Shop Made Tools

[nheng]

Also seen before ...

DRO edge probe from mild steel / delrin / drill rod



Bridgeport vice stop made with dial indicator universal snug and other pieces



HSS lathe bit organizer



Harrison lathe saddle adjuster for open end and hex wrench simultaneously

[Doozer]

Tapered end mills or a die filer.

--Doozer

[Chris Alton]

Thanks every one!
This is the most "Saved Images" I have ever stolen in one thread.
Gary Hart what material did you use for the main frame on your Hossfeld bender?
Is it hardened to prevent the holes from being worn?
Chris.

[Carld]

Man, you guys are creative and do nice work. I'm almost ashamed to show my stuff but here goes.

These are some tools I made. The tool on the left is an adjustable scribe, the next is to hold an indicator on the quill nose, next is a handle for a deburring tool, the next two are for indicating work in a 4 jaw chuck, and everyone knows what the one at the bottom is.



Top left is a spider for the left end of the lathe spindle, top right home made bull nose, bottom is a micrometer carriage stop.



I have a box of tools I made when I worked in the Cummins fuel pump/injector rebuild room and a drawer full of tools when I worked as a line mechanic at Cummins. There's some more but this is enough for me.

[gary hart]

Thanks every one!
Gary Hart what material did you use for the main frame on your Hossfeld bender?
Is it hardened to prevent the holes from being worn?
Chris.

Chris, Used plain hot roll steel. The 4 main pivot holes wasn't sure what to do so made 4 steel bushings and hardened them. Don't recall what the steel was. Don't know but would guess just plain smooth holes with few drops of oil would last a long time, maybe a lifetime. Gary

[Paul Alciatore]

Small tap wrenches made from 7/16 - 20 bolts. Hex head end is drilled for slip fit on 1/4" shaft and the hex rounded off.


Indexing around and using corner of end mill cut some "knurls" across the threads on the bolt.

Great tools. Neat way to get a nice knurl. How did you do that nice job of stamping the numbers on the round tools?

[gary hart]

Great tools. Neat way to get a nice knurl. How did you do that nice job of stamping the numbers on the round tools?

Paul, the numbers are not stamped. They are cut with a 60 degree D bit engraving bit. It is done by CNC where normal Y axis steps are changed to rotating A axis steps on a dividing head and the X moves same as it would if flat work. Confusing to me anyway, kind of like magic.

If the numbers were to be stamped, a flat could be milled and then numbers stamped on the flats. Gary

[Paul Alciatore]

Here are two other accessories I made for my SB lathe: a DI holder and a milling table.



The DI holder that came with my SB was a really lousy design. The clamp piece had flats on both ends so it only worked correctly if it was perfectly matched to the ways. But it wasn't and no ammount of shimming seemed to help. It also had the DI mounting hole on the bottom, clamp piece instead of on the top piece that was aligned to the way. This allowed it to move about/rotate and easily loose it's zero. I made this one from Fortal. The DI mounts in the top piece and the clamp is desiged to have no influence on the position of the top or the DI. The clamp rotates about a 1/4" piece of drill rod that rests in round slots in both parts. It is fixed in the clamp's slot with super glue. The contact surface of the clamp is NOT flat, but instead has about a 2" radius (hand filed) that allows it to contact the bottom of the way along a single line so it can not misalign the top and the DI. The drawing is reduced and hard to read small details, but this radius would be visible on the side view at the surface that is 0.474" above the bottom of the clamp. I cut it from a single piece of Fortal and drilled and reamed the 1/4" hole to form the round slots on the saw line before separating the two parts. The relative positioning of these two parts before sawing them apart is shown in the left hand, side view. This technique ensuered perfect alignment of the two half round slots and was a lot easier than milling them. Here's my drawing:



Oh, the milling work on the DI holder was all done on the SB using the milling table which is also shown in the picture below.

The milling table is just a piece of 3/4" 1018 steel. It had a fairly flat mill finish and I did very little to improve it. I did do about 100 or 200 strokes on abrasive paper on a glass plate to take off any bumps or burrs. There are a lot of 3/8" tapped holes for using a clamp set. This is a lot more verastile than the usual milling vise for a lathe.

