Shop Made Tools

[adatesman]

Thanks for the reply, Larry! From the sound of it the headstock from the Sherline might work just dandy, provided I find a cup wheel and figure a way to mount it. Been thinking about this project for ages, and until I saw your pic had no idea how close it was to finished right out of the box.

-Aric.

[whateg01]

Larry,
Thanks for the info. I did put my dremel on my Craftsman lathe and sharpened the ends of a couple of endmills. It worked okay, but wasn't fun getting it set up. Using the diamond wheel has the advantage, too, of being able to do the carbide endmills that I seem to chip too often.

From the threads I've read while looking for info on sharpening endmills, I bet there would be a lot of interest in seeing all the dirty details of that fixture. Don't feel obligated, of course, but I would certainly follow a thread about it.

Dave

[MrFluffy]

Nothing major but I knocked one of these up the other day :-


Its a "dinker", which is in reality a tiny punch and die to punch out the centre of 7" records so they can go on a jukebox which I have also just got one of (a broken wurlitzer silhouette, but now fixed and decorating my office in a funky purple lit up manner after making some new mechanical bits for inside, fascinating things to a tinkerer). That weird smiley is the centre of the record of "Close to the edit" by the "Art of noise" :-)

Works great, and no discs of importance have died in its use so far

[Stern]

That is really neat, and it doesnt damage the record at all ? Thought that they would crack if you tried to punch out a section. Can you post a pick of the jukebox, it would bring back memories

[MrFluffy]

It works perfectly on all but the plain discs with no labels, which if you examine them, they aren't flat in that area, and therefore start flexing and tend to crack before the punch can shear the slug. I've punched about 40 or so centres out of labeled 45's this week without drama and theyre all in the jukebox now playing fine.
For the plain discs you have to use a trepanning cutter on, and its a known issue. The making of which is probably going to be my next little job as the holesaw I tried I wasn't happy with how concentric it came out.
Ill post a pic out in general somewhere since I don't want to derail shopmade tools with pics of commercial toys

[cegreen]

Hi Dave, great job! What kind of steel did you use for the new spindle? -Chris

Not sure if this really fits here or not, but it is part of a tool, the lathe, and it was made in my buddy's shop, so technically...

When I bought my lathe a few years back, I was disappointed that the finish I was getting wasn't as nice as I was expecting. Being inexperienced, i didn't know any better and lived with it, just knowing that it was a limitation to what I could do. Fast forward to a few months ago and my buddy was over having me press something and I showed him what I was getting. He was appalled at the finish and said it should definitely be better. So, I set out to find the source of the finish problem, eliminating play, flex, and anything else that could be the problem, or so I thought. When I first got the machine, I asked around on some forums about the finish, and the fact that the faceplate wobbled, and some people suggested bent spindle or cracked spindle, but nobody said anything about the bearings. Well, I had run out of things go check, so I decided to pull the spindle and bearings. We set out to measure the runout in the spindle, but with the pipe wrench marks and scarred ends, we would have had to build a fixture to put it in on the bearing surfaces. Instead (as I secretly hoped he would) Bob suggested that we could turn a new spindle. Between that and the new bearings, it's almost like I have a new lathe now! Oh, and one of the bearings came apart while I was pulling the spindle. I mic'd the balls in it and none of them were round. Even on my mic, which only reads down to 0.001", I can see a difference of about 0.0007" in roundness. So, even if the bearings didn't have a bunch of crud caked on the inside of the races, there is no way they could be spinning smooth!

Anyway here's the amazing spindle...
(You may notice that the threads on the nose and the registration flange (or whatever it's called) were left long in this photo. I didn't see any added value in replicating exactly the original. I turned the end down to the length of the faceplate I have after it was installed and verified it was all running true. This left me room to true it up if I'd needed to, though. I also don't have a taper now. I may do that later, but I've not needed it yet, so who knows. At least if I do it in the machine, I know it'll be centered.)


Dave

[whateg01]

Thanks, Chris. I measured the old spindle, but almost all of the hours (and there were several) spent standing in front of the lathe turning the spindle were by my buddy, Bob. I know I've helped him with a few things over the years, but I figure I'm indebted to him for this work for a long time to come. I haven't had the heart to tell my lathe that it was repaired by a bigger, better lathe. I think that'll be my little secret!

We actually discussed building a D1-3 spindle, but that would have meant buying new tooling afterward and I don't think it is worth it for this machine. Maybe the next one.

Dave

[cegreen]

Thanks, Dave. At some point, I may want to attempt to make a similar spindle myself, so I'm especially interested in the type of steel that Bob used to make this one. Would it be possible for you to ping Bob and ask him? Greatly appreciated! -Chris

[whateg01]

Sorry. I forgot you asked. I don't know what kind of steel it was. I bought it from the surplus store here in town. It turned very nicely. I can see what he thinks it is, but it wasn't anything special. That was one of my concerns before buying it. I had it in my head that it needed to be the "right" kind. It's not HRS, though - I do know that. It was in the area of all of their hollow bar. I don't know if they even know what it is. Okay, somebody probably does, but all but one or two of the folks out in the metals area are non-English speaking, and I honestly doubt they know anything other than it is steel. That comes from asking them questions, so it isn't some kind of "dumb immigrant" statement, btw. This hollow bar was 3/4" ID and 1-3/4" OD. I needed 1.818" so we had to build it up in one area. Anyway, I'll see if I can get some info on it.

