What did you do Today 2018

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Ruined one and a half perfectly good endmills today in the process of turning a foot length of 2 1/2"x2" EN36 bar into 2 1/2"x2"x1/8" channel. The first was a 16mm carbide one. I'd set the cut up perfectly for the start of the initial slot. 1800rpm, 0.4" DOC, 4.5ipm feed (flat out on the feed). Should have been noisy, exciting and effective. Started off noisy and exciting, then became noisier then stopped. Some twat had forgotten the quill lock. The cutter ramped down, then stalled the 2hp spindle motor followed by the 1/8hp feed motor. Set things up right again and had another go. Worked a bit better, apart from the fact that the cutting edges had suffered a bit on the first cut and weren't working as well as they should have:-

 

Re-trenched, with far more conservative settings and a 20mm HSS rougher. This did very well cutting the rest of the slot, then I went on to widen the slot. Something's not right, Climb cutting wasn't working at all (note:- X feed play is 4 thou, so not normally an issue). Swapped over to conventional cutting and chomped away at the sides of the slot. I'd done 5 1/2 passes, taking .1"x.7" each time and the machine starts behaving like a Kango hammer! Close examination of the cutter shows edge wear and chip that could be the cause of the problem. Tomorrow, I need to think things though and see what I'm doing wrong. I think I'll have to slow down a bit:-

 

 

I'm not as devastated as I could be about the cutters. They both came from the turbine blade shop at work when the b****rds shut it down. I only wish I'd liberated more than I did, but I hadn't even finished building the shed at that point.

Edited By Mark Rand on 10/09/2018 21:14:09

[LimpetParticipant @limpet]

It must be the season of drive failures, my pc has just decided that my data drive is missing luckily I back up hourly and 2 hourly to two different drives so minimum loss if the drive has indeed failed but it could just be windows telling porkies, there's another day tomorrow all untouched to look at it. Don't ask why I keep backups!!!!

Lionel

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I have three separate backups and never have more than two connected to the PC in case of ransomware attacks.

Years ago I put in place a policy that everyone should keep their files on a fileserver with RAID and regular automated backups with regular changes of backup sets.

Of course one staff member decided they wanted to keep all their precious data (years of it) safe on their own machine.

Guess whose hard disk drive died?

We also suffered a server crash once, virtually all the staff lost a few hour's work.

Neil

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

We had a very professional 'managed service' … and only suffered one significant failure:

The RAID controller was 'bricked' whilst they were performing a firmware update

MichaelG.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

A few years back. my QNAP NAS (mirrored drive) failed and bricked both HDDs so I lost everything on them. Luckily I had periodically backed it up but I was still well pissed off. The root cause was the external PSU going West, corrupting the HDDs and/or controller as it gradually failed.

No excuse for not backing up. These days it is often just a case of plugging an external (pocket) drive in and it will do the rest automatically.

Murray

[David TaylorParticipant @davidtaylor63402]

I did two things today. I cut some new nameplates for my freelance 5" gauge 0-4-0 because the ones I did before looked far too big when I went to put them on. Should have printed them out for a trial but I didn't have to loco home until last weekend.

The new nameplates gave me a chance to try holding the brass down on the MDF with masking tape and superglue. It worked well and held the brass flat. The superglue let go in a few places allowing a small amount of lift. On one plate this wasn't significant because it was off the end of the job and on the other I noticed it before I started so flooded some more glue in there and weighed it down for about 20 mins. I noticed a small unmachined fragment in the lower void of the 'E' after a coat of black paint so that needs cutting down manually later once the paint dries.

There was one exciting moment when I went to profile around the outside of the plate and forgot to change Cut2D's default feed units of mm/sec to mm/min! I'm assuming the table moved at it's max rate but the 2mm cutter didn't break… I was equally relieved and impressed. The finish was rubbish though.

The other thing I did was move the lathe off the wooden blocks and further away from the mill to re-open the passage between the two so I can get around them easily. The move went without incident this time. The lathe is still a bit unsteady at the tailstock end so that part of the stand is obviously not much good. When it was on the blocks I could just move one of the two tailstock end blocks by hand with no resistance.

