course, if needed, the rotary table must be centered to the spindle before bolting on the plate, and one must find a way to center a workpiece to the spindle after clamping down - this requires different methods depending on the workpiece.

 :-[ Many of you might have noticed the rust that formed on my once-shiny tooling... With an all-time record wet rainy season here in Namibia, the damp got to all the places on chucks and tooling that I regularly touch in the shop - and then didn't oil when closing up for the day. I think a couple of hours with steel wool or Scotchbrite is in order, followed by a new work ethic of stopping sooner and cleaning and oiling tools used for the session...

Regards, Arnold


----------



## arnoldb

:big: - I got a nice reminder that this is an old topic when I started this reply; I definitely have not been making enough tools of late.

Well, a bit of tooling for a change. I actually wanted to start on an ER25 collet chuck for my mill. The Cheap 'n Cheerful import I have works well, but after having used the bearing-based closer nut on the lathe's ER chuck, the closer nut on the mill's is a pain to tighten and release. Unfortunately that chuck uses non-standard dimensions, so it's not as easy as just adding a bearing-based closer nut. I've already added some extra collets of the regularly-used sizes to my set, and this morning I set off to start on the new chuck. Bummer... I thought I had some suitable steel to make it from, but I thought wrong. So it'll have to wait till I can buy some steel.

Instead, I started on another collet chuck - an ER11. I've found that the ER25 on my lathe works very well, but at the smaller sizes it's inclined to shrink the collets if they are regularly used at under-sizes. So a couple of months ago I bought a set of ER11 collets which have been sitting idle on the shelf since then.

First I clocked up a bit of 16mm silver steel in the 4-jaw. I took my time about it to get it really close - less than 0.0025mm run-out (less than 1/4 deviation between two markings on my best dial indicator). Two years ago this would have taken me 30 minutes; now it takes less than 10... I left quite a bit of stock sticking out of the chuck; that was so that I could check both close to the chuck and further away for run-out:





Then I center drilled the end, turned a 13mm length down to 14mm diameter, and put a threading run-out groove in it:





I set up a 60 degree threading tool:





And started to set up the change gears for a 0.75mm pitch using a bit of paper to set gear clearance:





A very light cut across, and a thread gauge to measure that I had the correct pitch:





I took threading easy; just small increments at a time; 6 passes in total with the final pass at the same infeed as the previous one, and ended up with a nice smooth thread that's a spot-on fit for the ER11 closer nut:





Then I deep-drilled the work through with a good quality sharp 6.5mm drill - I didn't want it to wander too much.:





That was followed by a 7.5mm drill, which is the root depth for ER11 collet chucks. The Myford's top slide swivel graduations are pretty accurate, so I just set it to 8 degrees; that's the standard taper on all ER collets:





Of course I didn't have a small enough boring bar, so I ground one up from some 4mm square HSS blank:




A bit of round 6mm HSS would have worked better, but I don't have any; shopping list amended... The cutting tip was honed on the oilstone to a nice sharp corner, with a very slight radius.

The taper was bored out with light cuts as the workpiece was sticking out so far. When the outside end reached 11mm in diameter I stopped - this is the measurement where the "11" in ER11 comes from:




I love turning silver steel; it's easy to get a nice smooth turned finish.

Just had to try it out ;D - a 3mm collet with a 3mm drill bit chucked up:





Parted it off, and the final result. Chuck body:





Where the collet fits before it starts to compress:





And the 3mm collet compressed with the closer nut to near its smallest diameter:





Of course, the center 7.5mm hole goes right through so that I can extend stock through it:





And a final check on the lathe. I chucked it up in the ER25 collet chuck, as it will see most of its use like this. The 16mm ER25 collet has about 0.01mm run-out; both combined in this setup measured less than 0.015mm run-out; which is fine with me. If I need higher precision, I can always just clock up the ER11 chuck in the 4-jaw chuck:





I didn't add spanner flats to the chuck body; if it's really needed I'll add them later. Of course, this is not the most ideal setup, but will do in more than 80% of the cases where I need to grip small bits on the lathe. It will also work on the mill to grip small cutters or drills. I'll make a dedicated ER11 chuck for the small lathe once I get around to making a stand and mounting it.

