Shop Made Tools

[mickeyf]

Post #1928:

One Friday evening, in the middle of a project....., but while I was at it I also scraped the inner side of the arms, measuring with a micrometer reading .001mm,

"a micrometer reading .001mm" !? Did I read that right?

[Sun God]

Post #1928:
"a micrometer reading .001mm" !? Did I read that right?

Commonly available from Mitutoyo (e.g. cat number 103-129)

[DATo]

Post #1928:





"a micrometer reading .001mm" !? Did I read that right?

Yeah, I find that pretty hard to believe too. A typo maybe? I looked up the mic online and sure enough it says ".001" ... but I still find it hard to believe.

[goodscrap]

Don't they have a normal .01 graduation on the barrel then a vernier scale along it, you can get the same style in imperial mics that read tenths of a thou.

A bit like this

Brian

[KJ1I]

Mitutoyo 103-129 Outside Micrometer, Baked-enamel Finish, Ratchet Stop, 0-25mm Range, 0.001mm Graduation, +/-0.002mm Accuracy

[gandalf]

Mitutoyo 103-129 Outside Micrometer, Baked-enamel Finish, Ratchet Stop, 0-25mm Range, 0.001mm Graduation, +/-0.002mm Accuracy

Mine was the Mitutoyo #101-116, an older version of the #103-129. I found it on ebay a few years ago, for about $50. There is also a similar one made by NSK, but I like the Mitutoyo better. And once in a while one of the old Etalon (don't have the number, I used to have one many years ago) shows up. That is probably the best mike ever built, so good that they stopped making it when Etalon was bought by Tesa. All three have .50 mm pitch screws with a vernier reading to .001mm. They are pretty easy to read as you can see from the photo, IMO easier than reading a caliper with a .02mm vernier. The rest of the mike is missing in the photo because I cut it off (yes, I did!), to turn it into a mike head I needed when I made the adjustable level shown. In the level one division of the mike vernier corresponds to 1/4 division of the bubble, so they are pretty well matched, and the resolution is 1/100,000. If anyone is interested in the level, and you twist my arm a little bit, I can say more about it.

[Stern]

Not really a tool per say, but a project to make improvements on my mill. Since the garage floor is not what anyone would call flat, I decided to make adjustable feet. Had no problem making them from 5/8 bots and 3/4" plate, but getting them on was a different story. Things too heavy to lift or try tilting, so after failing with a jack I decided a hoist would be better.



Hoped that the 3/8 x 4" lag bolts would hold well, as I wasnt worried about the 3/4" steel bar bending.



Worked like a charm, allowing me to lift it enought to get the bolt feet on. Figured I will leave it in place for future times I may want to move/dissect the mill for improvements.



Next, brace the bottom and put a shelf there to take all the flex out of the legs, then make a coolant tray for under the table.

[cameron]

Gandalf, consider your arm twisted.

[TGTool]

The rest of the mike is missing in the photo because I cut it off (yes, I did!), to turn it into a mike head I needed when I made the adjustable level shown. In the level one division of the mike vernier corresponds to 1/4 division of the bubble, so they are pretty well matched, and the resolution is 1/100,000. If anyone is interested in the level, and you twist my arm a little bit, I can say more about it.

Actually, you could say quite a bit more about the tool kit around the level and how you use the various pieces that you show so nicely on your CD.

I see the level and base shown here, a flat base that I would guess is not three point contact but a wider footing, then some slim squares that look like they have beveled bases and some other items I can't quite figure out. I think there's a small lecture potential there.

[Stern]

Well, after being in the shop and getting bored, I looked at the pile of steel that was once a HF 3 in 1 bender/sheer/roller and decided it was time to make it work .... but not like it was before (was a piece of crap that wouldn't do anything with sheet metal thicker than tinfoil). So, I am going to make two units out of the bits, a bender and a sheer, both designed to fit in a hydraulic press. This means I need to make my press with an inside gap of 4 feet, so looks like its time to go shopping at the scrap yard for some channel and I beams.



