Setting up Shop Questions - from an NZ learner

[goldstar31]

From what I could see from the guys using a real torch they get a very small red hot spot.

Cheers,
J.

The 'hot spots' as you describe them were through holes made by ones fingers in the plug of wet paper or as Barry recalls, rags.

These MAPP torches are alright in their place. We were prattling about silver soldering- in the Olden Days and I remarked that my late wife did her stuff with a mouth blown alcohol burner. My friend claimed that he still had one---------somewhere:wall:

I was introduced to the construction of three wheeled cars engine with motor bike engines and clad( yikes) on a wooden frame, panels from big oil drums. I guess that I was possibly 5 or 6. My Dad tempered the springs using charring with a bit of firewood.

You get a feel for metal

N

 

[ShopShoe]

"Oil Canning" refers to a panel that has a bulge in it so that you can push on the panel and it will pop in or out, like an oil can bottom.

The technique to take a bulge out of a panel requires an oxyacetylene torch, and a hammer and dolly. Sometimes water is applied after the heat to aid the process. (This is also called "shrinking.")

This is a technique used by old-time car body repairers on the metal used on older cars: Some of the metal used nowadays can not be manipulated in that way.

There is a modern variation of the technique used with spot heaters to take out hail damage without damaging paint.

All of the above refers to car bodies and I have done it for car restorations, but I never got really good at it.

The one thing I can say is that this is a skill that takes a lot of practice to learn, no matter what size and type of metal you are working with. It probably also takes more patience than any other thing I have done in my various shop lives.

--ShopShoe

 

[joco-nz]

Thanks gents. I've had a look at the base and even tried a little heat but I think there is just too much tension in there to release via heat shrinking. Looking about on youtube all the examples and discussions I have seen on this oil canning technique seem to deal with quite thin steel. I'm using 2mm and I'm wondering if that is just a bit thick for this approach to work on?
Anyway, after much umming and haring I think I can actually use the mirrored bulging to my advantage. The upward bulge sits under the headstock and the downward bulge sits under the tailstock. This creates a very nice fall for liquid to run towards the tail end and pool in this downward bulge. The other plus is that as a result the best place to put a drainage hole and pipe is well away from where the support brackets need to be. This makes it much easier to setup the tray for sliding in and out when needed.

Also I finished TIG welding out all the seams last night. After letting this cool down I put water into the tray to do a leak test. No initial leaks!
:thumbup:

I then left things for about 30 mins and felt along all the seams other than cool meal no dampness. So I think I have a leak free tray. woohoo1

Next stop is drilling for drainage, setting up required hosing and painting.

 

[rodw]

Just leave it overnight to be sure its leak free.

If you have a look in my buildup, I pressed a recess for an outlet with 2 different size sockets and a bolt through the pan. You can extend this technique, by machining a set of dies on your lathe. The boys do this quite a bit at work. If you did this at a size that worked for a sink plug, it would be perfect. Then just run the return coolant through a stainless steel colander on its way it back to the reservoir.

 

[joco-nz]

Cheers Rod. I think given the amount of time I'll use coolant I think if it's not leaking in any noticeable way after half an hour then it's probably fine. Also once I put a couple of coats of paint on things and possible microscopic pin hole will be even more bunged up.

On the drainage hole front the idea a mate gave me was to drill small holes (say 3mm) in a pattern at the low point and weld or epoxy a pipe on the other side. This would do the same job and not need to go and make more tooling. But I quite like the compression die idea. Defiantly keeping thy in back of mind for future things.

J.

 

[joco-nz]

I knocked up some brackets from leftover 2mm sheet from the tray and some 25x3mm flat. These will get welded onto the stand and act as supports/slides for the flood tray.

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

Bit of a big update from efforts over the last number of days.

Brackets welded on the lathe.

The tray setup on the lathe before drilling the drain, attaching the drip pipe and painting.

The drip pipe under the drain. It's stainless pipe and not having any correct filler rod I decided to try my hand at TIG brazing. So out with the silicone bronze to see what I could manage. Not great but not a disaster either and it seems to have no holes.

Painting the flood tray. Nothing very original here, had a pot of rapid dry enamel black so thats what was used.