Here you can see the bottom with the mounting button for the cross slide. It also has an optional 3/4" raising block on it which allows movement over the cross slide's crank for greater Y movements. Without the raising block I can mount bigger (taller) parts.

Here's a bottom picture of the milling table:



The button is mounted with 4 M5 SHCSs: I used that size because I have a large box of them on hand and I have to use them somewhere. Number 10 or 12 English size cap screws would also work just fine. In the top side photo, you can see that there are three positions where the button can be mounted for more versatility.

This combined drawing shows a bit over 1/4 of the table and the mounting button. The other three quarters are symetrical about the center, which is marked:

[Paul Alciatore]

Here's a shot of the milling table in action:



Notice the use of shims under the work to place it at the correct vertical position for the cut.

It also shows the old, difficult to use DI holder.

[Paul Alciatore]

Here is an unusual accessory. I was using the milling table and an end mill to face the edges of some 1/2" aluminum. I wanted square edges, parallel to each other on opposite sides, and a nice finish. I was getting the first two, but the finish left a lot to be desired. So I made this larger handle that fits over the original SB crank so nothing has to be removed.



Ignore the TV remote, I was in a hurry and I needed something to prop it up for a better view. Here it is installed:



It is held on by a set screw you can see in both pictures. The crank is made from a carriage bolt and a gutter spacer that had the misfortune to be laying around. This allows free rotation. As you can see, I drilled three holes for it but I found the middle one was best. I plan to get and mount a better crank sometime and perhaps make a nicer overall handle, but this one works just fine for now. It allows me to feed much more constantly and that translated to a much better finish.

Here is a shot showing the difference it made:



The edge on the right was with the original, short handle. The one on the left is with the large radius handle. The difference in the finish is unbelievable. Same metal, same cutter, same machinist; absolutely nothing different except the handle and the smoothness of the feed. I would highly recommend this for anyone doing milling on the lathe and it is even good for facing cuts when turning. A better design would allow the dial to be more visible while using it and that would make it more acceptable for all turning operations. I also suspect that larger handles would be an advantage on my milling machine.

No wonder people like CNC.

The second photo in this post also shows my improved DI holder in use.

[Black_Moons]

Paul: CNC and power feed yes Cranking those handles at power feed smoothness is an art! im spoiled on my lathe. Congrats on the upgrade.

nheng: Woah, you should really post another thread just about all those HSS bits you ground. Id love to see some of them more close up and what kinda relief angles/etc you put on em. Maybe along with any comments or thoughts about each tool you have. (ie, I grab this one when playing with plastic, I grab this one to get a good finish on mild steel, I grab this one to make radius corners, but it tends to chatter a lot'

Now on to the show! I got jellous of all your tools so I just had to go and make some more of my own.


Heres something older.. a new bolt for my lathe stop (had to modify the bottom clamp to clear the rack on my lathe too.. though that isent really pictured) In retrospect, I should of just made or bought a longer hex head or something, I kinda worry about the tommy bar rattleing loose and comming in contact with the chuck jaws when turning large peices (chuck jaws protrudeing from chuck)


A dog by any other name.. would still [email protected]#% all over your work with its set screws. Quick and dirty dog.. combined with quick and dirty home made 3/8" bolts since I could'nt be bothered to go to the hardware store at 3am. One day i'll grind those welds down and make it look all shiny.


I call this my thread majordianameter! (Major-dia-na-meter) Or something like that, while you can't really see it, I sharpend the tips of this $6 tool on my belt sander, its not quite a 60 degree threadform sure, but its pertty sharp. Now I use it to measure the major diamiter of inside threads! just set till a nice barly slideing fit, and 'unthread' from the hole, (or just sorta squish and hope its spring action returns it to the exact same diamiter), then measure with calipers.

[darryl]

Wow! It's nice to be involved with a group that does such fine and varied works.

Throwing in another project that followed a need from another project- this one is a horizontal spindle adapter for the mill. I needed something with which to cut fret slots in a guitar neck. After spending countless hours learning about scales, string bending, fret spacing, etc, I used a program to give me fret spacings for chosen string lengths, et al. When it came right down to it, I figured to use the mill to make the slots, hand cranking the x axis to precise locations for the milling operation. I don't recall the precise width of the slot required, but there was no way I was going to find an endmill in that size, so a sawblade was going to be the ticket. For that I needed to turn the vertical spindle into a horizontal one, and speed it up.


