Shop Made Tools

[rcaffin]

Zero?

Very nice.
Just out of curiosity - how did you calibrate it for zero?
Repeat rotations on the granite slab?

Cheers
Roger

[tryfred]

Dan,
Patience and skills…you have both… Nice Job!
Joe

[greystone]

Really really cool !

[stefang]

That level is a great project!

I see something like that in my future

[BCRider]

VERY well done on that level. A truly inspiring bit of out of the box engineering. I would never have thought of using a graduated pipette in that manner.

As you say the amount of flex is so slight that it's hard to imagine ever having a problem. But if the point contact should prove to be a source of failure I think I'd consider a fulcrum with somewhat greater radius and perhaps a soft pad of thin glove leather to spread the contact pressure around a touch more. But only if the present setup should prove problematic.

[Noitoen]

I would change just one thing. Instead of a spring below the adjuster screw, I would increase the brass fixture a little to enable a small counter locking set screw. Any accidental pressure on the top of the vial is only held by the spring risking the breakage.

[Dan_the_Chemist]

Noitoen - Excellent idea. Not only might it over-stress the glass and break it, I have noticed that accidentally moving the brass shifts the sensitivity.

BCRider - I was thinking of making the saddle out of Delrin, but that got short circuited when I discovered that my brother had helped himself to my small hoard of Delrin. I decided to use the dowel pin mostly because I was sitting at the bench contemplating what to do and there was a jar of dowel pins on the bench.

RCaffin - Yup. It's a PITA process, since it takes a while to settle down when it's close to level - we are talking minutes. I did it by working on another project and visiting the surface plate every 5 minutes or so. Make a little tweak, spin it on the plate, and go back to the other project.

Howder1951 - I tested that tonight by putting shims under each end, letting it settle for several minutes, and taking a reading. The results aren't perfectly smooth (which I think is due to my not waiting a fixed period of time), and there is an asymmetry in the graph. I will try to figure out why it's not symmetrical. I'll bet I don't have the two ends depressed equally. Because of that it's not a gradiometer where I could use it to accurately read slope... but it's good for detecting level. I can see a displacement of the bubble with my thinnest shim stock which is 0.0011. I can make it more sensitive, but then it takes even longer to settle down.



DaGrouch used butane so he could have a low viscosity fluid. Ethanol is at least 4 times more viscous than butane, and that might be part of the reason it is taking so long to settle down. I tried using kerosene and that was very slow. I might try hexane or octane since those are less viscous than either ethanol or water and are liquid at common temperatures. On the other hand, this project wasn't supposed to turn into a Project That Never Ends, so maybe I'll go with what I have.

Thanks for all the encouragement and helpful suggestions

Dan

[larry_g]

The results aren't perfectly smooth (which I think is due to my not waiting a fixed period of time), and there is an asymmetry in the graph. I will try to figure out why it's not symmetrical. I'll bet I don't have the two ends depressed equally. Because of that it's not a gradiometer where I could use it to accurately read slope... but it's good for detecting level. I can see a displacement of the bubble with my thinnest shim stock which is 0.0011. I can make it more sensitive, but then it takes even longer to settle down.

Dan

Me, I would suspect that your not using ground glass and that you would have a cylinder that does not have a consistent wall thickness, leading to the bumps in your graph.

lg
no neat sig line

[Dan_the_Chemist]

That level is a great project!

I would like to thank you for your wonderful Youtube videos. They are one of the things that has inspired me to try to try to improve my work, and helped me to do it.

My last comment on the level (don't want to hijack the thread): I made it to level and tune my lathe. It really helped. The lathe looked level with my standard carpenters level, but I found that it was twisted along the length. Using wedges and shims I lifted the front by 0.105" on the left and 0.128" on the right. That immediately improved my results on a test bar. Before leveling a 14" test bar showed 0.0065" difference in turned diameter over 12". After leveling and settling overnight it showed 0.0029". With a lot of tweaking I was able to get the tailstock aligned well enough that it now shows 0.0012" of diameter difference over 12". Before I leveled it the best I could get was 0.0035 over 12".

I don't think I can do much more unless I had scrape the ways since a graph of the turned diameter versus distance makes me think that the first 10" of the ways are worn about 0.0004 - 0.0007". Still, that's pretty good for 40 year old second hand Rockwell 11x42.

[mattthemuppet]

made a tailstock die holder to finally cut straight threads with a die oh, and to use some of the tools that I've already made!

drilling out the holder using a toolpost mounted drill chuck. My tail stock has a miserable 1 1/2in travel which makes drilling a frustrating experience


close up


cross drilling the set screw holes with a live drill chuck (surprisingly handy)

[mattthemuppet]

arbor turned to a thou or two over size, then ground using my dremel tool post grinder. Not the best in the world, but better than nothing


parted off from the scrap axle. Turned it around in my collet chuck then turned the MT1 taper with the compound


threaded the handle with my tail stock die holder..


and it's finished


it's probably not going to get a ton of use, but it'll handy and it's giving me a bit of stress relief time in the garage!

[Dan_the_Chemist]

drilling out the holder using a toolpost mounted drill chuck. My tail stock has a miserable 1 1/2in travel which makes drilling a frustrating experience

BRILLIANT !!!!

I had been fighting the very same issue and I was contemplating ways to extend my tail stock travel. WOW... If you are ever in S E Ohio I will treat you to dinner !!!

[Dave C]

Pics are mia.

[mattthemuppet]

BRILLIANT !!!!

I had been fighting the very same issue and I was contemplating ways to extend my tail stock travel. WOW... If you are ever in S E Ohio I will treat you to dinner !!!

thanks! It's a good work around for sure. Not perfect though, anything larger than 3/8" is hard work and needs more pressure on the carriage handwheel than I would like. You also have to be careful to get it on center - I used a center drill in the tail stock to drill a center hole then the same center drill in the toolpost chuck to center it. The biggest boon is retracting drills from deep holes to clear chips, plus not having to move the tail stock just to change drills.

If we're ever in SE Ohio I'll give you a shout

Pics are mia.

sorry 'bout that, looks like pbucket is down. If they don't come back up today I'll check out other photo hosting sites and repost them.

[Toolguy]

When using the tailstock to drill a deep hole, you can save time by not retracting the drill with the T/S screw, just leave that where it is, unlock the T/S, pull it back, clear chips, push it back in to the bottom of the hole, lock and continue cranking the drill in. It is quicker to do than to tell about. It saves a bunch of unwinding, then winding back in.