# Rod's Aussie Shed



## rodw

Hi guys I thought I better post up a picture of my shop. well we don't call it a shop in Australia, It has to be a shed. Mine is tiny weighing in at 2.4m x 4.8m. For those who still work in feet, I will leave it to you to multiply those numbers x 3.28 to work it out in feet!







It is a bit of a work in progress as I still have to add the roof to the materials rack I put down the side






Note the slab for the compressor I will put there one day  You can see that I have already made provision to secure the roofing sheets to the fence. I built this shed myself from a Stratco kit and added a heap of shelves and benches at the time!

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, come inside my mini shop (err shed)!

Up one end I have my welding station, band saw and drill press. 






You will note the welding table is on (noisy) steel wheels so I can pull it out and away from the 200 amp MIG welder. You probably can't see it but on the back side of the table there is a vice mounted on a 50x50mm piece of SHS that I can remove if it gets in the way (eg. Like a tow bar with a 2" receiver). I had the top, corner braces and castor mounting plates laser cut so I did not have to buy a full sheet of steel!

I just moved the drill press to its current location as it was on the other side of the door beside my lathe but I am trying to reorganise my shop a bit to make way for some more room. The long term plan is to replace the drill press with a Seig X3 mill which is about the same size as the drill press. Behind the drill press is a small 6 tonne hydraulic press.  My camping gear lives on the top shelf. The bandsaw can be pulled out to cut long stuff passed through the door way.

Anyway, on the other side of the door is my lathe. It is the same as the Smithy Midas 1220 3-in-1. I have tricked it out by adding a 4 jaw chuck, a quick change tool post and a 4" milling vice. There is a hardwood workbench up the end under the window.






On the other side is my grinding station and I keep a couple of 4" angle grinders behind the bench grinder.






For Gus's benefit the grey tool beside the grinder is a commercial diamond hone knife sharpener I bought at an auction brand new years ago for $26. What a bargain! It was worth 12 times that! It takes about 8-10 strokes to keep all my knives razor sharp!

The red tool chest is a new addition to let me put 3 layers of tools on my ever shrinking bench tops!

Anyway, the main reason I moved the drill press is that I am starting to think I should upgrade my lathe and eventually use a separate mill.

My local "candy store" (as Gus calls it) has some specials on at the moment and I think I can fit this one in if the budget allows
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L682

but if the wallet won't stretch, maybe I will make do with this one
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L141 
which has roughly the same footprint. Decisions! Decisions! ANy help appreciated.

Any Aussies, lurking and looking for a used lathe, this one will be up for sale on eBay if I upgrade. I have just recently fitted all new spindle bearings and seals to it.


----------



## gus

Hi Rod,
Your BandSaw,Diamond Knive Hone Machine,lathe,mill and welding trnasformer and a brand new shed makes me jealous.I think I'ii move over to Thornleigh,Sydney and buy the house(with a two car garage) next to big sister's house.Just imagine how many machine tools I could squeeze in.

Just mounted my new Makita Portable BandSaw on a cheap and nasty DIY table. See my post.

Saw a Rotary Knife Honing Machine at TokyuHands,Tokyo and it is not cheap.You got a bargain there.
The "Boss" wants her kitchen knives done up.


----------



## canadianhorsepower

hey Nice "shed" I have a craftex co89 (same as your L141) for sale it's excellent equipement.
It's funny cause I just replaceit with an L682 the main reason the l682 have to rod for different
thread and feed rate

cheers


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod,.
> The "Boss" wants her kitchen knives done up.



But every time I sharpen the kitchen knives, my boss cuts her finger!

The electric hone is still the same sharpening process. Rub till edge feathers and then hone it off with the second plastic hone wheel. The first sharpen takes a while to get the angles right, but after that it is easy. You can keep it sharp just by rubbing on the plastic wheels,  If you use a steel though, it wrecks the angles and you need to use the diamond wheel. 

This is the one I have geez, $450 on Amazon! 
http://www.chefschoice.com/page2d_m2000.html

The welder was another bargain which my bolt shop sold me and the offer was too good to refuse even if it weighs 90 kg!


----------



## rodw

canadianhorsepower said:


> hey Nice "shed" I have a craftex co89 (same as your L141) for sale it's excellent equipement.
> It's funny cause I just replaceit with an L682 the main reason the l682 have to rod for different
> thread and feed rate
> 
> cheers



Luc,  good feedback thanks, the cheaper one is probably all I need, but the smaller one optioned up is much the same price, so I was hoping to find the extra $500.


----------



## rcfreak177

G'day Rod.

nice shed you have there mate.

Great to see the camping gear stash'd up on the top shelf. Seig X3 machines go well, great bang for you'r buck.

I have had a super X3 for a few years and has never let me down yet. (Also from Hare and Forbes)

Do you have any projects on the go at the moment?

Baz. Thm:


----------



## metalmad

Hi Rod
Looks a nice cozy little hidy hole buddy complete with Home brew yet LOL
Nice one!
Pete


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> G'day Rod.
> 
> nice shed you have there mate.
> 
> Great to see the camping gear stash'd up on the top shelf. Seig X3 machines go well, great bang for you'r buck.
> 
> I have had a super X3 for a few years and has never let me down yet. (Also from Hare and Forbes)
> 
> Do you have any projects on the go at the moment?
> 
> Baz. Thm:



Baz, not quite. Does painting the house over Christmas count? 

The Oz tent does not get much use these days, as we moved up in the world





Somewhere near Winton a couple of years ago on the back road to Birdsville.

We try to get away once a year.





Overnighter at Parachilna Gorge, Flinders Ranges about 3,000 km from home.

I joined this forum because I found the Ez runner plans but needed to get a few other projects out of the way first. Before I got to it, one of the bearings in my lathe let go, so that was quite a project! 






A guy in my street has the Super X3 set up for CNC and reckons it is not rigid enough and gets chatter on parts. But then again he has a big mill beside it!

Anyway, I have all of the material here to try my hand at the Runner and bought  set of reamers for the job. I will get to it eventually once I have my paying jobs up to date.



> Hi Rod
> Looks a nice cozy little hidy hole buddy complete with Home brew yet LOL
> Nice one!
> Pete



Yes Pete, I should knock the dust off the homebrew, I have not used it for a while. I made a still about 10 years ago, sorry I don't have a good pic of it complete but here it is











The column is about 1100 mm long and filled with stainless steel pot scrubbers.  It puts out 94% of the good stuff! Around 95% is the maximum you can get in theory without distilling in a vacuum. 






Don't know if you know anything about these, but there is a coil of 1/4" pipe in the top section that you run cold water through to condense the vapour, (the pipes up the column are water inlet and outlet). A couple of needle valves regulate the mount that is fed back to the column and out to the bottle. You need to set it up to recover about 1 part in 4. You discard the first stuff (maybe 200 ml). The temp starts at 81 degrees C and rises to sit on 82 degrees during the run.






Before the temp gets to 84 degrees, you make the cut, but run it out and toss it in the pot on your next run.

Fractionating stills like this let the good stuff to condense on the way up, drip off the potscrubbers so it all gets distilled over an dover again for maximum purity. Purer it is, the less room for bad flavours.....

Maybe I should post it in the live steam forum do you think?


----------



## metalmad

ooooooooooh 
I dooo like that Still
Pete


----------



## rodw

metalmad said:


> ooooooooooh
> I dooo like that Still
> Pete



Yes, it is a rewarding hobby. Just remember to water down before drinking!

Hmm, went to Hare and Forbes today to grab some countersink tools.

Ooops!!! Also came home with a stand for the AL320G (L141) lathe  

The new lathe will follow when it comes into stock in a week or so.

It was the biggest I reckon I can fit in my shed and with 38mm spindle is definitely an upgrade from what I have. I figured the pick gears for threading I can live with because I have yet to cut a thread since I have had a lathe.

Once it is here my 3-in 1 will be up for sale to fund the purchase of a Seig X3. Probably during the Hare & Forbes March Sale. As my nice stand/cabinet has to go to make way for the new lathe (which is too big to fit on it), I will let some tooling go as a package so it will be a good starter pack for someone.

Sing out if you know someone that may be interested.


----------



## Herbiev

Rod have you asked Hare and Forbes what sort of trade in you would get?
That has got to be the classiest stil I ever set eyes upon. Well done


----------



## rodw

Herbiev said:


> Rod have you asked Hare and Forbes what sort of trade in you would get?



I thought about it, but did not think it was worth chasing up. I figured I would do better on eBay. I would have asked if it had been one of their models though.


Herbiev said:


> That has got to be the classiest stil I ever set eyes upon. Well done



Thanks Herbiev. I got a bit annoyed when I made it because I soldered one fitting on the wrong way and by the time I took it off and turned it round I got silver solder all over the top of it so it is functional, not pretty. You can see it on one of the photos. If I could work out how to clean it up, I might have polished and laquered it and then it would have been real classy! Maybe some members have some ideas on how to clean it up.


----------



## rodw

I finally got around to unpacking the stand for my new lathe on Sunday afternoon and found that one of the side cabinets had a bent/broken door. I took it back to Hare and Forbes this afternoon and they swapped it over for me. They said that I will probably have my new toy by the weekend which is good as it is a long weekend so it will be a good time to set it up. I also stopped at my bolt shop and grabbed some 75 mm x 12 mm bolts to make up some legs for the stand. I need 8 of them as there are 4 per cabinet. 

It looks like these bolts are survivors of the January 2011 Brisbane floods as some were covered in a familiar grey silt. My bolt shop had over 2 metres of water though it and lost about $1m of stock. I have stuck by them even if sometimes they are a bit slow with their orders which I assume is because they are struggling financially without any insurance. I told them I thought they needed every customer they could get after this and I would stay by them and they really do look after me!

So I started off getting my trusty apprentice on the job cutting down some 50mm x 5mm bar into squares with a drop of cutting oil for good luck.






While I was stuffing around getting my camera and cleaning up the cut edges on the bench grinder, he kept wheezing away. I have found that one great advantage of a band saw is that you can get some other stuff done while "the apprentice" works away. (but you do need to keep an eye on it in case the blade jams and burns out the motor). I think I am going to have to call "my apprentice" Gus in honour of the happy fisherman! I will say however, there is one difference between my Gus and Gus the fisherman. You see my Gus has absolutely no initiative! I have to set up every cut for him and once he is done, he just turns off the tool and waits silently for me to get him going on the next cut.  :wall::wall:

While I was at it, I also ground off the writing on the bolt head so they sat flat on the plate.

Then with my carefully calibrated eyeometer, I positioned each bolt in the centre of the plates






and spot welded them on 






The idea is to use these as adjustable legs to level the stand on my sloping floor. The stand will be sandwiched between the two washers.

After consulting the paint store in my garden shed (which is so messy I keep it hidden from you guys), I hummed and haared about which paint to use, a lighter shade of blue used by Hare and Forbes or a discrete matt black. I decided to go with the black as the can was pretty full,  so a squirt of undercoat 






and the top coat and we are done!






Anway, I managed to get this far after work today but I am gunna be patient while the paint dries and fit these and assemble the stand tomorrow afternoon. 

I started my eBay listing of my curent lathe tonight and at $26, after a couple of hours, it has to be a bargain!

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/251217260147

I am glad it is off the mark and not sitting on the starting bid of 99 cents!

Anyway, very early days, I hope it sells well and the strategy of including the extras pays off (Particularly the collets) so I can fund the purchase of a Seig X3/SX3 mill as the lathe has pretty well cleaned out my slush fund!

Cheers guys, I will keep you up to date on this thread as my shed gets a makeover.


----------



## rcfreak177

Hmmm new lathe hey,

Bet you can't get to sleep at night thinking about it.

Good stuff mate, I looked at the same one some time ago, pretty solid machine.

Had a look at you'r Ebay listing for the lathe/mill, someone out there will be getting a good machine, looks great.

I reckon I could make a wicked CNC combo machine with that, fit an auto tool changer and Logitrol cnc kit. You would then be able to turn and mill all in the same setup.

 :idea:  Ok I will stop dreaming now.

Baz Thm:


----------



## Herbiev

Looking great Rod. One busy long weekend coming up. 
Regarding the over-solder I find that a rotary sanding disc in the electric drill gives results


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> Hmmm new lathe hey,
> 
> Bet you can't get to sleep at night thinking about it.
> 
> Good stuff mate, I looked at the same one some time ago, pretty solid machine.
> 
> Had a look at you'r Ebay listing for the lathe/mill, someone out there will be getting a good machine, looks great.
> 
> I reckon I could make a wicked CNC combo machine with that, fit an auto tool changer and Logitrol cnc kit. You would then be able to turn and mill all in the same setup.
> 
> :idea:  Ok I will stop dreaming now.
> 
> Baz Thm:



Baz, I hope it sells well. Its got up to $560 with a few days to go so it all looks good so far. You'd probably be better of with an HQ500 which have separate motors for lathe and Mill though





They are here in QLD http://wic043u.server-secure.com/vs4487_secure/dept.asp?id=154

Pretty sure this is the same as the Smithy Granite

I don't think I am ready to tackle a CNC project, but DRO's are on the cards. That's one of the reasons I decided to upgrade. It really would not have been the right machine to spend the money on.




Herbiev said:


> Looking great Rod. One busy long weekend coming up.
> Regarding the over-solder I find that a rotary sanding disc in the electric drill gives results



Yes, Herbie, I got the stand together yesterday afternoon and these look like they will do  the job. Then I had to dirty my old lathe for rush job last night but it was a paying one so I guess I can live with that!

It was over 10 years ago I built the still so I probably won't clean it up, its the inside that counts 

I thought a Dremel grinder might also be worth trying now I have one.


----------



## rodw

Well we better get back on topic!

It's Here!






And off the trailer





The rope is 10,000 kg dyneema winch rope that I had left over. I tried using a winch extension strap out of my 4WD but it did not work for me then I remembered the rope!

I had a bit of trouble balancing it and now realise I did not quite have the ropes where they should have been according to the manual at the headstock end but it is in one piece so far!

Just gotta slip the drip tray under it, bolt it down with a bit of sealant under it in case I set a coolant system up and clean it up in the morning. 

Then, I have to go back and get the Seig Super X3 mill which would not fit on the trailer when I went to Hare and Forbes this afternoon. 

The shed is at the other end of the house so there is still quite a  task ahead of me yet, I will probably hire an engine crane once both tools are ready to be moved. Lucky it is a long weekend and I have Tuesday off as well!

I was pleasantly surprised that the lathe was not covered in waxy grease I was expecting, just a bit of oil so it will be pretty easy to clean up.

Now a question. Should I drain the headstock and replace the oil? It looks like the top of the headstock comes off to clean it out but is it necessary?

PS. I gotta say the 4 jaw chuck is huge compared to my existing 160mm one!


----------



## rcfreak177

G'day Rod.

Good to see, I am sure you will be busy, "SX3 as well", you won't know yourself with all this new gear.

The oil in the lathe should be good for a couple of months or so, I would change it then. I use 68 grade oil Shell Tellus or similar.

No need to remove the headstock cover, It will be clean as a whistle inside. Hare and Forbes reps go to China and deal direct with the manufacturer and don't take any crap from them, Hare and Forbes has a good reputation and put their name against all equipment they sell. They are a good mob I reckon.


May pay to keep an eye on the graduations on the lathe dials, I have the AL336 and they were wrong on the X axis, I would put a cut on for example 0.1 mm and the bloody thing would take 0.13 mm, had to use a dial on the cross slide until my DRO turned up (Sino 2 axis of Ebay $295,00 incl delivery and is shi* hot if you need one). 

Edit: I just realised there is a mistake here, I actually paid $295.00+$120.00 shipping. My apologies if I mislead anybody and causing them to get over excited. :fan:

H and F offered to replace the dial but was not worth the hassle, the machine tool guy even came to my house to check out the problem under warranty. 

Happy Machining mate, And Happy Australia day for tomorrow.     *beer**beer**beer* X lots

Baz.


----------



## rodw

Thanks Baz, the info is much appreciated. Yes Australia Day will be busy on this side of the continent! Not happy that it has been raining all night so far and the machine is sitting in my open carport with rain blowing in! Anyway, I covered it in the plastic bag that was on it when i opened the box so it will be OK. 

Worked out I have to take the back splash guard off to sling it properly. On the left hand side, One rope needs to be to the left of the headstock leg and the other to the right. Pictures In The manual are pretty poor.

Warnings in the manual are pretty good too! "Avert the forceful rays and lightning caused by disturbing illuminants of shadows". Any takers on the translation front?


----------



## rodw

Well,I we up at about 5:00 this morning (I wonder why) and started to get the lathe ready. I started with the compound and chucks and then  tried to get the drip tray fitted so as not to make any noise so early in the morning. I followed the diagram in the manual when I lifted it and still had a of of trouble with the balance and I knocked a bit of paint off the drip tray. I eventually got it mounted and stuck down with Sikaflex. It was terribly unstable so I had to dtch my little feet I made

Before I really got going, I had a bit of a disaster, I saw all of this oil on the floor and found that somehow the sight glass (and drain plug) in the headstock had snapped off and I had dropped all of the oil in the sump. 

I still can't work out how this happen0ed, I think it could have been faulty. Anyway, went off to H&F to grab the mill and asked for a spare but they only had them in stock in Sydney. The guy said they would air bag one to my door and then gave me a 5 litre drum of oil to make up for the 250 ml I spilt!

Anyway, I said to him there must be a Chinese guy laughing his guts out over people following his instructions. So he explained to me how they lift all of their lathes with a sling around the spindle behind the chuck and a strap through the bed! He said lift it then drop it down again which will balance it and then it will be perfectly balanced!  So I asked him how to lift the Seig and he showed me on one on the floor and it worked perfectly! 






I will be keen to try his lathe method

I was pretty despondent about the busted oil drain on the lathe but eventually after I shovelled of a thick layer of grease off the mill, I found that the table had a spare bung for the lathe (which I promptly borrowed to get my lathe going!)






This must be used for a coolant return outlet but I stole it and grabbed an O ring and it worked perfectly and that is why I know it holds about 250 ml. Maybe I will order one of these parts to replace the sight glass!

Seig definitely made up for the lack of grease on the lathe and it took a long time to clean it after I removed the back cover to get to the column.






.

Anyway by about 5:00 pm, I finally had run up both machines and they both run sweet!

ON the lathe, the tailstock, compound and cross slide are real sweet and silky smooth now but one of the 4 jaw chuck jaws is really tight, I think I might take it back as it is so tight that it squeaks and despite playing with it for an hour or so, I did not get it fixed! I want to be able to dial in the chuck with two keys and I don't think it will work very well as it is.

My ebay auction finished tonight and I got $1125.01 for the lathe which is exactly half what I paid for the miill (well $0.01 more than half actually). I think the strategy of including the ltooling paid off even if I have to send anoter $125 on collets. I paid $1k for the lathe a few years ago so I am happy with the result!

Tomorrow, the agenda is that I will take all of the packing cases to the dump while I have this trailer and bring home an engine crane from Kennard Hire and get these machines down to the other end of the house and hopefully into the shed.

I am still only a noob but I must say I am very impressed with the SX3. It is a high precision tool I think.

I checked the tool post and despite being sold as a 12 mm tool height, there is no way this is true as the holding screws almost miss thetool. Inserting a 16 mm tool which I borrowed is almost spot on to the tailstock.

Maybe I might even be able to build an engine soon!


----------



## rodw

Well, I hired the engine stand and it was pouring rain all day. The new machines  got really wet so sorry, no pics I just got them moved and into the shed as quick as I could. Hare and Forbes method of picking up a lathe and balancing it works very well but trying to get an engine crane which is about 1100mm wide through a standard 820mm door into the shed is just not possible! This meant i had a lot of manhandling on my own and just managed to walk the lathe through the door and into position. I took the engine crane back and before I got home, the power went out. It is still out and it has been out for about 9 hours now. I have got the Seig nice and level and the lathe is pretty good. I knew I would have troubles with the lathe  and I may well end up pouring a level slab to stand it on but at the moment each leg of the stand is on a big thick tile left over from my son in law's pool installation. I think this will work out OK but have not been able to run it to see in the blackout!

I am really happy the way it all fitted in so tomorrow's Job is to machine a couple of fittings to centre my lathe tooling in the absence of a QCTP and maybe try machining a couple of back orders for plastic blocks. That is if the power comes back on!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Well, I hired the engine stand and it was pouring rain all day. The new machines  got really wet so sorry, no pics I just got them moved and into the shed as quick as I could. Hare and Forbes method of picking up a lathe and balancing it works very well but trying to get an engine crane which is about 1100mm wide through a standard 820mm door into the shed is just not possible! This meant i had a lot of manhandling on my own and just managed to walk the lathe through the door and into position. I took the engine crane back and before I got home, the power went out. It is still out and it has been out for about 9 hours now. I have got the Seig nice and level and the lathe is pretty good. I knew I would have troubles with the lathe  and I may well end up pouring a level slab to stand it on but at the moment each leg of the stand is on a big thick tile left over from my son in law's pool installation. I think this will work out OK but have not been able to run it to see in the blackout!
> 
> I am really happy the way it all fitted in so tomorrow's Job is to machine a couple of fittings to centre my lathe tooling in the absence of a QCTP and maybe try machining a couple of back orders for plastic blocks. That is if the power comes back on!



Hi Rod,
It is hard to believe we can get addictive to QCTP. :wall:Once set up and it is so easy to centre new cutters and change tool holders in a second or two.

Vertical BandSaw too,is addictive. Ha Ha :fan::fan:

Take it easy and take care.


----------



## rodw

Well, I have got everything in and have had a couple of days to play.







Still got a mess to clean up.



gus said:


> Hi Rod,
> It is hard to believe we can get addictive to QCTP. :wall:Once set up and it is so easy to centre new cutters and change tool holders in a second or two.



Yes Gus, I know what you are saying. I might have been a bit hasty in my order but it is done now. I found a scrap of 3mm x 32mm  flat bar and cut it down to fit the tool post holder. This left me a smidgin low but it was close enough to make some chips in HDPE plastic that is centre drilled.






After I made these chips, I went looking for some shim material and then I realised I was holding it in my hand! So I drained the beer can, hacked out a couple of shims and have two tools installed at perfect height.

Anyway, tooling is so expensive in Australia so it made sense to add stuff to the one order out of Hong Kong due to the freight cost.

After I had had a play on the lathe, I indicated in my milling vice and got it absolutely perfect which is no small achievement for a noob like me.

Then, I finally located the carriage lock screw and found it needed to be milled down to make it work so I also ended up with my first real milling job! Calculated the cutting speed from the instructions on the packet my end mill set came in, dialed in 400 RPM and it was all so easy!


----------



## starnovice

Suggestion Rod,
Put up some cheap shower curtain rods and hang tarps to protect your storage shelves from metal chips.

Pat


----------



## rcfreak177

Hi Rod,

Looking very smart now.

QCTP and other stuff,

I recommend this place http://www.cdcotools.com/

I have used them heaps and they are the cheapest around. Also service is good.

The only thing is the shipping, to make it worthwhile it is best to go with a USPS flat rate box for around $50 and fill it.
Has a weight limit of 20lb.

Baz.


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> Hi Rod,
> 
> Looking very smart now.
> 
> QCTP and other stuff,
> 
> I recommend this place http://www.cdcotools.com/
> 
> I have used them heaps and they are the cheapest around. Also service is good.
> 
> The only thing is the shipping, to make it worthwhile it is best to go with a USPS flat rate box for around $50 and fill it.
> Has a weight limit of 20lb.
> 
> Baz.



Thanks Baz, I did find them and my neighbour gave me a CDC (USA) printed catalog after I ordered this stuff as he had a spare. They don't have much in the way of metric stuff and I wanted to get a metric boring head (with metric markings) and a full 19 piece set of ER32 collets (where in the US, they drop one off and make it 18. I was a bit worried CDC's collets would be marked in inches not mm which would have been a pain. I could get 19 piece ER32 kits out of CTC (Hong Kong). Prices were similiar but freight was a lot dearer. I think it will get here quicker. The last couple of orders from the US seem to get stuck in customs for a while before they leave the country. (it took 3 weeks last time vs 4-5 days a few years ago).

The tool posts are pretty heavy so I added a few other bits working on more is better in relation to the freight cost until the budget ran out. I asked them to send me a couple of extra tool holders which were not listed and they came in at $22 each vs' $9 at CDC. CTC were very responsive with their emails, quickly sending me a Paypal invoice for the extra items before they shipped my order which I thought was pretty good service.

I still have more stuff to order and liked the CDC 5 piece lathe ISO insert tooling kit prices at $33 plus $4 per insert!

So anyway, once I get the toolpost and work out how to fit it and if I make the switch to 16mm tooling, I will make another order. Still need a few more bits for the mill. I guess that will always be the case.


----------



## rodw

starnovice said:


> Suggestion Rod,
> Put up some cheap shower curtain rods and hang tarps to protect your storage shelves from metal chips.
> 
> Pat



Thanks Pat, not a bad idea. My new lathe seems to be able to make a lot more chips than my old one. The mill is beside the door and gets wet if it is raining and the door is open so I will have a think about your suggestion. I have a fair bit of cleaning up to do to get the shop tidy again and want to make some tool holders to keep stuff habdy as I have a lot less storage under my lathe now.


----------



## wm460

Congratulations on your two new toys.
Looks like you have your shed set up nicely 

+ 1 for CDCO,



PS I you got too much rain, send some here forgotten what it is like.


----------



## rodw

wm460 said:


> PS I you got too much rain, send some here forgotten what it is like.



Yes, I got sick of it! I am sure we had plenty spare! I measured 310mm (12.5") of rain over 4 days which I guess is about 3-4 times your average annual average! In typical Brisbane form, the weather fined up after the long weekend was over!


----------



## rodw

Grr, not happy with the cheap plastic bungs H&F use these  days in their headstock gearbox. One let go before I got it installed and they airbagged one to me which I fitted last night. This morning, there was oil everywhere again and the bung was sitting there in two pieces. It was fine after I fitted it, but snapped overnight. Maybe the metal expands and pops it.






So anyway, it looks like the metal bung in the table of my Seig SX3 mill will live in my lathe as a permanent modification.

Anyway, at least this time there was a drip try to catch the oil!

Today, I made a carriage stop for the lathe.






I ned a different bolt for the adjustment so I'll go looking Monday. I posted full details here:

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/f28/my-first-milling-project-carriage-stop-20020/


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Yes, it is a rewarding hobby. Just remember to water down before drinking!
> 
> Hmm, went to Hare and Forbes today to grab some countersink tools.
> 
> Ooops!!! Also came home with a stand for the AL320G (L141) lathe
> 
> The new lathe will follow when it comes into stock in a week or so.
> 
> It was the biggest I reckon I can fit in my shed and with 38mm spindle is definitely an upgrade from what I have. I figured the pick gears for threading I can live with because I have yet to cut a thread since I have had a lathe.
> 
> Once it is here my 3-in 1 will be up for sale to fund the purchase of a Seig X3. Probably during the Hare & Forbes March Sale. As my nice stand/cabinet has to go to make way for the new lathe (which is too big to fit on it), I will let some tooling go as a package so it will be a good starter pack for someone.
> 
> Sing out if you know someone that may be interested.



Hi Rod,

My Aussie Boss and his Aussie partner had a very tall Stainless Steel Distill Column erected and running in his walled backyard in Saudi Arabia for three years and was never caught.The police sometimes passed by w/o realising alcohol was being produced. The "Partner" sometimes had to climb up on a ladder to fine tune column and would wave hello to the unsuspecting police.Very high grade drinking alcohol produced in Saudi.


----------



## rodw

Managed to get my QCTP fitted today






Full details here:

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/f28/yet-another-qctp-thread-bxa-al320g-20078/#post209450

So on the shed front, I am pretty happy to get this far since getting everything installed. It will be 2 weeks tomorrow evening since I bought the lathe home in a crate so to have managed to get a toolpost out of Hong Kong, fit it up and make a carriage lock (and a few boring parts), is not a bad effort.