The bits are beefy enough to bend 18 gauge and probably stainless, but the mechanism was a joke. This way both "bits" will use downward hydraulic pressure and eliminate the stupid swinging offset arm idea. I miss not having a bender and to a lesser extent a sheer, although I mostly use the plasma cutter now.

[gandalf]

Yes, I am interested in your level and more interested in what you use it for. .001mm is not very much!

Hey guys, thanks for the interest in the level. My arm is properly twisted, so here we go.

The idea of an adjustable level came up when I was working to remove bow and twist from the bedways of my first 7x10 Minilathe, a Harbor Fright I got back in 1999. I expected to use it just for aligning the lathe, probably only once, so I did not want to put much time in it, and also I could not use my lathe because it was disassembled. So I came up with this interface, using a .02/1000 "Master Precision" level I already had.



Even though it was made of wood, it turned out to be quite stable, and did not degrade in any way the accuracy of the level. It was just somewhat clumsy and awkward to use. But I was able to put it together in little time, without using "big" tools, and it did the job well. If you already have a sensitive level, you can build it in a few days. There are other partially disassembled views of the interface in the Metal Scraping CD, and I'll be happy to say more about it here also.

I checked for twist of the bedways buy putting it on the cross slide, using the three points support which is built in the interface, with the axis of the level square with the ways, and then moving the saddle along its full range. The same for bow, placing it parallel to the ways.



Because the interface is adjustable, nothing needs to be leveled, it just needs to be steady. Move the saddle to one end of the bedways, put the level on the cross-slide (or the saddle if the cross slide is not available), and adjust the micrometer to center the bubble in the vial. Then move the saddle to the other end of the bedways, reset the bubble to the middle, and read the movement of the micrometer that was needed to do that. From the size of that movement, and the length of the bedways, you can figure out the error. Or you can just adjust the bedways until the error is removed. If you suspect that the distortion of the bedway is not uniform, you can take another measurement in the middle, or even at several points. A measurement takes only a couple of minutes. So it is easy to do it, adjust the bedway, and measure again.

You also can do the same thing if you are buying a used lathe, and so avoid taking home a lemon with the bedways worn out more than you are comfortable with. I did it once with a friend who was considering buying a lathe, and it was easy to measure the amount of wear of the front dovetail near the chuck, where of course it was largest. And in the process, we had a good time looking at the face of the salesman...

The same can be done also to check the ways of a milling machine table, or any other machine, without the machine needing to be leveled. Also, with a 90* attachment (more on that later), the squareness of the vertical column with the table, and its rigidity, can be easily determined.

After using the interface for some time, I decided to make one that was smaller and more compact, the one shown in the previous post. Its footprint is 19mm x 120mm, the base is 100mm, and it weighs 550 grams. The stability is quite good. I checked it once after at least 6 months, and it was off less than 1/2 division of the vial. Lag and resettability are less than one vernier division. And although that is seldom needed, the zero position of the dial can be determined in a few minutes, and the micrometer set to it, just like setting the zero in any micrometer. The main thing to be careful about is thermal drift. Radiated body heat does not affect it, but if it is touched even briefly with only two fingers, it can easily drift by two or three vial divisions, and then take 15 to 30 minutes to stabilize again. As they say, "you can look but you can't touch..." So I always hold it with thermally insulated handles, visible in the photos, which can be easily shop made. And for the same reason I have put a Lexan sleeve around the top half of the micrometer body, and a Lexan knob at the end. That takes care of the problem quite well.

Here it is, being used to check twist and vertical bow on the ways of my more recent 7x12 minilathe. It does have a three points attachment, but I did not need it here because the saddle and cross slide were already scraped.