This is the result of that train of thought. The body of this device mounts to the quill, and requires a precise alignment for the spindle to be parallel to the x axis. There's an alignment mark on there somewhere, and one on the quill. The next picture shows a close up of how the thing is driven. The flat end of the spindle has a couple of slots in it, and the pin you see just above the gear goes into those slots when the adapter is mounted. There's the beginnings of an mt3 taper where the pin goes through, so that all nests into the end of the spindle nicely. That part drives the large gear which you can only see the back side of.





In this third picture you see the saw blade I made and silver soldered onto a 1/4 inch stub. The spindle is made from a grade 8 bolt, and is set up with a collet like a router to hold the tooling. The small gear on the spindle lets me get the spindle as close to the mill table as possible, so I can keep the diameter of the cutter down and therefore have it be more rigid. More depth of cut is another benefit of that. In the final picture, you can see how close the spindle is to the bottom of the housing. The gears are spiral bevel and came out of an angle grinder. Here I'm using them in reverse, with the large gear driving the smaller one.



I put the small gear on the back end of the spindle, which means I have to run the mill in reverse to get the correct rotation, but more importantly it gets the gear teeth in the same contact as when they were used in the angle grinder. There was not a lot of room for error when placing the gears to run the guietest, but I got it pretty good. The saw blade is made from a section of hss bandsaw blade, otherwise I might have made it round. No matter- less teeth to grind on it this way.

I built another version of this, but with a larger spindle and 1 to 1 gearing, and more robust. It mounts to the quill in roughly the same way, but the drive gear is not built in like this one. Instead, it's mounted to its own mt3 taper shank, held in with a drawbar. Those gears are about two inches in diameter, so figuring it out, that means that I can get a 1/2 inch (slightly less) depth of cut from a 3 inch diameter blade, and clear the bottom of the adapter, or get nearly an inch depth of cut if all I have to clear is the hex of the collet closer nut. I used a 3/4 inch grade 8 bolt for that spindle, and a 1/2 inch bolt for this one.

[Peter N]

I think that there is a staggering amount of talent, quality, and creativity on this forum, and much of it from amateurs rather than professionals. Add to that the fact that most of the tools shown are made on manual equipment too, and it nicely illustrates just what a clever bunch of chaps you lot really are.
I think we also need to get McGyver posting his stuff in this thread too, despite some of it having been seen here before, as many of the newer members may have missed these.

Peter

[Black_Moons]

darryl: Wow thats awsome, great idea for the source of the gears too. How did you make the gears teething adjustable?

[darryl]

Basically, I set them up temporarily and rotated them by hand to get the dimensional relationship according to sound and feel. When I felt it was right, I took the measurements. I machined everything to those specs, leaving a way to slide the small gear on the spindle. The large gear slides onto a fixed post, so I was able to shim it with thin washers until it was right. The combination of sliding the small gear and raising or lowering the large gear got the relationship correct. The small gear is epoxied and backed up with a collar on the spindle shaft. I machined a spacer to the same thickness as the shim stack, and that brass spacer carries the big gear. The real problem was getting the recess in the housing to the correct depth for the morse taper to seat lightly but not bind when the housing was attached to the quill. I lightly pressed the gear with the taper body into the mill spindle, took a reading from the back of the gear to the flat on the spindle end, took another reading from the spindle end to the quill bottom, took another reading from the gear in the housing to the top edge of the housing, did the math, presto (not really ) got the dimension for the depth of the recess to cut in the housing. It did take a while to do.

Like so many shop projects, the setup time, and for squareness and accurate alignment takes way longer than doing the actual machining. In many cases, where I get stumped is when I have to machine a fit, but I can't test the fit without removing the piece from the lathe. No way I was going to remove the quill to see when it fit the housing being turned on the lathe- I find it a little frustrating when I have to make a test copy of a diameter so I can use that to test a fit, but sometimes you have to waste a piece of material to do that. Not really wasted I suppose- pieces can always be used to make something else from- but it's always after I have a setup to turn mounted in the chuck when I realize that I have to remove that and make a test plug

Through the making of all these things, I've learned a lot, not the least of which is to allow the parts to come to room temperature before the final measuring and skimming to size. I've been caught on that more than a few times.