What did you do today?

[MattiJ]

MattiJ Sleeping outside when it's -24 sounds like either a cry for help or a proper attempt to end it all. I know it sucks lately but stay inside and have a stiff drink with the rest of us
I can only recall waking up in a tent once and finding it had snowed overnight. It certainly explained why it was so damn cold! Doubt we'd ever have been found either as it was somewhere around here. No villages, no roads, no people, no mobile signal. Now that's an act of stupidity done properly!

ROFL
My sleeping bag is rated -29C comfort temp and -68C extreme
(-90F in american english)

[MattiJ]

This was our accommodation couple of weeks ago with my 7 yo kiddo:



She has been asking when do we go again

[Cenedd]

Nice. I reckon my 9 yo would be really excited to do that.....and then want to go indoors when it was cold and not as comfortable as his bed. I can't say that I can entirely fault his logic given the warm comfy bed was just metres away. My sleeping bag was chosen for being small and lightweight. Snow really wasn't on the plan. I think it was "all seasons" but might well have been rated for the same numbers as yours but with a + sign on the front! Lets just say the whole thing was such a shambles that I ended up cooking for 7 on a hexi burner after somebody ditched the gas for the stove to save weight....but kept the multi-burner stove and an empty gas bottle, obviously! *facepalm*

[DennisCA]

Made some more parts for the main shaft of my pantorouter. Some fettling to do yet and also washers and the like to be added to the pantograph mechanism.

[Bruno Mueller]

I made something again.

Length and width of the base 120 x 25mm, thickness 10mm.
Total length of the vial 65mm, visible length 35 mm.
Vials Ø 10,5mm.
Distance between fixing bolts 93 mm.
Vial holder 16 x 16 mm.

The part is adjustable and very sensitive.
One graduation mark corresponds to 0.1mm on the meter.
I found the spirit level on the internet.

Until I had aligned the vial to the base, a good hour passed. Always checked for envelope and readjusted until the deflection of the vial was the same on envelope. In the end, it was barely noticeable rotations on the adjusting screws.
If I should do something like that again, then I take no normal M6 thread for the attachment, but M6 x 0.5 thread.

[Cenedd]

Definitely a finer thread would have helped. I think a Starrett 98 level is 0.5mm/meter (a search says 0.42mm/m but I could have sworn it used to say 0.5). I have a frame level that claims 0.02mm/m but the adjustment mechanism was hopeless - not fine enough and didn't hold calibration - so I can imagine what fun you had adjusting it!
My Stanley levels claims 0.5mm/m on each level. I tested one against the Starrett with a 0.5mm shim under a 1m square bar. The Starrett was bang on one division. The Stanley had not moved!
Nice piece of work Bruno. Stop making some of us (me!) look bad!

[nickel-city-fab]

ROFL
My sleeping bag is rated -29C comfort temp and -68C extreme
(-90F in american english)

Some of those extreme weather bags are the best. Many years ago, I got an Army surplus bag with the wool outer bag. The inner bag was filled with goose down, and made of nylon. I slept on top of a snow bank in 10 F weather (-12c) and I was sweating like in the summer time. We are having that kind of weather here again, February is always like this: 5 degrees F and more snow every other day. The worst part is the humidity plus the wind, humidity is around 70% and I am on the Eastern shore of Lake Erie -- the "snow belt"

[nickel-city-fab]

Added a new 4-jaw chuck to my lathe, using the original back plate from the 3-jaw. Drilled radially 60 holes for simple indexing. I used the gears to index the holes, by sticking a piece of HSS in between every tooth.
.
.

[Bruno Mueller]

Definitely a finer thread would have helped. I think a Starrett 98 level is 0.5mm/meter (a search says 0.42mm/m but I could have sworn it used to say 0.5). I have a frame level that claims 0.02mm/m but the adjustment mechanism was hopeless - not fine enough and didn't hold calibration - so I can imagine what fun you had adjusting it!
My Stanley levels claims 0.5mm/m on each level. I tested one against the Starrett with a 0.5mm shim under a 1m square bar. The Starrett was bang on one division. The Stanley had not moved!
Nice piece of work Bruno. Stop making some of us (me!) look bad!

Oh- it was not my intention to make anyone look bad.
I just wanted to show you my little tools.
Sorry- I'm not perfect either and will try to show my failed parts here too.
Maybe then one or the other feels better and you can learn something even from junk parts.

Some more pictures.



