A few of my posts from elsewhere

[Blogwitch]

Rather than sending people to other sites to show what I had been up to, I thought I would repost my articles here. Only short ones at this time, but what they show being made may help someone along there own path.

These posts, all merged under one topic, if you have a question, then please quote which post you are referencing to.

So here goes, my little tooling exploits.


First one - 5C to Morse Taper

I have a couple of tools that I need to make that are produced from MT blank arbors. OK if doing the work in the lathe, but when it comes to the mill, it poses me a problem as to how to hold them accurately and rigid enough.

So, I looked at my range of adaptable tooling that I have made that goes between the lathe and mill, and came to the conclusion that a 5c to MT adapter is what I really needed.


So rooting thru Arc Euro's pages, I found just what I was looking for, a 5c blank end arbor (on the left), I always have a few blank MT arbours knocking about for making up bits of tooling when required. I tend to buy the ones that have threaded ends, then if a tang is needed, I can just fit the screw in tangs I can get from Arc, again, I always have some in stock.

The arbor was mounted up in my 5c collet chuck, a hole drilled thru and I started to bore out at a rough angle of what a MT is at using the topslide.

When a point was reached where there was still about 3/8" to 1/2" of the taper protruding, the boring was stopped.

I also took the opportunity at this break in the proceedings to remove the chemiblack from the 5c arbor. I like shiny things.

Over many years I have built up my tooling range, so I have at my disposal 1, 2 & 3 MT reamers. These are very handy to have if you are into making your own tooling, and don't cost all that much if you search about, I think I gathered mine from Tracy tools.

Both my MT2 & MT3 are hand reamers, having the square drive end on them, but by setting them up like I have, they can be used for machine cutting, but only use very slow cutting speeds, plus plenty of high pressure cutting lube. The feed is put on with the tailstock, and I soon reached the required depth

The taper only goes into the 5c arbor about 2", but that is more than enough length to support the blank MT, and mine fitted perfectly with absolutely no runout at all.

A drawbar is required to stop the MT falling out of it's taper mounting under the rigours of machining, so a root around in the spares box came up with a good fitting bolt. Then a stepped washer was made to fit in the back of the 5c adapter.

This is how it all fits together.
After this shot, I skimmed down the bolt head to half it's thickness, so I didn't have too much protruding out of the back of the 5c.

So now that I have this adapter, I will have no problems with holding blank MT arbors in both my 5c collet blocks, and my spindexer as well.

It can sit in the corner of my 5c rack amongst the other specialised ones until it is required for use.
Notice the neo magnet on there, holding the bits together so they don't get lost.

John

 

[Blogwitch]

The second one - Tailstock V centre drilling tool

Having made the 5c to MT3 holder, I can now start to knock out easy bits of tooling for my tailstock.

I decided to make the easy one first, a V centre to centralise bar or tube at the tailstock and to easily drill cross holes in them without going to a great deal of trouble.


The first job required is to increase the size of the head on the blank arbor, so these two need to be joined together.
The big bit is a piece of unknown steel from the scrap box.

It soon cleaned up fairly easily across the face, so I am in luck

The next job was to gather together a selection of growing sized drills to get me to very close to the required size.

Soon done.

Then came the boring out. Which caused a bit of a problem.
Having loaned out my imperial internal mike in the size I needed (it always happens), I had no easy way to measure the bore to give me the 0.001" interferance fit. So I used the next best thing, my clock vernier. Unfortunately, I ended up at exact size, rather than undersized as I wanted.
I really do need to get rid of those internal measuring tips, they just cannot give an accurate enough reading for bores.

Not to be deterred, a very light touch on with a straight knurl should do the trick.

As you can see, it really was just a light touch on, but enough to swell the blank end to give a couple of thou interferance.

A real good belting with a 2lb hammer persuaded them to stay forever locked together.

After giving the front and side faces a clean up, a 1/4" hole was drilled into the end, about an inch deep.
I am not expecting to use this tool for drilling holes any larger than that, just holes on centre for fitting roll pins, rivets or whatever.