I think the next step will be to have a go at fitting a DRO and expect to order one in a couple of weeks. Still deciding on which one.

The help and advice from forum members has been awesome so far!


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> The last couple of orders from the US seem to get stuck in customs for a while before they leave the country. (it took 3 weeks last time vs 4-5 days a few years ago).



Rod, if you want anything from the US you have to pay premium prices for shipping. UPS Expedited gets here in 5 Days as they have their own customs clearing proceedures. I have used UPS a number of times and never had a problem with them. It's usually only a few dollars more than the others too.


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> So on the shed front, I am pretty happy to get this far since getting everything installed. It will be 2 weeks tomorrow evening since I bought the lathe home in a crate so to have managed to get a toolpost out of Hong Kong, fit it up and make a carriage lock (and a few boring parts), is not a bad effort.



Rod, have you considered adding another 'shed' the same as you have now?

It would give you all the storage space you need and plenty more space in the 'workshop'.

Just a thought. Nice QCTP BTW


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> Rod, have you considered adding another 'shed' the same as you have now?
> 
> It would give you all the storage space you need and plenty more space in the 'workshop'.
> 
> Just a thought. Nice QCTP BTW



Now don't start giving me ideas, my wife would never forgive you! I have thought of it, I really wanted a 6x3m one but it would have been a major job in a different part of the yard. I have a garden shed behind and this one is the biggest you can get without council approval, but you've made me think maybe I could knock out the end wall and extend what I have using another identical kit shed which could be all workshop. I had never thought of that before!


----------



## trumpy81

When I put my 3.9m x 3.0m shed up I reserved 1m of it as a bird aviary  for my cockatoo. I simply ordered an additional end wall with door on  one side of it and used the original to divide off the aviary. I cut a  huge window into it and then covered it with heavy mesh. Fred, the  cockatoo was not that thrilled about it though, so he decided to leave


----------



## rodw

Grrr, just found out the drawbar on my Seig is 1/2" and I bought an M12 ER32 collet chuck and a M12 facemill. I really didn't want to have to make another drawbar, but I can't for the life of me find a MT3 facemill arbour with an 1/2" thread!

Looks like I will have to make do with some threaded rod for now. Does anyone know where I can get some hex rod is Aus?


----------



## trumpy81

Bohler Uddeholm at Darra can supply hex stock in steel or brass. You may have to buy full lengths though. They wont cut anything under an inch/25mm.

Minitech at Brendale carry BMS hex in 12inch lengths and brass hex.


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> Bohler Uddeholm at Darra can supply hex stock in steel or brass. You may have to buy full lengths though. They wont cut anything under an inch/25mm.
> 
> Minitech at Brendale carry BMS hex in 12inch lengths and brass hex.



Thanks Trumpy,the last one I made from hex I got from Minitech, this time I need a longer piece. Thanks for the Darra source, a length would not be out of the question as it is handy to have, the other local source is Hobby Mechanics which is also only 12" long, see http://www.hobbymechanics.com.au/categories/Materials-/

they are at Sunnybank and offer a quick service if you order online.


----------



## radial1951

Hey Rod,  maybe they will sell you a few 12" lengths before they cut them up 

Just A thought...

Regards, RossG.


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> Hey Rod,  maybe they will sell you a few 12" lengths before they cut them up
> 
> Just A thought...
> 
> Regards, RossG.



Thanks Ross, my eyeometer was not calibrated well last night. I checked this morning with a tape measure and the drawbar is 12" long so I will give Hobby Mechanics a call and see if I can grab some over the weekend sometime as his suburb is almost next door.


----------



## rodw

I did not bother with the hex bar in the end, I came up with a better idea







I have this nice barely used 10mm square toolpost spanner that came with the lathe which courtesy of a QCTP is surplus to requirements.

I had to bore the cap out so the spanner would fit but this is what I came up with






The milling turned out to be pretty easy. I held it in the vice horizontally and worked out how much I had to mill off each side and crept up on it checking the width of the remaining steel. Once I got to the magic number, I locked it all off and then did the other three sides in one pass, aligning the part with a set square held against the milling table. I ended up pushing the part square against the vice and gripping it on the smaller flange which ended up with a few bruises as a result, but I am the only one who will see them!

The Seig uses a high tensile 8.8 grade allen head bolt secured by a pin and I copied the original design which is more complex than it needs to be






I figured if I stuffed up milling the square head, I could use the Seig technique.

Now there is only one problem!






I have never cut a thread on a lathe before! I went down to Hare and Forbes to buy a threading kit and had a few practice goes before I tackled this job and had no luck at all. I might get a chance tomorrow to have another go after a bit more research. 

I had trouble with the chasing dial which I did not think was working but it seems to be now. I did  quick bit of research and realise now I should have been using the reverse switch rather than the gearbox so I might give it another go on some scrap tomorrow before having a go for real on a part with quite a few hours invested in it.

The last time I made a M12 drawbar, I tried to use a die to cut the thread but I ended  bending the drawbar a tad so I want to use the lathe for this thread.

Any metric threading tips are welcomed (my lathe has a metric lead screw)!


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> Thanks Trumpy,the last one I made from hex I got from Minitech, this time I need a longer piece. Thanks for the Darra source, a length would not be out of the question as it is handy to have, the other local source is Hobby Mechanics which is also only 12" long, see http://www.hobbymechanics.com.au/categories/Materials-/
> 
> they are at Sunnybank and offer a quick service if you order online.



Rod I have used Hobby Mechanics in the past, no problems. If you wanna grab a full length from Bohler, maybe we could go halves? It's not something that would go astray


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> I have never cut a thread on a lathe before! I went down to Hare and Forbes to buy a threading kit and had a few practice goes before I tackled this job and had no luck at all. I might get a chance tomorrow to have another go after a bit more research.
> 
> I had trouble with the chasing dial which I did not think was working but it seems to be now. I did  quick bit of research and realise now I should have been using the reverse switch rather than the gearbox so I might give it another go on some scrap tomorrow before having a go for real on a part with quite a few hours invested in it.
> 
> The last time I made a M12 drawbar, I tried to use a die to cut the thread but I ended  bending the drawbar a tad so I want to use the lathe for this thread.
> 
> Any metric threading tips are welcomed (my lathe has a metric lead screw)!



Rod, some lathes have two gears on the threading dial, one for metric the other for imperial and some don't. I don't know if yours does or not?

When cutting the thread, set your compound slide to 29.5 degrees, some say you can plunge straight in but I like the 29.5 degree method, no particular reason, it's just the first method I heard/learned about. Make sure the cutting tool is set square to the bar, a fishtail gauge is best for that.

Try to cut 0.08 to 0.1mm on each pass, yes there will be a lot of passes, but it is the only way to do it and get a clean well formed thread.


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> Rod I have used Hobby Mechanics in the past, no problems. If you wanna grab a full length from Bohler, maybe we could go halves? It's not something that would go astray



Not a bad idea Trumpy. I had a look at tthe PDF's on their web site, would 3/8" be OK with you? They don't seem to have much of a range of metric sizes. I can get a price and pick it up on my way home one afternoon as they are not far out of my way. 

I think I will also get a length of 12mm rod to practice my threading on but ordinary mild steel from Metalcorp was what I had in mind. You can take half of that too if you are interested. I guess I could get the machining steel for this size too if  that appeals to you more.


----------



## radial1951

Hi Rod, just a couple of points re your thread.

Your undercut doesn't appear deep enough. That original drawbar seems to have a ROLLED thread so the minor dia is LESS than the shaft dia from which it is rolled. Also make your undercut wider to give more room to stop the tool before you run into the shoulder (!), and taper the end of the thread into the undercut. If you stop a bit short, you can pull the chuck over by hand to run the tool into the under cut. I have cut very short threads entirely by hand power up to a shoulder.
A screw-cutting tool CANNOT properly plunge straight in and cut at the point. You either swing the compound slide around to half the thread angle, less half a degree, like TRUMPY says (the EASIEST method by far) or you must move the tool along the correct amount with the compound slide with each cut etc TOO HARD!

You might be able to start with 0.1 cuts but not for very long. Cuts will need to be quite small, 0.02 down to 0.01 for the last few cuts. I hope you are using a HSS toolbit, NOT carbide... I have NEVER seen anyone cut a perfect first thread, so don't worry, be patient!

If you haven't already, you really should buy the South Bend book "HOW TO RUN A LATHE". It is the best for all the tricks on a lathe. Also "THE AMATEUR'S LATHE" By L.H.Sparey is excellent, with good projects to make along the way. Get both of them, you won't regret it! Any editions, my SB book is 1940's...

Just ask if you get stuck. Also, I'm sure the must be a quick screwcutting lesson somewhere here on the net.

Regards, RossG.
radial1951


----------



## bazmak

Make a new bung in brass its fun BAZMAK


----------



## rodw

Geez guys, thanks for all of the advice. I think I have it pretty clear in my head now after a bit more research, I realise now I should have been killing power and selecting the reverse switch, not reversing with the gearbox.  I don't think the chasing dial will be much use for metric threads after some interesting reading about chasing dials today. There are so many extra features on this Lathe compared with my old one together my head around. I get the compound angle thing and spent some time squaring everything today and found the compound zero mark is out 1 degree so my mark will be 30.5 degrees. I went to Bunnings today and grabbed a couple of M12 bolts to practice on as the only stuff I had here was 1/2" which needed turning down so swapping out the gears all of the time was not appealing!

Ross, how deep should the undercut be? I will check it, but I thought I set it to be half the pitch (eg. 1.75/2 = 0.875mm). With a bit more googling, I see what you mean about a wider undercut section, I will fix that and change belts to get to 60 RPM.

I do have some HSS tool steel and I had a go at grinding my first cutter and it seemed to work out OK when I was practicing. The holder needs to go into the toolpost on its side so I will eventually mill it down so it fits right way up ( once I can mount my facemill!). What I bought yesterday was insert tooling. I get that it likes faster cutting speeds.

Bazmak, let me get this one down pat first, but it is on the todo list. Shame the brass I have is not thick enough.

The other issue the drawbar project uncovered was some tailstock blues. The shaft ended up with a bit of a taper on it, but I was able to reset diameters at each end as in between was not critical. I have had a good look at the tailstock today and I reckon it was moving but I worked out how to lock it up a lot tighter now. Something somebody mentioned made me think the tailstock design on this lathe is a weak point as it does not sit on a dovetail, just on two horizontal rails. It is amazing when you dive into some stuff, the little things you find out about things you have no idea of!

Anyway, in the space of two weeks my new lathe has already adopted a well used look!


----------



## jack620

Rod,
On some lathes 29.5 degrees will actually read 60.5 degrees on the compound markings.  With the compound pointing at your guts you want to rotate it 29.5 degrees anti-clockwise.

I found these videos helpful the first time I cut a thread on the lathe:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y0MmvscBzg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y0MmvscBzg[/ame]

Chris


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> Ross, how deep should the undercut be? I will check it, but I thought I set it to be half the pitch (eg. 1.75/2 = 0.875mm). With a bit more googling, I see what you mean about a wider undercut section, I will fix that and change belts to get to 60 RPM.



Hi Rod, the nominal bolt thread depth of the M12 x 1.75 thread is 0.613 x Pitch. That means the undercut has to at least 1.07 deep i.e. 9.85 dia.

The charts say 9.6 minimum minor dia for the male thread (with the correct root radius). As your tool bit is likely to have a sharper point than having the correct radius, you need to allow a bit more clearance at the bottom of the undercut. Let's say you make the undercut 9.5 to 9.6 diameter, and the worst might be the tool will scratch the bottom of the undercut at the full thread depth. That shouldn't be a problem. I'd make the undercut 4 to 5mm wide to give yourself 2 - 3 revs of the chuck before the tool meets the shoulder !

BTW, if you didn't know already, the reason for the 29.5 deg is so the RHS of the tool will just barely shave the flank of the thread, rather than leaving lines on the flank from each cut of the tool (that's the theory). The tool is ground to exactly 60 deg, with a little back rake, and is set up dead square to the axis of the workpiece. A squirt from your oilcan will help tool life and finish.

Regards, RossG
radial1951
______________


----------



## dman

rodw said:


> I did not bother with the hex bar in the end, I came up with a better idea
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have this nice barely used 10mm square toolpost spanner that came with the lathe which courtesy of a QCTP is surplus to requirements.
> 
> I had to bore the cap out so the spanner would fit but this is what I came up with
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The milling turned out to be pretty easy. I held it in the vice horizontally and worked out how much I had to mill off each side and crept up on it checking the width of the remaining steel. Once I got to the magic number, I locked it all off and then did the other three sides in one pass, aligning the part with a set square held against the milling table. I ended up pushing the part square against the vice and gripping it on the smaller flange which ended up with a few bruises as a result, but I am the only one who will see them!
> 
> The Seig uses a high tensile 8.8 grade allen head bolt secured by a pin and I copied the original design which is more complex than it needs to be
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I figured if I stuffed up milling the square head, I could use the Seig technique.
> 
> Now there is only one problem!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have never cut a thread on a lathe before! I went down to Hare and Forbes to buy a threading kit and had a few practice goes before I tackled this job and had no luck at all. I might get a chance tomorrow to have another go after a bit more research.
> 
> I had trouble with the chasing dial which I did not think was working but it seems to be now. I did  quick bit of research and realise now I should have been using the reverse switch rather than the gearbox so I might give it another go on some scrap tomorrow before having a go for real on a part with quite a few hours invested in it.
> 
> The last time I made a M12 drawbar, I tried to use a die to cut the thread but I ended  bending the drawbar a tad so I want to use the lathe for this thread.
> 
> Any metric threading tips are welcomed (my lathe has a metric lead screw)!



I never threaded with a metric leadscrew but I think I can help. what is the leads crew pitch and how many divisions are on the thread wheel? 

the spindle reverse method is for imperial leadscrews on metric threads or vise versa. the tool should be disengaged from the thread during spindle reversal to prevent tool breakage but its the most foolproof way to single point when in doubt. 

on most lathes you keep the gearbox engaged at all times and the half nut is used to disengage at the end of the thread. (unless you are reversing the spindle to feed back as mentioned earlier). hardinge made nice lathes that were an exception to this and used the feed reverse lever on any thread with no need for a thread wheel but unless you find one used its not worth mentioning. 

compound rest should be at 29.5 deg to the right of perpendicular to the ways. (there is only one interpretation for this but still everyone I teach gets it wrong) this way the tool does the cutting on the leading edge which makes better chips and better chip removal than feeding with the cross slide. use the cross slide to retract the cutter for resetting the tool for the next pass. zero the wheel or use an indicator to return to position. if you overshoot pull it back and advance the slide again to take out backlash. 

use the compound rest to dial in depth of cut and keep track of cut depth. measure the pitch diameter with a thread mic or the 3-wire method when you depth of cut is maybe 70% the thread pitch then take your finishing passes. if threads were fully triangular the ideal depth of cut would be 100% thread pitch if the direction of feed is parallel to the thread angle but threads are generally incomplete and the nose radius on your tool will vary. refer to the machinery's handbook for 3 wire measuring and specified pitch dia.


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> Not a bad idea Trumpy. I had a look at tthe PDF's on their web site, would 3/8" be OK with you? They don't seem to have much of a range of metric sizes. I can get a price and pick it up on my way home one afternoon as they are not far out of my way.
> 
> I think I will also get a length of 12mm rod to practice my threading on but ordinary mild steel from Metalcorp was what I had in mind. You can take half of that too if you are interested. I guess I could get the machining steel for this size too if  that appeals to you more.



Rod, any size will come in handy ... lol

Just let me know when and where to pick it up 

For easy to machine steel go for 1214 (high sulphur but no lead ), you can't weld it though. 1020 B.M.S. machines OK but it does tend to tear a bit. I haven't tried their 1045K B.M.S. yet (not to be confused with 1045 high carbon steel).

I have a couple of 2m lengths of 12mm rod that I picked up from Bunnings. True mystery steel ... lol ... but I'd definitely go for some 12mm 1214 

Send me your email address. I have some PDF's you might like to read, in fact I have thousands of them ... lol


----------



## rodw

Geez, guys thanks for all of the input and a bit from Tubalcain on Youtube (who I have watched a lot), I reckon I will be an expert at this before long 

Trumpy, talk about Bunnings mystery steel. I bought a couple of bolts to play with from them yesterday, both have the same product code, one was 4.6 grade and the other was 4.8 grade. And one of them was 5 mm shorter than the other. I buy M12 bolts by the box but they are 8.8 grade which is  abit hard to play with. Anyway, I used them to prepare some homework exercises yesterday:






So from here, I will correct  the undercut (thanks Ross), do any other turning, set the change gears to threading 1.75 pitch, rotate my compound 29.5 degrees (plus my 1 degree error) and drop the belt onto low speed (60 RPM) and practice until I am confident of doing the drawbar remembering to stop the motor as I get to the undercut, retract the tool with the cross slide and reverse the motor to go back to 0 on the cross slide and increase the cut depth with the compound and do it all again!


----------



## radial1951

Hi Rod,  Screwcutting on an all metric lathe is no more difficult than doing it on an imperial machine. Just different.

Some metric lathes have a chasing dial with changeable graduated discs that fit in the top, depending on the pitch you are cutting. Others have no chasing dial, like my Stanko Toolroom Lathe.

With the starting lever on the carriage, it can stop and reverse out in 1 or 2 revs of the spindle at low speeds. A couple of dry runs in fresh air to get a feel for the coasting distance, and away you go. That is with 3ph motors and DOL starting. Lathes with a foot brake are a bit easier.

But watch it on 1ph capacitor start motors. If you hit reverse too quickly it will keep running forwards!!! And you will have one of those crunching panic moments...

As I said before, on this size work you can always stop short and pull it over by hand for the last thread or two.

BTW, if you want a nicely formed thread, you can rough it out by screwcutting on the lathe, then use your die to finish it to size. Very little load and wear on the die and it follows the thread perfectly. Coming up to a shoulder you can turn the die around and use the flat side to get closer. Don't forget the oil...

Regards, RossG
radial1951
_____________


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> So from here, I will correct  the undercut (thanks Ross), do any other turning, set the change gears to threading 1.75 pitch, rotate my compound 29.5 degrees (plus my 1 degree error) and drop the belt onto low speed (60 RPM) and practice until I am confident of doing the drawbar remembering to stop the motor as I get to the undercut, retract the tool with the cross slide and reverse the motor to go back to 0 on the cross slide and increase the cut depth with the compound and do it all again!



By Jove, I think he's got it! Good on ya Rod, and keep us informed of progress...

Regards, RossG.
radial1951
______________


----------



## Swifty

Thread cutting on a lathe with a foot brake is an absolute breeze. With a bit of practice a faster speed can be used giving a better finish. When threading, just stop by using the brake, withdraw the tool and then reverse back to the start and repeat until depth reached.


Paul.


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> By Jove, I think he's got it! Good on ya Rod, and keep us informed of progress...
> 
> Regards, RossG.
> radial1951
> ______________



Yeh, I hope so, the proof will be in the pudding later in the week. As with most things, you only need to miss one bit to make a stuff up. In my case, I missed the bit where it says "use the motor to reverse" and not really understanding how the half nut lever works as my last lathe was halfnutless!



Swifty said:


> Thread cutting on a lathe with a foot brake is an absolute breeze. With a bit of practice a faster speed can be used giving a better finish. When threading, just stop by using the brake, withdraw the tool and then reverse back to the start and repeat until depth reached.
> 
> Paul.



Paul, If I could have fitted in an AL336 with the foot brake I would have but unfortunately it was oversize for my tiny shed so I have to live with what I have got.


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> Rod, any size will come in handy ... lol
> 
> Just let me know when and where to pick it up
> 
> For easy to machine steel go for 1214 (high sulphur but no lead ), you can't weld it though. 1020 B.M.S. machines OK but it does tend to tear a bit. I haven't tried their 1045K B.M.S. yet (not to be confused with 1045 high carbon steel).
> 
> I have a couple of 2m lengths of 12mm rod that I picked up from Bunnings. True mystery steel ... lol ... but I'd definitely go for some 12mm 1214
> 
> Send me your email address. I have some PDF's you might like to read, in fact I have thousands of them ... lol



Trumpy, I've made an order and you have a PM with details. Their minimum order is $50. Not a bad way to buy stock, maybe we should do a Brisbane Group buy from time to time.


----------



## rodw

Well, got a little bit further today. I widened and deepened the undercut and parted off the tip to get the length right. The undercut is sitting at 9.5mm wide but there is plenty of room to go wider. I am pretty sure that is enough for me to withdraw the crossslide while powering down the lathe at the same time in this distance.






I also went by Bohler Udderholm and collected a bit of steel on the way home from work. I had an interesting commute, but it ended up being not that far out of my way only adding 20 minutes to the trip.






This is some 12mm and 25 mm round as well as a piece of 15.88mm hex in 1214 bright mild steel. In case you are wondering, that is 3/8" just to prove that imperial units are alive and well in a country that adopted metric 30 years or so ago). Bohler Udderholm being a German based company ( I think ) has no imperial measurements anywhere on their web site, so 15.88m it is!

The bad news is that I am told I can't weld this stuff ( might add that my welding skills are not much better than my thread cutting skills!).

The 12mm was only $12 a length but BU have a $50 minimum order and cash sales have to be arranged before 3:00pm but I was able to book it to a credit card over the phone and pick up after 4:00.

Anyway, these all came in 3.6m lengths and Trumpy and I have gone halves in it so we ended up with 1.8m (6') of each size for about $40 each. Now what he does not know is that when he comes over to pick it up later in the week, he has to give me a lesson in thread cutting!  

I've got a meeting tomorrow evening so the next installment will be Wednesday. Hopefully, I will have time to get my change gears swapped over some time.

If anybody else in Brisbane wants some stock from BU and don't need metres of it, then I would be in for a shared buy like this and Trumpy may even join in too!


----------



## trumpy81

I hate to tell ya this Rod ... but 15.88 mm is 5/8 inch not 3/8 inch. 3/8inch = 9.525mm 

By the look of those photos I wont have much to teach you ... you already know about keeping the half nuts engaged and reversing the motor etc ... so the only other thing you need to be concerned about is the thread depth. As you are threading, keep an eye on the 'crest' of each thread. The width of the crest will give you a good indication of how deep you are and how close you are to full depth. Having a suitable nut or threaded piece to use as a gauge is also handy.

And yes I would be interested in any bulk buys from BU or the like, so if anyone in Bris is buying stock and they have to buy too much, by all means contact me.


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> I hate to tell ya this Rod ... but 15.88 mm is 5/8 inch not 3/8 inch. 3/8inch = 9.525mm



See! I told ya I don't like to use Imperial so 15.88mm it is. I always say 3/8 instead of 5/8!

Funny back when I drove a mini in the 70's I knew the size of every AF spanner and socket size at a glance. Now I am the same with metric but I have to do some maths which I got very wrong in this case but you know what I mean :fan:


----------



## trumpy81

I know what you mean Rod. I still can't pick the difference between a 12mm nut and a 13mm nut ... and true to Murphy's law I always grab the wrong sized spanner ... lol


----------



## rodw

trumpy81 said:


> I know what you mean Rod. I still can't pick the difference between a 12mm nut and a 13mm nut ... and true to Murphy's law I always grab the wrong sized spanner ... lol



I think I have this worked out. I think at a bolt shop there is a standard bolt head that goes with a given M thread size. Except the car manufacturers deviated from this and invariably use fine threads. So the car bolts go M6, M8, M12, M14. This equates to 10mm, 12mm, 17mm and 19mm heads. So in answer to your question, if it is M10 and it came off a car (which is a fine thread and usually with a flanged head), it will be M12. If it is a coarse thread or even a fine thread standard bolt (eg no flanged head)  it will be M13.

in the smaller car bolts (M8, M6), they don't use fine threads so M8 is pretty much universally M8x1.25mm thread on or off the car.

At a bolt shop, they generally skip the M14 and go straight to M16 so anything M14 is usually a special order (which may mean a box quantity). I have found the fine threads are about three times the price so usually only buy them if they have to mate to a threaded vehicle component. The 70mm fine thread M12&#8217;s I buy cost more than the 200mm M12 coarse thread ones!

I think this is where our imperial cousins get confused with metric. As M bolts are not in general use, they don't understand general practice and customs that actually defines a pretty narrow range of bolts that are found in the wild!


----------



## dman

rodw said:


> I think I have this worked out. I think at a bolt shop there is a standard bolt head that goes with a given M thread size. Except the car manufacturers deviated from this and invariably use fine threads. So the car bolts go M6, M8, M12, M14. This equates to 10mm, 12mm, 17mm and 19mm heads. So in answer to your question, if it is M10 and it came off a car (which is a fine thread and usually with a flanged head), it will be M12. If it is a coarse thread or even a fine thread standard bolt (eg no flanged head)  it will be M13.
> 
> in the smaller car bolts (M8, M6), they don't use fine threads so M8 is pretty much universally M8x1.25mm thread on or off the car.
> 
> At a bolt shop, they generally skip the M14 and go straight to M16 so anything M14 is usually a special order (which may mean a box quantity). I have found the fine threads are about three times the price so usually only buy them if they have to mate to a threaded vehicle component. The 70mm fine thread M12s I buy cost more than the 200mm M12 coarse thread ones!
> 
> I think this is where our imperial cousins get confused with metric. As M bolts are not in general use, they don't understand general practice and customs that actually defines a pretty narrow range of bolts that are found in the wild!



imperial has some of the same issues with automotive hardware but not always... so it's just as confusing. it seems people usually have an afinity for one or the other. i like fractions so i have no issues with imperial not just because i'm american. but i see how people like working in decimal.


----------



## radial1951

dman said:


> imperial has some of the same issues with automotive hardware but not always... so it's just as confusing. it seems people usually have an afinity for one or the other. i like fractions so i have no issues with imperial not just because i'm american. but i see how people like working in decimal.



Aah, the Metric System, what a mess. Or should I say, how any "changeover" will be a complete disaster. It can't help but be a mess. Not that any Govt official would admit it. While the Metric Conversion Board was in existence, it was supposedly ILLEGAL to import or sell any imperial tools or measuring equipment. I remember being forced to buy 150mm steel rule... As soon as the Board was disbanded it was back to business as usual!!

Although SI Units are the only legal system of measurement in Australia, after 40 years we buy 3/16" x 25mm screws (!) at the hardware store, car wheels are 17" x 8" but the tyres are 245mm x 17" and nobody knows what a hectare is, so big land is acres but suburban land is square metres, unless you are a surveyor (maybe).

Our toolboxes are twice as big now because we need two sets of everything! As a toolmaker, I have various taps and dies for Metric coarse and fine, BSF, Whitworth, BA, UNF, UNC, Brass 26tpi, and ME 32 & 40tpi !!!!!!!!! Not to mention all the hand tools. Whit, mm and AF. What a schemozzle. And COST. If everything is metric, it's the best system overall.

I could go on, but nobody is listening anyway... 

Regards, RossG
radial1951
______________


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> Aah, the Metric System, what a mess. Or should I say, how any "changeover" will be a complete disaster. It can't help but be a mess. Not that any Govt official would admit it. While the Metric Conversion Board was in existence, it was supposedly ILLEGAL to import or sell any imperial tools or measuring equipment. I remember being forced to buy 150mm steel rule... As soon as the Board was disbanded it was back to business as usual!!
> 
> Although SI Units are the only legal system of measurement in Australia, after 40 years we buy 3/16" x 25mm screws (!) at the hardware store, car wheels are 17" x 8" but the tyres are 245mm x 17" and nobody knows what a hectare is, so big land is acres but suburban land is square metres, unless you are a surveyor (maybe).
> 
> Our toolboxes are twice as big now because we need two sets of everything! As a toolmaker, I have various taps and dies for Metric coarse and fine, BSF, Whitworth, BA, UNF, UNC, Brass 26tpi, and ME 32 & 40tpi !!!!!!!!! Not to mention all the hand tools. Whit, mm and AF. What a schemozzle. And COST. If everything is metric, it's the best system overall.
> 
> I could go on, but nobody is listening anyway...
> 
> Regards, RossG
> radial1951
> ______________




I agree with a lot you say. It is 30 years since we only taught metric in high school and I think I was lucky because I started high school the year before. I do remember being relieved that we did not have to do sums in quarts, pints and gallons and the like any more!