I think some adjustable feet might be a project in the near future unless the batch of brake parts I make on it soon come out ok, in which case I'll leave it alone. I really hate working on the machines or tooling rather than the project or loco I'm trying to build.

That was actually all yesterday. Today I am going to fix that little unmachined bit on the nameplates, fix a piece of plywood to the bottom of a tool cabinet that is of such appalling quality the castors screws simply pulled out while moving it around (don't but tool cabinets via eBay!), and perhaps making a start on the CAM for the weight reduction pocketing of the sandboxes I made last week. It would be quicker to do it manually but I need to learn to use my new machine for something other than faux-cast plaques.

David.

[David TaylorParticipant @davidtaylor63402]

I feel for you Mark. It's always a shame breaking a larger cutter. As long as the job's not ruined things could be worse.

[RobinParticipant @robin]

I had a computer monitor failure yesterday. New SOTA thing arriving today, plus replacement electrolytic capacitors for the old one. In my experience a dead monitor is nearly always a dried out electrolytic and at £3.22 for a complete new set I have to try.

[LimpetParticipant @limpet]

Well I'm all smiles again as I turned on the pc and all is well. Ran several tests on the drive with nothing untoward showing, it looks like I'm getting due to a windows reinstall. When are they going to produce an operating system that's reliable. There's also no point in considering Apple or Linux as some of my software is windows only. B*##!y Bill Gates

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

To be fair, most of the problems with windows tend to be caused by additional software and drivers. Those that aren't tend to get patched for free, and the number and frequency of patches is comparable to those of other operating systems.

 

I'm not seeing windows through rose tinted spectacles, I ran up to 6 dialects of unix since 1982, windows since 1996 and linux since 1998 at work and home and the latter two at home since leaving work in 2016.

Edited By Mark Rand on 11/09/2018 13:55:43

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Posted by David Taylor on 11/09/2018 04:01:12:

I feel for you Mark. It's always a shame breaking a larger cutter. As long as the job's not ruined things could be worse.

I found two sources of problems and have applied appropriate slapping upside of my head!

What I thought was a radius on the roughing endmill was where it had been run into something hard before I 'rescued' it from work. That made it run hot and rough (wasn't cutting at all on the corners). Even that wasn't a significant cause of problems or the inability to climb mill:- I went around this morning, after finding another endmill, to check that everything was adjusted properly. Tightened the bolts on the ram, head and pedestal and went to set up the first cut. Then I realised that the table was pivoting as I moved it in the Y axis! The gib screws had all worked lose by a half-3/4 of a turn. Since there's very little play on the feed screws (adjustable backlash), I've got into the habit of not bothering to lock the unused axes…

Adjusted everything and it's not working like it should be. The lesson was probably worth wrecking the milling cutters, just to make me remember next time.

And below is why climb cutting is nice and why roughers are nice. No recurring of chips and nice safe 6's/9's type chips rather than lethal splinters:-

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

I finally finished the water tank for my Burrell-Boydell engine today. It is made from 1/16" brass sheet with brass angles and reinforcements for the pumps inside, and no end of 1/16" diameter snap head rivets followed by soft solder to seal any gaps. There are four pumps to be fitted, one each side for filling the tank, one on the RH side, worked from the boiler filling pump, to feed the boiler and, with luck, another pump on the rear, worked by hand to fill the boiler and to provide back up to the engine driven pump. I say with luck because the ram will need to be horizontal to fit in the space but I'm hoping that a nitrile ball and a soft spring will work.

Brian

[David TParticipant @davidt96864]

Made a thumb nut

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Nice. Did you mill the 'serrations' or drill them before turning the diameter down?

[David TParticipant @davidt96864]

Posted by Mark Rand on 13/09/2018 22:57:17:

Nice. Did you mill the 'serrations' or drill them before turning the diameter down?

Thanks Mark. I milled the serrations by clamping the stock vertically on the rotary table (or BCA table in my case), and plunging with a slot drill. Then back on the lathe to clean up the diameter and part off.

