What did you do today?

[Tim The Grim]

Finally gave my granddaughter her rocking horse.
It’s her present for being potty trained.

[mattthemuppet]

That's beautiful Tim, a true family heirloom.

[mattthemuppet]

Sockets are great for these projects have drilled and tapped them as well.

yep, your adventures with sockets on your arbor press were part of the inspiration for this

[DennisCA]

This weekend I finally reassembled and closed up the gear box.

Both shafts back together. I had to disassemble the lower shaft again which I had put in first. It was completely impossible to get the three front gears in with the lower shaft assembled. So the upper shaft goes first, but try and get as many of the components for the lower shaft in place as well before hand, not a lot of space to work with...



Finally able to start putting components back in place:


Chain drive for the feed gearbox, still need to put in the drive shaft for the Y-axis before putting back the drive belts and pulley.


And the gear box selector is back. This was a difficult operation, trying to fiddle the thing just so, so that it would go into the locating pins (and it's not that light) while not disturbing all the forks on the backside that need to mesh against the gears and selection mechanism. Never mind that the gasket didn't want to stay in place. I had to resort to vaseline to keep it stuck against the gear selector. I probably tried 40 times or so before I got it.... A rubber mallet was required to get the thing to seat properly on the pins. And I had to put the selector in the speed that put the all the selector forks closest to the middle, which I found was 400 rpm.



Tested changing the speeds and rotating the spindle by hand and all the selector forks seem to have engaged properly.

Drive shaft for the Y-axis goes back back on.



And the aluminum cover, this protects the pulley belts from getting dirty from the chain drive.



Drive pulley goes on next



Then I pretty much just had to put back the side covers and the controls.







So pretty much back together again now, I refilled the gear box with oil and tested all the speeds and they seem to work. When the vertical head is engage the noise is loud at over 500 rpm, the straight gears meshing in the long reach head really make a lot of noise. I assume this is normal for the long reach head machines. The machine is quiet even at 2000 rpm with only the horizontal arbor.

Also I can tell the epoxy paint I used is getting discoloration, blotches that are lighter. Kinda annoying to see... I think epoxy paint might be a good primer, but perhaps this is what happens if you try and use it as a finish paint too, might have been better with polyurethane paint for a finish. But I am not going to bother with that now. Just an FYI.

[J Tiers]

Hah.... I'm out of town, and then while I am supposed to do other things, a good client asked for drawings on a rush modification project..... Done except for final checks and slamming it into the outbox, but quite the hassle to do when away from the office.

I'd rather be scraping a 2 x 3 surface plate to 40 points...... and I almost mean that.

[Tundra Twin Track]

I am sorting and organizing stuff in shop,-48c this morning so not outside weather.

[140mower]

I am sorting and organizing stuff in shop,-48c this morning so not outside weather.

Holy Crap!!!! I've been whining about the -19c here today.

[J Tiers]

Just drove 620 miles to get home today. I need some of that whiskey y'all been taking about. I did pick up a case of Spotted Cow on the way, but that's for a friend. If I wasn't lazy and it wasn't late, I'd go down and check the supplies of beer etc, but I'll probably hit the hay.

[Arcane]

I checked the local weather on the internet. It's -37^oC and the windchill is -51^oC.

For those of you who are Celsius challenged, that's -34.6^oF and windchill is -59.8^oF.

I'm staying in the house today.

[DennisCA]

I'm tired of this ****ty winter weather, please send some of that here. This might be the wettest, warmest and darkest january on record.

[pinstripe]

We recently had +48C here (118F). That sounds better -48C. Could do with less fires though Almost 100C difference between our two bits of the planet!

[J Tiers]

Up where I was, in Mnnesota, it was a balmy 15F or so.

The usual January temps are up to a max of 0F as a high for the day.

[Cenedd]

I had to tie the wheelie bins to the wall so they wouldn't fall over (and damage next door's car). It's tough living here! Hope none of you freeze....or boil, pinstripe.

[mattthemuppet]

rode to work today in shorts and short sleeves - it was 68F (20C?) at 7am this morning

[Tundra Twin Track]

Warmer this morning -47c ,large semi trucks on main highway 1/2 a mile away sound like a locomotive a 100 ft from the house at this Temp.
You know it's cold when walking across drive way snow crunches like walking on egg shells.