Another thing I use the level for often, is to check for stability in a surface that I am scraping. As you'll know if you have been scraping, there is a tendency to scrape heavier toward the edges of a surface, and that tends to make it come out convex. If that happens, then when you mark it it will roll on the surface plate, as if you were marking the back of a spoon, or it wobbles, as if you were marking a chair with a leg too short. By very small amounts of course, small enough that it is not easy to notice, but large enough to make successive markings change unpredictably, and make it hard to figure out the trend of the marking sequence. And when a surface is close to being finished, the convexity can be minute, and easy to miss altogether. The marking will make the surface appear flat all the way across, and one may assume it is finished, when instead it is high in the middle. You can find more about this at http://metalscraping.com/w2-Preview.html#10-Stabilizing

With the level, you can check for convexity easily. Clean out the die, place the work on the surface plate, and place the level, on its three points support, on top of it. Here also, you don't need to level anything, just make sure the setup is stable. Adjust the bubble to be about the middle of the vial, then push down on the work alternating at the two ends of a line parallel with the level. If the surface is convex, it will roll or wobble, and the bubble will move accordingly. This is where good sensitivity comes handy. With the .04/1000 vial of the small level, a displacement of 1/4 division of the bubble, equivalent to one division of the vernier, corresponds to a wobble of .001 mm over 10 cm. That is about the sensitivity you would like to have, if you are scraping a high grade surface.

Another use of the small level, is as a quasi-sine bar. It won't be quite as accurate as an actual sine bar, but will come pretty close, enough for most situations, and will be a lot easier to set up. Rather than using gage blocks, etc., as you know the baseline you can dial the micrometer for the slope or angle you want, and that all there is to it. The resolution will be 2 seconds of arc. The accuracy will be less, of course, but it can be made considerable, withing a factor of 2 or 3 compared to a sine bar, by calibrating the angle of the level against a sine bar at 1* intervals, plotting a curve of the error, and then using the curve to interpolate for any other setting.

There are several other things the level can be used for, which I'll get into when we look at the accessories. In the meantime, this is what they look like.

[TGTool]

Gandalf
Can you say a little more about some of the features and your thinking. First, on the large level: I see you have a hole series down the middle and both sides so that there could be a variety of three-point support placements but you have about 6 little plugs scattered around. Different heights? Spares/alternates just stored in holes here and there? Are you threading the wood plate so that the hex is used for mounting screwed pins? Is the vertical groove in the edge of the upper plate functional for something I haven't figured out yet?

For the small level tool set: I'm presuming the level is attached to the three-point base with screws on the underside. Are the two pin things towards the end of that base then the feet? Adjustable? And the kit has two alternates? On the flat base there are two hole sets. Just for mounting the level centered or to the side or something else entirely? How does that long pin with the screw end that looks like an indicator holder factor in? Again, I presume that the square resting at center bottom allows the level to be attached for checking vertical ways. And it looks like there are mounting pads on both arms so it could be mounted either way. And one arm is plain and one has a beveled edge? True or not or is there more that's not obvious.

The piece to the left side has me puzzled. I don't know if it's a trick of the light and photo, but it looks like a U-channel on the vertical arm. Perhaps it's just an alternate square with a short arm for getting into tight positions. (Short arm inspection? hehe )

And then the T-square at the top: You'll have to explain its function. It looks too small to be very helpful on its own, so does it work in conjunction with something else? How?

[gandalf]

Gandalf
Can you say a little more about some of the features and your thinking. First, on the large level: I see you have a hole series down the middle and both sides so that there could be a variety of three-point support placements but you have about 6 little plugs scattered around. Different heights? Spares/alternates just stored in holes here and there? Are you threading the wood plate so that the hex is used for mounting screwed pins? Is the vertical groove in the edge of the upper plate functional for something I haven't figured out yet?