Lathe back on stand and ready to start tuning again while setting the flood tray etc in parallel.

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

Okay we are back. The drip tray is pretty much done and the paint is drying so while that happens I have gotten the lathe back on the stand and its all levelled up. This time no rubber pads under the levelling feet. I also squared the base of the feet to the bolt in the mill. Especially after re-welding them so they would be very unlikely to break again.

I then embarked on an exercise to true things up using Rollie's Dad's method. I know there are lots of discussions on how good or not good this approach is but it seemed to make sense, I had the tools to try so what the heck.

I had some round bars that were rollers from a printer or photocopier (thanks Bruce!) one of which I used as the test bar. Setup the 0.01mm test indicator and off we went.

Here are screen shots from the spreadsheet I used to track the numbers for the horizontal then vertical tests.

From these you can see the horizontal was pretty much on the money right from the start. The delta was very small and while I could have gone for even higher accuracy I actually don't have anything that measure better than 0.01mm.

The vertical needed a bit of work. I started putting shims under the tail and no noticeable improvement in fact things started to get worse. So I removed those shims (0.1mm thick aluminium from soda cans). I then put a set under the headstock end. Since this "foot" is rather large and covers two support beams this means 4 shims in total.

This moved the delta to 0.03mm. I decided that didn't seem too bad so decided it was time to cut a test parallel. So to control over hang I took some ~19mm round bar and took some cuts over 100mm length using power feed to get a really consistent surface. The moment of truth ...
Measuring the tail end.

Measuring at the head stock end.

BINGO! Cutting parallel. Well at least within the limits of my 0.01mm callipers.
woohoo1th_wav

Cheers,
James.

 

[joco-nz]

The stand starting to look like its old self. Need to get on to the coolant side of things and will document that for those interested.

 

[joco-nz]

Not claiming much originalty in this as you can find a number of examples on the net. However I thought I would share my attempt at a coolant system on these small hobby metal bandsaws.

Starting out with some hex brass stock thanks to Bruce for that material. Drilling 6mm all the way through then enlarging to 11.5mm to a depth of around 20mm ready for the 1/2-20 tap.

All tapped and tested with the coolant pipe.

Next was to create the end for the coolant feeder pipe to go on.
Starting to turn it all down.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DC74XB3b80[/ame]

Comparing my work to the plastic fetting that screws into the submerged pump.

Ready to TIG braze the brass parts together. For the record brass hates me when it comes this process. I have had no issue with steel to steel. But Brass to Brass or Brass to Steel has been a nightmare.

The results after MUCH cleaning. You can see the figghts I had getting the silicone bronze filler rod to "flow" and the trouble I had with over heating the base metal in an effort to smooth out the filler rod. But in the end it seems to be stuck well enough for what I need.

Ta da! The custom fitting on the bandsaw, adjustable nozzel in place plumbed up to the pump system.

Steeping back and looking at the saw in total.

Under the system I eneded up having the drain drip straight into the bucket. I'm going to look at this some more and see if there are some improvements to be had.

Now for some live action ...
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZehAx5SY_gE[/ame]
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caboxj0-Zy0[/ame]

Cheers,
James.

 

[joco-nz]

There is a tendency for some drips to travel back on the blade and hit the rear frame. This will get worse the more of an angle the saw starts on. So having designed up the idea for a rear catchment system to catch the errant drips here are some pics of the idea pre welding. You will see a small welding magnet in the pics. This is really just holding things in place with its weight since the parts are made from 50x50mm ali angle. Obviously if I was making these stands as semi production I would change the design to ensure the saw was fully on the inside. But since this is a one-off this little addendum should do the trick nicely.

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

Got the parts welded and all cleaned up. Plan for the weekend is to get things all mounted up.

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

Some updates to the lathe stand.

[1] Boxed in 3 sides with 19mm plywood. This has a benefit of keeping swarf and "crap" out of the shelves better but most importantly it added a massive amount of rigidity to the stand. Really surprising amounts. If I was doing this all from scratch I would incorporate 2mm steel sheet in the mix as well as a method to added wheels on slide in box section. Maybe one day if I get really enthused.