Regards, Arnold


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## ronkh

Hi Arnold,

Glad you posted again on here else I would most likely of not seen it at all 

Love all of the idea's and especially that "special" one, the buckle.
You do some tremendous stuff (for want of a better word!) on this site and long may it continue!

Kind regards,

Ron.


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## Blogwitch

Very nice indeed Arnold.

Your workshop tooling must be getting very close to being finished, then you will have to look for something else to make. ;D

I have to agree with you about the bearing closing nuts, I have been using them now for a few years, and without them on my mill, I wouldn't be able to use ER collets at all. I like the way you can use one hand to get the tooling held in the collet, whereas normally, they would fall out until you could tighten them up with a C spanner.

Keep it up, you will get there in the end.

John


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## Omnimill

Adjustable Parallels, lets see some Adjustable Parallels! ;D

Vic.


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## arnoldb

Thanks Ron; your kind words are much appreciated 

John, thank you  - My use of the bearing closer nuts is all your fault; I saw those the first time in one of your posts and got hooked. 
 "Your workshop tooling must be getting very close to being finished, then you will have to look for something else to make." Rof} We both know by now that tooling is never finished! I do have a "something else" in the pipeline; a little engine project that I know you should like. That one have been nagging at me for many months to get built...

Vic, hang in there; they are coming :big: - don't know when yet; you'll just have to watch this space 

Well, not too much getting done after work in the evenings at the moment, and this coming weekend I'm going fishing partying with some friends; need to get a bit of the spring-time sunshine ;D

Kind regards, Arnold


----------



## arnoldb

Two weeks gone again 

At least the fishing trip the prior weekend was fun; we had beautiful weather, and it was really nice to be out of the town for a change:





Saturday I spent between fixing a neighbour's wife's treadmill (I tried to convince them to junk it so I could get the motor, but that didn't work out) and upgrading my satellite TV installation as my receiver had packed up last week. At least the new receiver have some nice features that will allow me to record the few programs I like to watch; these are usually in shop time, so I'll most likely get more shop from now on and watch the programs later 

Sunday dawned, and I didn't feel like precision machining, but wanted to make chips anyway. So I settled on making a vise back stop for my mill; something I've wanted to do for a long time. Material was scrounged from whatever I had around, and I pretty much followed Bogs' build with some minor differences to adapt to my vise and the material I had on hand.

My vise has two 8mm threaded holes on the back of the fixed jaw, so I decided to mount the stop there rather than to drill and tap the vise:





I salvaged a bit of ~25mm hot-rolled round and some bits of 20x5mm hot-rolled flat bar from the odds 'n ends bin and set to work. The round was turned down bit to neaten it up , drilled and then threaded M6 before sawn off to length and the other side just faced to clean it up. I then milled a flat on the other end. A suitable bit of the flat bar was drilled to fit the mounting holes on the vise, and one end flat milled down slightly to get rid of the black scale and the end squared up to mate with the flat on the round bit. Four pop marks with a punch on the milled bit, and I ended up with this:





The clean-up and punch marks on the flat bar was so that I could silver solder the two together leaving a bit of a gap for the solder to wick into. Its easier than welding (well, at least *my* stick welding :big or fitting screws to join the parts. After silver soldering and a couple of minutes with a wire wheel, I had this:





Fits nicely on the back of the vise:





Then I milled a slot and poked a 12mm hole in another bit of 20x5mm flat bar:





Another bit of HRS round was turned down with a press-fit step on one end for the 12mm hole in the flat bar and drilled and reamed 6mm and the two pressed together after cleaning the mill scale from the flat bar with the wire wheel. I rounded over the ends of the flat bar by eye with a file - just to get a pleasing look, and cut a suitable bit of 6mm silver steel for the stop; this was faced and polished on both ends. All together so far:





And mocked up on the vise:





Had to stop there as some social commitments came up; I still need to make both the locking handles, as well as drill and tap for the adjusting bar locking handle. I can flip the stop over to work from the right-hand-side as well, but I don't think I'll do that too often, as I normally machine on the right-hand side of the vise (or from right to left) so that I don't have to do the blue-chip-dance all the time if I get cranking.

Regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

I sneaked a couple of minutes in the shop after work...

Turned and half-way parted a bit of aluminium bar, drilled and tapped for M5 and screwed a bit of M5 threaded brass into it with a coating of high-strength tread retainer. The two nuts on the brass rod were locked together to allow a bit of torque on the threaded rod to screw it tightly into the aluminium without damaging the threads:





A quick knurl:





And after parting off, removing the parting pip, a bit of filing and rubbing the parted face on emery , I ended up with this:





Then I cross-drilled the adjuster end of the stop 4.2mm and passed the 6mm hand-reamer trough the bore to remove the burs on the inside:





Some hand-tapping:





And the adjuster stop knob was done:





A mad selection of bits 'n bobs for the stop, but I'd like to add that they were actually chosen... The aluminium knob won't rust from sweat on fingers (it gets hot here in Namibia ) and will not need oiling to prevent rust, the brass screw won't harm the silver steel stop arm making it difficult to move, and the brass threaded rod and aluminium knob are pretty much "seized up" on their treads - that's beside the thread retainer I added, so won't easily come unscrewed.

Regards, Arnold


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## kcmillin

Great Idea Arnold! A great use for those mostly useless screw holes on the back of the vice. 

Kel


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## arnoldb

Thanks Kel  Those holes can be useful for other things though - like mounting indicators or even angle plates to help set up a tricky casting. I think it's pretty much limited to imagination 

This morning I finished the last bit; a bigger knob for the back; countersunk and tapped M6 to accept a cap screw:





I don't have suitable screws in stock for the back mounting; I want M8 cap screws for that, so I'll buy those when I get a chance to go shopping again. For now, just two M8 bolts holding it on; the bolts are a bit long, but I didn't want to shorten them for a temporary job, so nuts screwed on them to bolt the stop in place. I also added a washer between the rear aluminium knob and the slide; otherwise it will give problems with galling and wear very quickly. Mounted on the vise in out-of-the-way mode:





And in "In-Use" mode:





That didn't take too long to finish today, so I spent the rest of the day giving all my machines a good clean and service. Now its time for an engine build for a change... One Elmer coming up ;D

Regards, Arnold


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## Blogwitch

Nice one Arnold. :bow: :bow: :bow:

Without mine, I would be lost. 

You don't realise just how much you can use such a simple piece of tooling, about 90% of my mill work uses it in one way or another.


John


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## lazylathe

Thanks Arnold!!! 
Now that is another bit i will have to make once everything is set up again!!! ;D

Looks like it will come in very handy!!!

Andrew


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## Ken I

Nice one Arnold.

When you have multiple parts to make, a mindset change is needed to move to "batch" production - your stop an invaluable asset in that regards.

Ken


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## arnoldb

John, Andrew & Ken, Thanks very much gents 

 ;D The vise stop had it's first bit of use this afternoon after work ; it's really nice to set up for machining on one side of a part then just flipping the part over and doing the opposite side without having to re-set everything 

Kind regards, Arnold


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## Blogwitch

As I said Arnold, I use mine all the time, not just for making duplicate parts.

Using it in conjunction with parallels, I can take out the piece part being machined for accurate measurement, knowing full well, that when I put it back in position, it will still be in the same position from whence it came.

You will find over time that what you have made will become second nature in it's use, and you will start to get easier to make and more accurately machined parts.


John


----------



## arnoldb

Thank you John. My apologies for the late reply; don't know why I skipped it :-[. You're right; the vise stop now feels like an old friend in the shop; it's REALLY handy 

My small lathe has been sitting idle in the shop since I bought it. I've not gotten around to making a suitable stand for it, as I had a bit of material shortage - so yesterday morning I ordered two 6m lengths of 50x50x5 angle iron; these were delivered late today, so now I can get cracking on making the stand.

