Shop Made Tools

[mattthegamer463]

Parallel spreader made from crate strapping, to hold parallels when the jaws are pretty wide:


MT4 adjustable lathe chuck stop for aligning thin parts in the lathe with minimal jaw depth


Zero Set DTI holder based on some of the designs here and what's commercially available:


Made a simple plywood finger-jointed box for the DTI holder:

[mattthegamer463]

Little mod for my cheapo indicator base, taking the arm off and putting it onto a 1/2" rod to use in the mill spindle, excellent for setting the vise and other simple indicating jobs.


Un-spillable oil pot for acid brushes:


Levers to replace the nuts on my Craftex B2227L lathe:


Level-able feet for the lathe too:

[mattthegamer463]

13/16" and 1" tailstock die holder:


That's all for now. Working on a digital height gauge, surface gauge, and radius ball turner for the next little while. All a lot more complex than these last few projects, I expect each to take at least a week, probably more.

[rcaffin]

Someone is having altogether too much fun!
Nice stuff.
Cheers
Roger

[Toolguy]

Nice looking projects. I'd say you have been around the block a time or two! Welcome to the herd.

[mattthegamer463]

Nice looking projects. I'd say you have been around the block a time or two! Welcome to the herd.

Thanks, I did a bit of work in college by making friends with the machine shop guys, but over time I've learned they never really thought me much in the way of proper procedures and the thought processes for making good quality parts. But I've been out of there almost five years. About a year ago I finally got some hobby-size machines and have been getting a workshop built up, trying to teach myself and learn from the internet.

Hopefully I'll have another dump of pics for here in a couple months.

[DaveR]

I LOVE the stock storage cart and would like to make one just like it. Any chance you could provide the major dimensions? Would you change anything if you made another one now?

Thanks!

Dave

[mattthegamer463]

I LOVE the stock storage cart and would like to make one just like it. Any chance you could provide the major dimensions? Would you change anything if you made another one now?

Thanks!

Dave

Here's my drawing. I was going to make a bigger one but I had a old AV cart and I wanted the wheels, but they weren't looking like they'd be easy to put on a new cart. So I cut the base off the AV cart and used that. It was 18x24 not 24x30 like my original plan was. I adjusted my drawing to match what I built not what I had originally planned.

Works great so far but its still pretty new.

[enl]

Quick little project. Found myself this morning with the need for a camera mount that would mount in an indicator holder. So



The need was for a camera with a broad base that is uneven near the threaded hole, so the plate on my existing mount wouldn't support it properly. The seating face is sunk about 0.1 or 0.2mm except for the 4mm near the rim. The overall diameter is 30mm.

[BCRider]

I'm not quite sure if this is the right place or not since it's more about shop made tools rather than modifications to a shop machine. But I don't see any major threads about machine modifications and accessories. Perhaps we need such a thread to go with this one on shop made tools?

Anyhow in another thread a newer member was asking about modifications needed to imported lathes before they were really nice to use. I mentioned that my lathe had come with some very rudimentary square stock handles that made it tough to feed manually in an easy manner. And that I'd made my own and then later on grooved them in my mill. So here's the result. I hope it might help others as well that are stuck with "smooth" wheels or don't like the ball and pin style cross handles.

In the picture the wheels on both the cross slide and compound are new from over size bar stock turned to blend with the index dial with a higher raised portion to grab onto. In use they turned out to be a touch slippery as I like the gybes adjusted for a light but noticeable drag to ensure they are slop free. After tolerating the smooth feel for about two years I broke down and added the finger grooves. This was SO much nicer to use that I pulled the main carriage wheel and grooved and divoted it as shown. The carriage wheel is also divoted on the rear as well. Now I hardly need any grip force on any of these controls to turn them easily and with a greater degree of control.

Another mod that keen eyes may notice is the clear vinyl flaps added to the near end and chuck side of the cross slide. These flaps perform great at keeping most of the swarf out of the cross slide dovetails. Pieces of 1/8x1/2 bar stock were dressed up to remove the mill scale and used as the caps to hold the vinyl in place. The chuck side flap being in position primarily to keep swarf out of the dovetail but it is also wide enough to aid in keeping swarf off the bed when working within about 4 inches of the chuck. The cross slide was removed to allow drilling and tapping for the numerous 8-32 screws that hold the two flaps and caps in place.



Here's some other additions and modifications I did on my lathe to make it better or longer lasting. First up was replacing the absolutely useless rubber bed wipers that did not even touch the bed with proper felts and caps. The caps are 1/8 aluminium and the felts are cut from heavy felt boot liners. Also although they were not there originally I added similar wipers to the front edge of the tail stock to aid in wiping swarf away before it could be swept up between the bed and tail stock;



On top of that my tail stock ram was not graduated so I added this aluminium piece. It has a rare earth magnet glued into the hole and the little angle aluminium indicator also has a similar magnet. It holds even stainless rulers well enough in most cases that I've now got a settable depth gauge. And when I need a 6 inch scale to check something I know right where it is. Some occasional swarf sticks to the magnet but it is easily wiped off with a finger.

[BCRider]

Since we can only post 4 images per post max here's Parte Deux.

And finally a couple of accessory tool posts I made up to hold boring bars and knurling tools.

[quasi]

nice mods, can I steal some idea's?

[BCRider]

nice mods, can I steal some idea's?

Sure... but if you ever make it out this way you owe me a beer as royalty...

[enl]

This was cut in about 10 minutes from an offcut in the scrap bucket. The feed ratchet retainer walked out on my shaper, as evidenced by the `tick SNICK, tick SNICK, tick SNICK' turning into `shoof shoof shoof' during a cut. The retainer is a tubular screw with notches for a driver. It both retains the spring and acts as a guide for the pin that engages the tooth wheel. No great effort was spent to make it nice. No knurling, hard, rough cut on the OD of a small chunk of scrap that was already bored to about the right size, followed by a minute with a file to make the pips on the end for engaging the screw.

The ratchet assembly, sowing the retainer and ratchet pin:


The tool:


Waiting for loctite to set, so I can finish the job I am on. Surprisingly, the cross pin that holds the setting know in the ratchet pin is a grooved straight pin. I may ream for a taper pin if I ever need to pull it off again, as grooved pins don't do well with multiple removal/insertion cycles.

[Boats69]

Small hole saw (trepanning tool?)

I needed to cut a thin, deep slot in aluminium. This little saw did the job - 15mm deep, 1.25mm wide. The ID of the saw is 6.5mm, OD 9.0mm.