Shop Made Tools

[j king]

Dr Stan,

The lathe is a Monarch series 50. 16x54

[j king]

Jeeesh I'm getting carried away.lol. Sorry if offends anyone.having fun with my Xmas present.weeee..pic of a live bearing steady.

[bborr01]

This is among the best threads I've seen anywhere! My compliments to the posters.

My meager contribution is below.

It's a drill jig for drilling through the center line of chromalloy tube of my experimental aircraft with a handrill. I had to drill a lot holes and wanted them located accurately as possible.

I didn't have a mill at the time so I had a machinist buddy fabricate the aluminum "v-block". I drilled and inserted the 3/16" pressed in the drill bushings. This jig worked great.

Jmark,

Thanks for posting your jig. Nice east solution for your locating problem. Also thanks for the kind words regarding this thread. I started it so there would be a place for people to share their ideas for tools. It has generated more great ideas than I ever thought it would. If you have any other pictures of your aircraft, I am sure many would be interested in seeing more of it too.

Brian

[browne92]

Not actually a tool, but a item I use a lot, is my moveable work table:



The top is 3/4" ply with plain white formica. The hole in the top holds a router table made of cast aluminum (al-you-mini-um to our friends across the pond ) tooling plate, but holds other fixtures I've made.

The table is made moveable by a hinged caster arrangement that I wish I could claim as my own design, but saw it on the net and stole...er...copied it. When you lift the table, the board with the casters hinges down and the latch boards hold the casters down:



Each corner has a string that pulls the latch boards out of the way to allow the casters to swing up and the table to rest on it's 4X4 legs:

[vpt]

A die grinder with a cut off wheel can cut conduit very easy you know.

[clive]

Wow, I finally got to the end, thanks to all who have contributed, my brain is in overdrive with new ideas, but one at a time. Just backtracking a bit - there were a couple of posts about getting a bearing outer race out of a blind hole. One method I have used on quite a few occasions - but you gotta be careful - run a bead of weld around the inside of the race on the edge of the ball groove, not right on the centre as it's thinner there, I use stainless stick because it's coefficient of linear expansion is higher than ferrous steel, Anyway get a bead on and quench it, the shrinkage enables you to wiggle it out or it cracks and comes out easy too. Try to get the weld at least halfway round but the further the better, it doesn't have to be pretty just has to stick.
Cheers
Clive

[j king]

A die grinder with a cut off wheel can cut conduit very easy you know.

You lost me on that one.

[Boostinjdm]

You lost me on that one.

He was referring to your bundle of wires in the pic. Look like DRO leads, so shortening would be a bit more involved.

[clive]

Wow, I finally got to the end, thanks to all who have contributed, my brain is in overdrive with new ideas, but one at a time. Just backtracking a bit - there were a couple of posts about getting a bearing outer race out of a blind hole. One method I have used on quite a few occasions - but you gotta be careful - run a bead of weld around the inside of the race on the edge of the ball groove, not right on the centre as it's thinner there, I use stainless stick because it's coefficient of linear expansion is higher than ferrous steel, Anyway get a bead on and quench it, the shrinkage enables you to wiggle it out or it cracks and comes out easy too. Try to get the weld at least halfway round but the further the better, it doesn't have to be pretty just has to stick.
Cheers
Clive

Just re-reading posts in the morning, I see that the bearing in question was in aluminium, I was referring to bearings in cast iron housings I wouldn't advise this method for ally as you may melt the ally, hope this clears any confusion.
Clive

[lbhsbz]

Just re-reading posts in the morning, I see that the bearing in question was in aluminium, I was referring to bearings in cast iron housings I wouldn't advise this method for ally as you may melt the ally, hope this clears any confusion.
Clive

This method works great in aluminum as well. I've used it to remove valve seats from aluminum cylinder heads, bearing races from blind holes in aluminum transmission cases...I generally just use the TIG and do it without filler...but a MIG and a steady hand works will also

[mars-red]

There was recent thread about stuff that's on our project lists and McGyver encouraged me to share some more of what I've been working on. It's been a little while since I've posted anything to this thread so here's my latest shop made tool... actually it's sort of 2 tools. I have a watchmaker's lathe with a "D" shaped bed... it's a little trickier to make attachments for this type of machine than the split bed machines, so I wanted a single base I could use for various attachments. The first attachment I needed to make was a tip-over style tool rest. Similar to the tool rests used on wood turning lathes, this is a t-shaped rest for a hand held graver that is height adjustable and can quickly be flipped up, clear of the work, then set back down without losing any settings (handy for measuring, cleaning, or inspecting the work during turning). These days this sort of tool rest usually only gets used for turning delicate staffs in watch movements though they are sometimes handy for the other odd job too.

I decided on using a small T slot in my base to hold the various attachments, as it seemed the most flexible option. The base was also my first scraping project - even though it's a very small surface it still counts! I was able to scrape it flat, and parallel with the top of the lathe bed, to (if my indicator is to be believed), 0.0001". Super fiddly indicating anything to that level, it took a very long time. The base is A36 steel (because that's what I had on hand) and I was expecting it to scrape a lot worse than it did. I'm looking forward to trying it on some iron.

Here is a pic of the attachment base after scraping and milling the T slot (and then putting a nice scratch across my pretty surface! Arg!), but before I did some cosmetic milling around the bottom to make it look a little less home made:


And here is the base, after some cosmetic work, with the completed tip-over tool rest mounted to it:


And a couple of pics with it mounted onto the lathe bed:




I have a couple of picasa albums with progress pictures I took while making this stuff, if anyone is interested.
The T-slot base: https://picasaweb.google.com/1159339...I6Xu7ui0IvT6AE
The tip-over tool rest: https://picasaweb.google.com/1159339...P-O7diVzca-ywE

[1-800miner]

Question to mars-red;
How long have you had that penny?

[mars-red]

Question to mars-red;
How long have you had that penny?

LOL, excellent question! I got it in my change several years ago, when I started getting into machining and horology. I've been a coin collector since I was about 10 years old so I habitually check dates/varieties on all my coins when I get change. It's pretty unusual to find a wheat penny in circulation these days, and it was around the same time I started following Jere Mihalov's excellent (and, I must say, inspiring) work... so it just worked out that I started using this penny to show scale in my pictures, as a small nod of respect to Jere. For anyone not familiar with his work, I recommend checking out http://watchmaking.weebly.com

[jhe.1973]

Tapping small holes w/o breaking the tap

Hi Everyone,

The last shop I worked in had more than it’s share of small, to tiny, holes to tap, often in materials that weren’t easy to machine.

A few of us made guides for our taps that could easily & quickly be used right in the machine.

Mine is on the bottom. I only made the one because from #6 on down they all use the same shank diameter:



The top ones were made by one of my friends that retired & I bought his tools. The idea is the same but he guided the set-screwed tap with a drill blank.

Both are used as shown by installing in the chuck/collet and letting the tap advance out of the guide whether it be shaft or tube:



Saves a lot of broken taps and allows you to feel if things are getting too tight in the hole being threaded.

[hoodlum]

horizontal to vertical adapter plate

So....This has been on my mind for a while....I have needed a good vertical rotary table for some time,but every time I look at the prices I cringe....I have a small 4" but it's really not satisfactory for heavier milling,not to mention the dividing capabilities are sparce,as with most affordable tables....
Last summer I acquired a used but solid Van Norman horizontal dividing head,so I said HEY!!!! Why not come up with a good way to support this vertically,so here's what I came up with....
This is the plate bolted to mill table before putting on dividing head

Dividing head bolted to plate before swiveling into place


Rotate head into place,slide in the 2 pins and you're ready to tram