For me, measurements of rainfall, property areas and temperature were the last to gel. Gowing up on a 40,000 Ha property like I did never sounds as impressive as saying 100,000 acres!  But then I lived briefly in northern Queensland where properties were measured in square miles. This sounded really impressive but when a guy told me he had 100 square miles.  I eventually did the maths in my head to find he only owned 64,000 acres (stuff the Ha!) which was a small holding by my experience! 

However, having studied some engineering along the way, there is no doubt that the SI metric system is vastly easier to work with when calculating things like power, force and the like. However today, the software which did not exist in my time probably does it all for you. I think when we are just in the workshop choosing between feet and metres, we never get to appreciate this logical systematic approach underpinning the SI system.  

I have long since personally adopted the metric system, I never buy a tape measure with inches and am a member on this forum simply because your EZ steam engine has a metric plan available!

This Wiki link about the Aussie Metrification process and the links at the top of the page to the US and UK experiences makes interesting reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia

Interesting that only 3 countries in the world remain in the imperial world. Whether we like it or not regardless of where we live, we are all going to have to deal with both systems due to the rich legacy of Imperial units and the logical thought behind the SI system as a whole. I think it is only in the last 5 years or so that our houses are fastened with M12 bolts instead of 1/2". I always found this frustrating when I went bolt shopping to have to come home with imperial ones!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Well, got a little bit further today. I widened and deepened the undercut and parted off the tip to get the length right. The undercut is sitting at 9.5mm wide but there is plenty of room to go wider. I am pretty sure that is enough for me to withdraw the crossslide while powering down the lathe at the same time in this distance.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I also went by Bohler Udderholm and collected a bit of steel on the way home from work. I had an interesting commute, but it ended up being not that far out of my way only adding 20 minutes to the trip.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is some 12mm and 25 mm round as well as a piece of 15.88mm hex in 1214 bright mild steel. In case you are wondering, that is 3/8" just to prove that imperial units are alive and well in a country that adopted metric 30 years or so ago). Bohler Udderholm being a German based company ( I think ) has no imperial measurements anywhere on their web site, so 15.88m it is!
> 
> The bad news is that I am told I can't weld this stuff ( might add that my welding skills are not much better than my thread cutting skills!).
> 
> The 12mm was only $12 a length but BU have a $50 minimum order and cash sales have to be arranged before 3:00pm but I was able to book it to a credit card over the phone and pick up after 4:00.
> 
> Anyway, these all came in 3.6m lengths and Trumpy and I have gone halves in it so we ended up with 1.8m (6') of each size for about $40 each. Now what he does not know is that when he comes over to pick it up later in the week, he has to give me a lesson in thread cutting!
> 
> I've got a meeting tomorrow evening so the next installment will be Wednesday. Hopefully, I will have time to get my change gears swapped over some time.
> 
> If anybody else in Brisbane wants some stock from BU and don't need metres of it, then I would be in for a shared buy like this and Trumpy may even join in too!



Hi Rod,

Bohler is good steel.Here is my Bohler story from 1965.

We used it for can stamping dies in Metal Box,Singapore. When I asked for the Bohler Steel Cat. No,I was told to go away.Just machine as per drawing. It is classsified.:wall::wall::wall:
I did ask to witness the heat treatment process and told.It is classified.:wall::wall::wall:
Bohler Steel Saleman happened to be my long lost Trade School class mate.
He gave me a Bohler Heat Treatment Manual.
Twenty years layer,did my own heat treatment.Taught my machinist everything. Thereafter he was the heat treatment expert for all our forming rolls and punches.


----------



## rcfreak177

G'day Rod.

Back in Perth after a week in the never never.

Yeah that 1214 bright mild steel will give you trouble if you weld it, has a high lead content, also known as free machining mild steel.
Great to work with though.

There is few options for material from Bohler which I would recommend.

*CS1020 bright mild*
 Bit sticky on the inserts and needs a high spindle speed to get a good finish, welds well and will not go hard.

*K1045 carbon steel*
 Very similar to the above, machines well, nice finish, can weld but will harden if allowed to cool down quickly or quenched. Best to pre-heat before welding. (I would say the last batch of flat bar that was killing the countersink tools you have was most likely this stuff, very common material)

*4140 high tensile*
  I love this stuff, is very tough, machines well beautiful finish will wear insets fairly quick, chip breaks nicely with the right feed, if you get swarf stringers on the lathe with it be aware they are razor sharp and will have no problem taking fingers off if caught up.
welds well although pre-heat is essential and submerged in kitty litter afterwords or it will go hard as a rock and crack.
Can be case hardened or through hardened with the right process. Also will work harden if the tool is allowed to rub instead of positively cut. (good example is drilling, go easy on the speed here)


You may already know these materials.

Here in OZ the 3 are the most common steels used in the machining industry. thats without going into the tool steel range such as EN25, EN36A  range,  All 3 come in round bar, hollow bar and flat bar.

Happy machining.
Baz.


----------



## rodw

Baz, Awesome information thanks.

Wish I could head out into the bush for a week about now 
or any time actually!


----------



## rcfreak177

No drama's Rod,

For a bloke that is fairly new to the game and self taught you are having a bloody good crack at it, was very impressed with the carriage stop you made,

 have worked with tradesmen that would have trouble with designing and making that, also probably 25%+ or so tradesmen don't know how to cut a thread on a lathe, I finished my time 15 years ago, (not long ago really) these days tafe and employers rush young blokes through to satisfy the skills shortage, The Art of manual machining I feel is slowly fading away.

I left the trade for that reason.


Yeah I love the mine site life, I work for Atlas Copco as product support on their blast hole drill rigs, I do field service so I am always moving around to different places. The scenery is amazing but as you know too well the countryside is hot dry and harsh. 12hrs in the sun every day gets a bit beyond the joke though. The missus reckons I am like a reptile, if the temp falls below 30 degrees I go into hibernation and seem to thrive when it is around 38-40 deg c

It just tipped 42 deg c at my place for the third day in a row, so there is no getting away from the heat at the moment.



Here is a great book from H+F that I well recommend, I think just about every apprentice fitter/machinist for the past 20 years or so lived by it. A lot of the methods are old school but they have been proven over and over again.
It is on the tech school book list Australia wide.

http://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L341


Has most things you need to know about the trade in it.

Heat treatment
thread cutting
gear cutting 
mathematical formula
all sorts of stuff, 632 pages of it actually.

Baz,


----------



## jack620

trumpy81 said:


> I still can't pick the difference between a 12mm nut and a 13mm nut ... and true to Murphy's law I always grab the wrong sized spanner ... lol



That's why I use a shifter!


----------



## rodw

Well, Trumpy came over to pick up his share of the material we bought this afternoon and it was nice to meet another forum member.

I had set up the change gears to start my threading practice and had some problems as the initial pass was far too fine (about 0.7 instead of 1.75). After quite a few hours, and checking all the gear ratios about 3 times, I finally worked it out. I had the half nut lever in the wrong position! I have never really understood how this lever works as my last lathe did not have one. It has been further complicated that the thread chasing dial did not work in the threading position but worked in the other position so I think I will ask Hare and Forbes to sort that out for me under warranty.

I know when the half nut lever is up, you can engage the cross feed and also longitudinal feed and I knew the longitudinal feed also worked with the half nut lever down, but I did not realise that the longitudinal feed rates  were different! 

After I got this sorted, I found it very easy to cut a thread and the lathe only runs on about 1 turn or less when switched off, so I know that I can use much shorter undercuts, probably 3-5mm. Once I was done, a nut went on quite nicely and I ran a die over it as suggested and it did not make much difference so I was happy with my first thread!

Too late tonight to put any pics up, I think I could confidently move straight to the drawbar now but will have another couple of goes just to be sure.


----------



## Varmtr

rcfreak177 said:


> Hi Rod,
> 
> Looking very smart now.
> 
> QCTP and other stuff,
> 
> I recommend this place http://www.cdcotools.com/
> 
> I have used them heaps and they are the cheapest around. Also service is good.
> 
> The only thing is the shipping, to make it worthwhile it is best to go with a USPS flat rate box for around $50 and fill it.
> Has a weight limit of 20lb.
> 
> Baz.


 
Thanks Baz also good for measuring tools as well at good prices. Watch out credit card here I come.

Rossco


----------



## Varmtr

Rod it's a pity you only do Toyota stuff. Looking for sliders to suit my GU IV Patrol.

Here is a good vids on threading and lathe set up.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoBsCrSYUhE[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0h6DMksURo[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YxeSbArIQQ[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWWB68ozvBE[/ame]

and one more for 60 degree pitch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=8aIiEP8yEcE&feature=fvwp


----------



## rodw

Varmtr said:


> Rod it's a pity you only do Toyota stuff. Looking for sliders to suit my GU IV Patrol.



Sorry, I've just stuck to the products I know. Give Buddy a call,he will sort you out http://www.budscustoms.com.au/default.asp

Thanks for the links, but I have this nailed now!


----------



## trumpy81

Rod, before you hassle H&F make sure the threading dial is engaged on the lead screw properly. You may have to loosen it's mounting bolt and reposition it so that the gear of the dial fully engages the lead screw threads. Don't expect it to spin quickly either. With the lathe set at 60 rpm or so the dial will take minutes to revolve 1 turn. You'll have to watch very closely to see it move ... lol

Thanks again for the shop tour. I'm still amazed at how much stuff you have in that tiny shed and yet how much working space you have. A job well done! (It put's my shop to shame ... lol )


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> I know when the half nut lever is up, you can engage the cross feed and also longitudinal feed and I knew the longitudinal feed also worked with the half nut lever down, but I did not realise that the longitudinal feed rates  were different!
> 
> After I got this sorted, I found it very easy to cut a thread and the lathe only runs on about 1 turn or less when switched off, so I know that I can use much shorter undercuts, probably 3-5mm. Once I was done, a nut went on quite nicely and I ran a die over it as suggested and it did not make much difference so I was *happy with my first thread!*



Well done, Rod. I sometimes use a die to FINISH a thread to size and correct form after roughing it out by screw cutting (leaving it a bit oversize). Highly stressed threads need the correct root radius and good finish. Made special length wheel studs for race cars that way.

Make sure your lathe's half nut lever and the power feed levers are INTERLOCKED properly so that they cannot be engaged simultaneously. Big trouble if that happens, somethings gotta give... Maybe something needs adjusting inside the apron.

Regards, RossG.
radial1951
______________


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> Well done, Rod. I sometimes use a die to FINISH a thread to size and correct form after roughing it out by screw cutting (leaving it a bit oversize). Highly stressed threads need the correct root radius and good finish. Made special length wheel studs for race cars that way.




Thanks Rossco, I am over threading for this week I think!











It all (eventually) worked like a charm with all of the help and advice on this thread. Thanks everyone.


----------



## Varmtr

Thanks Rod for Buds customs web I will be making a few phone calls very soon.


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> Thanks Rossco, I am over threading for this week I think!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It all (eventually) worked like a charm with all of the help and advice on this thread. Thanks everyone.



Well done Rod. That's a nice looking thread!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> I agree with a lot you say. It is 30 years since we only taught metric in high school and I think I was lucky because I started high school the year before. I do remember being relieved that we did not have to do sums in quarts, pints and gallons and the like any more!
> 
> For me, measurements of rainfall, property areas and temperature were the last to gel. Gowing up on a 40,000 Ha property like I did never sounds as impressive as saying 100,000 acres!  But then I lived briefly in northern Queensland where properties were measured in square miles. This sounded really impressive but when a guy told me he had 100 square miles.  I eventually did the maths in my head to find he only owned 64,000 acres (stuff the Ha!) which was a small holding by my experience!
> 
> However, having studied some engineering along the way, there is no doubt that the SI metric system is vastly easier to work with when calculating things like power, force and the like. However today, the software which did not exist in my time probably does it all for you. I think when we are just in the workshop choosing between feet and metres, we never get to appreciate this logical systematic approach underpinning the SI system.
> 
> I have long since personally adopted the metric system, I never buy a tape measure with inches and am a member on this forum simply because your EZ steam engine has a metric plan available!
> 
> This Wiki link about the Aussie Metrification process and the links at the top of the page to the US and UK experiences makes interesting reading.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
> 
> Interesting that only 3 countries in the world remain in the imperial world. Whether we like it or not regardless of where we live, we are all going to have to deal with both systems due to the rich legacy of Imperial units and the logical thought behind the SI system as a whole. I think it is only in the last 5 years or so that our houses are fastened with M12 bolts instead of 1/2". I always found this frustrating when I went bolt shopping to have to come home with imperial ones!



Hi Rod.

Like you ,I grew up with Pounds,Shilling,Pence and Farthing. Ounces,Pounds,
Hundredweights,Tons. Furlong,miles,leagues etc. Took a 8 year old some time to absorb.Properties here are still in sq. foot.!!!
Upon graduation,fortunately I worked with an American Company which stuck to HP,CFM,GPM etc till 2001.But I adjusted very quickly to metric when working in China till 2011.
Took me a long time to reconcile and use Metric Threads and all because BSW,BSF,BA fasteners are hard to buy.:wall::wall:
 Pipe threads here are still to Imperial.

Going Burma for deep sea fishing tomorrow. The 3rd Genearation Deep Sea Rod Holder will be to put to use. Fotos will follow.
Thanks for helping me decide to buy the BandSaw. Just Discovered I cannot live w/o the BandSaw.Wee bitty tapping fluid makes sawing easier.
The Makita BandSaw Blade is still very sharp after so many cutting.


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod.
> 
> Thanks for helping me decide to buy the BandSaw. Just Discovered I cannot live w/o the BandSaw.Wee bitty tapping fluid makes sawing easier.
> The Makita BandSaw Blade is still very sharp after so many cutting.



Gus, I am sure my part was very small. I had never seen a bandsaw like yours until you posted pics on the forum! Yes, I do find some cutting fluid helps and in my experience the blades break before they wear out! Still, they are a lot cheaper to run than a cutoff/chop saw and can cut a much larger range of material.

Anyway, this morning, I finally got up to date with my production of HDPE plastic blocks which I was meant to get done before Christmas. My new lathe makes it so much quicker, probably at least twice as fast and the finish is so much better, particularly if running a fast feed rate. In fact, it was so good, I started to skim the faces I cut with my previous lathe as it was embarrassing to see the previous quality. 

It started to rain this afternoon and because I ave been promoted to a senior member without ever building a model engine, I decided I better have a go at one.







I made the base and frame of the EZ and drilled and tapped all of the holes. I also cut a flywheel out of 6mm plate but I am a bit worried because the metric plans say to make it 50mm (2") but the imperial plans show it as 3". Hope it works out OK with the smaller flywheel, but it won't be too hard to remake it!


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> Gus, I am sure my part was very small. I had never seen a bandsaw like yours until you posted pics on the forum! Yes, I do find some cutting fluid helps and in my experience the *blades break* before they wear out! Still, they are a lot cheaper to run than a cutoff/chop saw and can cut a much larger range of material.



Hi Rod, Those cut-off band saws would have to be one of the best bargains on the planet. Very useful. As you probably know, he blades break because they are being twisted during each rev around the wheels. The blade usually starts making a rapid "ticking" or "clicking" sound not too long before it breaks.

If you have a careful look at the blade, you will see minute cracks heading across the blade from the gullet of nearly every tooth. These are the result of the twisting and that's what makes the noise.

The trick is to have the blade only just tight enough to drive. It will still break eventually, but will last a bit longer...

Regards, RossG.
radial1951
______________


----------



## Hopper

Rod, where do you buy your brass and aluminium material from? I am in Qld and looking for a good source that will do mail order. Due to health I can't get around the junkyards much and need a not-to-expensive supplier for a couple of Stirling projects I want to do.


----------



## rodw

Hopper said:


> Rod, where do you buy your brass and aluminium material from? I am in Qld and looking for a good source that will do mail order. Due to health I can't get around the junkyards much and need a not-to-expensive supplier for a couple of Stirling projects I want to do.



Hopper, I have got brass in 300mm lengths from each of these guys
http://www.hobbymechanics.com.au/ at Sunnybank

http://www.minitech.com.au/ at Brendale (who have a shop)

Larger pieces you could probably get cut at Bohlers discussed earlier in this thread. Minimum order is $50 and they won't cut material under an inch thick somebody said.

The aluminium I get from Action Aluminium at Coopers Plains http://www.actionaluminium.com.au/.  You can see them from Beaudesert Road but the access winds in off Bradman Street. They have everything and cut to size regardless of order quantity. Most of the stuff I have bought from them has been short offcuts but have seen the cutting gear blanks a few mm long for machine shops.

For structural steel in lengths I go to Metalcorp at Oxley. They will usually sell half a length.


----------



## Hopper

rodw said:


> Hopper, I have got brass in 300mm lengths from each of these guys
> http://www.hobbymechanics.com.au/ at Sunnybank
> 
> http://www.minitech.com.au/ at Brendale (who have a shop)
> 
> Larger pieces you could probably get cut at Bohlers discussed earlier in this thread. Minimum order is $50 and they won't cut material under an inch thick somebody said.
> 
> The aluminium I get from Action Aluminium at Coopers Plains http://www.actionaluminium.com.au/.  You can see them from Beaudesert Road but the access winds in off Bradman Street. They have everything and cut to size regardless of order quantity. Most of the stuff I have bought from them has been short offcuts but have seen the cutting gear blanks a few mm long for machine shops.
> 
> For structural steel in lengths I go to Metalcorp at Oxley. They will usually sell half a length.



Thanks mate. Should save me a lot of running about.


----------



## rodw

I thought I would update this thread from time to time about things tools I add or make for my shed as opposed to making something.

My shed is starting to evolve OK now. I have been collecting a few bits and pieces via eBay over the last week but still have more stuff on its way.

I was getting sick of swapping over the drawbars whenever I wanted to drill a hole, so I got a 16mm keyless chuck with an M12 thread in the arbor.






I have not had one of these before It is very big so perhaps a 13mm one would be better on the Seig SX3. If I decide to buy a 13mm one, this one can move to my lathe where the extra length won't be a drama.

Some of the other goodies I rounded up






I had seen the circle centre finder before and I thought they were really clever. I also bought a slitting saw and 4 assorted blades. I guess I will find a use for it. I also bought a tailstock die holder for 1" dies which was pretty cheap so I thought it would be handy. I did have a go at making one ages ago, but I was not happy with the arbor I made for it, one day, I will give it another go.

I have got some transfer punches still coming. Australia is a big country. It takes a long time to get a parcel from the west coast to the east it seems!

I decided to have a go at making a 10 degree angle block for a job I have in mind while I was waiting for the V block to turn up. Based on some feedback from the forum, I made  a quick sketch and placed a couple of 5mm holes on a 10 degree angle from the origin. I started by hacking some mild steel down to size.






I worked out the number of clicks I had to move the mill and wrote them on the plan. The Seig has 100 clicks per revolution. Then I indicated in the origin and wound the mill out to the hole positions and drilled some 4.5m holes which I reamed out to 5mm. Then I held a 1/8" parallel against the pins and scribed a line to mill to.






I parted off  couple of pieces of 5 mm rod ratted out of an old laser printer and hung the part on the top of the milling vice.






I was very happy with the accuracy of my second freehand cut on the bandsaw as it only took 2 passes with an endmill to clean it up.

It did not take long to finish it off. I number stamped the angle on it in case I forget and added a logo stamp just because I could!






I don't have a linisher in my shop but cleaned it up OK on a metalwork belt sander. Not ideal, but it worked!

I did a quick trial cut of some ally bar using one of my new V blocks and it works a treat.






I am slowly making progress on my EZ steam engine, got the piston and valve finished off today, and will post something once I get it going. I was happy how the piston came together, so I think it will run when I get it done I think the hard stuff has been done now. I will say I have to get better at reading plans, I am not used to following others instructions it seems!

I can't believe how easy a decent lathe has made my life. I wanted to turn the base of the piston to 6mm. I worked out I needed 18 clicks on the crosslide to get it to size I ran 2 passes of 9 clicks and it was spot on to 0.01 of a mm so I am very happy with the improvement over my last lathe.


----------



## rodw

Well, I have been slowly adding to my tooling list making a few things and buying stuff when I can afford it. My QCTP holders seem to be breeding like wire coathangers






I also decided to try mounting up a spare cheap drill press vice to my bandsaw. I started with weding up a 10mm plate as the material I had was not quite big enough






I always forget to remove my glasses when welding and can never see so I ground off the weld before being game to publish a photo






And after drilling and tapping a couple of holes including a hole in the vice itself, it was ready fr its first cut.






Which finally ended up with something that looked like this






You can see that the vice now just bolts on in place of the swivel jaw and is tightened up against the fixed jaw after squaring with the blade. It might not be as clever as some other ideas with bolts to adjust at the back of the vice and it can't cut on an angle but it handles what I want to do.

Now that I had this done, I had this 30mm wide L shaped scrap left over from my carriage block that was screaming make something out of me.

The vice is about 5 mm away from the blade and I found it easy as to split  this piece in half without any dramas at all. The cut was nice and straight so I got stuck into it and got an opportunity to use my slitting saw for the first time.

This is what I came up with.






The scrap started out in life as being a 30mm offcut of 5x65mm ally and the 5 mm was just long enough to hold it in a BXA holder with three screws. I am looking forward to trying it out with my 4 jaw chuck which I have not used on this lathe yet.






The holder is about 15mm square and I used an M5 bolt for the clamp. I drilled the hole through, counter bored the end  with an end mill and then tapped it using the tapping feature on the SX3. I had heard this was pretty average but I found it worked perfectly much to my surprise! I may not use my geared tapping attachment any longer! The hole for the indicator was drilled 7.5mm and then reamed to 8mm. You can see I still have not bought a linisher yet but it is very serviceable even if not pretty. I am looking forward to using it!

The next modification was a bit more complicated. I was quite intrigued with 5C collets and then found that there was a 5C collet fixture that would fit the 38mm spindle on my lathe. Trumpy on the forum here gave me a few surplus 5C collets so I was hooked! ON hte first day of Hare and Forbes sale, I was down here to pick up a collet block and a spindle fixture.

I thought I had the clearance but when I got it home, I found the drive pulley was very close to the spindle and I could not get a spacer flange past it. I was a bit despondent at this and got as far as putting it in my car to return it but Trumpy spurred me on and I did a deal with Chriss down the street who turned the pulley down in exchange or a beer one afternoon. He took a couple of mm off the pulley so it was flush with the belt, not sticking up proud.






You can see there is not much room. I had a piece of 1 1/2" water pipe here and I  polished out the  bore with a light cu on the lathe so it would fit over the collet drawbar and turned it down to get past the pulley.






We are on a winner now!
















I actually made the reduced section a bit too thin so I need to remake it now I have a bit more room but of course I am out of water pipe! Anyway, it is quite serviceable as it is.


----------



## rodw

I thought the last post was long enough. Today was a busy day. I had some components to collect from my laser cutter and I had designed a saw table for my little bandsaw which they cut for me at the same time out of some 5 mm plate. It worked out awesome! Here is what I got back






well actually I got two of them cut, one for me and one for Trumpy. We have different model bandsaws from H&F but worked out that this will fit his as well.

All I had to do was to countersink the laser cut holes and we have a goer!











I think this will be an awesome mod to the saw and should fit any 4" or 5" bandsaw. The table is as sturdy as and does not need any braces. I think it could benefit from using some normal M6 countersunk machine screws to mount it with as the factory screws have a non standard countersink angle but they work fine.

Anyway, this was the first time I have designed a part and handed off a digital file for cutting. Previously, I have given them hand sketches which they then convert to CAD for me.

Also today was the first official day of H&F's 3 day sale and despite my best intentions, I could not help myself and called in on the way to work and picked up a Vertex 6" rotary table and matching chuck plus a few other pieces while they were discounted by around 20% Unfortunately, their linisher attachments were not discounted so you won't see any fancy finishes on my projects.

I will post up an update after I get the table cleaned up and mounted on my mill.

My wish list is getting shorter, nothing that another $500 or more won't fix and then I might start thinking about DRO's.


----------



## gus

Hi Rod,

Welcome to the "QCTP TOOL HOLDER COLLECTOR CLUB". Looks like you beat me in numbers of tool holders.


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> Well, I have been slowly adding to my tooling list making a few things and buying stuff when I can afford it. My QCTP holders seem to be breeding like wire coathangers



Damn, it's a shame these holders are BXA, I wont be able to use 'em if one or two went walkabout ... lol


----------



## trumpy81

rodw said:


> I thought the last post was long enough. Today was a busy day. I had some components to collect from my laser cutter and I had designed a saw table for my little bandsaw which they cut for me at the same time out of some 5 mm plate. It worked out awesome! Here is what I got back
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> well actually I got two of them cut, one for me and one for Trumpy. We have different model bandsaws from H&F but worked out that this will fit his as well.
> 
> All I had to do was to countersink the laser cut holes and we have a goer!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think this will be an awesome mod to the saw and should fit any 4" or 5" bandsaw. The table is as sturdy as and does not need any braces. I think it could benefit from using some normal M6 countersunk machine screws to mount it with as the factory screws have a non standard countersink angle but they work fine.
> 
> Anyway, this was the first time I have designed a part and handed off a digital file for cutting. Previously, I have given them hand sketches which they then convert to CAD for me.
> 
> Also today was the first official day of H&F's 3 day sale and despite my best intentions, I could not help myself and called in on the way to work and picked up a Vertex 6" rotary table and matching chuck plus a few other pieces while they were discounted by around 20% Unfortunately, their linisher attachments were not discounted so you won't see any fancy finishes on my projects.
> 
> I will post up an update after I get the table cleaned up and mounted on my mill.
> 
> My wish list is getting shorter, nothing that another $500 or more won't fix and then I might start thinking about DRO's.



That's a great looking table compared to the flimsy sheetmetal affair of the original. I can't wait to get me mits on it ... lol


----------



## rodw

Well, I have been working on a storage makeover for my little shed for a while now but time is limited so it is still not complete but here is what I have been up to.

First off, I purchased three heavy duty storage shelf units (from Hare and Forbes) to put in my garden shed which helped me get some stuff out of my workshop shed and then started off with these from Hare and Forbes





they were not cheap but they are 450mm deep and each drawer is rated for 20 kg (44 lb) and it let me get a lot of stuff squared away..

Then I found some cheap roller drawers (At Hare and Forbes again!) which were low enough to fit under my shelves so I added some adjustable feet I had made previously (see earlier in this thread) in lieu of casters so I could level them on my sloping floor and screwed them to the shed frame so they could not tip over. 





These drawers are only rated to 35 kg and are not particularly robust but I think they will last for ages in a home shop situation. You can see that I had to hack out some shelving to make holes for these fit in.

So the next cheap addition was three sets of roller drawer inserts from Trade Tools which let me store heaps more stuff in my roller drawers starting with the every day tool drawer





You can see I can fit say three sets of pliers on top of each other which takes up 1/3 of the previous space! What a bargain at $12.50 a set! 

And they let me start to sort out the lathe and Mill tooling too.













Somewhere I found a copy of the little black book so I made room for it too...












I also freed up some precious bench space by dedicating one drawer for a jumble of material. I might review this later and move this stuff somewhere else





By the time I had got this far, I had pretty well emptied the lathe and mill stands and everything had a home. 

Then Chris down the road told me where he got his parts drawers and an order to element14 (used to be Farnells) had 5 of the Raaco parts drawers on their way at $35 a set freight free. One of them got damaged in transit and they sent me another one to replace it no questions asked and I was able to repair the bent one much to my surprise so I got six for the price of 5 





I mounted thse to the shed frame using nutsert rivets and some M4 bolts as I wanted something stronger than a self tapper as some of these drawers are holding a fair bit of weight. It has taken me weeks to sort out my fasteners, nuts and bolts and all sorts of electronic components and parts. I still need to label the shelves but being a metric convert, there are several rows of bolts, nuts and washers for each size (M3, M4, M5, M6, M8, M10 and M12) and a few rows of imperial ones for good luck.