In the meantime, there were some other issues to attend to. The lathe as I bought it is pretty basic, and one of the worst things is that it did not come with a tailstock drill. A fair warning to would-be hobby lathe buyers: Always make sure you buy a tailstock drill along with a lathe; it's indispensable!

A while ago I bought a small but good quality drill chuck for this purpose, but nobody in Windhoek could supply the suitable "shortened" MT1 arbor needed to fit the lathe's tailstock. Finding bigger tooling is easy here, but small things are rare, as there's no hobby market, so the chuck unfortunately needs a threaded arbor to boot, instead of a Jacobs taper. With our currency currently on a very low point in the international scene, buying one from overseas is a tad expensive for my taste.

So I decided to do what I always do; make my own 

A C-o-C was drawn up, and a bit of 16mm silver steel (drill rod) cut:





To turn the Morse Taper (MT1), I did some calculations for using the Myford's top slide to turn the taper. I do have a taper turning attachment for the Myford, but that's currently already conveniently set for another project:




 :-[ "Cross slide" in the image above should be Top Slide; I only noticed it now.

Anyway, to explain a bit of the above:
First off, there are multiple and easier ways to do this, but I felt like taking on a bit of an engineering challenge - that's part of the fun for me. It's also another bit of experience; with this method - if I can pull it off - I can turn pretty much any taper needed without a "reference" piece.

To cut the taper the top slide have to be set at an angle of 1.4287 degrees - not easy to set by eye on the top slide's rotary scale. A sine bar would have been nice to have here, but I must still make one. I have a nice precision protractor, but that's only accurate to 1/100th of a degree - and thus not quite good enough for this purpose.

One way is to use a dial indicator mounted on the top slide measuring against a parallel bar mounted in the lathe to get the "y" value, and to use the top slide's dial to traverse along the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the taper ("z" in the photo above) for a known distance.

The longer the distance one can measure over, the more accurate you can set the topslide, especially for a very shallow taper like this, so I cranked the Myford's topslide in and out, counting the turns to get a good balance between where its on its maximum "in" (lock up) and "out" (before coming off the feedscrew and still have adequate hold in the dovetails) - this ended up in 25 turns. At 100 thou per full turn, that comes to 2.5" or more conveniently for me 63.5mm.

With a bit of trigonometry, it ended up that the top slide would be set at the correct angle when I could measure 1.583mm travel on the dial indicator over 25 turns of the top slide.
Still a tough call - I only have 0.01mm dial indicators, so I'd have to "read between the lines" 

Enough maths, on to the setup. I set the topslide on an angle of about 1.5 degrees on it's scale, and mounted a dial indicator as square as possible to the lathe axis. If you look at the DI's tip, you'll see it has a bit of U-bent plate on it; I don't have different tips for my DIs, and this is a compromise to get a foot for measuring against a round shaft. The shaft I chucked up is nice and straight:




I know my 3-jaw chuck has quite a bit of run-out radially with the outside jaws in it (about 0.1mm!), but is pretty accurate parallel to the lathe ways (less than 0.01mm over 300mm) - but I checked the chucked bar just to make sure on the axial travel. Over the length sticking out and cranking on the apron, the DI barely moved, so that's still OK, and I don't need to turn down a bit of bar to get a more accurate test piece.

Then I locked the carriage down, and started by setting the DI to zero at with the topslide at maximum-less-a-bit infeed and on a zero reading on the topslide dial, with backlash taken up in the direction of it's feed:





After cranking the topslide out 25 turns, I got a reading of 1.32mm:




(The small mm dial on this CCC DI runs the wrong way :big

Too shallow a taper then, so I needed more offset on the topslide. I needed ~1.58mm, but the topslide pivots, so it's no good to just set it over to read 1.58mm - it has to be set to less than that. So I split the difference between the earlier 1.32 and the 1.58 - and I lightly tapped the crosslide over a bit more to get 1.45 on the dial. I then repeated this a couple of times, with the different readings - splitting the difference each time. I ended up with this on the dial:




A fuzzy photo with the focus in the wrong place :wall: - a click on the above photo should show more detail - you want to look at the DI face. Earlier on, I mentioned that I'd have to "read between the lines" - and this is it - a reading of 1.58something - between what I would think 1.580mm and 1.585mm, and what I'd guesstimate at 1.583mm. That's as close as I can do in my home shop - even a loud [email protected] would disrupt it.