Because the new head is larger than the size of the 5c collet block, I had to resort to fitting a parallel under the block to allow me to scribe a line around the centre of the head.
So this shows the calcs I used to get the centre height to set on my height gauge.

The lines were scribed.

The whole lot was then turned thru 180 degrees and the line position double checked, spot on.

I could have just mounted the block truly vertical, found centre with my coax indicator and cut the V with a 90 degree V cutter I have in my possession, but that wouldn't show anyone how to do the job with just a large milling cutter.

The 5c block needs to be set in the vice at 45 degrees, so you would have to find your own way to do that. I set up two precision angle blocks to give me the correct angle, then used those to check that my little Wixey digtal angle finder was accurate enough, it was spot on.

So the block was set up in the vice.

I am using a 16mm end mill for this job, you would use whatever you have for whatever depth of V that is required.
I just fed in a combination of down and across to get me to the stage shown.

What I am looking to do is to split the scribed line with the corner of the milled cut, so when coming down, and very nearly there, I just double checked that the angle hadn't moved.
It was OK, but if it had moved, you would retract the cutter some, and gently get the angle back to correct, then bring the cutter back into play with only very fine cuts.

As far as I am concerned, this is spot on, or near enough, to within a couple of thou of being perfectly centred. I have 'split the line'.

Plenty good enough for what this tool is designed for.

After a quick deburr and clean up, it is ready for use.
The ones you can buy are fitted with a clamp plate for holding the round bar in position, if you wanted to fit one, then fine, I am quite happy to use it as it is. So no need for the safety nannies to jump on my back

I am showing here the bar being held from the wrong side. Normally you would fit your drill bit into the lathe chuck, hold the bar in position with your left hand, in fact, I would have the bar nearly vertical, and move the bar and tool towards the drill in the chuck with the tailstock feed handle.

I will be making a few more bits of well known tooling over the next few weeks. I can only do so much hand filing on the flame licker, so when I have had enough of doing it, I will jump onto making an easy but useful bit of tooling.
Not everyone will want to make them, but I hope to give enough tips to make these posts a worthwhile read.


John

 

[Blogwitch]

The third - 5C to R8 adapter

This little bit of tooling is a follow on from my 5c to morse taper adapter, which was to allow me to machine blank arbors on my mill so that I could use them in the tailstock of my lathe, only this time it will allow me to make my own tooling for the mill, which uses an R8 fitting, not an easy shape to hold for machining.

Unlike the MT one I made, where I just wacked a reamer up the spout to get what I wanted, this time it all has to be done with technique.

The first thing was to set my boring bar to the depth, plus a little, of the R8 blank.
I have measured up the internal diameter of the 5c blank end arbor, and I will still have plenty of meat left on the arbor once it is bored to the size required (0.950") of the R8 fitting

What you have to realise, the blank 5c arbor is in fact made of some sort of higher carbon steel, so that they can harden the shank, and leave the main top end unhardened. So this is not an easy exercise, I am boring thru the softer end, and then taking out some of the hollow hardened shank. It is for this reason you can never really get a superb finish on the blank end bits, no matter what type, even though softer, the blank ends are still some sort of tool steel, that really is designed to be ground rather than turned.
Anyway, the job was achieved with no major problems, except the surface finish down inside of the hardened bore was a tad rough, and was still a little tight for getting the R8 arbor all the way in.
I would definitely NOT try to use a HSS boring bar, the hard stuff down the bore would flatten it off in no time.

So out came my bore hone, with just the two stones for smaller bores. I fitted a hand vice on the end of the flexi shaft so that with the lathe running at about 500 RPM, I could feed the hone right up and down inside where I had bored.

After about 15 minutes, the bore was a lot smoother, and both the R8 arbors that I tried slid in nice and smooth, with no slop.