I think I will get another one of these cabinets to put against the lathe to fill in the hole to the left of the lathe but my bank balance needs to recover after spending over $1500 on storage stuff!

You can see I have removed some of the plastic buckets from behind the lathe chuck for safety reasons. I think ultimately I will take all of the buckets away.

One day I was at Officeworks and I saw this neat little LED light for just $15 and I had an awesome work light for my lathe!






Then I was at Bunnings Hardware and they had some magnetic Kingchrome shelf units designed to stick on the end of a roller drawer tool chest for $10 so one of them came home as I had the perfect place for it on the lathe splash guard





Some of you might have noticed there is a bit of wasted wall space at the tailstock end 





This is deliberate. I have got the timber here for the job and the plan is to make a shelf to hold all of my QCTP holders that have been breeding like flies.

I also have to redo this bit of saggy shelving to hold the legacy parts bins




One day, I might add another 3 drawer unit above the current one in this space but that will entail cutting away some of the C section cross member so I won't rush into it.

Another project is to make up a nice Collet holder to fit inside the drawers out of some 1.2 mm Aluminium plate I purchased for the task. I also plan to invest in a set of 5C collets and a holder for them will also be needed. 

Anyway, I still have to tidy up the rest of the shelves but what I have done is a massive step forward to making my tiny space as efficient as possible. 

I even have room on my bench for my latest project which is rebuilding an old compressor





And the receiver out of the weather until I get time to finish this off.

Unfortunately, I did not get time after work this afternoon, to put this back together as I was planning, there is always tomorrow!

Hope you guys enjoyed the update to my mini shed.


----------



## radial1951

Looking good Rod. Some excellent storage tips, those drawer inserts are really neat, I wonder if they are available in Sydney. I can see a couple of those LED lights coming in handy too. And those $35 parts drawers, and .... 

RossG
radial1951
_________


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> Looking good Rod. Some excellent storage tips, those drawer inserts are really neat, I wonder if they are available in Sydney. I can see a couple of those LED lights coming in handy too. And those $35 parts drawers, and ....
> 
> RossG
> radial1951
> _________




Ross, you should be able to get them on line

Drawer inserts http://www.tradetools.com/products/A1001E

Raaco Cabinets http://au.element14.com/raaco/126762/cabinet-organiser-44compartment/dp/136709101

I was also thinking of getting some drawer dividers for the small drawers
http://au.element14.com/raaco/150-00-dividers/dividers-for-150-00-drawer/dp/1674861 I think they would be handy to store nuts and washers in the one drawer on the smaller sizes.

I think on orders > $50 Element14 do free freight so get two of them at least. Also I am told they do specials on this unit from time to time but I was too impatient to wait. :wall:


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> Ross, you should be able to get them on line
> 
> Drawer inserts http://www.tradetools.com/products/A1001E
> 
> Raaco Cabinets http://au.element14.com/raaco/126762/cabinet-organiser-44compartment/dp/136709101
> 
> I think on orders > $50 Element14 do free freight so get two of them at least.


Rod, thanks for that. Half the battle is knowing what's available and where to get it. These guys have a huge range... actually over $45 for free freight.

Regards RossG
radial1951
_____________


----------



## ///

Element14 are brilliant.
I've been a customer for close to two decades(as Farnell) 
More recently, I ordered a couple of small items for work.. we needed them urgently but that wasn't mentioned in the order (it was processed normally) I placed the order at about 4pm local time(Western Australia) so ~7pm Eastern states DST.
It was waiting for me when I got to work the following morning!!! Approx 4000km's overnight. Insanely fast, almost didn't believe it possible!
Sure, they may not be the cheapest supplier around, but that is the price you pay if you need it NOW.
Best of all, they are now quite happy to do small orders to individuals than they were in times gone by... a great boon to hobbyists and tinkerers.
I have even received a phone call out of the blue by a real human just to check if I was happy with an order. Cannot praise them enough. This is something more big businesses in Australia could learn from.

Edit: Also worth noting, they stock a limited range of engineering materials: http://au.element14.com/engineering-materials
Not cheap... but again, if you need it now....


----------



## rodw

/// said:


> Element14 are brilliant.
> I've been a customer for close to two decades(as Farnell)



I must say I have been impressed with them too. I have bought a few small things from them before these cabinets and they offered to let me open an account with a $1,000 credit limit. I have not taken them up on their offer yet.

It is a shame RS components are not as well priced because they are only 10 minutes from me.


----------



## rodw

Hmm,

Fitting the new coolant system went well





The inlet shown from the back with a secondary outlet for my mill.




Putting the lathe back did not go so well.





Two of us could not lift it even with a floor jack. We thought of standing it on its headstock end where all the weight is and turning it round until we could stand it up but I decided to stop and reassess and talk to my insurer. Turns out that counting the $250 excess and the loss of premium discounts of about $500, it would cost me $750 to go through them. I don't think the lathe has been damaged other than the chuck guard as I had one of my nice new drawers open and it caught it on the way down. I don't think the costs would get to $750.

I think the roof might need to come off the shed and pick it up with an engine crane but I suspect the wall needs to come off to get the crane legs in position. I might be able to get one leg of the crane in the door.

So guys, help me out here. Where to from here?


----------



## ///

Oh f(*^%$!!

Damn, if I wasn't on the other side of the country I'd lend you some muscle 

Can you set up a block & tackle anywhere? Maybe build a makeshift gantry over it?
Pull an engine crane apart and rebuild it in the shed?


----------



## rodw

/// said:


> Oh f(*^%$!!
> 
> Damn, if I wasn't on the other side of the country I'd lend you some muscle
> 
> Can you set up a block & tackle anywhere? Maybe build a makeshift gantry over it?
> Pull an engine crane apart and rebuild it in the shed?



All good ideas thanks Simon. It is amazing what stopping and thinking achieves. I have a plan now. I stripped all the looses stuff off and I found a 4" x 4" post behind the shed which is long enough to span the shed  about 1500mm off the floor.  I have an endless chain and an engine leveller so we should be right. The engine leveller will be handy as you can't level the load with slings with the sideways lift.

Anyway, wish us luck tomorrow night.


----------



## ///

rodw said:


> I found a 4" x 4" post behind the shed which is long enough to span the shed  about 1500mm off the floor.


Hah! I was picturing a length of 4x4 in my mind as a makeshift gantry when I posted. 



> Anyway, wish us luck tomorrow night.


Done. You'll be fine.
Hope the lathe has only superficial damage. Fingers crossed. 

I'd have been  for a good hour or more after that.


----------



## radial1951

rodw said:


> Putting the lathe back did not go so well.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Two of us could not lift it even with a floor jack.
> So guys, help me out here. Where to from here?



Sheesh, Rod, what the hell happened? Am I missing a post here? What caused it to fall over?
Please be very careful how you go about lifting it. About 7-8yrs ago, there was a fatality in Sydney when a chap was installing a similar type of lathe in his garage and it toppled over. As you are aware, they are dangerously top heavy.

Hasten slowly...

Regards, RossG
radial1951
_____________


----------



## rodw

radial1951 said:


> Sheesh, Rod, what the hell happened? Am I missing a post here? What caused it to fall over?
> Please be very careful how you go about lifting it. About 7-8yrs ago, there was a fatality in Sydney when a chap was installing a similar type of lathe in his garage and it toppled over. As you are aware, they are dangerously top heavy.
> 
> Hasten slowly...
> 
> Regards, RossG
> radial1951
> _____________



Ross, my shed was built on an existing slab that had a fall away from the house for runoff. Said runoff goes straight through the shed whenever it rains. You can see the floor is wet from rain in the photo. I had it sitting on two of the concrete tiles shown near the broom. I think as I walked the tailstock end back into position, the headstock end walked the other way and fell off the tile.

We have decided that we will pour a level slab that includes some bolts in it before this goes back into position. That will fix the water problem and make the lathe install safe. My son in law gets good results with Lanco self levelling floor in commercial sites.

The fatality is a sobering thought. It was the right call to stop and reassess the situation rather than keep trying silly things. My wife had a sleepless night worrying about what she would have done if I was underneath.


----------



## ShedBoy

BUGGER!
Not much room to do anyhting. Can you unbolt if from the stand so you can stand it on stand it back up at least then maybe roll it out side on some broom sticks then move it back in the way you first installed it?

Brock


----------



## aarggh

I've always thought the puny cabinets they sit on are a royal PITA, especially when a lot of them don't have a brake. Mine has a brake but I've decided to build a solid bench with many drawers to sit mine on, and also incorporate the brake. I often look at mine and think not only is the useless stand a shocking waste of space for space deprived workshops, but the whole high centre of gravity thing also worries me.

cheers, Ian


----------



## rcfreak177

rodw said:


> Hmm,
> 
> 
> Putting the lathe back did not go so well.




*"OUCH"*


The poor lathe does not look happy, glad that you were not injured Rod.

I hope it all goes well for you standing the machine back up and the damage is minimal. 

All the best mate

Baz.


----------



## ///

aarggh said:


> I've always thought the puny cabinets they sit on are a royal PITA



Have to agree, I have never liked the look of these flimsy sheet metal cabinets, even tho they are supposed to be bolted to the floor.
They just seem to have a footprint smaller than that of the lathe which never made much sense to me.
Many oldschool lathes had nice cast iron cabinets, nice that is, until you need to move it!


----------



## enfieldbullet

i store a lot of metal beneath my lathe to keep it in place.

whenever i have to move it, i empty the cabinet.

but as soon as i can i'm making my own lathe and getting rid of it. 1.2 m length is just too much for my work.


----------



## rodw

Success!





Thanks for everybody's support and for the offers to come round to help.

I have a few more photos which I will post up. I was a bit worried because I had the sling so it would come straight up on its side so I organised another helper to bring the troops to 3 but at the last minute, came up with a much better idea for the sling and got it to come up through the gap in the bed. This let it swing upright and give me a few more inches of lift.

As suspected, aside from the chuck guard, the damage is restricted to a small dint in the corner of the belt guard and a gouge in the Hafco ally name plate. I still need to check it out before powering it up but I am sure it is OK. While it is out, I have a bit of wiring to do so I can run a light, coolant pump and a DRO from the lathe itself. 

I think the DRO should be powered on if the lathe has power to it. Does that sound right? The light and the coolant will  be controlled by a couple of toggle switches mounted by the switches. 

When we pour a level  slab to fix this forever, there will be a couple of copper pipes under the concrete so I can run coolant remotely to my mill. It is not very far away and there is enough fall so the return drain can go back to the tank at the lathe. If it ever blocks, a squirt if air will fix it.

I do agree, these stands are a joke, the weight of the lathe extends well forward of the legs so it is an accident waiting to happen if not bolted down. It may have been worse because I had taken all of the stuff stored in the lathe stand out and had them stored in my new, now partly destroyed drawers.


----------



## ///

Whew!!
Happy to see it's on its feet again.


----------



## aarggh

Good to see not much damage from what could have been a disaster Rod! I can't remember if I saved these from here or cnczone, but this blokes idea I reckon is just about perfect! I'll be something similar but adjusting the bottom as I'll need to re-fit the brake so it's fully functional and not impeded in any way.

cheers, Ian


----------



## rodw

Ian, very nice and food for thought. It took me a while to work out the hand winch purpose and then I saw the removable wheels!


----------



## rodw

aarggh said:


> Good to see not much damage from what could have been a disaster Rod! I can't remember if I saved these from here or cnczone, but this blokes idea I reckon is just about perfect! I'll be something similar but adjusting the bottom as I'll need to re-fit the brake so it's fully functional and not impeded in any way.
> 
> cheers, Ian



Ian, I have been pondering this on my way to work today. I've already got one of the drawer units he has used. They cost $198 from Tradetools which I think are down your way too. http://www.tradetools.com/products/EP333-I3X

The other one which is 110mm deeper is the Hare and Forbes unit at $165 but they will give a good customer a discount so I should be able to get them for a bit less
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/A422
I have plenty of thin drawers already and the Hare and Forbes 100mm deep drawers are probably better for me. I just have to decide if I can afford to give up the extra 110 mm of floor space for them! 

When I made my welding table, I got some components lasercut which made it very easy (and let me get a small piece of plate steel)




The table is very similar construction to the lathe table and it did not take long to knock together.





It has provision to hold a 2" SHS to mount a vice in case you are wondering what's going on in the left hand corner!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Ross, my shed was built on an existing slab that had a fall away from the house for runoff. Said runoff goes straight through the shed whenever it rains. You can see the floor is wet from rain in the photo. I had it sitting on two of the concrete tiles shown near the broom. I think as I walked the tailstock end back into position, the headstock end walked the other way and fell off the tile.
> 
> We have decided that we will pour a level slab that includes some bolts in it before this goes back into position. That will fix the water problem and make the lathe install safe. My son in law gets good results with Lanco self levelling floor in commercial sites.
> 
> The fatality is a sobering thought. It was the right call to stop and reassess the situation rather than keep trying silly things. My wife had a sleepless night worrying about what she would have done if I was underneath.





Rod,

Please take care and get the right lifting equipment to lift and place lathe safely. Have heard of fatal injuries.

Gus Teng.


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Rod,
> 
> Please take care and get the right lifting equipment to lift and place lathe safely. Have heard of fatal injuries.
> 
> Gus Teng.



Thanks Gus, we did use slings and an endless chain rated for the lift at hand.

This weekend's project is to make a start on a new lathe stand based on aarrgh's design. Thanks Ian!

It must be a large lathe in the photos as the minimum width I could make a stand using that style of drawer unit is about 1450mm which is too long for me. The Hare and Forbes drawers are shorter but a bit deeper and will work for me so hopefully they have them in stock in Brisbane here. I have to muck about to make sure there is enough room for my coolant pump as well which might be a challenge.


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Success!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for everybody's support and for the offers to come round to help.
> 
> I have a few more photos which I will post up. I was a bit worried because I had the sling so it would come straight up on its side so I organised another helper to bring the troops to 3 but at the last minute, came up with a much better idea for the sling and got it to come up through the gap in the bed. This let it swing upright and give me a few more inches of lift.
> 
> As suspected, aside from the chuck guard, the damage is restricted to a small dint in the corner of the belt guard and a gouge in the Hafco ally name plate. I still need to check it out before powering it up but I am sure it is OK. While it is out, I have a bit of wiring to do so I can run a light, coolant pump and a DRO from the lathe itself.
> 
> I think the DRO should be powered on if the lathe has power to it. Does that sound right? The light and the coolant will  be controlled by a couple of toggle switches mounted by the switches.
> 
> When we pour a level  slab to fix this forever, there will be a couple of copper pipes under the concrete so I can run coolant remotely to my mill. It is not very far away and there is enough fall so the return drain can go back to the tank at the lathe. If it ever blocks, a squirt if air will fix it.
> 
> I do agree, these stands are a joke, the weight of the lathe extends well forward of the legs so it is an accident waiting to happen if not bolted down. It may have been worse because I had taken all of the stuff stored in the lathe stand out and had them stored in my new, now partly destroyed drawers.



Hi Rod,

Much relieved to see lathe up on its feet with the appropriate safe lifting equipment and Rod in one undamaged piece.
Plan to buy a Proxxon PD400 lathe which is 45kg and has to go up 2nd floor.
Now working out manpower planning to move lathe when it arrives.


Gus Teng.


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod,
> 
> Much relieved to see lathe up on its feet with the appropriate safe lifting equipment and Rod in one undamaged piece.
> Plan to buy a Proxxon PD400 lathe which is 45kg and has to go up 2nd floor.
> Now working out manpower planning to move lathe when it arrives.
> 
> 
> Gus Teng.



Gus, looks like a nice lathe.  I reckon a burly fisherman like you could just carry it up the stairs.:hDe:
Surely with the chuck and tailstock etc removed you can slim it down by 10kg?

My plans have had a bit of a setback. My Hilux let me down on the way to work on busy Ipswich Rd peak hour traffic. I managed to sneak down a side street and wait patiently for a tow truck to arrive. My guess is a rear wheel bearing but the mechanic thinks it is a diff centre. So I probably won't be able to collect the steel as planned for the weekend.


----------



## aarggh

rodw said:


> This weekend's project is to make a start on a new lathe stand based on aarrgh's design. Thanks Ian!


Not my design Rod! I just plundered the images when I was searching for ideas on convenient ways to move machinery. I've been searching like a madman, but for the life of me I cannot find the original post at all. I have a habit of marking good things to return to them later, but it's gotten lost somewhere along the way!

Good luck with the ute mate, I have a hilux myself, and loooove it, so I can feel your pain!

cheers, Ian


----------



## rodw

aarggh said:


> Not my design Rod! I just plundered the images when I was searching for ideas on convenient ways to move machinery. I've been searching like a madman, but for the life of me I cannot find the original post at all. I have a habit of marking good things to return to them later, but it's gotten lost somewhere along the way!
> 
> Good luck with the ute mate, I have a hilux myself, and loooove it, so I can feel your pain!
> 
> cheers, Ian



Yes they are a good car Ian, I play with a few bits and pieces for them on my web site
http://www.vehiclemods.net.au/index.php
Hmm, I was wrong it was a shattered pinion in the rear diff. 





Hopefully Insurance will cover this. The mechanic said it was impact damage whilst the vehicle was stationery which is consistent with when this:





Did this to me




last week.

It has not been a good couple of weeks as last Friday my alternator went which cost e $900 in repairs. I almost got to the Auto electrician but walked the last 200 metres after it stopped dead!

Anyway, Here are some better photos instead of my phone ones.

Setting up to lift it with snatch blocks, slings and an engine leveller





Not enough lift, so had to rearrange things










I think I had room for one more block on the second side but the stick of timber I had ran out.

And a prop I added just in case





Sorry, I had removed the slings before I thought to take photos but I ran the slings around the headstock base and poked the ends out this hole so it could straighten up when lifted.





Finally upright





And some of the damage









I did not notice initially that the control box had a bit of a lean backwards and that was because the mounting holes had bent out but a hit with a hammer flattened the dimples back down.





While I had it off, I decided to add a few more holes to it.





and mount a couple of switches





And rounded up three different coloured extension leads and threw half of each away





The grey cable glands are the originals and now I have three colour coded power outlets.





The two switches are for coolant and work light. The third is for a DRO but I was not planning on having  a switch on it.

I will pull everything off this control box and give it a coat of paint. I took the back plate of the control box to Bunnings and they mtched the grey paint pretty well and I stuck the sticker with the paint codes onto the inside of the control box cover so it is there for next time.

I have also purchased a replacement drawer unit for this one but need a vehicle to bring it home






I've had a couple more  ideas about what to do with the stand in relation to drawer units. It is hard to get clearance for the coolant pump and of course the coolant drain from the drip tray needs to get past the cabinets too. I am going to browse through TradeTools tomorrow and see what I come up with. One idea is to use the 4 good drawers from the busted unit, the other is to use a small 3 drawer tool box as one of the drawer units so that there is heaps of clearance behind it to mount the coolant pump.

Incidently, I had a chance to play with it briefly with some water, it does not take long to empty the tank!


----------



## rodw

Oh, I forgot to say, my order from Little Machine Shop in the US arrived last night. I was very impressed with their service and would not hesitate to use them again. Shipped within 24 hours and arrived in 10 days. Main things I wanted were imperial 5C collets to go with my metric set and some transfer screws. I really only wanted their metric transfer screws but ended up buying one of very size they had in stock. The only thing left on my wish list is a linisher attachment for my bench grinder and a set of ball end mills. Oh and a sine bar and a set of sine blocks and .....

So after I digest some car repairs and finally sort out my shed and finish a few projects, DRO's will be on the agenda.


----------



## rodw

Well, a few things went right today. I cleaned up the lathe and put it back together and touched up most of the missing paint. Everything is working fine. I finished off my accessory power and am happy with the result. All tested and working!













The DRO socket is just wishful thinking for now but it is getting a lot closer now give or take a busted diff or two. I have not included a switch for it and it is live all the time if the powerpoint is turned on. I borrowed the wiring idea from Hare and Forbes as one of their lathes with coolant built in just had a lead hanging down with a computer IEC socket for the pump so I followed their lead.

The plumbing side of the project needs some revision. The pump came with a length of pipe and an agricultural looking tap.  I tried to use them as it had a nice mount but it hits the crossslide when it is right across so I will ditch the supplied nozzle and run with a magnetic base coolant nozzle.





I went down to tradetools today and bought one of these tool boxes for $68







With the lid removed, the height is identical to a drawer unit I intend to use.

I have found from some sketches I have done up that using prebuilt cabinets for a lathe stand sets the dimensions of your stand and I still need to allow for a coolant drain (which might be able to go down between the drawer units).

The other thing is to get enough clearance under the cabinets for  the coolant pump and still having the lathe at a good work height. My solution for this is to use a roller drawer unit and one of these. Being a bit shorter, this unit will see the stand length to be just right and the coolant tank and the tool box together will be the same as the depth of the roller drawer unit so I have come up with the building blocks that are just right for me.

So anyway, I butchered this brand new toolbox by removing the lid and all of the catches as soon as I got home.

The other thing I have to sort out is the coolant drain. I had a friend who is  plumber around today and he did not think the punches they use for pressing out sink plug holes would handle the thickness of the drip tray so I am back to plan B, making a tail that is held on by countersunk brass screws. I think I should also see if I can make up a flanging tool to flare the hole a bit so the coolant drips off the tray.



So the UFO's Unfinished Objects) floating round my shed are.
1. Electrical wiring to compressor and a couple of other power points while we are at it.
2. Drill motor power feed 
3. Arduino controlled Rotary table controller (Hopefully Programmable, maybe with an SD card).
4. Make some collet racks for drawers
5. Make Late QCTP tool holder rack.
6. Lathe stand so my machine never falls over again!
7. Replace the busted drawer unit and see if the other drawers can be incorporated into lathe stand.
8. pour a level slab once I can wheel the lathe out

So much to do and not enough time!

By the time I tick them off, I might be able to afford some DRO's and then I will be have some time to think about an engine to get Baz off my back!


----------



## davewaldo

Hey Rod, good to see things are coming together and no damage to the lathe.  You've given me lots of ideas for my little shed and lathe!  I too live in Brissy and own the same lathe, I've just got it all adjusted and running sweet. 

I built a lathe bench and installed some shelves and draws from bunnings. There is no reason other than cost stopping me adding more drawers under the existing ones. I like these deeper draws as I can fit chucks, rests tool holders etc in them. 

Dave.


----------



## aarggh

Is that a granite/resin slab on your bench Dave? If so, where and how much mate?

cheers, Ian


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> Hey Rod, good to see things are coming together and no damage to the lathe.  You've given me lots of ideas for my little shed and lathe!  I too live in Brissy and own the same lathe, I've just got it all adjusted and running sweet.
> 
> I built a lathe bench and installed some shelves and draws from bunnings. There is no reason other than cost stopping me adding more drawers under the existing ones. I like these deeper draws as I can fit chucks, rests tool holders etc in them.
> 
> Dave.



Dave thanks for the photo, glad you are getting ideas. It seems you made the right decision to build your own stand in the light of my lessons! I am on the south side (too close to Hare and Forbes!). If you want to catch up and see things first hand, send me a PM.

... now you've given me more ideas. It just so happens I have two legs similar to your Bunnings ones. I had forgotten I had them. I wonder if I can use to hold my bench? They are surplus  because I bought two shelves and joined them together so only needed one leg in the middle. The shelves were rated to hold 450 kg each so they are definitely strong enough, but they may be too high at 910mm. 

How high is the top of your bench?


----------



## davewaldo

Hi Ian, I wish mate! No it's not granite, it's a laminated chipboard kitchen bench top from IKEA. I found them to be the cheapest supplier of 50mm tops. I believe a 2.6m length was $80. This material should stay dimensionally stable if it remains dry - to ensure this I coated all seams and the bottom with a couple of coats of varnish. It's supported underneath by two 150x50 steel rails (you can't see these in the pic). So hopefully this bench will stay rigid, flat and true. 

Rod, personally I wouldn't use those legs for a lathe stand. Just too flimsy I think. There is an eBay seller based in loganholme that sells cheap 2nds quality steel. I used them to buy the reinforcing posts, I reckon you could weld up a custom bench pretty cheaply that would be much sturdier and custom designed. You could then cut those legs down to size and use them to mount drawers however. The drawer kit from bunnings is only $50 and is a massive 900mm wide x 200 tall x 600 deep. 

I believe my bench top is about 850 high at the bench top. My concrete slab has about 50mm of runoff so I added levelling feet to the bench legs making one side 50mm higher than the other. You're welcome to come take a look if it will help. 

Hope this helps. 

Dave.


----------



## rodw

Dave, thanks, yes I have discounted using the legs now. They would need to have been shortened and therefore not worth the effort. It looks like you have a non standard Drip tray. Is that right? The standard tray hangs below where the legs mount up so I have to allow for that too as the cross braces I was planning on putting in to hold the lathe at its mounting points will need to be a bit higher than the bearers. That's probably a good thing as it means it won't need a bench top. Sounds like your shed floor is like mine. 

I usually get my steel at Supersteel at Coopers Plains which is on the way home or Metalcorp at Oxley which is not much out of the way. Metalcorp are a tad cheaper and will sell half a length. Last time I made up a bolt on bracket for the bull bar so I can now carry a full 8 metre length on the roof.


----------



## davewaldo

Sounds good. Yep I had to modify my drip tray to sit flat on the bench. Basically I just took to it with the angle grinder to cut down the lip that sits bellow the tray bed.


----------



## rodw

So many projects and not enough time.

First shot of my lathe stand





Do you like it?

And another one of my drill powered Mill power feed





well, the variable speed reversing motor controller anyway!

And my Rotary table controller complete with SD card storage









And the menu system slowly taking shape in the evenings

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAD4D4-VJM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAD4D4-VJM[/ame]

Anyway, this weekend, the focus is on the lathe stand. I hope to have it mostly together tomorrow.


----------



## rcfreak177

rodw said:


> So many projects and not enough time.
> 
> First shot of my lathe stand
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you like it?
> 
> You going pole vaulting Rod  ;D


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> You going pole vaulting Rod  ;D



Yes all 8 metres of it. Looks like we drive different types of cars on different sides of the country too! 

The stand will use about 6 m of the 35x35mm SHS and it will marry to 65x35 RHS top rails. I bough the drawer unit this afternoon but not stuff for the bottom shelf. I thnk it will be pretty quick to put the frame together.


----------



## rcfreak177

Excellent,

looking forward too seeing the new stand,

My lathe has the same stand at the one yours is on. Have been using it over the past couple of days, I keep thinking about the picture of your machine laying down and having a rest, gives me goosebumps thinking of having 850 kg laying on top of me.
 (or my 10 yo son, he uses it too with me supervising of course)

Might go down the same avenue with the bench some time.

The car, I bought it in 2003. was 6 months old, my pride and joy, just sold the wifes Hilux, regretting it now


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> Excellent,
> 
> looking forward too seeing the new stand,
> 
> My lathe has the same stand at the one yours is on. Have been using it over the past couple of days, I keep thinking about the picture of your machine laying down and having a rest, gives me goosebumps thinking of having 850 kg laying on top of me.



Maybe just bolt it down. This video which is of one like my lathe seems to indicate you will get a better finish on machined surfaces if you do. He has just built a clamp to hold it. This would have been an option if I had a level floor.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2Q9H4RLp8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2Q9H4RLp8[/ame]

I gotta remember this when I am finished.


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> Excellent,
> 
> looking forward too seeing the new stand,



Well, I have not got much to show for a full days work.

First off, my bandsaw was cutting poorly and by the time I got it cutting straight, I could have had my stand half cut out.