[2] Added a riser to the splash back. This will prevent stray drops going behind the lathe and also provides a convenient area to stop tool holders and other items on.

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

The name of this update was to provide toolholder storage. I wanted them more easily accessable BUT not in a position that would have me reaching over the chuck. This holder style is not new as I have seen other doing the same type of thing. It's basiclly 50mm Ali alngle cut into 40mm wide sections. The have them all mounted on a strip of woood.

The result all finished and mounted up.

Spacer at the bottom to provide some angle on the holder.

The top mount using 25x25mm ali angle.

Bungie over the toolholders when not using the lathe. Down here in NZ the earth tends to rock and roll a bit so anything that can be shaken off really should have some kind of restrain on it. And I really dont want these heavy holders falling down onto the lathe.

General overview of the lathe and the growing set of improvements.

Cheers,
James

 

[XD351]

I too need to re- think my QC toolholder storage when i finally get my lathe back together ! Its been to hot here in Sydney to do much in the shed , today is food and grog then hopefully boxing day won't be a scorcher so i can get back into it .

Merry Christmas mate .

 

[joco-nz]

Happy Christmas Ian and to all readers on the forum.

 

[joco-nz]

Over the last number of days I've been slowly working on another toolholder for the QCTP and while doing it I decided to make use of the setups to make a number of the sub parts for later .i.e. multiple M10x1 rods and the height/locking wheels. I also delved into the use of the "Method 3" as described in "Screw Cutting in the Lathe" by Martin Cleeve on page 139. In this method the topslide is parallel to the ways, not at 29.5 degs (assuming a 60 deg thread form). In this method you achieve the same diagonal tracking of the tool tip by moving the topslide half of the cross slide movement. The main advantage I can see is that it is easy to get to the correct depth via the cross slide then you can, if needed, thin the thread my moving the topslide a couple of 100ths of a mm at a time.

So some pics ...

The blank roughed out ready to use dovetail cutter on.

Some blanks ready for further work. Wheels tapped M10x1 and the threaded rods cut M10x1 using the "Method 3" I talked about at the start of this post.

The wheels mounted on a threaded rod and held in an ER32 collet on the mill. The block of the holder is a hex so you a pretty simple exercise of getting the depth of cut lined up (using an 8mm end mill and 1mm depth of cut from the edge of the circle) and just keep rotating the block in the vice until all the little half moons are cut out.

The end result with a completed toolholder and my last tool without a home mounted in it. The M8 cap screws have been shortened in the lathe and the ends make nice an flat and chamfered. The threaded rod has had a flat milled on the blank head. The rsult in an effective 8mm nut for locking the shaft in nice and tight into the toolholder base. No loctite really needed here as there is no load on this part of the tool.

The extra parts that were made and in their sub assembly ready for three more toolholders to be made.

Cheers,
James.

 

[joco-nz]

Evolving the coolant system on the bandsaw with a "flash" custom built ali tank.

The weir welded in before other sides are put on.

Side panel in which the connection fitting will be welded. This supports the tube connections between pump and the coolant line external to the tank.

Just showing my attempt at welding around the fitting. Still getting more frosting from cleaning action than I think is supposed to happen.

Top view looking into the tanl with the pump in the position it will ultimately be installed in.

Bit of an overview of the tank to date.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyB5bKHA6M&feature=youtu.be[/ame]

Next major activity is to fully weld all the seams up.

To supprt that process I needed a means to support my hand over a ~30cm welding seam at a really ticky height. So taking inspiration from what I have seen on Welding Tips and Tricks I found some offcut 35mm square tubing, got some 20mm ID (27mm OD) galvanized pipe and a flange fitting from Bunnings and hacked this up. Key parts are:
- 1200mm length of 20mm galv pipe, cut that in half
- 20mm galv flange fitting, acts as the base
- off cut 35mm SHS
- M8 cap screws and nuts

Cheers,
J.

 

[joco-nz]

Water leak testing underway ...

After a couple of hours still bone dry on all seams.

 

[DJP]

People build boats this way so if you are scaling up, a nice 30 foot sailboat would be a good project.