What did you do today?

[Tim Clarke]

I've been spending time on the Oregon coast. Caught a Salmon Friday, Did some work on my humble cabin Saturday, Shot some Sporting Clays Today, and will return to the river tomorrow. Weather has been great, looks a little windy tonight and tomorrow, but better the rest of the week.

[DennisCA]

Doing some prototyping for the lathe. I want to build some protection to prevent swarf and chips getting onto the ways, keep things cleaner. When the lathe gets wet or oily crud really sticks to it and also gets into sliding surfaces and cleaning up is a PITA, I want to keep those as clean as possible to reduce the time spent cleaning the lathe.

I made the depression in the middle mainly for chuck clearance issues, I would loose work height if I kept it straight and this lathe center height is only 118mm. Idea is to keep it in place with magnets.



I then made another cover for the cross slide. Did some turning and boring with these in place and they reduced the cleanup by a lot, 99% of the crud landed on the sheet metal parts and I could just lift them off the lathe and sweep the swarf and chips right into the bin. I think it's great. The back of the cross slide also exposed the ways there a lot of the time and it would get very cruddy, so the cover extends over that. It can still be made shorter, I will probably cut and fold it down.





I think some leather pieces in the right places would help (like Gotteswinter did with his lathe) cover the remaining areas around the compound.

And speaking of leather I made new way scrapers from an old leather belt, works great, made them slightly oversize compared to the felt ones so they really wipe the ways clean.

[CCWKen]

I'm convinced the only way to keep my lathe clean is to turn the light off and walk away.

Nice job on the covers but they always get in the way or are not large enough. You're fighting a battle that can't be won.

[J Tiers]

Dunno what lathe that is (looks Leblond-ish), but nearly EVERY US lathe would have a cover on the crosslide as a standard feature.

The cover over the ways looks like a real pain, but maybe it is OK for you. I see the machine has way wipers, they should do a good job and not require the "way tray".

On my Logan I did put a cover over the leadscrew, attached to the carriage, and extending 4 or 5 inches to the left side. That is both handy and very useful in keeping crud off.

[plunger]

I did something similer. It doesnt get in the way at all because it falls into the gap and conveniently tucks itself up and I just sweep the swarf off the rubber sheet.
Its most usefull when I am using emery cloth. The ways are nicely protected now.

[garyhlucas]

Our shop guy covered the cross slide screw slot with a piece of magnetic sign material. Seems to work real well as the front side is smooth plastic and doesn't appear to be magnetic.

[DennisCA]

Dunno what lathe that is (looks Leblond-ish), but nearly EVERY US lathe would have a cover on the crosslide as a standard feature.

Here is a picture of the cross slide as it is from factory. You can see in the picture, part of the dovetail surfaces are exposed at the back, that's a place that really likes to pull in the dirt. But with the lower and upper covers which "seat over" each other the back is fully covered all the time and the mating lines are also protected from crud and cutting fluid getting in there. Sure nothing is perfect but so far it was worked pretty well for me in making the machine easier to clean and more fun to use. Doesn't look as nice though.

The cover over the ways looks like a real pain, but maybe it is OK for you. I see the machine has way wipers, they should do a good job and not require the "way tray".

It does not interfere with the controls and does not get in the way so yeah, no pain, possibly if I was machining really large diameter stock ot would get in the way, but then it can be removed for that operation in seconds. The reason for the covers is to make clean up easier. The way wipers still do their job and are needed regardless, it's operation is not primarily related to them. I would get covers for the lead screw too, if I found some for a price I was willing to pay.

[Ridgerunner]

I made a ball hitch for the back of the mower so it is convenient to move a trailer sometimes. I ended up hot flocking the powder coat but it still did not work out as well as I would have liked.

[J Tiers]

Here is a picture of the cross slide as it is from factory. You can see in the picture, part of the dovetail surfaces are exposed at the back, that's a place that really likes to pull in the dirt.

....

What I did was just a short cover above part of the leadscrew on the H/S side of the carriage. The OEM crosslide cover is similar to yours, but the actual crosslide does not go back that far for any operation I get into, so it has not been an issue.