It was now time to cut the taper for the arbor to sit in.
I offset the topslide to somewhere close to the taper required and cut away about half of the required depth.
This was then lightly smeared with engineers blue (NOT marking out blue). Engineers blue is a non setting compound, that will jump around and stick to anything that gets close to it. Get it inside the house, and you will be in deep s**t with the boss. No matter how hard you try, you just can't stop it getting onto everything in your shop.

The R8 arbor was then pushed into the taper and gently rotated. This transfers the blue onto the arbor that is touching the taper. I also marked up with a felt tip how far in the taper had penetrated.
As shown in this pic, only the bottom part of the taper was in contact, showing that the taper sides were too steep.
For me this is bad news, I always try to start with the taper shallower than required, then not so much material needs to be removed to reach the full surface covering required. When cutting tapers, it is very easy to take too much off, that is why I like to sneak up on it from a shallower taper.

After removing about 1/4 of a degree on the topslide setting, I reached the place where I wanted to start out from, a shallower taper, shown by the blue being at the top rather than the bottom.

After slightly slackening the topslide, and gently tapping it with a plastic handle of a screwdriver, after two attempts, I managed to get the full covering I wanted, even though very feint, and there was more than enough meat left in the hole to take it out to full size.

Because I now had the angle spot on, I could just cut down the taper until the arbor sat at the correct depth.
This pic now shows that the angle is still spot on, although slightly patchy down the taper. That is caused by surface finish, and was soon put right by some very fine and slow cutting at high spindle speed.

This is a shot of the back end of the 5c adapter, showing that the bore depth was good with an R8 arbor inserted.

Except for making the draw bolt and washer, as I did with the 5c to MT3 adapter, the job is completed.

All I need to do now is think up what I want to make to fit my mill. I'm sure that I will soon come up with lots.



John

 

[steamer]

Nice thread John! :bow:

Dave

 

[gbritnell]

Thanks John,
Great stuff.
gbritnell

 

[b.lindsey]

John, anymore this is the only site I come too so thanks for posting these here. Great stuff btw!!!

Bill

 

[rhitee93]

I really need to make a center drill v-block like that. Thanks for sharing

 

[Captain Jerry]

John

Thanks for posting that stuff here. As to the tailstock V block, Why? Is it quicker, easier, or more accurate than using a V block in the mill or drill press. My drill press is used for little else, so I have a V block centered and bolted to the table most of the time.

Jerry

 

[bearcar1]

Man, I really like that first one, John. Of course they are all nice. Practical as well. I've been thinking of a way to utilize a dead center in my 5C spindle and this is just the ticket, I thank you. 8)

BC1
Jim

 

[GOOFY063]

excellent wright up John all ways informative Thm: Thm: thanks

 

[Blogwitch]

Many thanks gents.

I'm not expecting for everyone to rush out and make copies, but to inspire a maybe different way of doing things, plus a few techniques that I use occasionally.

In fact, Jim has just proved the point, he can use one of the techniques to make a bit of tooling he wants.


Jerry, if I had a drill press set up with a v block, then certainly I would use that technique, but I don't, so as it is, this tool sitting in my tailstock rack, can be set up, used and put away in the time it would take me to be half way through setting up and clamping a v block on my drill press.

We all have unique ways of working and using different tools in different ways. What would the world be like if we all did and liked the same thing?


John

 

[rotorhead]

Hello Bogs,

Any chance of advising how to post pics and text the way you do?

Or, point me to a suitable article or answer.

As I've a few bits to post that may be of interest.

 

[Captain Jerry]

John

Thanks for the answer. I thought it might be that simple but I could have missed something. It is always better to have more than one way to do something, even if you never use it, the knowledge might lead to a solution of a very different problem.

Jerry

 

[krv3000]

nice post well dun

 

[ShopShoe]

John,

Thanks for posting these and for showing all the steps. I really like seeing the ways you work through your projects. I always learn some new things from you and find that some of the things I have been doing follow some of the same logic. Keep it coming

--ShopShoe