The spirit level was not inserted from below, but from one side. I drilled a hole in the square brass block that was only slightly larger than the diameter of the vial. Then the cutout was milled out with a finger cutter and the bevel was finished with a 20.5mm 90° three-cut countersink.
I used a 2mm rubber spacer and an M12 x 1 screw for each vial and tightened them only hand-tight. The screw was secured with Loctite. At the very end, both ends were milled off and the mounting holes were made.

One has to be very careful when mounting the vial. The spirit level is made of glass.

[Cenedd]

Bruno Mueller If I can learn something from junk parts I will very quickly be the most knowledgeable machinist there is! A well-made tool is a joy to behold - keep making them!

[mklotz]

Definitely a finer thread would have helped. I think a Starrett 98 level is 0.5mm/meter (a search says 0.42mm/m but I could have sworn it used to say 0.5). I have a frame level that claims 0.02mm/m but the adjustment mechanism was hopeless - not fine enough and didn't hold calibration - so I can imagine what fun you had adjusting it!...

Seems to me that these level calibration screws provide a perfect opportunity for the use of a compound thread.

[nickel-city-fab]

I made something again.

Length and width of the base 120 x 25mm, thickness 10mm.
Total length of the vial 65mm, visible length 35 mm.
Vials Ø 10,5mm.
Distance between fixing bolts 93 mm.
Vial holder 16 x 16 mm.

The part is adjustable and very sensitive.
One graduation mark corresponds to 0.1mm on the meter.
I found the spirit level on the internet.

Until I had aligned the vial to the base, a good hour passed. Always checked for envelope and readjusted until the deflection of the vial was the same on envelope. In the end, it was barely noticeable rotations on the adjusting screws.
If I should do something like that again, then I take no normal M6 thread for the attachment, but M6 x 0.5 thread.

Wow, that is beautiful!

[The Metal Butcher]

I've been so damn busy I haven't had much time to post.

Good news is that I will be receiving an offer from my job for full time. They've actually suggested two positions so I get my choice. So that is very comforting knowing that I will have a day 1 job after graduation should I chose to accept.

I've been tooling up their machine shop. I've got about $1.5k worth of stuff on the way that should make my life a lot easier. Big thanks to Doozer . PM is one of the few forums that isn't blocked and everytime I'd do some research I'd find his posts with some helpful advice. An example would be the APT boring heads and the little balls inside. I'll have to remember to remove them. Got a 2 1/2" R8 on the way.

I also worked out a strange deal. Back when we got a couple pallets of chucks last year, one of them was a 10" Bison D1-5 4 jaw. We've had it for sale for a while, but there just isn't much market for D1-5. I start working there and they have a Nardini lathe with a D1-5 and no damn 4 jaw. I simply don't know how to do good work without a good 4 jaw and was getting pretty frustrated. I'd been requesting one but they are indeed hard to find. The only way I could get one new affordably was a cheap shars, + a $100 backplate + tooling + my time to machine it. I mentioned in passing that it would be so much easier if I could just sell them mine, but of course I was sure I couldn't with that conflict of interest. But the guy I was talking to agreed that would be a lot slicker, and so we worked out a deal. The president signed off on it and everything so.... I guess that kills two birds with one stone. It still feels a bit wrong, but it really is a good deal for all parties involved. So hey.

Been a tough week. But it should be a good weekend. I'll get to try out my steady fix, I've got a 33" long tube to bore. Gonna try it on the Sidney, that will be interesting. I don't think the Lagun will fit 33" + chuck + 4" of boring bar, so I kind of have to. We'll see! I'll also get to try out my tailstock chuck adapter. Should be fun.

[RB211]

I've gotten into cryptocurrencies. It all started with cashing out my vacation pay, about 4,000 usd. Every year I do this, but this year, instead of buying a Taig CNC mill, I decided to invest it. I ended up going with Ethereum, and within 6 weeks my 4,000 grew to 6000. I cashed out the 2000 I made and started to mine Ethereum with all the extra GPU's laying around the house. I ended up purchasing two new computers that have Nvidia 3060Ti's which can do 60 MH/s each. The second computer comes Monday, but so far I am earning about 20$ a day mining, over $600 a month in coin. Since the value of the coin keeps raising, so does the potential profit. And I still have the original 4000$ invested in Ethereum and Dash. It's at about 4500 currently.

[Cenedd]

RB211 Just keep an eye on the news. Nvidia have or are going to be hobbling the 3060 for Ethereum mining with a combination of encrypted firmware and drivers. You may need to be careful what drivers you put on or it may be only new cards that are affected but worth a read-up if you're using them already.