Shop Made Tools

[Arcane]

The other day I needed to use two wrenches to tighten a bolt holding a part onto my faceplate so I grabbed a wrench out of my tool box to use in conjunction with the one I keep right at the lath. I set it down in the swarf tray and when I picked it up, it was fuzzy with chips! Somewhere the darn thing had gotten magnetized. Don't know where, don't know when, but it was a PITA. I really do not like anything magnetized around my lathe or mill.

[Noitoen]

The other day I needed to use two wrenches to tighten a bolt holding a part onto my faceplate so I grabbed a wrench out of my tool box to use in conjunction with the one I keep right at the lath. I set it down in the swarf tray and when I picked it up, it was fuzzy with chips! Somewhere the darn thing had gotten magnetized. Don't know where, don't know when, but it was a PITA. I really do not like anything magnetized around my lathe or mill.

Newer washing machine pumps have a "U" core with 1 coil and a magnetic rotor inside a plastic housing without shaft seals. If you remove the rotor housing, you are left with the bare core with a slight gap. This makes a very good demagnetizer.

[pensioner]

Noitoen thanks for the idea!
I have already made such a demagnetizer, just now, I just cut off the magnetic core a little, added a switch and placed it in the body of the old adapter. Works

[Dan Dubeau]

Here's something a little different. A swing weight scale I just finished last night.





While I know it's a stretch to be included in this thread, It is a tool, and I did make it in my shop .

For those who don't know what it is, it's a scale to measure the "heft" or "swing weight" of a golf club. This is a copy of Dave Tutelman's design with a few changes to suit material I had on hand. All the design and engineering info can be found here if you're interested. he can explain it much better than I can. https://www.tutelman.com/golf/measur...eightScale.php

This all started because I told my (6'5") Nephew I'd build him a set of golf clubs to fit his height. While researching I learned that if you extend clubs, you must counterweight them to maintain the same swing weight. Well, how can I maintain swing weight if I can't measure it*......so here we are.... I also machined a mold to pour lead counterweights. Don't have a pic of it, but will take some when I pour the weights. Hoping to have the club build wrapped up this weekend. Next build is a loft/lie machine to check and bend clubs. It's a slippery slope I tell ya. But it's fun.

*There are other ways to measure swing weight, but none as fun and time consuming as building a specialized tool for it. One way is here https://www.hirekogolf.com/golf-club...ght-calculator

[Dave94Lightning]

I'm about to make this simple tool but wanted some opinions before building it. It is an idea I had for a simple radius cutter for some aluminum axle blocks that I fabricate on my mill. The jig would be plastic (3D printed) with an aluminum locating Pin and Aluminum handle. The bottom of the locating pin would be placed in the vise jaws and thus allow the jig to be rotated horizontally via the handle. The part to be cut (Blue) would be placed in the jig and the handle rotated to allow the endmill to cut the radius. Let me know if you think this would work well.

[Cenedd]

I'm about to make this simple tool but wanted some opinions before building it.

You might want to have a browse through Tom Lipton's YouTube channel Ox Tools as I'm sure he's done just this using a mini pallet. The key point in his design was a stop to prevent over-rotation - partly to prevent taking a chunk out the face you don't want to damage and partly for safety if it grabs. Mini pallet is definitely on my round toit list - for the rotary table mainly.

[Cenedd]

Think I found the video. https://youtu.be/AZkP1uiMzJk?t=156
I'm sure there's been a follow up with more info on stops but it gives you the gist Also found a blog post on the mini pallet: http://oxtool.blogspot.com/2012/12/c...nists.html?m=1
Hope it's of some help/interest. Plenty of other interesting/useful stuff on his channel too.

[Bruno Mueller]

I made a little video about the possibilities of the Bosch-Combi lathe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xJEtpNKyQI&t=177s

[Cenedd]

Finally something that fits the category! I saw a Joe Pieczynski video a while back on diamond grinding HSS on a mill. Obviously that went in my shopping basket and obviously I've done nothing with it for the last 18 months. Now, I've bought myself a nice set of 8 chisels for a project and standards aren't what they were in the 70's (when the other two 'identical' chisels I've got were made) and the backs need a LOT of flattening. It's still taking too long even on a 120 micron diamond plate (that's approx 140 grit). I know there are shortcuts involving a tiny back bevel but partly I want these as perfect as I can get them - they have sort of inherited sentimental value as they replace the missing ones out of my dad's set - and partly the back is so bad that one entire corner is unusable as is. Clearly the overkill solution would be a surface grinder....and I did look! There was even one of the mythical bench size variety available...but collection only from three hours drive away....and it's been very difficult to get fuel here in the UK for the last week of so. It would have needed work anyway as it looked like it was someone's self-build project. So I suddenly remembered I had this resin-bonded diamond wheel that just needed an arbor. One chunk of EN8 (roughly 1040 equivalent) later and here we go. Turned the shank first and then held that in the 20mm collet that it'll be running in to do the other side.



Runout was....far from what I'd hoped it'd be. I'm not sure how much was my failure and how much was in the wheel but it clocked in at 0.3mm on the outside of the cone and the edge of the flat at the bottom. So I just chucked the whole lot back up in the lathe and trued it inside and out - the arbor's dedicated to this tool anyway so it won't be coming back off.




There shall be some unimportant test piece tried first, of course....and much covering of things shall be done first
What grit is it? Well, I guess we're going to find out as it's unspecified. Could be about 200-ish as other "D12A2" wheels seem to be. Gotta give these things a try.....even if it's just to find out that they don't work!

[ezduzit]

C--looks very useful.

[rcaffin]

Caution: using a diamond wheel on steel is not a good idea. The steel (iron) absorbs the carbon from the diamonds and degrades the wheel.
Yeah, seriously. Save the diamond for carbide tooling.
If you want to work on steel, you will need CBN: cubic boron nitride, instead. You can get almost identical wheels in CBN from ebay. It does HSS steel very nicely. Go softly.
I made my own T&C grinder, and use both diamond and CBN.

Cheers
Roger

[elf]

Caution: using a diamond wheel on steel is not a good idea. The steel (iron) absorbs the carbon from the diamonds and degrades the wheel.
Yeah, seriously. Save the diamond for carbide tooling.
If you want to work on steel, you will need CBN: cubic boron nitride, instead. You can get almost identical wheels in CBN from ebay. It does HSS steel very nicely. Go softly.
I made my own T&C grinder, and use both diamond and CBN.

Cheers
Roger

That would depend on the speed and heat generated.

[Cenedd]

My understanding - from Tormek's video is that, like Elf said, it's only a problem at much higher heat levels. I've got to avoid that sort of heat for fear of wrecking the steel anyway so I think it should be ok. I'll be testing it first on a cheap modern Stanley chisel that's been horribly abused already so hopefully I should notice when I then sharpen it whether it seems softer.
I've got a CCGT insert in CBN; it makes a very nice fly-cutter insert for hot-rolled steel with the mill scale still on.

[J Tiers]

Grind them wet, and the heat issue goes away even more. Yes, somewhat of a problem with the wheel upside down like a Blanchard, and the work just a tiny edge, but at a slow speed won't likely be an issue anyway.

Also, grinding steel with diamond has been done for a long time. If there was was that much of a problem, it would not have been done.

[TGTool]

John Stevenson commented on grinding steel with diamond. He did it without any visible issues and he was engaged with a Chinese company developing a benchtop endmill sharpener that finally came to market. It's a theoretical problem but more difficult to find in real life.