Anyway, I learnt a bit more about aligning this awesome tool. The main culprit on crooked cuts is the alignment of the blade at the driven (motor) end. If the blade is on an angle the cut will be crooked as the blade will wander away from the perpendicular. It is good to start by removing the blade and replacing it with a 30 mm ruler held in place by tightening up the guide wheel eccentrics but this time I needed to tweak it afterwards and check how it was cutting until I thought it was sweet!

And then I consulted my highly detailed CAD drawings





Some of you might wonder how I can cut down an 8 metre length of steel in my 3.8 metre long shed. Well, the answer is, I can't! I roll the bandsaw down to the other end of the house and set up in the carport.





Yup, that's why I like to keep my tools on wheels if I can!

This time I had to open the gate for the first cut which was a pain. Whilst members in the northern hemisphere are thawing out after winter, we are heading into ours and the wind was coming straight through the open gate *AND *the band saw was not cutting straight so I was punished for an hour or so! 

I also decided to check out the positioning of all of the accessories





The coolant system will actually sit lower than the cabinets but  the motor sticks up in the road so I decided to modify a toolbox to use as drawers so I still had a bit more storage AND room for the coolant system. Also, using a second drawer unit would have seen the stand as being about 1450mm long nd I just don't have room for that! So this configuration matches the length of my Hafco AL320G lathe very closely. 

So after a day of cutting stuff down, I ended up with this by about 3:00pm:





The black stuff is 65mm x 35 mm  RHS and the blue stuff is 35m x 35mm SHS.
Would you believe I paid good money for the rusty Crap which is 75x50x6mm angle iron

So from the top down we have:

short Black - top cross members (some will be supporting the lathe itself).
short Blue - Bottom Cross members
medium length blue - legs
Long Blue - Bottom front and back rails
Long Black - Top front and back rails
Rusty Crap - Angle Iron for removable wheels
4 x 32mm x 3mm flats - to be used as end caps for top rails to make it look tidy.

Castors - Well I have three sets of these complete with fasteners shown in  the small plastic bag. They came with my grey Tactic drawers in the shed. They are pretty crappy but the wheels will be for occasional use and while they are not what you would buy for this application, they were free with heaps of spares, so I decided that they have to be good for 80-100 kg each which is all I need. (I gotta move the 165 kg Seig SX3 out of the doorway before I can wheel the lathe out anyway!

I decided not to use angle iron to support the drawers as it meant the stand had to grow in length so I am going to use 5mm x 50mm flat steel as "Hangers" and let the drawers sit on an inverted T suspended from above. The purpose of the small black blocks is to mount these hangers to.

So with that explanation, the  50mm x 5 mm flats sitting on top are hangers and the tops of the inverted T's. The short black RHS sections are mounting brackets for the hangers. The short piece of 50x5mm steel is the same length as the depth of the toolbox so it will hang down from above on the outboard edge.

So that leaves us with 4 small, sort of square pieces (32mm x 35mm x 8mm) which you can see below the three black RHS brackets.

Well these are to be attached to the bottom of the legs to hold the adjustable feet so I took them back into the shed. 8mm steel, might be a bit thin for a M12 thread but I remember reading somewhere you only need three threads to hold stuff and it equates to 4.6 threads. I had some 10mm steel I could have used but the 8mm x 32mm flat is a good match for the 35x35 SHS  and even includes a welding fillet!

Anyway, I took the legs and these bottom pieces back to the shed and after a while, I came had the feet all sorted and tacked into position.





and some holes drilled in the legs to mount the removable wheels





I was expecting to run out of welding gas during this project but I really expected to be able to do more than three spot welds!  I really did not hav ethe tie to go and top up with gas during the week so tomorrow I will focus on mounting the castors to the rusty angle iron and turn up a few pins for the removable castors.

I will say that when I first reviewed the example shown earlier in this thread I wanted to mount the wheels so they did not overhang the lathe stand. However, once you get into it, you need to make sure that teh caster hace clerance from the frame an din my case, this worked out to be 130mm. I also considered other mounting systems but then realised that I had to make decisions abut how this was going to work and after half an hour of puxzzling, decided the easiest design was to follow what was shown so I drilled two holes through each leg, The top hole is 19mm diameter and the bottom hole is 13mm to suit a 12mm bolt or pin.

I will turn up a set of 19mm dia pins which have a 10 or 12 mm hole through them to attach the wheels assemblies. I also had a 22 mm drill but decided that was a bit too big a hole to drill through 35mm  SHS and keep the strength I want.

So far, all good! I was very fussy (unlike me) with getting dimensions right and It will be  few days before I weld it up but I still h ave a fair bit to keepeme busy tomorrow turning up pins and mounting up the castors. If I get time, I would like to duck down to the new Jaycar electronics store at Browns Plains to get a few bits for other projects I have on the go!


----------



## gus

Hi Rod,
Believe I bought same Reversibe DC motor speed controller though device has yet to arrive from "Qkits.com.
 Please post when you get mill table feed up and going.

I am in no hurry to bush engineer my mill table feed. For now just looking for new ideas and options.No harm with "Monkey See---
Monkey Do" to get best option.Getting sick and tire of cranking when milling long jobs.


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod,
> Believe I bought same Reversibe DC motor speed controller though device has yet to arrive from "Qkits.com.
> Please post when you get mill table feed up and going.
> 
> I am in no hurry to bush engineer my mill table feed. For now just looking for new ideas and options.No harm with "Monkey See---
> Monkey Do" to get best option.Getting sick and tire of cranking when milling long jobs.



Gus, Don't wait for me I am afraid. I have lots of stuff happening. Anyway on the mill power feed front, nothing much has happened. I still don't really know how to mount the cog that will drive the clutch. The cog is a press fit on a 12mm shaft and had a needle bearing in it. I have some 12mm steel so I figred I would start with one or two bearings and work it out from there.

I did one small power feed related thing yesterday and decided a power pack might be handy so I modified the charger to include power output. Note the charger plug pack plugs into the left end of the top plate.









I've got two of these batteries which came with the unused donor drill. I am not sure if I will use them for the power feed or not, but for a $ or so and a quick soldering job, it looked like it could be a handy thing to have in a workshop.

Yesterday, I did not do any more on my lathe stand but did get a replacement drawer unit installed after the lathe fall destroyed one precious drawer. I also came up with a good idea wich cost me $12 for a cheap spanner which I hacked into two and threw the open ended piece away. 





Then I tapped the hole I had drilled in my QCTP mounting bolt as it was sized for an M10 thread and turned up a washer from some 1 1/8" round stock.





And now I have  handle to loosen the QCTP so I can chamfer things easily.





Anyway, a bit of a spur of the moment idea that was inspired by watching some youtube videos of someone who had a nice handle that let him change angles so easilly which was something I tended to avoid because I was using a big shifter that was not much fun to use. The handles miss each too which is  great bonus!





So there you go. a quick 10 minute original "Rod" project which I had not seen elsewhere before!


----------



## ///

rodw said:


>



Oh look it's the old PS-0522! (or the 0524)
Urgh! pretty bad that I can still remember the common part numbers even tho I left the company 3 years ago.

Nice idea with the spanner!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Gus, Don't wait for me I am afraid. I have lots of stuff happening. Anyway on the mill power feed front, nothing much has happened. I still don't really know how to mount the cog that will drive the clutch. The cog is a press fit on a 12mm shaft and had a needle bearing in it. I have some 12mm steel so I figred I would start with one or two bearings and work it out from there.
> 
> I did one small power feed related thing yesterday and decided a power pack might be handy so I modified the charger to include power output. Note the charger plug pack plugs into the left end of the top plate.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've got two of these batteries which came with the unused donor drill. I am not sure if I will use them for the power feed or not, but for a $ or so and a quick soldering job, it looked like it could be a handy thing to have in a workshop.
> 
> Yesterday, I did not do any more on my lathe stand but did get a replacement drawer unit installed after the lathe fall destroyed one precious drawer. I also came up with a good idea wich cost me $12 for a cheap spanner which I hacked into two and threw the open ended piece away.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Then I tapped the hole I had drilled in my QCTP mounting bolt as it was sized for an M10 thread and turned up a washer from some 1 1/8" round stock.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And now I have  handle to loosen the QCTP so I can chamfer things easily.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, a bit of a spur of the moment idea that was inspired by watching some youtube videos of someone who had a nice handle that let him change angles so easilly which was something I tended to avoid because I was using a big shifter that was not much fun to use. The handles miss each too which is  great bonus!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So there you go. a quick 10 minute original "Rod" project which I had not seen elsewhere before!



Hi Rod.
Now dreaming(or mentally designing) a compact Power Feeder like the ones from Taiwan. Bought one for the BridgePort Mill 20 years ago.Worked so well. Now scrounging for a cordless drill to cannibalise motor. Will need some bevel gears. Just bought some gear cutters.Project will take some time. Just like Rod ,I have to many on the plate.Ha Ha ha:wall::wall::wall:


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod.
> Now dreaming(or mentally designing) a compact Power Feeder like the ones from Taiwan. Bought one for the BridgePort Mill 20 years ago.Worked so well. Now scrounging for a cordless drill to cannibalise motor. Will need some bevel gears. Just bought some gear cutters.Project will take some time. Just like Rod ,I have to many on the plate.Ha Ha ha:wall::wall::wall:



Gus, if you can cut gears, somebody suggested to ditch the motor gearbox and go with a worm drive so the motor runs along the end of the table driving a worm that turns a cog to drive the leadscrew. That makes for a very compact layout. Apparently you can buy the bare motor cheap on eBay.


----------



## davewaldo

All looking great there Rod!


----------



## gus

rodw said:


> Gus, if you can cut gears, somebody suggested to ditch the motor gearbox and go with a worm drive so the motor runs along the end of the table driving a worm that turns a cog to drive the leadscrew. That makes for a very compact layout. Apparently you can buy the bare motor cheap on eBay.




Hi Rod,

Good idea but Gus has yet to cut his very second  spur gear after the first was cut in Trade school 52 years ago. Been viewing YouTube of folks cutting the worm wheel with taps.Will give it a try. Tube made it look so easy.

Gear cutters has yet to arrive from ctc.com but will be j.i.t.(timely or just in time).Will be cutting a small pinion for the Webster Engine.Been reading Harold Books on Gear Cutting and dividers. 

Have all material on hand to build Webster. Taking my sweet time.Base and frame is up with blank shaft fitted in. So far so good. will post tonite.


----------



## Hopper

rodw said:


> Gus, if you can cut gears, somebody suggested to ditch the motor gearbox and go with a worm drive so the motor runs along the end of the table driving a worm that turns a cog to drive the leadscrew. That makes for a very compact layout. Apparently you can buy the bare motor cheap on eBay.



Or use a pair of bevel gears out of a garage sale angle grinder to both reduce the gearing and turn it through the 90 degrees. I am working on something like that for fine feed on my old Drummond lathe.


----------



## rodw

Well, had a good run today with the lathe stand. I decided to make up a quick jig to see how that worked out





The scraps of wood were pretty wet as they had been sitting on my materials rack but I have bought the iron for the roof this week.

Tacked up the top rails and then started to weld the legs on






And got it on its feet





And added the bottom braces using a spacer to keep it all the same height.










I needed to clamp a couple of the braces but overall  I was amazed how square I managed to get things.





All went together OK.





Time to check out the drawer units and work out how to mount them up a bit higher





No spare room and I am really pleased after all this work that it all fits in place

Anyway, this looks better




The centre mount is made out of 50x5mm steel hanging down for above. Make sure you allow enough room for the weld fillets.





The side mounts are 25x25mm angle iron I had on hand.





Time to move on to the cross members that the lathe mounts to. They need to sit up a bit from the frame so I made up a spacer the right height.






There only needs to be two of these cross members to hold the lathe but I added a third at the headstock end.




Another view





Now we are talking. I have pushed a piece of aluminium angle iron in above the tool box as it had a bit of a gap. It is only sitting there at the moment, I have to figure out how best to mount it.










Now with the adjustable feet fitted.





And now the reason for the hole in the back. 





That was for the coolant tank and drain fro the drip tray. I am not happy with the angle iron side mount here. I am going to remove the back section of the angle iron and support it with a hanger from above. This will let the coolant tank slide straight out from the end for servicing.



You can see the holes in the legs to mount the removeable wheels.

I just hope the lathe lines up with the mounting holes. I went off the manual initially which said the holes were 722 mm apart but when I measured it up, it was 726mm so I was pleased I checked. To measure the distance of the lathe mounts, I removed the bolts and pushed a transfer punch up from below so I had  a reference point near the hole centre to work with.

It is still only just tacked up so I need to finish off the welding and figure out some mounting points for the drawer units and work on the wheels etc. It should be complete tomorrow but I don't have material for the bottom shelf so It probably won't be ready for painting until next weekend.

So what should I use for the bottom shelf? MDF, PLy, steel, ally checkerplate? cast your vote and help me decide.


----------



## rodw

Well, got a bit more done today. I came up with some pretty cool ideas last night after a bit of prompting via a few emails to and from a mate I met on the forum here so I had a bit of a change of plan.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I welded up the frame totally and sorted out how to mount the toolbox and drawer unit into the frame. The tool box was pretty easy. First I welded in a hanger so I could cut away the angle iron seen in my previous post so it was not in the road of the coolant pump. Then all I did was weld on a tab and drill  a hole in it and the hanger and inserted some nutserts into the toolbox. so I could screw it in. You can see one of the M6 bolts screwed into the nutserts in the top left of this pic.





The easiest way to secure the drawer unit is to use the existing M8 threaded holes for the handles. Beauty! this was a chance to use my transfer screws I bought recently from little Machine Shop. They are pretty cool





The toolbox obscured one of the bolts so there is only one on the inside





Now it was time to start work on the cool ideas from last night. I grabbed the identical drawer unit in my shed that I had sitting above the left hand grey drawer unit. 





Hmm, I really need to do something about that droopy shelf. I actually have  plan tat will fix it, so bear with me.

I decided that if I hung the second drawer below the first one, I would have 80mm clearance under the for long pieces of stock maybe some 35x50mm steel bar for tool posts and the like.  Call it balast down nice and low for stability. I decided to just hang the second drawer down on the bolt holes.





on both sides. You can see the tab I welded on to secure the toolbox with a M6 bolt into a nutsert.





And from the front, this is what I now have





You can see I added a couple more cross members on the bottom shelf to handle any extra ballast I add by way of materials on the bottom shelf.

Just for fun, I jammed the lid of the toolbox I had removed last week in above the coolant pump. I am not sure if I will fit this here but it is food for thought as a bonus shelf!





I would have to drill a hole through the shelf for the coolant return drain if I want to utilise this space.

From the side it now looks like this.





The coolant tank can just slide out of the end of the stand for servicing. Cool hey!

So the plan is to get some light steel plate (1.6mm or 2.0mm) and make a shelf and build a wall around the coolant tank on the front and the left hand side.

Then I should be able to make a short material rack below the tool box for short pieces (up to 500mm long)  for special stocks like brass etc.

If I choose to use the toolbox lid, I will also end up with a bonus shelf above the coolant tank.

So after this heavy thinking last night, I can see that it is going to work out but I have inherited another project.

You see, if I cut away the bottom busted shelf the lathe landed on, I think I can just make it fit where the red toolbox was in the shed. That way it will look all consistent.





Anyway, stay tuned. Hopefully this will get finished off next weekend if I can round up the flat plate material during the week. I have decided I will paint the frame Henry Ford black so it matches the red and black theme of the Seig SX3 mill and stand.

Cheers guys, I am really pleased with progress to date and the cool ideas I had last night.


----------



## cam081

looks good mate can never have to much storage space.


----------



## rodw

cam081 said:


> looks good mate can never have to much storage space.



Thanks Cam, it would look better painted. I wish these things painted themselves. 

Another observation is that I am glad I have a desk job! I can hardly move this morning so hopefully will recover by the weekend for the next instalment.

You don't realise that you are working when doing something like this but gradually, the thing you are making gets heavier and must make you work hard by the end.


----------



## rodw

Well,I have added a few more features during the week and have the stand prepped for paint which I hope I will get done after work tomorrow.






You can see I have welded a couple of bits of  SHS in the corners to mount a cover panel below where the tool box goes to hide the storage area






I remembered that I had a heavy duty set of drawer runners rated for 100 kg, maybe more that I used to use as a fridge slide in a vehicle and I have never found a spot they would fit as they are 550mm long. Anyway, they are a perfect fit for this space. They overextend so the whole drawer will slide right out for access.

The storage area will not be very wide, maybe 4" or so but it will be nearly 12" deep. 

I've also got material for the bottom shelf and cut out ready to fit.

Not shown, but I also rotated the coolant pump to gain clearance as the housing for the starter capacitor was fouling the frame.


----------



## ConductorX

Rod it looks awesome.  I think I will do the same for my lathe since I have to build a stand for it anyway.  "G"


----------



## rodw

ConductorX said:


> Rod it looks awesome.  I think I will do the same for my lathe since I have to build a stand for it anyway.  "G"



Thanks. Don't underestimate the effort involved I have put in 5 full days and a couple of afternoons so far and the lathe is still not on it yet!

We've got a long weekend so hopefully, tomorrow it will be in the shed. I figured there were too many little things to do and if I did not get it all done, I would never do it.

Anyway the middle of winter here so not very good paint drying weather so I decided to paint the stand Friday evening as I knew the paint would need 24 hours + to dry. That way, I could do the fiddly stuff the next day that did not involve knocking the paint around.






Chris down the road suggested adding some lifting lugs on top of the frame but it will be all covered by the drip tray so there is no room so this is what I came up with on diagonal corners





So to sling the lathe, stand and all, they will just swing out





Yeh, I know the bolts are too long and I will fix that eventually.

Then I spent a fair bit of time making up 4 pins.





There is not a lot of clearance between the leg and the tool box, hence the very flat head to it. I was very pleased with the accuracy and I worked out how to keep the dimensions the same on all 4 pins. I still need to remember I have a big lathe and can turn down a pin 6mm in two passes! Wait until I have coolant!

The next step was to drill holes for casters and figure out how to mount up the legs. 





You can see I ended up buying a set of 125 kg casters from Richmond Wheel Co so I knew they could handle the weight of the lathe. Anyway, inspiration came to me and I headed back to my shed to play with my new toy





BOC had a special on plasma cutters and I got this for about $550 which I thought was very good value seeing the no name eBay ones are about $450. Best part about it, I don't have to pay for it until next month!

Anyway, my first cut was a live one and you can see I got a bit excited and cut too far!





Anyway, that is as far as I got on Saturday. This morning, I started on it again. I just have to work out how to drill the holes in the pins.





Back to the shed again. I decided to see if I could use a 5C collet block and a collet stop from Little Machine Shop to simplify things.





I found the edge of the pin and centre drilled a pilot hole seeing as I have not got any spotting drills yet.

Then drilled it out to 11 mm for an M10 bolt. I wanted plenty of clearance to make it easy to put together.





the collets worked perfectly. I only needed one setup for all 4 pins and they were all perfect. The spring loaded collet stop ejected the pieces as soon as the collet was loosened. Being a collet the pins remained centred under the mill spindle.

I used the plasma to shorten some angle iron brackets for mounting points to the pins. No accuracy required on these parts and the bench grinder tidied up the visible edges. I drilled the hole in the tab after the tab was welded on using the first hole as a guide.





When I welded the tabs on, I put some packing (probably 1.6mm) in with the pin so there was plenty of room.

Then  weld the uprights to the caster support plates. I did this with the uprights mounted to the pins so I had the clearances set right.

then some 25mm SHS to hold my jack handle





I cut down 600mm of 5/8" hex for now. Its a bit loose. A 20mm rod would be nice and snug and might need reducing to fit on the lathe. I will sort that out eventually.

So this is what it looks like now:





And in the lifted position, secured with a 12mm bolt. I had already drilled a 13mm hole in the leg, so used a transfer punch to mark the hole position. This made it very easy to drill.





So the theory is to bolt on the legs at the top and just stomp on the lever





and bend down and secure the legs on with the bottom bolts.

So tomorrow I am going to see if I can mount up the drawer runners, make ad mount a front panel to hid the drawer and assemble it. Hopefully, that will include mounting the lathe.  Painting the lathe early has worked out OK, might need a bit of touching up at the end in places that are visible.


----------



## ZipSnipe

Excellent thread Rod, love the toolbox storage deal, lookin sweet !!!!!!


----------



## rodw

ZipSnipe said:


> Excellent thread Rod, love the toolbox storage deal, lookin sweet !!!!!!



Thanks ZipSnipe you can see why I have not made any progress with Power feeds and Rotary Table controller..

Anyway after six full days, the lathe is on and its in the shed. Before I put it on the stand which was  bit of a mission in itself, I decided I better add a coolant drain. Chris down the road suggested I press two sockets together to make the drain and then weld on some steel tube. Well, I figured the drip tray would be Sikaflexed too tight to the lathe to remove it, so I did it in situ by drilling a 12mm hole and using a M12 bolt.





So I had finally found a use for some imperial sockets  





Great idea Chris!





1 found  steel 3/4" hose joiner at an irrigation shop the other day and I parted it in half.





Now I knew I would have trouble welding this tail on the underside with an overhead weld. I had it looking pretty good and of course I decided to fill in a pin hole and of course I blew a huge hole in the tray. I gotta get some grinding tips for my Dremel before I show you some photos of this but it will work out OK. I just bolted the tail in place to hold it while I was welding. If there are leaks, I will smother them with Sikaflex 

And here we are back in the shed!









I still need to add a couple of bolts to the front of the drawer runners ( need a right angle drill for that). I thought about it was I welded it up but decided I was not sure how it was going to fit together  so would worry about it later.

The drawer is only about 145mm wide but it is 55 mm long and rated for 100 kg's I need to make a checker plate drawer for it to match the rest. I have the material (in 3mm), but no way to bend it so I might just ask somebody to make it for me. Anyway, it should be handy for special stocks like brass etc. It is good to finally find a home for the drawer runners which are rated for 100 kg and cost me about $150 about seven  years ago.

And I am pleased to report my lifting lever did the job. to move it into position, we lifted the heavy end onto the wheels by stomping on the lever and manhandled the light end.

Also, with legs under each of the 4 corners of the lathe, now I have leveled it, it is as solid as!

I have a few things still to do. eg. Enlarge the hole in the coolant tank for the drain because the hose I need to use to match the tail is larger than what came with the coolant tank, mount up the plumbing up to the lathe and get the splash guard back on and sort out the drawer. I will probably touch up the drip tray as it has got a few scratches on it. Hopefully, I will get it tidied up during the week. That is unless, I just stand in front of it every evening and just admire my handiwork.

Oh and I am calling for ideas on how to add some sort of screen on the return drain.


----------



## ///

Much betterer!
A lot of work but well worth it.

As far as screening the return drain... the suds pump on the Horiz. Bandsaw at work has a built-in conical strainer in the top of the reservoir. The return hose just dumps into it. I reckon you could easily do something similar. 

Got a kitchen store like 'Matchbox' nearby? They usually have stainless steel conical strainers: 
https://www.google.com.au/search?um...5.681.3-2.2.0...0.0...1c.1.16.img.Bz-lajnZ5ow


----------



## canadianhorsepower

> Oh and I am calling for ideas on how to add some sort of screen on the return drain.
> __________________


 
Pretty good looking set up Thm: You'll love it mine is set up
on tool box and would never go back to the standard rack

as for your return I'm suggesting this unit
remove the cap, and secure it upside down or make some kind of pipe adapter and push it in


----------



## rodw

canadianhorsepower said:


> as for your return I'm suggesting this unit




Thanks Luc. Did you mean to add a link?

///

Thanks for the idea. Maybe I just stick a conical strainer in a funnel in top of the lid and let the hose empty into that? That would be nice and easy and also very easy to service too.


----------



## ///

rodw said:


> Thanks for the idea. Maybe I just stick a conical strainer in a funnel in top of the lid and let the hose empty into that? That would be nice and easy and also very easy to service too.



Probably wouldn't need a funnel, just open out the hose hole so the strainer will sit nicely without falling thru.
This is the one on the bandsaw at work: http://www.machineryhouse.com.au/P235
Can see the strainer in the top, return hose just sits in that.


----------



## canadianhorsepower

> Thanks Luc. Did you mean to add a link?


 
oops:wall: yes I did

here it is
http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Filler-breather/1300-370-465-753-217.c

The reason why I like this one specially mounted upside down
It's never going to clog about 4 inch hi
your never going to have debris in your return line you simply vacuum
the bottom of your pan


----------



## rodw

canadianhorsepower said:


> oops:wall: yes I did
> 
> here it is
> http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Filler-breather/1300-370-465-753-217.c
> 
> The reason why I like this one specially mounted upside down
> It's never going to clog about 4 inch hi
> your never going to have debris in your return line you simply vacuum
> the bottom of your pan



Luc, thanks, looks pretty cool too!


----------



## aarggh

Brilliant job Rod, looks great! Very good use of storage space now.

cheers, Ian


----------



## davewaldo

Very good mate, looks a lot safer to boot!


----------



## rodw

/// said:


> Probably wouldn't need a funnel, just open out the hose hole so the strainer will sit nicely without falling thru.
> This is the one on the bandsaw at work: http://www.machineryhouse.com.au/P235
> Can see the strainer in the top, return hose just sits in that.



Simon, Thanks. I think you are telling me to enlarge the hole in the top of mine with my new plasma cutter to take a conical strainer! Now you are talking woohoo1



aarggh said:


> Brilliant job Rod, looks great! Very good use of storage space now.
> 
> cheers, Ian



Thanks Ian, yes nothing like storage space. I will say since I have added all of the storage drawers etc in my shed, it keeps itself cleaner as everything has  a home.



davewaldo said:


> Very good mate, looks a lot safer to boot!



Yes Dave,  it is really rock solid with a leg in every corner. Much more stable!


----------



## rodw

Well,, thanks for all of the support and ideas guys.

I went shopping today and grabbed a couple of tools.





Tradetools had a sale on so I grabbed a 90 degree drill attachment and some hex drive drills so I can eventually finalise the mounting of the drawer slide. I was also going to get a set of tooling for my dremel but then saw the die grinder for only $33  which I decided would be a better option to sort out my [email protected] welds. And this is what I ended  up with.





I know it is not pretty but but will be hidden under the splash guard mount and a coat of paint will do wonders! It is not obvious in the photo but there is still quite a dish around the drain.  I went to a kitchen shop and they did not have anything like a conical strainer I liked so I grabbed a round strainer and shaped it round my finger and a metal rod for a while and poked it into the drain. The drain is well way from where I work so I don't think much [email protected] will end up this end.

I enlarged the hole in the top of the coolant tank with a 32m step drill and the hose fits in nicely now.





I also finished off the plumbing for the outlets which are attached to the rear splash guard.





The mounting block came with the coolant kit but I had to mill 10mm off it and enlarge the hole as I ditched the pipe that came with it that it was designed to clamp to and now it clamps to the larger diameter pipe fitting instead. The slimming operations were required to allow the pipe fittings to screw together.

In case you are wondering about the two taps. the coolant will enter from the rear on the left had side and flow via T pice hidden inside the mounting block to the top tap and barb will be for the lathe coolant. The bottom tap on the right exits to another barb at the rear to eventually run coolant over to the mill on the other side of the door.

So I think the next step is to paint the drip tray tomorrow night and the final plumbing can be done for the inaugural switching on later in the week! It is frustrating that I have had the coolant system for a month and it is still not operational!


----------



## ConductorX

Awesome job Rod, all projects take time.  I have a number of projects on hold because I keep having little set backs.  Right now my wife's electric scooter is giving problems so we are shopping for a new one.  "G"


----------



## rodw

Well tonight was the moment I have been waiting a month to get to. Coolant is Live!





I was surprised how clear the coolant fluid is when it is mixed up.

The drain came up alright. It is always amazing how much difference a coat of paint makes





The 3/4" drain easily copes with draining the fluid back to the tank and the slight fall towards the back corner the drain is situated in works a treat so not much pools anywhere. 