Dave

[thaiguzzi]

Rob Wilson's parts are just fantasticly made and finished. Especially if he is not using CNC.
Larry and others interested in home made T&CG stuff;
Harold Hall has a very good website detailing all his various work. He also wrote a book, no. 38 in the Workshop Practice series, called Tool and Cutter Sharpening. This book details (inc drawings) all the various home-made fixtures for use with a home-made table working in conjunction with a bench grinder, inc how to grind ends and flutes of end mills, slot drills etc. I have adapted some of his ideas along with ideas from the Quorn book to make fixtures for my Stent T&CG.
Another good book written by him for HSMers is book 37 in the above series simply called Dividing. This book again shows many ideas how to make your own spindex, and various dividing heads, all made from bar and plate stock, no castings involved.
All these WPS books are available from several UK suppliers, inc Amazon, at about £7 (about $10-11)plus postage.
Well worth a read, not expensive, if you like making your own stuff.
Regards,
Mike.

[iMisspell]

Just got the lathe and starting to make the little things for the long run.
Nothing special, a spindle tube extension and spider.

The spindle extension was originally gonna be the spider, but when i figured the length of it, the cover was off the machine and it never dawned on me to figure that in so a design change was needed In the end it seams like it will work out better, now when i screw the spider on and off, if something was to happen to the threads, it will booger up the extension and not the spindle tube.

spindle tube extension OD was made as big as possible but also to a size which will not interfere with the biggest change gear that sits under it, extension was made from 316 stainless steel (size wise, closest martial i had on hand) - OD thread is same as spindle OD thread.

Extension bottoms out on the inner/back recces of the extension and not on the lock-nut of the spindle.

Note: before making the extension, i measured the spindle threads with wires and a mic then made a "male thread gauge" and used that while making the ID threads.


ID thread looks like crap because there some Never-Seez in there which i did not do the best of cleaning it out after a test fit on spindle.





After the extension was screwed on the spindle (with never-seez on the threads) i grabbed a pipe wrench and gave it alittle extra turn.





.... Image limit... to be continued...

[iMisspell]

Heres the spider.. made from 420, first shot is with some 3/8-16 bolts i had laying around, made some knurled bolts and nuts to make it "tool-less" along with screw-in brass tips with 1/4-20 threads. The smaller OD matched the spindle extension (2.73 - if i remember) and the larger OD is 3.125 so the bolts have alittle meat to sit in.




Bringing the tips to size (sorry, fuzzy image). Cut the tips 1/4-20 thread and cut it off alittle long, made alittle thread adapter and then screwed the tips in to that and cut them to length.










From the brass tip to head of bolt are the same length on all four to make for a quick measurement to get them close before grabbing the indicator - when needed.

Aside from "centering" up long stock, the main use of the spider will be to hold spindle tubes (reducers) for the 2" spindle bore. Just ordered the martial tonight, should have them all (five of them, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, and 1") made next weekend, as long as i remember to grab the camera, will post some pics of them.

[_Paul_]

Made some cutter storage from cast off HDPE cutting board









Paul

[whateg01]

I hate trying to mess with the mag base indicator stand on the lathe. I figured that there had to be a way. Then a buddy of mine mentioned a holder for the tool post. Hmmm... Yes, that would be nice. I'm waiting for my dovetail cutter to arrive, but I can cut close enough to 60 for this job using my sine bar! Didn't have much in the way of long screws and I didn't really want to turn an adjustment nut like the normal BXA tool holders have. So I made an arm to stick a screw in from the top. Works great so far, though I've only tried it out twice. Made of aluminum because it's easy, on hand, and doesn't have any cutting forces on it.

Parts cut and ready to be assembled.


Assembled.




On the tool post.


Dave

[ammcoman2]

My recent project making a model shaper highlighted a problem with model sized hex-head screws. This model called for 0-80 to 5-40. I was using wrenches and nut drivers to tighten up the screws but often the OD of the wrench or driver was too large. My set of nut drivers were made by General but left much to be desired quality-wise. Bought a set made by Wiha which were a huge improvement.

Anyway, this set of General drivers were "twiddling their thumbs" so I decided to re-purpose them.

Did the following: Anneal, cut off the heads, turn down the head to socket wrench proportions and finally silver soldered some handles on the heads.



The left one handles # 0 and the middle one with a regular wrench adjacent is for #5 screws. The right one is 1/4" across flats so will probably not need to use it.

My silver soldering technique still needs some honing!

Geoff