The next step is actually turning the taper. First things first, and the toolbit has to be set spot-on on height:




My crappy-looking very-newby-project height gauge still does the job adequately  

A bit of silver steel (drill rod) turned down to 12.1mm diameter on 32mm length, and marked at 28mm for the end of the taper:





Taper turned part way down:





Time for a final check; some engineer's blue smeared on the taper:





I have a good quality MT2 to MT1 reducer - so I used that to check the taper; slid it on and turned it a bit:





The result - the taper is ever so slightly tighter at the big end, but that's OK by me:





A final finishing cut:





And the end counter bored 8mm deep:




I wanted as much taper as possible on this arbor, and the counter bore is needed to add an additional bit of travel on the small lathe's tailstock; every bit helps...

To turn the thread on the arbor, I need to mount it in the MT2 to MT1 reducer sleeve, and mount that lot in the Myford's head stock. There is a problem though; if I tap the arbor-in-making into the sleeve, I'd have a bummer of a time to get it out because of it's shortened taper. A bit of rummaging around my scrap bin produced an old 1/8" drill with a MT1 shank:





The shank on drills normally is not hardened, so I gave it a test with a file to make sure, and the file cut it, so I clamped it in the vise and hacksawed it off at an appropriate length:





A quick trip to the bench grinder to clean up the sawn end, and I had a nice insert:





With the insert lightly tapped down into the sleeve, followed by the arbor-in-making, and I can use a Morse key to remove both:





While I had the top slide set up on the lathe, I turned two more taper blanks from silver steel:





The original arbor was then fit in the lathe headstock, and tidied up a bit:





Next, turned down to fit the register in the chuck, a thread run-out groove added, and the section to be threaded turned down to 9.52mm (3/8"):





A quick test with a very light threading groove to check the thread pitch:





The thread turned for a good, but slightly tight fit in the drill chuck; it's better to have it a bit on the tight side for a chuck arbor:





Chuck screws on pretty much perfectly - I'm a happy chappy ;D:





Finally, in it's place on the small lathe:





Then I had a thought... That's dangerous, but what the heck; I gathered some bits 'n bobs and one of the other blanks I'd turned up earlier:





The MT1 blank was drilled and bored for a push fit for the bearings - leaving the drill bit cone in the end of the hole intact:





I decided not to use the 5mm silver steel rod shown in the photo before the last one; instead I used some 6mm silver steel rod and turned a 60 degree taper on the end:





Then turned it down to 5mm for a tight push fit for the bearings:





The bit was then parted off - leaving a 2mm long 6mm step at the end. I then mounted it in a 5mm collet, and faced off the parted end, and with a big center drill put a cone on the end:





A quick brass spacer and a PTFE ring turned for a press fit in the body and a running fit on the shaft, and this is the lot together - ready for assembly:




The PTFE ring is just to keep swarf and dirt out of the works. The step left at the end of the shaft is so that I can use the shaft to pull out the bearings for servicing.

All assembled up with a good dollop of high-pressure grease on the bearing ball, and I have a small running center - I think it turned out quite well ;D:




Of course, it's a light duty running center, but I've needed one for a long time.

Couldn't resist a quick test; it works a treat ;D:





Wow - this was a mammoth post; I hope I didn't bore anybody to death!

Regards, Arnold


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## Lockstocknbarrel

Arnold,
I class you as a Mentor, thank you for the massive amount of time you take to photo document the items that you build, and write the plans so that dirty rotten plagiarists like myself can build a item without the pitfalls, in today's electronic world, thanks must go to people like you, please don't stop this thread.
 Kindest Regards
Beagles


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## steamer

Looks great to me Arnold!

I love posts on tooling...keep em coming!

Dave


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## arnoldb

Thank you Beagles. I don't know about mentoring, but it's my way of repaying the generosity of many others who have freely and selflessly helped me come along in the hobby. 

