What did you do today?

[Timleech]

Tonight, made a dozen 3/8" Whitworth brass cap nuts for an old Lister marine engine I'm working on.
Originally every external nut on the engine would have been this type, but it's lost a few over the years and some had been replaced with nuts from the wrong size of bar.



Tim

[J Tiers]

Made 2 of these pulleys for a test fixture at work , finished very early today, so they count as what I did "today". also made the idler stud, went to work, put them together on the fixture, and found out that the programmer wasn't ready to use this "rush-rush" fixture that we needed right away because the client wants this feature in the code super ASAP.....

In case you ask, no I could NOT find them in sizes wanted at Berg, Stock drive, or Small parts...., nor at Boston Gear. For 2mm round urethane belting, and a special new ratio that we needed to emulate on the fixture.

[John Stevenson]

Mentioned in post #218.

It's the axle off a baggage tug at the local airport.



Drive to this is via a 48 volt DC motor direct splined to the axle.
Splines are visible inside that finned housing which is all that's left of the original motor.

On the floor is the motor I have been given to graft on. Unfortunately it's a motor that has 6 large external splines and not the needed 12 internal spines, plus it drives via a reduction box [ missing but not wanted anyway ]



Closer shot of the problem.

So a bit of turning and boring and a bit of back breaking spline cutting on the slotter [ Oh why, oh why do slotter have to be so low ? ]




And we get a conversion piece.

This is as far as I got today.




Far enough to get some measurements on the back of an envelope so that I can make a new housing up for the motor end and also fits to the axle.

[John Stevenson]

New post because of the 4 picture limit.

State of play at the end of today.



New lump of alloy, nay, BILLET, delivered. 8" diameter cut at 6" long. Ower alloy suppliers are brilliant, I only ordered this at 4:00pm yesterday and it was delivered today at 10:00am. If I had wanted just 1" long they would still have cut it and delivered it.

They come from Lincoln which is about 40 miles away and charge £7.50 regardless for delivery.

So tomorrows job is to replace that reduction housing with something that is hiding inside this BILLET.

[dewat]

Actually over 2 days,

For reference that's a 5 gallon bucket ( 19 liters)



Excluding the center hole , 432 drilling operations, final ID .484" ( 12.3 MM) and 144 tappings , too big to power tap with my mill.




.

[Carbide Dies]

I've been plugging away at a gearless clock per Philip Woodward's design and today I managed to mount the escapement and verify that it seems to work. A minor milestone, lots more to go.

John

Not to be troublesome, but aren't those gears?

[Peter N]

Made up a heat staking/riveting/swaging fixture for a custom plug-in rechargeable battery-pack case we are moulding.
I designed this battery to go with the "Teletest Focus" ultrasonic flaw detector I posted as a recent project. The Phosphor Bronze contacts (still to be gold-plated) were designed in an assymmetric shape so that they could be used flat in the battery pack as shown, and also in the mating case & charger as a cantilevered spring contact, just fastened at one end on the other parts and angled down to provide the "spring" action.

Heat staking/swaging is very common for fastening contacts, but because of the design I had to make a multiple staking head with angled pins, 30deg on one set of pins and 5 degrees on the other, so keyed them in position before grinding.
Used an aluminium block for the heat transfer from the staking m/c, but made the pins from steel so the face angles could be ground, and then machined a simple nest to locate the case.





Finished it off late last night, and got to test it out today.
Here it is on the benchtop. Tip temperature was set at around 105/110 deg C to soften and deform the plastic (PC/ABS alloy blend) without actually getting it molten, as then it sticks to the staking pins.
First-off trial run was not bad, but I will probably have to machine a hemispherical dome in th ends of the pins to finish it off, but I'm pleased with the way it worked.





Peter

[vpt]

[Carbide Dies]

Matenance

Today was spent noticing rust, oiling and planning how to reduce the humidity in my shop. That and quoting. Not why I got into the business but it has to be done.

[Dr Stan]

Just about finished with my Fray rebuild so I'm pulling wire for its circuit.

[John Stevenson]

Well a bit late posting today. I had hoped to start early and get finished early to pull another job in but due to pi$$ing about with some broken bleed nipples for the body shop across the road it was 11:00 before I got started.

Chucked that big lump of BILLET up and proceeded to make tons of swarf, hollowed out, bearing circlip and oil seal fitted and trial assembly.



Final assembly, just got the mesh strip to fit over the vent holes so no one get get their fingers in.




Back to the rewinding company on Monday for them to fit the rest of the motor and test, I don't have the brush housing.

Big clean up [ no pics ] and realised that this job was done start to finish with no drawings or sketches, everything was measurements taken from the old housing / spline or trial fit then remembered.

[sconisbee]

Well today, I finally managed to remember to bring the camera to work,
just finished these spikes up, they fit into the end of some aluminium tube,
which is then screwed into the ground over which a flag pole sits.

25 of them in total (not all pictured).

Bit of a rush as they are being taken up to london by the customer for flags
at a certain wedding thats coming up.

They are 1 inch aluminium bar, the "thread" is 20mm (approx) wide, and on a 28mm
pitch takes 7 minutes to make each one, not too bad for a 20 odd year old cnc.

[Carld]

Today I went to an auction with a fellow machinist. We bought some stuff and we all need stuff. I regret not bidding higher on a live center set but that's life. I did get an expandable mandrel from 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" using two sleeves, a large assortment of allen screws and three 3/4" pipe clamps for about $35. I wanted the mandrel and the clamps, the screws was icing.

The food was some damn good BBQ and baked beans. Got home and had a beer and popcorn. Then sorted everything out and stashed it away.

Then I had one of my special highballs. I'm glowing now thank you.

[EVguru]

Today I took delivery of another motorcycle.

It's my one and only non Italian.



link to hi-res version; http://buyvintage1.files.wordpress.c...50favor_10.jpg

[DICKEYBIRD]

Then I had one of my special highballs. I'm glowing now thank you.

Could you post a detailed drawing, a bill-of-materials and instructions please? Sounds like fun!