For the small level tool set: I'm presuming the level is attached to the three-point base with screws on the underside. Are the two pin things towards the end of that base then the feet? Adjustable? And the kit has two alternates? On the flat base there are two hole sets. Just for mounting the level centered or to the side or something else entirely? How does that long pin with the screw end that looks like an indicator holder factor in? Again, I presume that the square resting at center bottom allows the level to be attached for checking vertical ways. And it looks like there are mounting pads on both arms so it could be mounted either way. And one arm is plain and one has a beveled edge? True or not or is there more that's not obvious.

The piece to the left side has me puzzled. I don't know if it's a trick of the light and photo, but it looks like a U-channel on the vertical arm. Perhaps it's just an alternate square with a short arm for getting into tight positions. (Short arm inspection? hehe )

And then the T-square at the top: You'll have to explain its function. It looks too small to be very helpful on its own, so does it work in conjunction with something else? How?

About the large interface. Yes, there are three rows with lots of tapped holes each. When I built it it was an experiment, so I figured I'd plan for all eventualities. It turned out that only a few holes would have been enough. I tapped in the wood, and as the wood compresses there is just enough friction that the threaded rods can be moved up or down snugly, to approximate the slope of the surface that the interface will be placed on, and then locked with the brass nuts. Only three are used, the other three are spares. About the vertical groove, it's very not functional, and I'm afraid I don't remember how it got there... <g>. I probably back-tracked on something I was trying to do. As shown in the photos, the level itself rests on one side on a 1/4" tool steel dowel with two small lateral pins that locate it. On the other side, not visible in the photos, it rests on a 5/8" steel ball, which is partly sunk in the wood, and protrudes just enough to make contact with the V at the bottom of the level, and so locate that end. Also on the right side, between top and bottom of the interface, barely visible in the photos, there are a 5mm hardened steel ball fastened on top of a screw, which in turn is fastened to the bottom plate, and, fastened to the end of the micrometer, a corresponding sleeve, which fits accurately around the ball. Note that all the contacts between the level and the the interface, and between the interface top and bottom, are metal to metal. The metal to wood contacts are by means of relatively wide areas, and fastened with epoxy, so any possible compression of the wood is negligible. I think that is important to provide long term stability.

About the small level. The three points interface is fastened to the bottom of the level with two screws in the large holes, and it has two alternate sets of three threaded holes, with different spacings, for the feet. The middle foot gets fastened in place (you can see it at the far left in the photos), and the other two can be raised or lowered to match the slope the level is placed on, and then locked by hand with the two knobs. The rectangular interface also is fastened at the bottom, and has a dual use. It is mounted centered, if a base shorter or wider than the base of the level is needed. Or it is mounted offset, to check surfaces from below, like the bottom of a lathe bedway. The one I made was for the Minilathe, but of course it can be of any size. For the other accessories, I'm about to take some photos, that will make things clearer and hopefully "save 1000 words," then I'll say more about them.

[Stern]

Decided to start working on the coolant system for the mill since yesterday I went out and picked up a parts washer pump and nozzle to use. Needed to make a mount for the nozzle as well at connections for the supply and return lines. Since I had a couple of scrap bits of aluminum I figured why not use them.





Used a chunk of 3/4" aluminum and made it the size needed, I then drilled passages in the block for coolant flow and fittings for a control valve (to regulate the flow rate to the work). Tapped the holes for compression type 1/4" copper fittings (I have tons for work) and the coolant hose. Temp fit went well.

[Stern]

Coolant enters on the right end and goes through the valve to the hose. A second tap is taken from the hose and returned to the coolant tray via a second valve. This allows me to change the flow rate and not strain the pump, as excess will just be returned to the reservoir (same way I did my lathe one).



Then channeled out the center for a recess to put the on/off switch (decided to use a rocker type). Since the plate isnt deep enough for the switch and wiring, I made a second smaller block (1" alluminum) to mount over the base plate and give me a reces deep enough to hold the switch.



The channel in the top block is sized to fit the switch (bottom is stepped open to stop wire rubbing) while the bottom block has more room to hold the wiring. I will mount the switch on a sheet of stainless and screw it to the top block.