 ;D Dave, I know you do! - I'll keep them coming Thm:

Kind regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

The Kimble engine took me a bit longer to finish than I thought, but it was a lot of fun to build. 

Now on to some tooling. I'd mentioned earlier in this thread that I'd ordered some additional ER25 collets and a bearing based closer nut to make a new collet chuck for the mill quite a while ago. A couple of months ago I picked up two offcut pieces of 40mm EN8 steel from a local supplier for a very good price - the good price was mostly because they neglected to order some hex brass I'd ordered from them and wanted to pacify me ;D

So this afternoon I did a quick C-o-C of what I wanted; I took some measurements off my boring head MT4 shank, as I want this new chuck to share a draw-bar with it:






Off to the bandsaw to get a bit of appropriate length sawn off:





On to the lathe and chucked up. I used some emery to clean up the tailstock end of the workpiece - there were some dings and high spots on it that needed smoothing off. Then I mounted the fixed steady close to the chuck, and set it's fingers to just touch the workpiece:





Then I moved the steady over to the end onto the bit I cleaned up, and added a good dollop of oil:




Now, I may be completely wrong about the way I'm thinking here, but, by setting the steady to size close to the chuck with the steady fingers touching the workpiece, and then moving it to the end that I cleaned up with emery, that end is very slightly smaller, and adding some thickish oil there, it produces a nice running fit.

Next I faced off the end:





And center drilled for tailstock support:





Then I made some chips  - after the delicate work on the Kimble, it was nice to just hog at things a bit:





I'm still struggling to get a good finish on lower-grade steel; I can turn aluminium and brass to a near-mirror surface, and the same for silver steel, but this stuff still needed some work with a file and emery where it was needed:





Some taper turning is required for MT4, and I set up for that. The last time I turned an MT4 taper I took great pains to set the taper turning attachment to a good degree of accuracy and it's still at the same setting, so this will be a doddle:




 :hDe: oh: - No doddle today; it's the wrong way around Rof} - the last setting on the TTA was from the headstock out oh:

I left things there for today; there was a right big thunderstorm pouring down and there was a bit of a lull, so I dashed for the house from the shop. Hopefully more to follow next weekend 

Kind regards, Arnold


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## arnoldb

After the "Homer Simpson" moment last weekend, I picked up where I left off this morning.

First I set the fixed steady to size on the thickest bit of the workpiece close to the chuck:





Then I mounted the 4-jaw chuck, moved the fixed steady toward the tailstock, flipped the workpiece end-over-end and carefully and accurately clocked it up in the 4-jaw - leaving a bit of run-out space for the taper next to the chuck:





The end of the workpiece had been cut with an abrasive cut-off wheel, and silly me; I'd forgotten this is higher carbon steel than the normal crud I work with. There was a HARD spot on the end which promptly took off the cutting edge of my favourite HSS cutting bit:





I could have tried brute force with one of my seldom-used carbide bits to take off the hard section, but I didn't want to get things out of kilter, and I didn't want to put too much of a load on the steady. So I attacked the hard bit by making an under-cut on the face - trying to get "behind" it:





The under-cut worked  , and I got the hard section off, so was able to get it properly faced and center drilled for tailstock support. I also had to skim off the thicker section protruding between the steady and the tailstock, so that I could get the steady out without changing it's setting:





With the steady out of the way, and proper tailstock support, I could turn the taper:





It looks like a dog's breakfast in the previous photo, but a very light rub with some scotch-brite had it looking OK - far from perfect, but good enough for here:





Next I turned the end down to 32mm and put in a thread run-out groove with the parting tool:





A quick hone of a 60o threading tool, and set up using a thread gauge:





Next a couple of minutes setting up the change wheels for 1.5mm pitch and a very light test pass - checked with a tread pitch gauge:





One of my favourite pastimes on the lathe - screw cutting - over much too quickly - but on size and smooth. The gritty bits in the threads are just some swarf:





The closer nut spins on easily and smoothly, with virtually nil free play in the threads:





Next, the steady back on, and some drilling - about 90mm deep, and 16mm diameter; it should have been 18mm diameter, but I don't have an 18mm drill:





On previous ER chuck builds, I'd simply set my lathe's top slide to 8o with the cutting bit spot-on on center line, and have not had any problems, so that's exactly what I did next, and then bored out the taper:




The finish looks a bit rough, but it is in fact very smooth; the banding that's visible is streaks of cutting fluid.