The drain is protected somewhat as it is located under the back splash guard  mount.





Sorry, it was a bit late tonight so I have tried any cuts but I will over the weekend. There is a bit of splash when it is running but I found putting a small low plastic container under the bed where the coolant was hitting the deck helped to control this.

I still have to paint the removeable wheel assemblies and lifting lugs and also sort out the drawer but to all intents and purposes it i finished now!

I dug out the rather bent chuck guard after I took these photos and refitted it. I have a feeling I might need it  now. It got damaged in the fall but it is still serviceable.


----------



## rodw

I spent a bit of time today grinding off the rust and painting the leg assemblies so I can say it is totally done. Sorry, I did not take any photos. but you have seen it all already, just that it looks nicer now! I think that just leaves the drawer on the end to finish off. 


When I dropped the lathe, the only thing that really got damaged was one of my new gray drawer units. I decided to buy another one at $275 as they were a clearance line and was the only ones that I had seen that fitted under my benches. The bottom drawer was a writeoff so I decided to take my new Plasma cutter to it and cut out the cancer!

I thought I would start at the back so when I stuffed it up no one would notice.


So here we are setup for the first cut. I decided to screw down a guide to get a straight cut as my hands are not very steady... I also hit the ends with the angle grinder so I had a bit of shiny metal to start cutting on. My plasma is  a scratch start and the manual says to drag the tip on the work you are cutting.





And it worked awesomely!





Before long, after cutting away some braces on the inside, I had shortened it nicely. I also had to cut the MDF shelf on the bench away to get enough clearance between the two shelves.





What a lot of fun plasma cutters are! 

And you can see I finally straightened the wonky shelf as it had to come out for this unit to squeeze in. I replaced the MDF with a 19mm x 235mm pine shelf so it should be strong enough. If it sags, I will put a steel or ally shelf in its place...






Now it seems the only problem I have is that I don't have enough tools to fill the 20 drawers i now have at my disposal!  Sounds like I better go shopping!

I think the only thing left shed wise now is to make a mounting plate to screw on the wall to hold my QCTP holders.. oh and trim a bit more of the base of the drawers that I cut away and put it on wheels so I can roll it under my bottom shelf for more storage....   :nrocks:


----------



## ZipSnipe

Looking pretty spiffy, time to get more tools and then dirty it up real good !!!!


----------



## rodw

ZipSnipe said:


> Looking pretty spiffy, time to get more tools and then dirty it up real good !!!!



Not for the want of trying. I ordered some more drawer fillers from CTC today and also picked up a couple of things on my way home and also won some stuff on eBay last night.

It's a matter of balancing the paying jobs that have let me fund all of this amongst the fun jobs. One day I will work in my shed, not on it :wall:

Anyway, my new lathe lets me do the paying jobs 80% faster than my old one and tonight I made complete parts in the time it used to take to face the first side!

It is amazing how popular this thread has become given the number of views. I got a warning about almost being out of bandwidth at Photobucket so if the photos disappear in the next few days, please send me a PM an I might buy some more...

I really want to get back to my mill power feed project.


----------



## rodw

I've been on a bit of a shopping spree recently but stuff is a day or so way. I did not get any time on the weekend to play in my shed. I don't really know how I got involved in a woodworking project but we organised a working bee within the family for a friend who as breast cancer and wanted a deck on her house. Does she look happy or what?









The material was mostly donated though some contacts her son has and we knocked this up in two days...

I somehow think we might need to help with the painting too....

There are some wrought iron hand rails to be extended to go back on the stairs which I have volunteered to cut and weld up so all is not lost for this aspiring metal worker.


----------



## ZipSnipe

rodw said:


> It is amazing how popular this thread has become given the number of views. I got a warning about almost being out of bandwidth at Photobucket so if the photos disappear in the next few days, please send me a PM an I might buy some more...
> 
> I really want to get back to my mill power feed project.



This is why I use http://imageshack.us/    I have photos on the web that are 13 years old, so I basically use it as a back up for my photos along with cd copies of course, but hey if they ever burn up in a fire or whatever, I can always jump online and download the pics, just sayin ....


----------



## rodw

ZipSnipe said:


> This is why I use http://imageshack.us/    I have photos on the web that are 13 years old, so I basically use it as a back up for my photos along with cd copies of course, but hey if they ever burn up in a fire or whatever, I can always jump online and download the pics, just sayin ....



I am much the same with photobucket. I have 3009 photos up there so I decided it was worth the $30 a year to buy more bandwidth which is now unlimited. I have only ever put downsampled photos up there so storage is never a problem.

As far as backups go, I run a Synology NAS on our home network which also has a 800 metre 150mb wireless link to my son in law's house. He is in the process of replicating my setup so once complete, we will host each other's backups of NAS data so offsite backup will be automatic.

My mill DRO kit has cleared customs at 5:00 am this morning so hopefully it will arrive today via DHL. I thought it needed fitting so I know how much room I have for my power feed.


----------



## davewaldo

What DRO did you choose Rod?


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> What DRO did you choose Rod?



I cheated and bought a kit for the Seig SX3 that has all the mounting hardware prefabricated from toolsales on eBay. The DRO itself is a  Rational WE6800. Scales are 1 micron. Cost me $800 delivered and it looks like it will turn up today out of Hong Kong 48 hours after paying the bill on Monday.

It seemed to have good reports and as I work full time I don't have a lot of time to play so I paid more for convenience. I think there is a report on this forum but the pics have gone.


----------



## rodw

rodw said:


> I cheated and bought a kit for the Seig SX3 that has all the mounting hardware prefabricated from toolsales on eBay. The DRO itself is a  Rational WE6800.



Well that was quick.





From Hong Kong to Australia in 48 hours from time I paid the eBay bill. The black parts are the Seig brackets. All milled and anodised.

The mounting bracket is the standout in comparison with others I have seen. It is a solid SHS with end caps and the mounting brackets on each end of it are cast aluminium. Others I have seen are just pressed metal.

Not much good for me here at work though. It will take a while to get it mounted with what the calendar looks like at the moment.


----------



## davewaldo

Looks good - I've begun looking around for a dro, but I'm trying to keep my spend closer to $400.


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> Looks good - I've begun looking around for a dro, but I'm trying to keep my spend closer to $400.



Dave, I was working on that figure too but decided to cheat on the mill. I've spent the afternoon getting my head around the install and it will be pretty easy.

For your DRO, try Ditron on AliExpress http://www.aliexpress.com/store/903293

The fellow Swallow was a heck of a nice guy when I talked to him via email at the beginning of the year and the prices are very good. They also do a real slimline 1 micron scale and it was about $350 delivered for my lathe. I saw one of their slimline scales in a glass cabinet at Hare & Forbes once so went looking for them. I think I will get my lathe DRO from him when the coffers build up again.

I also received an order from CTC this afternoon. A sine bar, a set of sine blocks, a set of ball end mills and an insert parting blade and a few other bits and pieces. 

I paid for a set of Minuteman keyway broaches this afternoon second hand on eBay. Saw them second hand and figured I'd never get an opportunity to get that quality at that price again.


----------



## davewaldo

You sure seem to be kitting up well Rod!  Half the fun of this hobby so far is buying new tools!

Thanks for the link, this DRO seems like a good one: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Free-shipping-2PCS-Linear-scales-1um-0-500mm-800mm-1000mm-2axis-Digital-display-DRO/903293_427101594.html

I'm not sure I need a Z axis scale on the DRO, I'll just fit a cheap digital scale on the quill. 

You'll have to give us an updated photo tour of your workshop with all the new changes


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> You sure seem to be kitting up well Rod!  Half the fun of this hobby so far is buying new tools!
> 
> I'm not sure I need a Z axis scale on the DRO, I'll just fit a cheap digital scale on the quill.
> 
> You'll have to give us an updated photo tour of your workshop with all the new changes



Dave, thanks, I started a wish list after I watched the MIT Tech video series as I really got a lot out of it and made a list of what he used and it kinda grew from there. I decided to purchase the tooling before I installed DRO's and I am running out of ideas for things to put on the tooling wish list, one more order from CTC will just about do it I think. It has been hard to find everything on my list as you just can't walk into a shop to buy it in this country. I make a bit of money from using my tools and I have poured my "wages" into tooling as I wanted it done before I retire.

I would get the Z axis scale even if you do just put it on the quill. At the price I was quoted from memory it was about $50 for a scale and about $10 difference between the 2axis and 3 axis readouts. Slim line scales were about $10 extra and the 1 micron scales the same.

Yes, I have to do an update as it has been a big transformation since the end of January but I want to sort out storage for my QCTP tool holders first as they are scattered everywhere.

I have listed my drill press on eBay this week as it has been sitting in the garage since the Sieg mill went in and January and I have not missed it and I need the space.


----------



## rodw

Well, I made  start on installing my DRO on my mill. 

First step was to remove the cover from the column and work out where to mount the console unit. The Sieg SX3 has a cover over the column that contains all of its electricals and is held on by 4 bolts. 2 on top of the column and two at the bottom.





You can see I put a mark that was visible once the cover was fitted back on. There is  a square at the top rear of the column that has enough room to let me use one of my favourite tools. A nutsert gun!




These are M6 nutserts fitted up and they require a 10mm hole to be drilled before inserting and crimping the threaded inserts with a tool similar to a pop riviet gun. I can heartily recommend you get one of these tools. The are way cool. I have had mine for quite a few years and got it from here

http://ovesco.com.au/products.php?c...&cat=8&sub=32&subname=Threaded Insert Tooling

 I hve the AVK plier type shown second from the bottom of the page. Initially, I just got M6 dies for it but have since added to the collection and can do up to M10.


This pic is a bit hard to understand but it is looking head on at the front edge of the column cover so we can see the DRO mounting bracket on the right (outside) and the back of the nutsert (on the inside of the cover)





The cover has a welded seam which I straddled to make the mount as stiff as possible.

Beautiful! It is so convenient not to have to worry about nuts so you can mount things without fear of dropping something!





Some of you may be wondering why I did this part of the install first. Well there is  a reason. The Z axis scale is mounted to a bracket that is bolted to the top of the column via the mounting bolts for the cover.





I had to take the cover off to work out where to put the nutserts and once the scales were aligned, I did not want to disturb the setup by removing the cover again!

You can see this bracket has a threaded hole to mount the Z axis scale to. The top bolt holes are slotted for adjustment so the scale can be aligned left to right.

The bottom of the Z axis scale required drilling and tapping M5 to mount the scale. his is where I found  problem, there was not enough adjustment in the top bracket to align the scale laterally so I either had to enlarge the countersunk slots or space the bottom out. I chose to space the bottom out and milled a scrap of 6mm ally on both sides to use as a spacer.





With the scale mounted up, I then bolted the provided bracket to the mill head using existing bolt holes. This is to mount the sensor to.





There are two threaded holes to mount a bracket the sensor is mounted to that was meant to come with the kit but it was missing which was a tad annoying. I went down to Action Auminium and asked them if they had some 100x50xmm ally and he looked in the offcut bin nd I saw a piece of angle that was 100x100x6 which he gave me for free! (well it was only 120 mm long!)

I decided before I worried about mounting the bracket for the sensor, I would see if I could align the scale so I knew it was done. This required  lot of cranking the head up and down which gave me a good workout to get it aligned on both axes.





I set the indicator up on both the front edge of the scale and the inside edge. I found this a lot harder than it looked because when I loosened the bolts to adjust things, it would move unexpectedly. Anyway, I got it to about 0.5mm which is about 0.002" from the centre to the top of the column. I figured that is better than my chuck runout so it would do!

Anyway, I turned my attention to the missing L bracket and trimmed the angle to size and notched it to allow for some bolt heads.





The bracket was too big to be held in my milling vice so I cold not use an endmill to get rounded corners on the notches without tearing down my vice setup, so I held it on its edge to mill the notches.

So that as not a bad first effort. I just have to drill two  (probably slotted) holes in the back of the  L bracket to hold the sensors and the Z axis will be done! hopefully, I will get it finished in the next week or so.

Stay tuned!


----------



## davewaldo

Lookin good!


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> Lookin good!



Thanks Dave, I fitted the sensor to the bracket last night so the Z axis is now operational. I could not help myself, I had to turn the console on to check that it worked. And it did! I was rather relieved about this.

I spent all day in the shed today but had no time to play with DRO's. Tomorrow is booked doing some product development at another site so not much progress will happen for a while. 

One good thing though was that I had to make a couple of bits on the lathe so I had a chance to do some machining with coolant and it all worked pretty well.


----------



## tomo

Space saving is one of the biggest  issues i have in my shed or sheds i have in had. I seem to be adding more bench and storage space frequently!


----------



## gus

About time I put in a DRO on to my Sakai Min Watch Maker's Lathe. Will look around for one.

Hi Gurus.Your expert advice is seeked.


----------



## rodw

tomo said:


> Space saving is one of the biggest  issues i have in my shed or sheds i have in had. I seem to be adding more bench and storage space frequently!



Thomo, some of us don't have the luxury of adding ad infinitum!



gus said:


> About time I put in a DRO on to my Sakai Min Watch Maker's Lathe. Will look around for one.
> 
> Hi Gurus.Your expert advice is seeked.



Gus, Have a look at Ditron. I think I will go with their system on my lathe

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/903293

I exchanged a few emails at the beginning of the year with them but decided to buy my tooling first which is almost done so it is almost time. 

The reason I suggest them is that they have a real slimline scale which will be excellent on a small lathe. I initially saw these in a glass cabinet at Hare and Forbes where I bought my lathe from and wrote down the brand. Also for a small lathe, get the 1 micron scales.

Having said that there are a couple of suppliers on eBay based in Singapore so you might get a good deal with a bit of face to face haggling!

Track these guys down locally, both are OK.

Meister  http://www.meisterdro.com/servlet/StoreFront
DRO Store http://www.thedrostore.com/

Here are a couple of phone photos of progress to date on my mill.













I just have to mount the X sensor (hopefully this evening) and align the X & Y scales and it is done. I can't believe how long the cables are on this kit. I have metres of stuff to coil up.


----------



## rcfreak177

G'day Rod,

I reckon the DRO will be a welcomed addition to the mill.

How has the SX3 treating you?

The bench for the lathe came up well, I have been following this whole thread hiding the background with interest.

I am coming back to Perth to work, had enough of the FIFO for now. Will be looking after the warranty department for Atlas Copco blast hole drill rig division. Over fixing the machines for a while.

Hopefully I will be able to get some more shed time.

Keep up the good work mate.

Baz.


----------



## doortoh

Howdy Rod w i am not too far from you and would like to hear from you some time and see your shed...my shed is a little on the large side for a hobby..but it is what i have.....5hp turret mill..1mt precision grinder..1.5 mt centre lathe...1 mt centre lathe...bolt making lathe and small coventry die head...hare and forbes mill drill...small horizontal mill set up to do small gears..small surface grinder...air float mill drill...tig welder..mig welder power hacksaw...large band saw..small valve refacer...cylinder boring machine...i think i could produce full size if i cared to do so......Wayne


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> G'day Rod,
> 
> I reckon the DRO will be a welcomed addition to the mill.
> 
> How has the SX3 treating you?
> 
> The bench for the lathe came up well, I have been following this whole thread hiding the background with interest.
> .
> 
> Baz.


.

Baz, i figured you would still be watching... I am amazed at the number of hits this thread has received. It is actually hard to believe that my shed has been transformed so much since I bought my gear in January.

I really have not done much milling with my SX3, mainly been used as a drill. That is because I have been too busy doing other projects to have any spare time to play. The good news is that I got the last axis fitted on the DRO tonight at about 9:30. I still have to align the scales yet and fit out the covers and tidy up the wires etc but at least it is operational. There is still a few more projects left to finish off my shed, it hard to find the time. Tomorrow I am on removalist duties, Saturday I have a plumber sorting out a coolant line from my lathe stand to the mill, Sunday, I got a mate coming over to check my shed progress and Monday I have a couple of doctors appointments. I need to get a minor operation done on my wrist which may slow me down for a week or two.

The FIFO lifestyle must get tiring after a while. It seems they work you guys a bit harder now than they did 20 years ago from what I recall from mates that did it back then.



doortoh said:


> Howdy Rod w i am not too far from you and would like to hear from you some time and see your shed...my shed is a little on the large side for a hobby..but it is what i have.....5hp turret mill..1mt precision grinder..1.5 mt centre lathe...1 mt centre lathe...bolt making lathe and small coventry die head...hare and forbes mill drill...small horizontal mill set up to do small gears..small surface grinder...air float mill drill...tig welder..mig welder power hacksaw...large band saw..small valve refacer...cylinder boring machine...i think i could produce full size if i cared to do so......Wayne



Wayne, by all means catch up, I will send you a PM. Sounds like you know a lot more about this stuff than I do! I am sure you will reach me a thing or two!


----------



## rodw

Well, I got a bit more of my DRO done over the last few days.

I got all of the scales mounted up and covers fitted yesterday afternoon





The Z axis wires disappear back around the column as shown in the pic above.





The X axis sensor is mounted to the saddle at the rear of the table. The instructions said to bolt it down through the saddle, but I elected to use some 6mm aluminium angle iron instead





The Y axis looks neat too.





I still have to work out how to tidy up the wires to the X and Y sensors neatly while still allowing for travel.

I had to rip a ledge off the covers for the X and Y covers as it was getting in the road. This was easy on my bandsaw in upright mode. You can see the ledge in the pic of the Z axis earlier. I may trim this off yet too.

The Seig SX3 has the electronics in side a cover over the column that has a couple of removable covers. I notched the back of the case (and the top cover) with a file so the cable goes inside with the electronics (well it will when done) and emerges out the other side near the DRO.





The X & Y axis wires feed in through notches on the bottom of the housing (one in each corner)





I have put a couple of bolts through the covers to secure some cable clips that were supplied. These let me  hold the surplus cables with a cable tie.

There is an enormous amount of spare cable to tuck out of sight.





I still have to notch the back cover in two places. I tell you using a file really sucks when you have a perfectly good milling machine at your disposal. I still have a couple of notches left to file in the top cover.





I am going to have to be careful to secure and maybe insulate the steel cables so there is no risk of shorting out a board.





The installation will look nice and neat once the covers are back on.





I am also going to install a cable gland below the DRO arm mount so the mains power lead can go into the cover and pick up power after the main switch so it is powered up with the machine and does not waste a power point.

The family plumber came round today and bent up some copper pipes to run coolant to the mill but it will be a while before I get to this, so be patient!

Once this is all tidied up, it will almost look like a factory install. I would not mind getting rid of the cable ties on the arm and securing the wires in a different  way so it looks neater from the operators side. Any ideas?

Staggering to see this thread has had over 19000 views since I started it in January.


----------



## canadianhorsepower

> Once this is all tidied up, it will almost look like a factory install. I would not mind getting rid of the cable ties on the arm and securing the wires in a different  way so it looks neater from the operators side. Any ideas?


 nice clean work looks good,

this is what I used on mine, wire loom
http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Wire-Loom/1-in-x-25-ft-Split-Flex-Wire-Loom/8218844.p


----------



## rodw

canadianhorsepower said:


> nice clean work looks good,
> 
> this is what I used on mine, wire loom
> http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Wire-Loom/1-in-x-25-ft-Split-Flex-Wire-Loom/8218844.p



Luc, Thanks for that. I have some of that here and used some to make sure that the metal DRO cables could not short out the board. More on this later. I think I will just run with cable ties for now. some box conduit screwed to the back of the arm would be good but I have to buy full lengths and the one I have on hand is too big so I will leave the cable ties in place for now.

Well, I grabbed a cable gland today and finished of the install. I cut the power plug off and fed the power cable from the DRO into the case.









You can see the split conduit I used. I usualy have some of this laying around. The big one was good for two cables but it would have been better to have some 13mm for the third cable but the bigger one had to do.

Splicing into the power was pretty easy. There is a big EMI filter that the power passes through first thing but I decided I would wire the DRO in before it in case the additional power draw was a problem. After refreshing my memory about power cable pinouts, and confiring the SX3 power switch was a dual pole one with a multimeter, I started by splicing the active (brown wire) into the outside of the fuse using a double adapter spade connector to the one on the outboard side of the fuse. I covered the connector with shrink wrap.





The earth was easy as there is a BUS bar for all of the machine earth wires. I did not have the right sized bolt so I doubled it up with the mains earth





You can see the DRO earth has a  blue crimp on connector on it.

This left me with the Neutral (blue wire) to deal with. I decided to cut the wire leading from the switch to the EMI filter and splice in with a mains screw in connector (which I later covered with shrink wrap). 





I decided there was no need to secure the cables now they were covered in split conduit and routed them down past the main board.





Then it was just a matter of putting the covers back on









I put a cable clamp on the existing bolt securing the cover to hold a cable tie





And drilled and tapped one more hole in the machine to tidy up the X and Y sensor cables





Leaving room for full extension of the Y axis





And it was done!





Here is the Z axis at full height.





I was a bit worried for a while though. The DRO powered up but the Mill sometimes did not power up even though its green power light came on. I had problems with this once before. I had a bit of a dig around and diagnosed a loose main connector to the mother board. My cables may have been pushing on the mill cable a bit, so I rearranged things so this would not happen so here is hoping! I will talk to Hare and Forbes about this while the machine is under warranty.

Anyway, it was good to finally finish this off and get the shed back together.


----------



## rodw

So now it is all back together, some of you have asked for a tour so come on in and and have a look at what it looks like now.





















About the only thing left to do is to sort out the storage for my lathe tooling.





and get a roof on my materials rack and compressor, run coolant to the mill, run a new power main to the shed for 15 amp power and level the floor......With a bit of luck I will be done by Christmas.


----------



## davewaldo

You've done a great job with it all Rod, love the new lathe stand!


----------



## rodw

davewaldo said:


> You've done a great job with it all Rod, love the new lathe stand!



Dave, thanks, its nearly finished.

Today after about 2 years, I finally got around to installing the roof over the materials rack and compressor









You can see, this project also included the same style of roof against the garden shed in the background.





Also during the week I went to pick up some plasma cutting tips but they were out of stock so I had to buy something!

Seeing it was on special I grabbed one of these





I wanted to have a lightweight portable stick welder I could use away from home because my MIG weighs 90kg and it was not that much more to get a 185 amp DC TIG welder. I have no idea what I will do with it, but I figured it would be handy and was the same footprint of a stick welder that also had basic TIG. The AC/DC TIG was a fair bit more than my budget so I decided that I will have to stick with MIG if I need to weld aluminium as I have a separate gun with a Teflon liner and different feed roller set up for Aluminium. Also having TIG will let me get more value out of a bottle of Argon gas as I can use it for TIG and aluminium MIG.

Also, I got the chance to spend a bit of time on a simple milling job for the first  time since I fitted my DRO and it was pretty cool just reading positions off the DRO!

This is a prototype part for a new body lift kit and once it is fitted up to a vehicle in the next week or so, I will finalise the design and get a batch laser cut and send them out for powder coating.





Hopefully there is a bit of pent up demand for them. I have a 50mm tube to take a 10 mm bolt to make and while I turned up some prototypes, I was going to buy some seamless steel tube but I gotta buy 2 lengths minimum and that is enough for 120 vehicle kits!


----------



## robcas631

Some people are fortunate enough to have a man cave. You have your own house! Very cool!


----------



## rodw

robcas631 said:


> Some people are fortunate enough to have a man cave. You have your own house! Very cool!



House! All 10 square metres of it!


----------



## rodw

Well guys, this thread has been a bit quiet because I had a minor operation on my wrist last Wednesday to remove a big lump of an oedema that has been there for a few years. I went back to the doctor today and got the all clear and the dressing was removed. They use disolving stitches these days so there was nothing to do but send me on my way after a cursory look.





But I have to confess after taking 3 days of sick leave from Wednesday to Friday last week, I was starting to get some withdrawal systems by Sunday afternoon, and the wrist was only really sore for one day so I decided that using a plasma cutter would not be too hard on my wrist. I was kinda motivated by my son in law who gave me some electrical cable





He tells me that the 50 metres of 10mm2 cable on the bottom drum was worth about $800 and it is a gift for services rendered! Cos he shares my cable internet via an 800 metre wireless link which I set up for free for him. So the plan is to run this cable to my shed from the swichboard at the diagonally opposite end of the house to my shed (hence the heavy cable). I will have to dig the trench by had so it can go nice and neat underground to my mini-shed. I will then have a few 15 amp circuits for my compressors, welders and plasma cutter.  The top roll is to run from a distribution board in the shed to the various powerpoints.

The only available space in my shed is up in the rafters





Hmm, with a surname like that, I can see that when I eventually get round to it , my first IC engine is gunna have to be a Webster! The sign was a gift from a sign writer I knew and roughly follows the design of a logo for a business I sold about 10 years ago. (Some Aussies may recognise the likeness to Snap Printing but they have since redesigned their logo)  I needed a mounting plate for the switchboard so the plasma made short work of a piece of seconds 2mm thick plate steel I got for about $13 the other day.





The big cable is probably good for 80 amps or so and I added a couple of nutserts to simplify mounting the switchboard to the backing plate.





I checked out the spec for my new (still unused) TIG welder. It can draw 30 amps and the plasma and compressor together will use about the same and my 90 kg MIG welder is much better behaved and only draws 15 amps max. So basically, I will only need about 30 amps max at one time but it is better to be  sure! Justin reckons the street will black out before I melt this cable as it is probably bigger than the the mains running into my house!

While I had the plasma out, I thought I better fill in the spot I have allocated for lathe QCTP adapters as Justin was eyeing it off for a good spot for his switchboard.





So if I get some time this weekend, I will make a start on welding the mounting tabs onto this backing plate for my lathe tooling to finish this job off (which will FINALLY pretty well finish off my shed storage makeover).... Tinkerer would be shocked to see the mess in my shed ATM. 

It has been a really busy week for us, my operation, my wife's mother's unit sold (she is now in a home with Alzheimers), my wife finished work (I am not so lucky) and we purchased $8k of photo scanning hardware. My wife wanted to scan all of her old photos and we thought there might be a few others in the same boat so maybe it will give her something to do in amongst granddaughter (and grandmother) duties. We think that my experience with printing prepress and her experience in document management, scanning and indexing will let us do a decent job of it. We have also had a logo developed and I have deployed a second web site (but it is not open for business yet). Not bad seeing we only decided to do this last Friday just 7 days ago!

So if any Aussies reading have a heap of photos or slides in shoeboxes that you don't know what to do with and would like to get them on a PC so they can pass them on to their children, don't hesitate to send me a PM. (Hope the mods don't mind a minor OT indiscretion.)


----------



## rodw

Well, life has been very hectic here so have not had much shed time but I did get an hour or so over the weekend to finish of my QCTP tool holder holder  (if that makes sense)

I cut up some pieces of 40mm x 3mm flat bar so they were the same width as the dovetail on the holders. Then I cut two more pieces on a 15 degree angle to make a little jig so they were all the same angle






I tacked these bits to a short bit of 25mm RHS.

I removed the plate from the wall and welded them up (pretty poorly as they were a bit too close together to get the MIG in there easily)

I held the jig in place square where I wanted it with a magnetic welding corner gadget and it worked out pretty well.







It worked out pretty awesome! I am happy with the angle. I have a couple of spare slots and room for about 5 more in the middle, maybe a few more but I won't add them until I need to so I get them in the right spot.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to play with my lathe after this was done.


----------



## rodw

Just a bit of an update.

I have been very busy and the electrical stuff is still sitting there to be installed as I have barely been in my shed for moths. 

A bit of excitement however today as with the warmer weather, my wife looked up to see a snake emerging fro the wall cavity a couple of metres from my shed door.











We are not sure whether he is a venomous one or not but of course he made a bee line for my shed and slithered under the door. I had a good look though the shed a few hours later once I got home (with a long handled shovel in hand but fortunately he had moved on ...I hope!) 

Of course it goes without saying Australia has some of the most venomous snakes in the world and the most dangerous live in our part of our continent.