[vpt]

Welded up some cracks in the transom of the work boat. Ready for another year of abuse.

[danlb]

Picked up a new smart watch to replace my 4 year old first generation samsung model. The Samsung Galaxy S3 Classic a very impressive model that even includes a built in cell phone so that it does not need a smart phone to work. I'm impressed by the quality and features.




Then I spent 3 hours on line with Verizon tech support getting the cell phone feature activated. Network folks will understand what I mean when I say that the watch uses a UDP like protocol to send initial information to the cell phone (or in this case the watch) and that protocol has no error correction. The cell tower near my house has a bad transmitter with a high S/N ratio and that also drops packets. Combine those problems with a UDP protocol and you create a situation where the watch can't get a good download of initial configuration data. The solution was to drive north 1 mile to another cell site and reboot the watch. Instant success.

I also got my package of tooling from amazon. It included some nice end mills and some corner rounding end mills. It also included some PVD coated inserts. I don't know why but they were $17 for a box of 10 inserts. ( CCMT060204 VP15TF CCMT21.51) A box of bigger ones for my other tooling was only $14 for 10 inserts. anyone know what the PMK mean on the back of the inserts?




Dan

[jdedmon91]

Sharpening drills today. Did a time lapse video.

https://youtu.be/cFrTtyaSOMg

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Arcane]

Mundane stuff. I blew my outside water line out in preparation for winter (it snowed here a couple of weeks ago!) and I drained the water out of my compressor tank; it's been several months and I got just over 400 ml. I finally bought the needed materials to install a quarter turn valve on the tank outlet, too! I've been planning on doing that for only two or three decades. Took the front tire off my hoopy, it has a slow leak that I will fix tomorrow when I go out to the acreage where my buddy has a nice tire machine.

[PStechPaul]

Today I cleaned up and mostly leveled the foundation for the small 4' x 8' yard machine shed:



Then I used my electric string trimmer to mow some of the weeds and grass in the front yard, but I had trouble advancing the line. I found that the spool was too tight in the trimmer head, so it would not respond to bumping, and would not turn. It seemed to have swollen. I tried to use a file to make it fit, but that does not work well on ABS. So I used my lathe to do the job - hey, finally some machining!



When I was cleaning up some debris on the front lawn, I found an orange toad:



And on Sunday I went to the local Micro Center, intending to get a $39 Android tablet, but they talked me into a $99 Samsung Galaxy Tab A 7. I got it mostly to try using it on my security cams, which don't seem to play nice with my Windows machines and Wi-Fi. But I installed some games, and got hooked on a Billiards/8 Ball Pool App:



Here is a video clip of the action. I broke the rack, then Mr Android took over and sunk all but two balls. Then it was my turn and it went back and forth until I finally won. This was the "hard" difficulty, and the CPU plays a mean game, but I win maybe 25% of the time.

http://enginuitysystems.com/pix/elec..._Pool_4617.AVI (70M)

[MattiJ]

I also got my package of tooling from amazon. It included some nice end mills and some corner rounding end mills. It also included some PVD coated inserts. I don't know why but they were $17 for a box of 10 inserts. ( CCMT060204 VP15TF CCMT21.51) A box of bigger ones for my other tooling was only $14 for 10 inserts. anyone know what the PMK mean on the back of the inserts?




Dan

Mitsubishi VP15TF grade is the most commonly sold counterfeit insert on Ebay
These are listed on amazon but also fake Mitsubishi's https://www.amazon.com/Gaobey-CCMT21...rds=CCMT060204 (seller has been shy to show Mitsu's logo..)

I have bought VP15TF CCMT060204's as low as 4 dollars per box including shipping. Some copies seem to be better than others, the 4 dollars per box had dents on the cutting edges etc.
(If you slide your fingernail along the cutting edge of the insert you can feel even the invisible dents)

P M K in the box is the ISO standard material grade, so in this case they are suited for steel, stainless and cast iron.