A quick test with a bit of 16mm silver steel chucked up in the 16mm collet, and there's less than 0.005mm of run-out; plenty good enough for me ;D:





I still had to drill and tap the end for the M12 draw-bar - so I just chucked the new collet chuck end-to end on the lathe's collet chuck using that same bit of 16mm silver steel, then set the fixed steady to size to run on the short thin section I'd left at the end:





Then I had a thought; I'd obviously need a way to hold the chuck with a spanner/wrench! - So I took the lot off the lathe, set the dividing head with it's tailstock support up on the mill, and plonked the lot in there:





Then milled out six 2.6mm deep grooves for C-spanner use:





Back to the lathe and set up as shown in the third last photo, and drilled and tapped for the M12 draw bar:





A bit of deburring, and the chuck's done:





Compared to the "non-ER" Eastern chuck I've been using till now (on the left in the photo) - it gives me about 25mm more headroom, and as it's not using a MT reducer sleeve like the old chuck, a bit more rigidity and hopefully some more accuracy as well:





Installed in the mill spindle - the taper fits a treat:





A quick try-out in some aluminium; I'd used the flycutter to face the lot, and then ran the 16mm mill 4mm deep through there at a good clip; the finish is OK - definitely better than what I'd been able to get with the other chuck:





And the best part - no heavy-handed hanging on to spanners to tighten or loosen the closer nut; it works a HECK of a lot better ;D

Regards, Arnold


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## Catminer

Arnold;

 Very nice job and a great step by step. Thm:

Peter


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## vcutajar

Arnold

Nice work and thanks for the photos and descriptions.

Vince


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## bearcar1

Splendid! Another well documented and thought out project. It does make life a whole lot simper when one does not have to dal with adapter city to get tools to bolt up. Bravo! Thm:

BC1
Jim


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## Maryak

Good one Arnold :bow:

Best Regards
Bob


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## cfellows

Wow, that's purty! Nice work, Arnold.

Chuck


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## Ken I

Well done Arnold.

Did anyone spot the hidden tip ?

When screw cutting take a light cut and CHECK that the pitch is what you thought you set it to.

Ken


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## steamer

Sweet Arnold!  Nice job!  

Dave


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## lazylathe

Great work as usual Arnold!!!

As for the tip on checking the thread pitch...
When checking the thread pitch does one rest the teeth of the pitch guide on the tops of the teeth
or in the valleys created after cutting the threads?
Not sure if that makes sense??

I have never been shown how to do this and i kind of put the thread gauges teeth into the threads of the 
bolt to check what they are.
I take it that this is incorrect?

Andrew


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## Catminer

Correct Andrew

Peter


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## arnoldb

Many thanks for the responses Gents :bow:

Since the first thread I've turned I've always checked the thread pitch like Ken mentioned, so it's become sort of second nature; I snapped that photo as a matter of course... 

Andrew, Like Peter said, that's correct - if the pointy ends on the teeth of the gauge matches up to the grooves, that's the correct pitch.

The thread pitch gauge is also great to easily determine "mystery" threads; the one I'm using in the photo is metric on one side and Whitworth on the other side - so it's easy to run through the different fingers on it to determine if an obscure thread is either of these types and the pitch it's using. The angular difference between metric (60o) and Whitworth (55o) is easily discernible when holding things up to the light and finding the best match. I don't have a gauge like that for UNC/UNF and other threads yet, as those are rare here in Namibia, though much to my surprise I've seen a recent rise in the use of UNC in devices such as treadmills and vehicle-installable computers that I've had to do a lot with lately.

Kind regards, Arnold


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## lazylathe

Thanks Peter and Arnold!!!