I grew up with them in the bush and am snake aware but my wife is not so well trained... and on our wedding anniversary too!

Looks like I have to fill in some gaps around the door.


----------



## rcfreak177

Careful Rod that looks like a young King Brown. (Eastern Brown)

Shame we live so far away, I'm a licenced snake handler, would love to come and have a play and re locate it for you.

Baz.


----------



## Cogsy

rodw said:


> I have been very busy and the electrical stuff is still sitting there to be installed as I have barely been in my shed for moths.


 
So there's a possibly venemous snake in your shed but you go in anyway, yet the MOTHS keep you out...

Seriously though - take care.

Baz - I gotta come round your house one day. Machine tools, metal casting (if I'm not mistaken) and snakes! Heaven! If you've got beer as well, I'll never leave!


----------



## rcfreak177

Always welcome Cogsy,

Definitely have beer but no snakes, the wife will not let me. I leave them at work up in the Pilbara. When they become a nuisance I will come in and carefully relocate them to a safe area away from harm. Great fun though


----------



## Cogsy

My house is a nice, safe area for snake relocation . I told my wife I wanted a snake or a ferret - she let me get a ferret but the bugger just wouldn't stop biting lumps out of me and the kids so I had to get rid of it. So now I'm on the lookout for a nice, gentle Stimpsons, or a mild mannered Gwadar...

If you need a hand with anything, give me a yell, I'm just round the corner in Armadale (and I'm a furniture removalist so I can lift heavy things...).


----------



## rodw

Thanks guys, had a laugh at the killer moths in my shed. Yeh told my wife it was probably a python or tree snake.

RCFreak, now I know where the "freak" comes from. I grew up in the bush so am snake aware but it does not sound like you guys would approve of my snake handing techniques which re loosely based on the premise that the only good snake was a dead one!

As a kid, I had a brown mulga snake coiled up inside the house ready to strike but I saw him in time. Got him with the .22 under my mum's dressing table a couple of weeks later. Also tripped over a log and found a brown snake sunning himself on the other side right across my chest! Fortunately, he got a bigger fright than me and cleared out. And my mate wondered why I did not get up in a hurry!

In all my time in snake country, I only ever met 2 people who were ever bitten. One was my grandfather who got tagged through his boot leather while riding a horse well before I was born.


----------



## Swifty

I'm with you Rod, I treat every snake that I see as deadly, and the only good snake is a dead one.
I have encountered a few tiger snakes swimming across rivers when I have been wading upstream fly fishing, I give them plenty of room.

Paul.


----------



## rodw

Strewth, Its been 4 months since I updated this thread. A lot has been happening in my neck of the woods. I had a bit of  a hiccup back in November as I was invited out to celebrate Melbourne Cup day (the horse race that stops Australia). I never follow it, but in this instance, I partied a bit too hard and fell over and broke my wrist so progress was delayed.

The following is not really shed related but ight explain why I have been so quiet on the forum.

When I broke my wrist, I was part way through a major electrical upgrade on my caravan which installed a wind up battery tray right underneath the van itself to carry two batteries,












Not shown, but I used a $35 boat winch to winch it up and down to service the batteries






And then there was the 1500 W inverter tucked in under a seat.






and a couple of power points.. one for the microwave






and one for the toaster and Nespresso Machine!






Who said you can't have a good coffee in the middle of the bush?

Well, with this stuff, I needed to add some solar power (you may have noticed the remote controller for the solar charger beside the first power point).

Fitting up the Tracer 30 amp regulator was easy as the van was already prewired for solar at the factory.






You can see the blue cat 6 network cable running off to the remote console seen earlier. A couple of dual pole circuit breakers on both the panel and the charging circuit.

Once my wrist came good, I decided to get into the solar panels. This was pretty tricky because the van is a pop top and has no load bearing structure in the roof. Based on another mate who had done the same thing, I made up a roofrack from 40x40x3mm angle iron to carry the panels






which required some brackets I machined up and drilled and tapped threads






Including a couple of practice holes that ended up in the wrong position.






I had talked Chris down the road into making a press brake for his hydraulic press  after reading one of Tin's threads and this was his first real job on it. The roof surround leaned out 5 degrees and the brackets needed a bit of a tweak to get things square.






Whilst on the solar bandwagon, my son in law wanted to charge some motor bike batteries so I got him to order one more 10 W panel and a 3 amp regulator which cost about $35 all up and I gt him a roll of 12 volt cable in return.

And I whacked the panel on the garden shed roof (HINT: not my workshop shed)






I bought a small gel cell battery and designed up a battery tray for it. I bought a spray can of repositionable glue and printed out the plan ful size on A3 size paper (roughly 11"x17" for non metric speakers). this made it so easy as I just cut it out and folded along the dotted lines before peeling off the pattern!

And added a 0.2 amp light 






and now I have the brightest off-grid garden shed in Australia!

Wel back onto the real shed. You will be pleased to now that we finally got the 10mm electrical cable off the drum it had been sitting on for the last 6 months  and pulled trough from the meter box on on corner of the house on Sunday.






and ran it through the ceiling to the diagonally opposite corner






and across the patio and through a 26mm hole in the slab






Into a trench beside the existing lightweight shed cabling






and out a new hole in the  shed floor






and up to a sub board full of circuit breakers











Now I have 15 amp power points everywhere!












There are actually about the same number of circuits in the shed as in the house now!

In amongt this all, I finally got around to ordering my Ditron DRO for the lathe and have started to fit it up while I have the lathe up on its mobile wheels for the first time ever!











Must weigh about 400 kg now full of tools

I made a start on the DRO installation. first the easy bit






I have not got much to show for today's effort but have got this far with the cross slide scale after a lot of head scratching.






The scale needs to extend beyond the rear of the cross slide a bit so I decided to make a mounting strip that is cut out to allow access to the gib screws. I decided not to attempt to drill and tap this mount late this afternoon as in my experience, that is a recipe for disaster so I left it for another day. It should be pretty easy from here.

Oh almost forgot, finally got a linisher belt too. These are awesome bits of Gear.






And have been practicing how to use a Weber Q which will replace our BBQ in the van.. Awesome gear!






Anyway, sorry I have deviated off topic a bit, stay tuned, I will update as the DRO proceeds. It is pretty much the last thing on my shed wish list.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Rod, while your off topic I will carry it on a bit. We had a van with 4 batteries and 4 solar panels, just be careful with the toaster it will flatten your 2 batteries in no time, my wife used a 650 watt hair dryer (it was the lowest wattage one we could get) in the van, and she was under strict instructions to only use it for a couple of minutes. We also ended up carrying a baby webber Q, they were great for legs of lamb etc.

Paul.


----------



## bmac2

canadianhorsepower said:


> nice clean work looks good,
> 
> this is what I used on mine, wire loom
> http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Wire-Loom/1-in-x-25-ft-Split-Flex-Wire-Loom/8218844.p


 
Hi Luc
Good old Princess Auto. I used the ½ (cheap DROs) when I did my mini mill, looks nice and clean.
One day Im doing to think of something to use the other 15 feet.  
Gus 
Once you bite the bullet and install them youll never look back.


----------



## rodw

Geez, it has been busy in my shed the last week or so.

There are an obscene number of circuits in my shed now.






and power points everywhere!

Under benches






and even ones we never planned on!






I finished my DRO install. I thought I had taken some pics of the longnitudinal scale instal but apparently not. I'll update on another day.

While I was at it, I decided to permanently mount up a light I had been using and redo my coolant nozzle. I don't know about Bmac2 but I have used rolls and rolls of split conduit over the last few years Fortunately, I had a bit in a box of tricks which I used on the light wiring!
















The back part of the cross slide is just a pressed metal cover, so it was easy to drill a hole through it for the light and I milled up a coolant line clamp that is screwed on from below.

I moved the coolant plumbing down to the bottom where the pump.






One day, I will get the coolant lines over to the mill on the other side of the doorway.

It will be 12 months next weekend since I upgraded my lathe and bought my mill. I have to say that once you actually start doing things on a mill, it is amazing how quickly your confidence grows. I have been sketching up parts on the PC and taking a printout down to the shed, sticking it to the wall near the mill and it has been a lot of fun! When I started, I did not want to touch the vice once I had laboriously dialed it in and now it is a breeze and I have been a bit more ambitious!

The DRO on the lathe just about concludes my wish list of tooling etc I have been maintaining so maybe I will get to some projects that have been pushed aside for months.


----------



## rodw

Sorry, guys, have not been here much for a while. I just posted my new radius turner using a boring head here


























I need to try cutting a convex face yet but all that should be required is to put the cutter in the other way round (the right way actually!)


----------



## gus

Hi Rod,

That was a very smart idea to cut sphereical knobs. th_wav

Beats the RT ball turning.  Since I have a DIY Boring Head,will try 
cutting brass knobs the ''Rod Way". 

So many ways to skin a cat.


----------



## robcas631

RodW

Looks like you have all you need and then some! Great shop. Have fun.


----------



## robcas631

Chris, 

That goose neck tool looks impressive. Do you think it would work on a 7 x 12 lathe?


----------



## robcas631

Varmtr,

Excellent video on cutting threads. Thanks for posting it!


----------



## robcas631

RodW,

I like the base plate on your bandsaw. I'm sure it's far better to use, as you have bypassed that irritable round insert around the blade. That said, I am going to make one for myself.


----------



## rodw

gus said:


> Hi Rod,
> 
> That was a very smart idea to cut sphereical knobs. th_wav
> 
> Beats the RT ball turning.  Since I have a DIY Boring Head,will try
> cutting brass knobs the ''Rod Way".
> 
> So many ways to skin a cat.



Gus, thanks, I am sure you will get it working! it wasn't my idea originally  and I bought the extra flange for the boring head a year ago. Some others online have incorporated a stop to limit the radius you can turn but I did not bother.


----------



## rodw

robcas631 said:


> RodW,
> 
> I like the base plate on your bandsaw. I'm sure it's far better to use, as you have bypassed that irritable round insert around the blade. That said, I am going to make one for myself.



Rob, thanks, it works well. I roughed out the T shaped block for the ball turner on the upright bandsaw with the base plate installed and it is 50mm thick. I have since seen another design that hinges the base plate so you can leave it installed and fold it up out of the way in horizontal mode. You just need to add a cross piece below the plate that mounts to the saw and extends the width of the plate. Pin it to the plate at the edge so it will act as a hinge. The plate I have is easy enough to modify to this design but I don't use it enough to worry about it.


----------



## rodw

Well, today was not a lot of fun in my shed. I was cutting a few pieces of plastic and the motor on my 6x5 bandsaw gave out eventually stalling half way through a cut. It has done an awesome amount of work over the last 4 years. I can remember running it for 8 hours straight in a day cutting steel. I checked with Hare and Forbes and they have a spare arriving at the end of June for $220 + GST or I can buy a new saw on their final runout of that model for $350 + GST.

Anyway,  I pulled the motor apart and consulted with a mate and we decided to replace the bearings as we could see the armature had been hitting the windings. This was an interesting exercise as one bearing  was pressed into a blind hole so you could not remove it easilly. Chris suggested filling the hole with gear oil and hammering a tightly machined shaft into the centre. This worked very well but I had to top the oil up a few times to get it right out.

While I had it apart, I skimmed the armature in the lathe, basically just taking the paint off.

After I reassembled it, the motor spins like a top by hand but when it runs, it makes an awful buzzing sound but now spins.  We checked the capacitor on a multimeter and it was OK but maybe it is breaking down under power and the buzzing sound is the contacts flipping in and out so I have a bit more to check.

If anybody in Oz knows where to source a reasonably priced 1/3 HP (0.25kW) motor with a 5/8" shaft, please let me know.


----------



## rodw

Hmm, I was a bit disappointed, I fitted up a new electric motor after making a adapter base plate for it and I was still not happy with the end result so I made the mistake of opening up the gear box only to find it was dry and there was a heap of brass flakes in there. I decided to strip the gearbox which revealed the problem. The chinese had assembled it with an oil seal riding on a keyway. How was that going to work? It didn't obviously! I priced some parts and decided that I was so close to the replacement price that I took the motor back and bought a new one. I have severe space limitations but H&F did me a deal on one of these:
http://www.machineryhouse.com.au/B003

Made in Taiwan and heaps better in quality. every bolt and screw was a better quality and it was easy to tweak it so it cuts dead square. I decided to make a lower wheeled stand for it  and realised it was the exact width of my previous saw so I hacked 235 mm out of the roller base I and made and built up a stand from there. A bit rough and ready but I got it in the shed and cutting away within the day. Photos to come.

I gotta say, setting it up was a breeze and the first cut was spot on, 100% square. The 7" throat is big by these standards, as big as the entry level real ones so I may look at adding coolant which will be easy to do.


----------



## cam081

I up graded to the same saw after I burnt the motor out on the bs-5 that I had. the bs-5s is so much better of a saw and heaps better for cutting angles on as well. cam


----------



## ColinFaulkner

Very nice piece of kit Rod! Makes my inherited BS-4A look a bit tired... Oh well when its time to upgrade, I'll be looking at something similar


----------



## rodw

cam081 said:


> I up graded to the same saw after I burnt the motor out on the bs-5 that I had. the bs-5s is so much better of a saw and heaps better for cutting angles on as well. cam



Thanks Cam, nice to know I was not the first....



ColinFaulkner said:


> Very nice piece of kit Rod! Makes my inherited BS-4A look a bit tired... Oh well when its time to upgrade, I'll be looking at something similar



Colin, I think it leaves the others for dead if you can afford the extra cost but cant get up to the bigger ones.

Here is a quick phone pic (oops, sorry about the size). I have now got it on wheels and kept it low so it did not get in the road of the mill table.






If you go back through my shed pics, you will see I had an angle iron base on wheels for my old saw. The first job was to thread the saw through it and  cut out a 235mm piece from each side and weld it up again. Then I cut some 25x25mm SHS legs which I welded in place in each corner than put two 65x35mm RHS rails on top. The saw sits on rubber feet and is just held down with 2 bolts (fore and aft). To finish it off, this project needs a drip tray placed under the feet. Coolant can't escape from the saw table anywhere so it will be easy to drill a hole in the cast iron base so the coolant can drain down below. Anyway, that is my excuse for not painting the stand! I think coolant would be a good option for this saw as it is so easy to deal with.


----------



## Swifty

A bandsaw is on my wish list of machines, I will keep a note of this model, I have seen them at Machinery House (H &F).

Paul.


----------



## rodw

Swifty said:


> A bandsaw is on my wish list of machines, I will keep a note of this model, I have seen them at Machinery House (H &F).
> 
> Paul.



Paul, the BS5 that Cam and I both wore out is on special ATM at $385 so you would never get a cheaper saw than that right now. That was what I was planning to buy but H&F had this one there for $495 so it was a no brainer to spend the extra $100. 

I think in my case, the motor burned out out because of problems in the gearbox and bearings as it was siezing intermittently for a while. 

Add a filler bung to the BS5 gearbox and maybe put a perspex cover on it to see the oil level and for home use, it will last a long time. Mine had done a lot of work, sometimes running 8 hours a day, cutting 8 metre lengths down to 55mm pieces and I still got 5 years out of it.

Its a shame that H&F don't fit a hydraulic descent cylinder to the BS5-S that I just bought. You can see an undrilled spiggot in the yellow casting just below the depth gauge to fit one to. Based on what I have seen elsewhere, the other end of the cylinder would go to a bracket mounted using the gearbox cover screws. If anybody knows where to get a cheap cylinder from, please let me know. A $35 part in the US becomes a $200 part down under.


----------



## cam081

I burnt my out buy leaving it going wile I came in for a drink and started talking. by the time I got back to the shed all was quite and the lights wore out I must say it took me a wile to work out it was the saw with a short piece of about 2 inch bar jammed between the stop and the blade. I never leave the new saw cutting with out being near it. cam


----------



## rodw

Well, I bought a 5C collet chuck from Little Machine Shop and started to mount it up today. For the Aussies, I went to George Weston and Sons and bought two 30mm wide slices of 165mm diameter round grey cast iron which cost $33 each. They have a huge range of cast iron and brass stocks.

I have fitted a chuck before and decided that I needed to be precise when dealing with collets so I decided to make a plug as a guide for this chuck and any other chuck I might fit. I got out my barely used 4 jaw chuck and  indicated in the rough cast iron as best I could. I faced it off and then machined a 5mm high boss that was a snug fit to the back of my 3 jaw chuck. In theory, this should be an exact copy of the spindle mounting plate.






I have left it in the chuck overnight to have a think about things but the idea is to chuck up the other piece of cast iron, face it and machine a matching recess which mates snugly. I will use this plug to check the dimensions. Last time, I just shot for the measured dimensions but this more complex method should give me the confidence and tools to get a much more precise fit which hopefully will keep runout to a minimum. I might  centre drill this piece so I can find the centre again if I ever need to.

Stay tuned!


----------



## cam081

Hi rod I am looking at the 5c collets for my new al336d lathe when it turns up. I have been using mt3 collets and er32 collets in my al50 and love them. Where did you get you collets from?


----------



## rodw

cam081 said:


> Hi rod I am looking at the 5c collets for my new al336d lathe when it turns up. I have been using mt3 collets and er32 collets in my al50 and love them. Where did you get you collets from?



Cam, I got my Imperial 5C Collets (and the chuck) from Little Machine Shop in the US and my Metric ones from CTC in Hong Kong. I have since found a supplier on Albaba who sells them all including Hex and Square (metric and imperial). He says minimum order is 100 pieces but I have heard he will accept a sample order.

I was going to stock up once the coffers refill.

If you are interested, I think I will have a spare, hardly used Hare and Forbes 5C Collet Spindle kit and a handful of unused metric 5C collets that somebody gave me (but I bought a complete set soon after) once I get my chuck sorted out.

EDIT: Here is the link to the supplier above


http://dzdrjj.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-214632782/5C_COLLET.html


----------



## rodw

Well, I got my chuck fitted up late this evening. Following on from my [email protected] phone photo, this is what I came up with for my master pattern.

This is now my master for any other chucks I fit to this lathe. I am so glad I took the time to make this as it made everything so easy! None of the heart in mouth stuff wondering if it will fit as planned when you take it off your spindle!






The next chuck I fit will just be so easy now I have made this up.

This is an exact copy of the lathe spindle mounting flange (but a bit thicker). As stated yesterday, I held this in my 4 jaw chuck an fitted this up snug to the back of the 3 jaw chuck, turned it over and faced the back side and tided it up. While it was in the chuck, I decided to drill the centre as I would ever get another chance and for some reason, I decided to drill and tap the hole so I could use a transfer screw at either side if I ever needed to mark a hole in another piece and I could still use that as a precise reference of the centre.

The next step was to install some transfer screws in the back of the 3 jaw






and fit this template up to it. One quick bash with a hammer and I had 3 nice centre punch marks. Then it was over to the mill and I drilled the three holes starting with a 3mm pilot hole that lets me see the drill flex and bend as I line it up in the centre punch divot.

So with the template done, I chucked up another piece of cast iron in my 4 jaw and  machined a recess that was an exact match to the template boss. Once I was happy with the fit, I left it in the 4 jaw chuck  (heavy as) and unmounted the chuck, so I could check fit on the spindle boss. I figured if it was not right, I could just bolt the chuck back on again. I nednt have bothered, It was a beautiful fit!.

Now over to the bench and I fitted up my template and grabbed a transfer punch (not a screw this time).






I punched drilled and tapped one hole and with the two pieces held together so nothing could move as shown above, I punched the other two hole positions.











Back over to the mill to drill and tap the other two holes






Finally starting to make progress! One piece of cast iron bolted up to the spindle!






In the earlier setup, the piece was held in the 4 jaw chuck so I could not machine the outside diameter. The blue paint is how  the material came from the supplier.






This pic also shows one of the mounting bolts that goes through the spindle flange and screws into the backing plate I made.


So from here, the next step was easy.  Face it off and tidy it up. I skimmed the hole in the centre again so it was machined in its final position. 







Then machine  a tight fitting 95mm boss to fit the back of the spindle chuck.






Fit the transfer screws to the  back of the collet chuck to mark the holes
And head over to the mill again, repeating the previous process to drill and tap the threaded mounting holes on the front of the backing plate.

And bolt it up!











Look how dirty my lathe got with all this cast iron!

I had run out of time by now and a quick check of the runout (0.10mm  or 0.004" TIR) was a bit disappointing. I thought I could see a slight gap at the back of the collet chuck so I went inside and found a drawing of the chuck on the Little Machine Shop web site. Sure enough, the drawing showed the recess was 4mm deep. I had measured it at 5mm and set the height of my boss to be 4.8mm so I think a quick adjustment in the morning will fix it. There is zero runout on the backing plate I machined and the registers on the back and front of the backing plate are perfect so there is no reason for this chuck not to be concentric due to anything I have done! Wish me luck tomorrow!


----------



## rodw

Ooops, I missed one photo. I had to turn a few things inside out to machine the outside diameter to size.






You can see, I swung the tool post right round and had to reverse the tool in the holder to match the job at hand.


----------



## rodw

Had a quick look at the chuck again scratched around for my feeler gauges which have not been used for over 30 years since the stopped putting points in cars. I soon found the reason for the runout I saw last night.






The gap was 2 thou. (Yep my feeler gauges are so old, they are imperial!)

As suspected, I had made the boss too high so I just skimmed a bit more off the top. 






I played for a while and found that the way you tightened the bolts securing the chuck to the backing plate made quite a difference. 

Then I put a 12mm drill in a collet and put my best dial indicator onto the job.






Measured 0.01mm of runout! That is 0.00039" TIR.

How good is that for a rank amateur? I am happy as!

I think I will call this job done!


----------



## Swifty

A job well done Rod, I could hear your sigh of relief down here in Melbourne when you finally checked the runout.

Paul.


----------



## rcfreak177

* (Yep my feeler gauges are so old, they are imperial!)
*

Hahaha! careful our friends in the USA will have a piece of you for that comment.

Nice job there, Silently following along still.

Baz.


----------



## rodw

rcfreak177 said:


> * (Yep my feeler gauges are so old, they are imperial!)
> *
> 
> Hahaha! careful our friends in the USA will have a piece of you for that comment.
> 
> Nice job there, Silently following along still.
> 
> Baz.



Baz, the scary thing is back in the late 70's when I bought them, I actually thought in imperial! 

Now I refuse to buy a tape measure or ruler with inches on it!


----------



## rodw

This thread has given me some Inspiration.
http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/f13/siege-super-x3-mill-mods-3611/index2.html

I spent a couple of hours looking for options for a spindle lock on my SX3 Mill. Google led me back to this forum. I liked the simplicity of the brass button approach on this thread but the SX3 needs a different approach.

I spent some time today designing a SX3 version which needs to enter from the side. It doesn't need a circlip because it is about 65mm long and will need a guide to slide through that will retain the spring. Hopefully, I will make a start on it tomorrow. I gotta find an excuse to use my collet chuck!


----------



## rodw

This is a rough drawing of what I have in mind viewed from the front of the mill.






I will turn this out of 12mm bar stock. The button will have a 10mm dia head on it and a 12mm dia flange  on the inside of the case so it can't pop out. The shaft is 7mm which is the same width as the slots in the flanged spindle (which is only roughly drawn).

The smaller shaft will pass through a bracket secured from above with some M3 countersunk screws in the top of the mill cover. the only tricky bit will be to get the height of this part right it is level with the hole in the case.

I have not drawn it, but I will fit a compression spring on the left hand side of the bracket to keep the button away from the spindle until it is pressed.

After a bit more thinking, I will probably fit the lock on the opposite side of the drawing as I am left handed.

I like the simplicity of this idea but if anybody has any suggested improvements. please post them up.


----------



## rodw

Well, this is slowly coming together. It's gunna be sweet!

So my first job with my collet chuck.






I turned each end down so I could get my tools in there. I used a neutral tool shown to get clearance then used left and right hand turning tools to get a nice square edge to the flanges.

awesome Chuck!






The finished locking pin. I used my ball turner to cut the radius.






Time to clean up the casting and make sure there is a milled surface to mount the support to and the side is relatively smooth for the button flange to seat against. After it is milled, use the DRO to measure how thick the casting is by comparing the height of the milled surface to the mill table and note the measurement as we'll need it later. (mine was 6.25mm)






Yup, the head of the mill is naked for now but still runs even if the spindle tacho display is hanging loose by the wires.I had to use a big end mill to reach the bottom when I cleaned up the side. 

Baz, I was in shock! it was an imperial end-mill! And only because I got a good deal on a set from an online auction AND they sent me the wrong set! They could not fix the problem by replacing them with metric ones per the listing so they were very cheap after I gave them a piece of my mind.

Finished inside.






You can see there are a few rough bits in the side of the casting that might need cleaning up. 

Now to make the support. I cut it from a piece of 8mm flat bar Mild Steel. Measures 14mm x 18mm. The two mounting holes are 2.5mm from the edge (13mm apart). A good excuse to use my new Sensitive feed drill chuck from LMS. I tried to buy one from the ages ago but they were out of stock. 






I bought a used one off ebay but never really got it working as it was not in good order. As they were back in stock, I added one to my Collet Chuck order. If you have not seen one before, you pull the chuck down with your fingers so you don't break a drill. Probably did not need to use it for a 2.5mm hole, but I had to find out how good it was.

Tapping 2 x M3 holes. You can see a countersunk screw in one hole






Where I got to today. Hopefully I will finish it on Saturday if Camo does not distract me too much as he is dropping round when he picks up his new lathe!






It took a bit of figuring to get the clearance for the locking pin over the boss in the middle of the cover. In the end, I put a parallel across the cover and measured the difference in height between the milled section and the top of the boss. I aimed for about 1mm of clearance between the pin and the boss and drilled a 7mm hole in the support that the pin will pass through. For my mill, the hole was 7.5mm from the edge of the support that mates with the cover.

So there is not much left to do. The plan is to clamp the mill cover down on the table red side up, indicate it parallel and find the X&Y edges. Then I will use a Coaxial centring gauge to locate the centre of the hole for the spindle and note the measurement. Then I will drill and countersink 2 M3 holes to mount the support so the locking pin will hit the spindle dead centre eg. The mounting screws just need to be in the milled section and straddle the spindle centre line.  All I will then need to do is to set the cover up on its side and drill a larger hole for the button at exactly the right spot to line up with the support. That is why I measured the thickness of the cover. The other coordinate will be centre of the hole noted earlier.

I hope it works!


----------



## rodw

Well, I finished this off. And it works!

I had to indicate the front edge based on the measurements I had so I was glad I remembered I had a mirror to read the scale.






Next step was to find the centre of the hole the spindle passes through using a coaxial centreing gauge. This is an awesome gadget when you get your head around it. You can see I mounted a post from my clamping it to stop the dial from spinning. First, rotate it above the hole to get it pretty well centred. Then with the spindle turning on slow speed, adjust the x table to minimize the dial movement. Do again for the Y axis an you are done. repeat if desired.






And check the pin actually lines up with the support we added.






Much happier now.So time to fit it and screw the support down.





Awesoe! it does

You can see the end of the pin in this shot . I trimmed the length to suit at this time.
And here is another shot with verything mounted in position






And the finished job.






How neat is that?


----------



## james_III

Ok, that's clever and my x3 seems to need one more modification  Only worry I can see, is it strong enough? Maybe I'm only one with over thigh tendency.


----------



## rodw

james_III said:


> Ok, that's clever and my x3 seems to need one more modification  Only worry I can see, is it strong enough? Maybe I'm only one with over thigh tendency.



I am pretty gentle tightening the drawbar, the casting is 6mm thick, so I doubt you cold break it! If there is a problem it will be because I used M3 screws not M4 or M5, but that was the size countersunk bolt I had. I think if the end of the pin was tapered at the same angle as the spline, it might be a bit more secure. I had to oversize the outer hole a bit to get the button in (which adds a bit of play), so keep the thick section of the button as short as you can and maybe keep 1.5-2.0m clearance above the boss in the casting (but be mindful of clearance with the pulley below the pin).


