Shop Made Tools

[chip's]

Yes all, some very nice work. Tony, thanks for sharing about the build.

[_Paul_]

I never seem to have enough AXA toolholders.... so made another 3









Paul

[doctordoctor]

I never seem to have enough AXA toolholders.... so made another 3

very nice! what steel and how did you cut the dovetail?

[_Paul_]

Thank you Doctor, steel is EN1A (1213) and dovetails cut with an unbranded 1" 10 flute 60* dovetail cutter.

Despite being made from mild steel they will take a few knocks, I am still putting together the bits and pieces to chemically blacken them that may also improve their durability a little.

Paul

[thaiguzzi]

Paul -
# bar the slot for the tool shank itself, why not size them and make the dovetails on the shaper? i know you are a shaper-man.
# Just done a batch of 10 Dickson T.0 / S.0 tool holders on the 8" Boxford shaper from 2 billets of flame cut steel. Maximum stroke = 5 tool holders. All the cleaning up, sizing the rectangular shape, and machining the 45 degree V interfaces done on the shaper. Time consuming but great fun, especially hand feeding the T slot and V details. I am going to cheat and use the vertical mill to slot the slot for the tool shanks. I'm not that much of amasochist!
# I get great results blackening my tooling i make, by heating on a gas outside cooker and plunging in used diesel oil. I've tried new engine oil (brown finish) and used m/c oil, but used diesel oil seems to give the best durable "black" finish.
Regards,
Mike.

[_Paul_]

Mike,
I have made them on various shapers over the years and I should make more using one particularly with the cost of dovetail cutters.
Just got lazy on these lol.
I found the quickest method for the AXA type was to setup the tool in one position to cut both sides of the dovetail turning the work piece around in the vice to achieve the second half of the dovetail, but with this the shapers table has to be perfectly level.
I take my hat off to you making Dickson type holders is not easy on any machine and quite a challenge on the shaper I imagine.
Not tried to cut T slots on a shaper yet something I must do in the near future though, any tips?

regards

Paul

[thaiguzzi]

Thanx Paul,
toolbit is a 5/8" shank butt welded HSS lathe "r/h grooving tool" purchased from Cromwells. Shank machined down on the width to 7/16" to fit the Boxford, and shape very slightly modified to suit on the Stent T&CG. Slow hand feeding , thou DOC at a time, full width of the slot. Goes surprisingly quick. I have a good photographic evidence of all the process, just have to get my arse into gear and sort this Photobucket thingey out sometime, being not a great computer hand.
Cheers,
Mike.
ps, checked the hours involves so far. I'm up to ready to stick the 2 billets in the power hacksaw and saw them into 10 pieces. Then onto the vertical mill to slot the tool slot shank, and drill and tap the 5 holes. 2 of the holders are for parting off blades, these will be done on the shaper.
Time so far, about 40 hours, but as i said, these billets were flame/gas cut on all 4 sides (what a bastard!). The V interface was 6 hours alone on both pieces.

[mars-red]

Workshop is stabilizing a bit, so I've had some time to actually make stuff. Finally got around to finishing a "belt rack" I needed to drive the milling/gear cutting attachment for my watchmakers lathe. I got the attachment with the lathe (2 years ago?) and was never really motivated enough to use it. I wish I had done this earlier, it's a blast to use. Anyone not familiar with this type of attachment might not realize that it's fairly standard for this type of lathe, as crazy as it might seem. I was pretty skeptical that it would work very well, but I'm happy to say it works fantastic. I was expecting very limited amounts of travel before I had problems with the belt jumping off the pulleys, or too much/too little tension becoming a problem. Turns out I can get nearly full travel in all axes without having to stop and adjust everything. The length of the belt, combined with the swiveling rack and the elasticity of the belt, makes this a surprisingly usable setup.

I recently picked up a copy of "Wheel and Pinion Cutting in Horology", and then happened to stumble across a couple of sets of VERY nice old watch gear cutters at an estate sale... so that's got me pretty fired up to try cutting some gears.

Here are a couple of pics of the rack, and the milling attachment. As you can see, the rack is mostly black iron pipe, and threaded into a flange fitting that I faced in the lathe (for a good flat surface) then screwed to the bench. This lets me easily remove the entire rack from the base when it gets in the way of other work. The pulleys on the arm of the rack are made from some black acetal I had hanging around, and there are no bearings. The acetal against the steel shaft is whisper quiet (another pleasant surprise).





The mess in the pictures is from fooling around milling some aluminum. Everything felt nice and solid - quite a respectable micro-milling setup, in my opinion. Most of the cutting I'd do would be with brass wheels but I'm hoping it will work alright for occasional steel pinions too. Time will tell.

[RichR]

Hi Max
Very slick. Did you fabricate the belt too?

[mars-red]

Hi Max
Very slick. Did you fabricate the belt too?

Thanks Rich! No, the belt is regular old fusible round belting. I'm using the Chinese made stuff. It was inexpensive enough that I wanted to try it out to possibly avoid having to pay through the nose for the Swiss made belting. The Swiss stuff is a little better but not enough to justify the price in my opinion.

[tsmartin_98]

The job was to drill 160, 3/8" diameter holes in 80' of 14 gauge sheet metal conveyor frame located 10' off the floor.
There was no doubt in my mind that a Unibit, or step drill, was the tool of choice. For drilling accurate round holes in thin gauge sheet metal they are hard to beat.
The problem with them is you run the risk of drilling under or oversize if you aren't constantly checking the hole or forgetting how many steps you've gone. That eats up alot of time.
My solution to the problem was the drill stop shown. While it's true that it is only for one size hole, the time it saves drilling the holes more than makes up for the time it took to make it.
It should be self explanitory as to how it's made and how it works but in short, it's a piece of 1" CRS with a 1/2" hole, the largest diameter on the Unibit, and a hole just large enough for the 1/4" hex shaft to go through the other end. The blind end of the 1/2" hole butts against the end of the Unibit which, when clamped in the drill chuck, prevents the stop from moving back and forth. The other end is trimmed to where the 3/8" step is plus a bit more to deburr the hole.
Works like a charm. After using a jig to locate and drill 1/8" pilot holes I just drilled away, clearing chips now and then, until the stop hits the base material and your done. Move on to the next hole. No need to worry about oversize holes.

[howder1951]

elegantly simple?

[howder1951]

elegantly simple!

[cameron]

Yes, elegantly simple. And no set screw, which is where my buttoned-down brain would probably have led me.

[howder1951]

Thats sure nice work Sir John, when I did mine I also recut the thread so that I could use it with the new metric pipes.

I just made one of these, but I can't get it any more accurate than >003" Can anyone help me, I am at wits end with that.