For a while there i thought i was losing it!!
I see a lot of pictures here that people have taken with he gauges teeth resting on the lines 
of the first light cut.

Andrew


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## krv3000

well dun


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## arnoldb

Thanks Bob - Sorry for the late reply!

Today I interrupted my current engine build to make a bit of tooling that will take some pain out of the engine build.
It's something I've needed on a couple of occasions, and never bothered to get around to - even though it's simple to make... A mounting to hold a dial indicator to the lathe bed to accurately move the carriage. I need to make a batch of thin, but accurate washers and nuts, and once the current engine build is done I need to make up some gear hobs as well.
Up to now, I've simply indexed along the lathe's Z axis using the leadscrew hand wheel, but it's slightly inconvenient as it's difficult to keep track of exact movements (for me anyway) as it's graduated to 125 thou - slightly confusing my metric-oriented braincell.

A quick measurement of the lathe ways, and I just fell to work - without much of a plan. First some 25mm aluminium square bar onto the mill and the band saw marks cleaned up on the far end - just for looks:





After fussing with making 2mm bolts earlier in the day, it was nice to just hog out material - making chips nearly as big as those little bolts:





With the workpiece standing squarely upright, I used a 1mm slitting saw to make a kerf:





A 4.2mm hole followed - but only through the top bit and taking care to not drill into the "flap" left by slitting:





I'd eyeballed things on the lathe to find suitable spots where things would touch, so I drilled a 7.9mm hole in the appropriate approximate location:





That was reamed out to 8mm:





After cross-drilling another 4.2mm hole to match up into the reamed hole, both the 4.2mm holes were tapped M5.
On to the lathe, and some turning and threading - ready to just part off:





Another piece like in the last photo was turned and parted off, and then two dud gears I made quite a while ago soldered to the screwy bits with soft solder:





A quick face-off, and I had two OK-looking knobs:




I knew I'd find a use for those dud gears one day 

Some scrub-down with a scouring pad, and the bit was done:





It fits very well to the lathe bed, and can be used on either the left or right side of the carriage:









Of course, it can be used as a depth stop as well with a bit of rod inserted; in the next photo I just used an 8mm drill bit as I couldn't find some rod:





 : It's not a perfect solution though; if used on the right-hand side of the carriage, it prevents the tailstock from moving up close enough to work with small drills. At some future point, I'll make up a smaller one that can clamp onto the bed from the top. For most jobs, this one will do me just fine though.

Regards, Arnold


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## krv3000

hi and a nuther job well dun


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## steamer

I could never get along without my bed mounted dial indicator stop Arnold....you've built another "how could I ever get along without this" tool.....your going to love it.

Dave


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## arnoldb

Thanks Bob 

Dave, Thank you  You're right, as I've used it quite a bit more already than I thought I would... It beats the heck out of trying to get at the workpiece with the verniers and getting an accurate reading ;D

Kind regards, Arnold


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## Blogwitch

Only just caught up with the last two bits you have made Arnold, great work as usual. :bow: :bow:

How are you finding the ball raced ER nut? I can almost tighten mine up with my bad hand and get it to grip enough for cutting, they have revolutionised the way I use a collet chuck, before I would need three hands to tighten it up on the mill, now it is easy peasy.

I am lucky in that I have DRO's on my lathe, but I can definitely see where your DI holder can be of great use.

Nice ones. th_wav th_wav

Isn't it nice to make a bit of tooling that isn't on the market yet, or if it is, not as accurate as you can make yourself?

John


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## arnoldb

Thank you John 



> How are you finding the ball raced ER nut?


 ;D I love the closer nut to bits - that's part of the reason why I made the new chuck for the mill. After having used one on my lathe collet chuck for a couple of years, the "non-standard" Eastern one was just a pain to operate. And as you say, hand tightening milling bits is easy.



> Isn't it nice to make a bit of tooling that isn't on the market yet, or if it is, not as accurate as you can make yourself?


That it is! And somehow it's "nicer" to work with my own-made tooling; the bits feel like old friends and constantly acts as a reminder of mistakes made, lessons learnt and skills acquired.

Kind regards, Arnold


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