Shop Made Tools

[doc0455]

Spring loaded Electronic Tool height setting tool to set tool heights.

[pensioner]

Homemade indexing device for a small milling machine. Spindle for ER25 collet.

[mc_n_g]

Nice clean build on the dividing head.
I built a small using a Sherline head stock based upon plans in Home Shop Machinist (i think).
It has come in handy on the Sherline mill.

I don't know if your cutter has a form to it or not.
I cut a rack out of O1 tool steel and heat treated it for cutting (loosly hobbing process) gears for my South Bend.
The straight tooth rack cuts more facets on the tooth form to very closely approximate involute shape.
Works great for what I am doing.

[pensioner]

Thank, we have almost identical dividing heads
Yes, this is a cutter with one cutting tooth, I sharpened the cutter for making a gear by applying it to the exemplary gear I have and carefully trying to match the shape of the cutter with the profile of the gear tooth. I made these gears for my lathe, textolite gears. It turned out well, there is almost no noise from their work.

[plunger]

Wish you would start a different thread for this so we dont cram this shop made tools with questions. I would love to ask you some how too questions on what you've done and how to go about it.

[Beazld]

While not quite a tool I am always looking for my automatic center punch. The lightbulb came on and now I use a little rare earth magnet to hold it to the pulley housing of my drill press where I usually need it.

[rklopp]

While not quite a tool I am always looking for my automatic center punch. The lightbulb came on and now I use a little rare earth magnet to hold it to the pulley housing of my drill press where I usually need it.

Looks like the Sword of Damocles!

[Beazld]

Looks like the Sword of Damocles!

Nah, we got enough of them already!

[Ironbearmarine]

I have some smallish (30”) cannon barrels that are solid cast iron ( no bores) i decided to design a simple horizontal drilling/ boring system, using my old Sheldon lathe, a hydraulic ram and a marine propeller shaft. I machined a keyway the length of a 48 inch of 1.25 propeller shaft. Made a collar with a length of key stock. I use the ram for feeding and use the compound with a special tool that engages dimples in the keyway to retract the bar. Then i had to build a special adjustable cradle for the cannon barrel, but thats another story.

[mattthemuppet]

whoa, that is crazy cool engineering! Certainly solves the problem of bed length by using the chuck to turn the drill but the ram to push it. Did you need to retract the drill during the process or did the spade bit clear the chips well enough on its own?

[Arcane]

Ironbearmarine, that's very impressive!

[Ironbearmarine]

whoa, that is crazy cool engineering! Certainly solves the problem of bed length by using the chuck to turn the drill but the ram to push it. Did you need to retract the drill during the process or did the spade bit clear the chips well enough on its own?

The nature of cast iron chips is that of fine grain black sand and as this is horizontal there is no build up of waste material at the cutter head. Also carbon, which is inherent in cast iron is released and acts as a dry lubricant. So allowing a build up of a certain amount of waste material is beneficial to the process.
however retraction is easy, though it means stopping the machine to do it. A special spanner was made with a retractable pin, that is mounted to the compound. In the keyway of the drill shaft are dimples every 3 inches. The apron is manually moved so the spanner pin engages the dimple and the apron is moved back along the ways, retracting the drill bar. Guess i’ll have to find a pic of that and add it in.

[mattthemuppet]

thanks for the reply! I'm not sure I'll ever need to do the same, but I've stored this up in the noggin just in case

[jmm03]

Very cool engineering Ironbear, does the ram just push on the end of the drill shaft? I was wondering how you coupled it. Jim

[davidwdyer]

It appears from the picture that the cannon is mounted at an angle to the lathe carriage, or at least the base plate is. Is this just an illusion?