----------



## rodw

Here is a great addition if you have a collet chuck and an electric drill. It is also a great project for a collet block set.











If you have not used a collet chuck, you might not know that uing 5C collets involves a lot of chuck spinning so now I have the fasted collet chuck key in Australia! 

I must say, this works great!

Pretty simple really, start with a piece of 1/2" or 12mm bar (which I used) but you get to use both the 4 sided and six sided collet block. After cutting the Hex shaft, rechuck it and cut the groove. I used a 60 degree Neutral tool.


----------



## bazmak

Thank you rod for an interesting thread.I know its old but I have just finished rereading it all and have added this comment to bring it back to the front
Perhaps you can let us have an update. Regards Barry


----------



## rodw

bazmak said:


> Thank you rod for an interesting thread.I know its old but I have just finished rereading it all and have added this comment to bring it back to the front
> Perhaps you can let us have an update. Regards Barry



Barry, Thanks for the comments.  I'll have to see what I can do to add a bit to this when I get a chance for your reading enjoyment 

Currently, doing a bit of a garden makeover outside the shed so time is precious. Every shed should be surrounded by landscaped gardens don't you think?


----------



## bazmak

I agree rod,i have to share my time too.Just finished a wall and tidied up the back garden while the weather has cooled and to keep the wife happy
Today I di 3 hrs in the shed maching rebar and then 1 hr in the garden
1 hr playing online poker and another collating steam locomotive photographs which I collect.Nothing important to do so I share myself about doing what I am in the mood for.Some more photos of your setup would be nice
Regards Barry


----------



## rodw

bazmak said:


> Some more photos of your setup would be nice
> Regards Barry



You might need to be patient Barry, I have to get this done






Shown here after 2 days pulling out 22 metres of old retaining wall and everything green in the yard with a bobcat and excavator, 6 truck loads carried away and a few more loads coming in. You can see the operator dinted the brand new fence. I got it to here over the weekend so hopefully will get it further along over Easter.






Getting ready to install popup sprinklers and decided to add fertiliser injection so came home with this today





The venturi injector requires a pressure loss across the bridge hence the ball valve in the middle which is used to regulate the pressure drop. I need to drill and tap the T pieces for pressure guages 1/4" BSP so there will be a little bit of shed time here in this project. For those that are wondering, there will be a 1" main from the water meter entering on the right and the water goes through a main shutoff valve, then a dual check valve back flow preventer, a filter and then the 1/2" bypass/injectors come off. I need to replace the 1/2" coupling with a union so it can be unassembled for servicing. 

You can see the small spiggot on the venturi  that will suck the fertiliser in and inject it into the water. The injector comes with a pressure table chart for the inlet and outlet side that allows you to calibrate the flow of fertiliser back to litres per minute/hour.. The irrigation shop says I can insert some rubber test points into my tapped holes that let me poke the meter in to measure the pressure on each side so I don't need to install two gauges out in the open. The meter is then used like a tyre pressure guage when you want it. Should be interesting.  33 years since I majored in this and I've forgotten what I once knew about irrigation design backwards.

By all accounts, I should have enough water to drive 6 spinklers on one zone with a 9.1 metre throw so they will do the whole yard.


----------



## bazmak

all you need is lawn.Thankfully I don't have any which means I don't have a mower,strimmer etc and I have an additional couple of hrs in the shed per week.All planned of course when I bought the house.Also keeps the high water bills down


----------



## geo

rod don't know where you are in Brisbane but millers tooling at loganholme are very good to deal with can supply anything h&f have at a better price


----------



## rodw

geo said:


> rod don't know where you are in Brisbane but millers tooling at loganholme are very good to deal with can supply anything h&f have at a better price



Thanks Geo, not all that far away from me. There is also Brisbane Engineering Supplies. I think I have just about got everything now. While the exchange rate was good, I bought a lot of stuff from CTC ex Hong Kong. But i did find this morning that a dedicated set of drills to suit my  BSPT taps from CTC would be handy as my metric fractionals stop at 10mm. But I looked up a chart and pulled out the right imperial one...


----------



## ronboult

Hi Rod

What is the  dilution ratio of your venturi injector?
Also what soluble fertilizer will you use?
I have tried Aquasol but have trouble getting it to dissolve at 40g/l which is required for my injector.

By the way how is your Ditron DRO going. My new Sieg Runmaster lathe came with a Ditron installed but I find it a bit clunky. Instruction book could use a rewrite. I like to switch between radius and diam on the lathe depending on what I am doing and it is not straight forward and I always forget what mode I am in.
Will probally swap it out for another ES12 because it is hard to find any lathe specific DRO readouts anymore.
Cheers
Ron
Macleay Is


----------



## rodw

ronboult said:


> Hi Rod
> 
> What is the  dilution ratio of your venturi injector?
> Also what soluble fertilizer will you use?
> I have tried Aquasol but have trouble getting it to dissolve at 40g/l which is required for my injector.
> 
> By the way how is your Ditron DRO going. My new Sieg Runmaster lathe came with a Ditron installed but I find it a bit clunky. Instruction book could use a rewrite. I like to switch between radius and diam on the lathe depending on what I am doing and it is not straight forward and I always forget what mode I am in.
> Will probably swap it out for another ES12 because it is hard to find any lathe specific DRO readouts anymore.
> Cheers
> Ron
> Macleay Is



Ron, 

I'm not sure yet about the fertiliser injector application rates. I got the turf down last Friday (9 days ago) and the sprinklers working on Sunday so its only been a week so far.






They say there is no point fertilising in the first month so I've got a few weeks before I need to worry about it. I'm not thinking in terms of dilution rates but rather in terms of litres per hour which will let me calibrate the dilution rate from there. I also have this inlet pickup line (from the Irrigation shop, Slack Creek) which includes a needle valve to further accurately regulate the flow





I think I'll probably go to an Agricultural Supplies place to purchase my fertiliser and have not ruled out mixing my own. A friend who sells liquid fertiliser said he'll try and round up 20 litres of concentrate for me.

Anyway, back on topic, I had a bit of shed time today and finalised my Body Lift kit for the latest October 2015 and on Toyota Hilux, then spent some time taking photos of it....






These will retail for a bit over $700 each. Its taken a good month to get everything laser cut and powder coated after the initial prototyping. I don't actually have much work to do this myself other than machining the body blocks and 2 hours of welding every six months. The oval black brackets with holes in them are countersunk and tapped to M8 by my laser cutters so I just have to debur the edges and drop it off for powder cutting (100-200 at a time).

As far as the Ditron goes, I like it. Its a quality piece of gear, nicer than the one I used on my mill. I have worked out the tool memory but today when I wanted it, I had forgotten how to retrieve the offsets. I must document the process as I want to gang up the turning of the small spacers in the photo to do 5-6 at a time. First pass is a 2mm deep groove with a 45 degree neutral tools followed up with parting off in the centre of this groove so that each piece ends up with a 1mm bevelled edge both sides.. 

I've just left my DRO set up on diameter mode. There is an indicator on the far left of the display to tell you which mode (eg. diameter or radius) you are running. Can't see any need to ever change it.


----------



## rodw

Thought I'd give a bit of an update on my irrigation system as its shed related by virtue of the fact the irrigation controller is mounted to the wall of the shed.

The turf has been down 4 weeks now and today I got the fertiliser injector calibrated and working. Shown below adding  about 1 gram per litre of water to the lawn for the first time. Coming into winter, we got a couple of weeks of nice warm weather to kick it off so it looks really good now. I'm a bit annoyed becasue there is quite a bit of nutgrass (sedge) that was in the turf but that is easily controlled with Sempra (which costs $45 for 25 grams of ingredient - Ouch!)





I had a few dramas as I put a crowbar through the water main and a week later found  a leak near the manhole the water meter hides in on a Sunday.






I had to dig it up, call in a son in law favour to get the plumber back only to find it was still leaking in the evening so I was out in the torchlight  fixing it. Any left it open for a week to confirm no leaks and carefully bedded the pipework on some crusher dust before back filling the trench.

I went to a Rural supplies place and he recommended GF9 fertiliser at this time of the year. Made by Grow Force, its one of their Flowfeed fertilisers formulated for liquid fertiliser application. You mix it up as a concentrate at the rate of 1 x 25kg bag per 100 litres of water (250g per litre). It cost me $69 for the bag. Growforce say that crops can tolerate 5 g per litre of fertiliser per litre as a final concentration but usually much less than that is used. Their example on the bag works on 1 gram per litre which is what I adopted.

I bought  a 60 litre wheelie bin from Bunnings for $15. Carefully measured in 60 litres and found it was brim full so I took out 10 litres and engraved a 50 litre mark on it which meant at the recommended concentrate, I needed 1/2 a bag.  I repurposed a leanto by my garden shed into a fertiliser shed and here's what I ended up with.






So for ronboult who said he had problems with his fertiliser injector, here is what I learnt about getting it up and running. 
1. You need plenty of pressure as you need to give up about 60 kPa before the venturi functions at all.
2. The Mazzei 384 injector I am using is made in USA and their calibration data quotes a really obscure pressure unit of kg/m2. To convert to kPa (Kilopascals), multiply by 98.1.
3. You really need the horrendously expensive Mazzei needle valve pictured earlier above to cut the flow back so you don't have to dilute the concentrate.
4. I measured the maximum injection rate using a 3 litre measuring jug over a 10 minute period and found I was injecting 200 ml per minute.
5. I ran some calculations and decided to cut this back to around 10%. After setting the needle valve and remeasuring the flow over 20 minutes, I was injecting 45 ml per minute..
6. My pressure gauge told me I had a working pressure of 200 kPa and the sprinkler calibration chart told me I was using 10.62 litres per minute at that pressure. That worked out i needed 236 grams per litre of concentrate to give 1 gram per litre at the sprinkler. I decided to adopt the standard 250 g per litre concentrate (25 kg or half a bag into my mixing tank) so I am applying 1.06 gram per litre.
7. They say to fertilise every time you irrigate.
8. With 2 sprinkler zones running for 10 minutes each, I am using 900 ml per irrigation so the half bag ($35) of fertiliser should last for 50 applications. Thats about 3.5 months so it will cost me about $10 per month to feed my lawn. It will be interesting to see how it all goes from here.
9. I'd forgotten how cold urea  gets via endothermic reaction when mixed with water! (urea must be the primary ingredient of GF9- ice cold beer anyone?). You can see the condensation on the wheelie bin in the pic above.


----------



## ronboult

Hi Rod
Thanks very much for taking the time to update your fertilisation procedure.
The info on the Fertiliser (GF9) and the application rate is very helpful. If I read your post correctly your injector is injecting at a ratio of 236:1 ( 236g/L concentrate gives 1g/L at the sprinkler). My Injectors are mechanical pumps run by water flow ( Dosematic) and are adjustable from 40:1 to 200:1. So if I make up my concentrate at less than 200g/L everything should be OK. This is well within the solubility you stated for GF9. Interesting as I could not get Aquasol to completely dissolve even at 40g/L
You seem to have it running well given the lush looking lawn.

PS Found the radius /diam indicator on the Ditron Display-thanks
Cheers
ron


----------



## rodw

ronboult said:


> Hi Rod
> Thanks very much for taking the time to update your fertilisation procedure.
> The info on the Fertiliser (GF9) and the application rate is very helpful. If I read your post correctly your injector is injecting at a ratio of 236:1 ( 236g/L concentrate gives 1g/L at the sprinkler). My Injectors are mechanical pumps run by water flow ( Dosematic) and are adjustable from 40:1 to 200:1. So if I make up my concentrate at less than 200g/L everything should be OK. This is well within the solubility you stated for GF9. Interesting as I could not get Aquasol to completely dissolve even at 40g/L
> You seem to have it running well given the lush looking lawn.
> 
> PS Found the radius /diam indicator on the Ditron Display-thanks
> Cheers
> ron



Ron, yes If I mixed the concentrate at 236 grams per litre of water, I'd be adding 1 gram of the concentrate powder per litre at the sprinkler heads. But the injector ratio is different as I am injecting 45 ml (0.045 L) per litre of water. Thats actually (1000-45):45 or 955:45 or 21.2:1
(955/45 = 21.2 ).

I think that the 1 gram per litre is a very conservative application (which is cool when just starting out so as not to burn the lawn) and will talk to the fertiliser shop again to check their rates now I have some calibration data. I think it should be up around 3 g per litre. From what I can work out at 40:1 you are adding 25 ml per litre so your minimum application rate is 6.25 grams at the 250 g/L concentration I'm using so you need to cut yours back.


----------



## ronboult

Rod
I am now totally confused. If your concentrate is 236 g/L and your injector ratio is 21:1 i.e. 1ml per 20ml of flow then I believe your sprinkler concentration will be approx 11.2g/L and not 1g/L.
One of us has it arse about somehow. 

Somehow I think your injector ratio is really 236:1. 
Are you sure that 45ml of concentrate is added to just 1 litre of water going to your sprinklers? This would mean that you would be using 45 Litres of concentrate in 1000 L of sprinkler water i.e. approx 10.62Kg of fertiliser per 1000 L (10.6 g /L)

Ron

Just had a thought. Is the 45ml added to 1 litre going through the Venturi with a lot more water actually by passing the Venturi?


----------



## rodw

Ron,  we are coming at this from 2 different directions. Your system works on ratios. Mine works on litres per minute injected and the fertiliser instructions are based on the same methodology I use. I never calculated ratios until you posted and I think I was wrong in what I did.  I'm injecting 45 ml per minute and the sprinklers deliver 10.6 litres per minute. The liquid concentrate I'm using is 250 g per litre. So there is 250g * 0.045 L = 11.25 g of fertiliser in my 45ml. Thats spread over the 10.6 litres delivered to my lawn so the final concentration is 11.25 g /10.6 L = 1.06 g per litre. I think if I calculated the ratio it is the 236:1 you stated which coincidently was the exact number of grams per litre in the concentrate I needed to add to get exactly 1 g per litre so your post confused me 

Anyway while we've been confusing each other, my lawn is responding well to its fertiliser application a few days ago and is looking better by the day...


----------



## rodw

And yes,  a portion of the flow bypasses the venturi. In the pic, you can see the large 1" ball valve is partly shut off to create a pressure differential which I can measure with the 2 guages either side. This forces some water through the venturi which is called the motive flow. This in turn  creates a suction that injects about 200 ml per minute if unconstricted but then I have a graduated needle valve that allows me to throttle that back to the 45 ml which is pretty much as low as I can get it to go. So if I want to add say 3 g per litre, I can open up the needle valve a bit more without changing anything else. There are some calibration charts for the venturi. For example with 275 kPa on the high side and 172 kPa  on the low side, there is 7.6 l/min motive flow and 28.4 l/hr suction flow.


----------



## rodw

We acquired a small lathe at work with a 70mm spindle but it came with no chuck and no tooling. But at $900, the price was right.






You can get an idea of its size by looking at the blue posts which are actually a vehicle hoist!

A mate gave me a heads up about a cheap chuck at Hare and Forbes so I went and had a look at it. I'm sure we can swing a 400mm chuck on it, but a near new 315mm DI8 chuck for $150 was a bargain given it retails for about $1k.

So then the pressure was on to be able to actually use it so I decided to have a go at making a tool holder for its Quick Change Tool Post over the weekend and this is what I came up with. Just gotta grab some set screws in the morning and it will be complete.






I placed a tool holder from my lathe for comparison. You can see this one is a monster. My 25mm 60 deg dovetail cutter was at its limit doing this one! Every part you see I made. The washer must be 4140 so it did not knurl very well and I turned the M12 x 1 threaded rod (my third thread ever)and made the lock nut as well. 

Just a heads up, if you are going to make a dovetail for a QCTP, if you grab two pieces of machined rod and place it in the dovetails and measure the distance between, that is what you are shooting for when machining it. When you make the drawings, include the circle for reference as part of your drawing so it is tangential to (eg. touching) both dovetail surfaces and it makes it so much easier. This is the third tool holder I've made and it turned out the best of the lot after I was told about this cool trick. For this one, I used 10mm dia circle but just grabbed a drill bit and an end mill when I measured it. It was a bit hard to draw without a part as a model so I printed the drawings at 100% and checked it for fit by placing the tool post over it and made a few tweaks before I was happy to head for the shed.


----------



## rodw

Geez, 18 months since I've updated this thread.  I have to report I'm currently latheless.  I never thought I'd see the day I'd part with my AL320G but the Optimum TU-3008G comes with a D1-4 camlock chuck and has a full gearbox so when a mate of mine told a random shopper in Hare and Forbes that I might part with my lathe, I did the deal with the intention of upgrading to the Optimum
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L691
But I think I can just squeeze in an AL336D that comes complete with DRO, coolant, spindle brake and worklight. 
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L682D
By the time the Optimum is optioned up with 4 jaw chuck and all of the fruit, it won't cost that much different.

So Hare and Forbes will have a sale in November so I'm going to see if I can wait that long.....

I also sold my plasma cutter on my CNC table via another forum under similar circumstances as I did not have any firm for sale plans but the right opportunity came along so I can see a Hypertherm 45XP coming in its place.


----------



## Scott_M

Latheless ?  those are scary words. I got my first lathe around 1976 and have not been without one since. I currently have 3.
I hope you can make it until November without any real withdrawal symptoms   The 336 looks pretty nice, It should be worth the wait.
Hope to see an update on the plasma as well. Thanks for checking in.

Scott


----------



## rodw

Yes, it might be hard, but I also expect that I'll be leasing an industrial unit for my ecommerce business in between now and then and some of my toys (and a few others) are going to live there so setting it all up will keep my mind off the deficiencies


----------



## clockworkcheval

All nice stuff, Rod. I used to have two 150 liter stills running in tandem. I had them equipped with Norse marble colums. Those are pipes of about dia 120 mm and length 600 mm with a screw-on lid and filled with glass marbles. The main benefit is easy cleaning. I had to let go when my wife got a serious position in the local police force. Have Fun!


----------



## joco-nz

A mate has an AL336D. You will love it. A foot brake for threading is just awesome. The only thing to have a look at will be the lead screw covers.  They stop full travel towards the chuck and with a face plate on you can’t get all the way there.  He ended up removing them. 

One day I would like one as well. But the 320G still owes me a few years yet.

Cheers,
J.


----------



## rodw

Yes, a mate also has had one for a few years and says the same thing about the leadscrew covers. He uses it in a semi-commercial setting so its done a lot of work. 
Had it been available at the time, I would have gone with the Optimum TU3008G over the 320G
But it needs to be optioned up a fair bit so the 336D wins as its ready to go out of the box.
I might add, I was given 2800 reasons to part with my AL320G and have kept all of my tooling except for some starter ISO tools I have never used since I found the CCMT inserts. I think I only paid about $1900 for it.


----------



## joco-nz

Nice.  Wonder what I could get for mine with its custom stand and 3axis DRO.


----------



## rodw

Mine had the custom stand, DRO, coolant and a collet chuck. I was not really trying to sell it, it just happened....


----------



## joco-nz

Or keep lathe and CNC it like I am doing the Mill and get a 336.  Now THERE is a plan.


----------



## rodw

Yeh,  I thought of that. I've seen some photos of one thats been converted where the guy removed all of the gearboxes at the headstock and saddle. Using LinuxCNC you can use your existing DRO scales for encoder feedback for servo motors but don't ask me exactly how!


----------



## joco-nz

5um linear scales from what I have read are not enough resolution for feedback.   At least that was what I understand for a mill and suspect same for lathe.  Looking at 2500 to 3000 ppr optical rotary encoders at the moment.  MUCH cheaper than linear scales.


----------



## rodw

I had 1 micron scales on my 320G but realistically, I can't see a real problem. 5 Micron scales are accurate to 0.005mm, mine are accurate to 0.001mm. Its unlikely you can hold that level of accuracy (eg +- 0.005mm) and if anything, the lower counts on your scales might be an advantage as the frequency able to be read is going to be a limiting factor but as I said I have no idea.


----------



## Rickl

Nice shed Rod. Mine is similar in size. 2.6 x 3.8 metres. C6 lathe and X2 mill. Have had them for about 10yrs. Never miss a beat. 
Happy building. 
Rick
Sth Australia


----------



## rodw

Well, its taken about a month to move in but now my business is in an industrial shed with a bit more room and a few more toys.







Small walk behind forklift in the background. The hoist is for some R&D work for vehicle products and is wired to 3 phase power. All of the e-commerce stuff in pallet racking to the right.

And a compressor perched up above the toilets





But I really digress. The Hare and Forbes Annual  sale pricing is now available and I went down there to buy an AL336 Deluxe to replace the lathe I sold yesterday
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L682D

But while I was there, I noticed a couple of used lathes the said they had traded from a school a day or so earlier and while they had a few queries about them, nobody wanted a 3 phase lathe.




So these are 4 years old and just traded in. They have hardly been used and they still had the steadies wrapped in plastic in the cupboards. They have faceplates,  coolant, 3 & 4 jaw chucks, drill chuck and even a couple of tools. These have a 40mm spindle, DI-4 chuck and are made in Taiwan rather than China. New, they are another $1k dearer than the AL336 I was going to buy. 
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L237D
So cutting a long story short, I screwed them down to $3900 and put a deposit down. So I got rid of a well used lathe I bought new for about $2k and upgraded it to a lightly used but rather dirty  lathe about the same age as mine worth $6.5k new (with the coolant) for an outlay of just $1100. I'm pretty happy with that.

So I'm just waiting on their service department to give it the once over before they deliver it to me. I guess if I ever take it home, I'll just have to add a VFD. Anyway, I'll report back when I get it delivered and wired in.


----------



## Scott_M

The building looks great ! and nice deal on the lathe.
It looks like some work to do getting everything set up and in its place, but that shouldn't take long.
Have fun, be safe and good luck.

Scott


----------



## DJP

It's nice to see a vehicle hoist in a shop/shed. I have the same but wider to accommodate larger vehicles. The two post design is wonderful for access to all components. I allowed friends and neighbours who needed a hoist for repair to use my hoist but eventually I had to stop the offer. I didn't mind providing a specialty tool or some advise but when they came totally unprepared and expecting me to do the work I pushed back. 

My shed is one half dedicated to auto repair and the other half a metal workshop. If you will not have employees the space between machines doesn't need to be generous as only one machine can be used at a time. If you have a mill placing it diagonally in a corner saves a lot of room.

I would put in lots of racks for storage before you layout the machines and work benches. Once I place something on a rack it becomes part of my memory system for later retrieval. You can't have too many storage racks.

Congrats on an industrial space for your shed. I considered the same move but worried about break in and theft when the shed is not in use. Perhaps that's why my home shed is usable but tightly packed.


----------



## rodw

Thanks Scott and DJP for the feedback. Yes, don't ask me what the insurance cost. I had to have liability insurance which meant I needed product liability as well. Ouch!
I have not decided whether to take my small SX3 mill from home up there or just buy a drillpress.
There was a space above the office that had no access to it, just a doorway with no stairs and a ladder.  I knew where there was a set of metal stair stringers so we relocated the doorway, added a cavity sliding door and ran stairs up. (Handrail has now been extended)






Upstairs is a fully equipped photo studio for product shots. This area here is for packaging so we have pull out wireless scales under the bench for freight and a very cool Ranpack machine that fills boxes with environmentally friendly crumpled paper void fill.  A Zebra label printer is tucked away under the stairs for shipping labels. Our software is very efficient as the store interfaces with our inventory management and Xero accounting plus with all of our shipping providers so it only takes a few mouse clicks to ship a product, get a label from the freight provider and generate the manifest. Behind this area is two rows of pallet racking that go full length with a small area for machine tools at the back. Next on the agenda is an Android based barcode reader that will allow us to scan our barcoded components into the carton while picking so you can't make a mistake and the  shipping label will be printed from the barcode scanner.


----------



## DJP

Friends who have similar small business ventures making unique products for other industries have moved to CNC machines. I was able to purchase a Myford lathe and Bridgeport mill plus big metal band saw when they upgraded. A big issue is making parts for previously sold assemblies where everything needs to fit and work in the field. Packing and shipping were never mentioned as issues, perhaps because these sales are not to the general public but to specific unique industries.  If you are into e-commerce (shopify) then I can see your need to focus on fulfillment speed.

Thanks for sharing your venture as it's a nice change of topic on the forum.


----------



## rodw

I think it depends on whether you are selling to other businesses or to consumers. We use Australian ecommerce software called neto. Nothing has its level of integration with fulfilment. So much so, they now offer Shopify users an addon that lets them do the fulfilment like we do. 

I don't really have any parts that need CNC equipment although I do have some laser cutting done. I've tried to avoid hands on production myself. Currently I have a shipment of plastic parts on the water from China. I initially approached them for supply of the raw material which was always in short supply in this country. Eventually they offered to machine the parts and sent a sample which tested fine. The shipment represents a saving of about AUD $30k and will be packaged and labelled in kits ready to go. I have another part that is laser cut and I have thought about cutting it on my plasma cutter. It costs me AUD $7.45 each once its machined and powder coated. The Chinese have quoted USD $1.15 per piece and are going to send me a sample. Its hard to justify in house production although I did think of adding some CNC capability earlier.


----------



## DJP

One last observation from the small machine shops building devices for particular industries. These guys like to stay one man shops with no desire to expand production with employees. Perhaps it's a retirement plan for them but they do seem happy.

Enjoy your venture. Happiness is found in the journey and not the end result.


----------



## rodw

DJP said:


> One last observation from the small machine shops building devices for particular industries. These guys like to stay one man shops with no desire to expand production with employees. Perhaps it's a retirement plan for them but they do seem happy.
> 
> Enjoy your venture. Happiness is found in the journey and not the end result.



Thanks. For me the hobby is the business, not making stuff in my shed. My time is too valuable for that. Staff will come but there are some fundamentals left to to tick off. Maybe in the new year.


----------



## rodw

Hmm, Photobucket is offline so my photos have disappeared. So time to upload a couple. Quite a funny day on Friday. Paid for my lathe at Hare and Forbes in the morning and they put it on transport to me in the next suburb.  Ducked hoe after that to pick something up and then stopped at Chris's place. I asked him what he knew about 3 phase power and he said a fair bit. I asked him if he made house calls and he said he did. The truck arrived and the guy was adamant that he had a delivery for me despite the open truck being latheless. Then he said "Oh my God, I forgot to pick it up! SO an hour later he came back and I was able to sling it off with my little electric forklift and get it in position. It was pretty easy to connect up and everything worked perfect. This pic shows it after I started to clean it up. Once I finished cleaning it the next day, It was looking almost like a new one. 





Then there was the matter of converting it to a QCTP that was compatible with my tooling and holders. Chris said to lock two nuts on the toolpost and it will just screw off which it did. So later  I didn't have any 16mm dia steel so I dropped back in again to see if he had any. He did and then proceeded to cut the required threads for me. The bottem post is the original one for the turret style and the top one is the one we made. Chris suggested to machine some flats on each  of them to suit a 14mm spanner which only took a few minutes on my mill.




So here is the final result. Very happy with it now!




This morning I got the coolant tank all cleaned out and filled so the only thing left to do is to is to add a work light and sort out my tool holder rack to store everything ready to go. I dialed in 3 of my most used tools to centre height that I use all of the time so its really ready to go. I also had a sparky there today who lit up a 3 phase power point for my yet to be replaced plasma cutter so its all coming together.


----------



## Shipdisturber

I think you may need a bigger shed! You have some very nice toys there.


----------



## Robert Carnell

Great thread guys, read it all this afternoon. Nice to have the room you need.

I had a Sieg X3 (CNC conversion), a 1m toolroom lathe and a mini-lathe (more CNC) in my garage, but have since moved into an apartment and Mill is in storage, I sold both lathes.

I just rented a storage unit at Kennards, and there is a power point outside, so will be moving the mill there and buying a Hafco AL-320G which I will strip immediately and convert to CNC.

I did a website showing some of my mini-lathe conversion if anyone is interested: www.cncprojects.net

Rob.


----------