(Apologies for the wonky photo)

[GrottoParticipant @grotto]

Nice work David!

I think I’ll make a couple those to replace some knurled ones which really don’t have enough grip.

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

These are some I made earlier. Flutes done on mill, rotary table by plunging down with endmill Ian P

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Spent the morning yesterday making handles for woodturning tools, it's a while since I did any wood turning. I then made the tools.

Ian S C

[WindyParticipant @windy30762]

Got the cam follower radius aid finished and had used a recently bought Vertex 6" rotary table with a Myford 3 jaw chuck on it to machine a non critical dimension.

I knew the chuck was a couple of thou out but would not be too important for what I was doing

Found the 2 Morse taper chuck holder was out as well this was bought with the new table.

Chuck register 0.0015" small and when turned in Myford headstock 0.004" on DTI checked a genuine old 2 MT chuck holder and DTI hardly moved.

When I first saw this holder I was suspicious as it was shiny (all that glitters is not gold)

Good job when using the table to machine my cams it was on a home made 2 MT holder.

Some of these tool accessories today are not always accurately made an ER collet chuck bought some years ago had to be replaced as thread was very undersize.

I know industrial tooling is very expensive compared to hobby stuff but still should not to out of accuracy by as much as the chuck holder.

A lesson learnt if possible check if running true with DTI etc. new accessories.

 

Edited By Windy on 14/09/2018 20:40:39

[WindyParticipant @windy30762]

Machined radius on test piece cam follower with a carbide cutter will try the Alexander grinder on it tomorrow with a light skim.

I put a test bar in the chuck first and found the jaws need truing as slightly tapered another grinding job.

So used an ER collet chuck I had modified to fit the Myford thread to hold the follower radius aid.

As a first attempt to Tig stellite apart from an inclusion probably a bit of tungsten electrode when I touched with electrode it 's better than I thought it would be.

So this weekend 3 blanks to build up with stellite after have been to see record attempts at Elvington.

A French World record attempt contender will be there with a custom 500cc bike.

[David TaylorParticipant @davidtaylor63402]

Over the last few days I got that piece of wood on the bottom of the toolbox, made the front and mid brake hanger pedestals and bottom cross bars, and rounded over the corners of the sandboxes. The photo of the sandboxes shows one straight off the machine and the other one after about 10 mins with the sandpaper. The ends of the sandboxes look rough because they were done with a roughing end mill.

The rounding over was done with a 12mm end mill as I don't have any corner rounding end mills.

David.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

How many passes did it take to do the corner rounding?? Better results than cornser rounding endmills often give.

[David TaylorParticipant @davidtaylor63402]

I set the stepover at 0.25mm and used both vertical and horizontal passes. I think the horizontal ones were unnecessary.

Even so it only took about 8 or 10 minutes for each setup I think. Pretty quick and easy.

There is some weird faceting where to two radii meet on the corners but nothing a bit of sandpaper doesn't fix.

All up I was very pleased with the result. I'll be honest and say I don't fully comprehend the settings I used in the toolpath setup dialog. I basically told it to not touch any face near the fillet, do anything between 0-90 degrees, give it the fillet radius, set the step over, and clicked the 'also do horizontal passes' checkbox. I just kept fiddling until I was happy with the toolpath in the simulation. Then I did a short trial run in the air, took a deep breath and let it go on the part.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

For the last couple of days I've been trying to learn how to use the slotting head on the mill. I've had it for several years but hadn't done anything with it apart from cleaning and oiling it. Having spent two days making the tool (on the shaper, since the mill head is poorly) and practising on a bit of scrap aluminium, cutting a 1/4" keyway in the 3.5" thick aluminium lump that will become a step pulley was almost an anticlimax. The hardest part was filing and stoning off the assorted burrs from the motor shaft it is due to fit.

Celebrated by boring out the hole in the blank for it's matching pulley.

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

Used my old Royal Shaper to put a nice finish on this bracket i'm making.

Cast it using lost foam in an open mold. The furnace was an old gas cylinder and the crucible a stainless pot from The Range.

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