What did you do today?

[Cenedd]

Put the bins out, fixed the fence in the hot sun and had a beer....all I need now is to retrieve something from a high shelf and I get my man-card back!

[jdedmon91]

Today I made a lathe arbor for my annual cutter set I just purchased. Video below

https://youtu.be/WM5Ft-h5ATo

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[DennisCA]

Trued the wheel for my sandstone grinder. It was a real PITA, the traditional method says to use an iron pipe but it did not work well at all I thought. So I set up a rest from a piece of plywood and using a cheap T-style diamond truing tool I got the wheel trued. Now to start building jigs.

Picture is post cleanup, it was a very dirty job.

[boslab]

A modern antique, nice, is there a water trough at the bottom of the wheel
Mark

[Dan Dubeau]

Nice grinder. I've got an old sandstone not wuite as big as that (thinner) back in the barn. I want to make a treadle stand for it some day, but it's WAY down the list of projects right now.

Spent the last 2 hours playing around in fusion 360 before the kids woke up. Starting to get the hang of it. It's a bit different workflow than I'm used to, and it's tough to break old habits, but I'm trying. Now I gotta head to the landscape place for a couple trailer loads of mulch.

[michigan doug]

Last year I bought a self propelled "push" mower. Not too expensive. 4 wheel drive no less. It starts great, it cuts well, it DOES NOT expel the cuttings very well. You can use a bag, or you can have it act as a mulcher. Neither option works well, and in anything but very light cutting, it would clog every 20' or less.

So, I cut out two rectangles of 1/8" steel, approximately 1 1/4" x 3" and welded them on the top side of the blade, as close to the cutting end as I could easily get them. They are ~4" away from the ends. They were installed parallel to the blade so they act like fan blades. Balanced the blade and whamo, it totally fixed the discharge problem. The width was chosen to still give a solid 1/4" clearance to the top deck.

[rklopp]

Welding on a mower blade sounds really risky, due to the potential for cracking. Any mower blades I’ve dealt with are at least somewhat hardened to hold an edge. If the blade can be hardened, it is susceptible to cracking when welded. Even if welded carefully, I’d be very concerned about fatigue due to vibration and once-per-revolution load variation from the blade passing the grass chute.


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[DennisCA]

A modern antique, nice, is there a water trough at the bottom of the wheel
Mark

Yeah you can see half of it inside the garage, I remove it for drying the stone out after use. Also let it run for a while without the trough to avoid water collecting ad the bottom of the stone and turning it oval with time.

Today I worked on a jig for the axe for it, just a scrap U-profile I had laying in the yard that I cut into shape with angle grinder and bandsaw, then I bent the top into shape. Copied Tormeks own design.

[Willy]

Welding on a mower blade sounds really risky, due to the potential for cracking. Any mower blades I’ve dealt with are at least somewhat hardened to hold an edge. If the blade can be hardened, it is susceptible to cracking when welded. Even if welded carefully, I’d be very concerned about fatigue due to vibration and once-per-revolution load variation from the blade passing the grass chute.


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I would tend to agree as well. I don't think either one of us wants to come across as a safety nazi but as mentioned vibration, cracking and maybe more importantly sudden impacts with stone may cause a failure mode in the heat affected zone.

Nice that you were able to diagnose the problem and come up with the required shape to make the blade more efficient though. However after many years of welding this is still an area that I tend to shy away from as I've always been able to find blades that have the required shape.
I believe that OHSA limits manufactures of lawn and garden equipment to limit blade tip speed to 19,000 ft./min., a speed that could still do some serious damage if left unchecked if something let go.

If nothing else carefully check that blade regularly, especially after a rock strike.

[J Tiers]

Welding on a mower blade sounds really risky, due to the potential for cracking. Any mower blades I’ve dealt with are at least somewhat hardened to hold an edge. If the blade can be hardened, it is susceptible to cracking when welded. Even if welded carefully, I’d be very concerned about fatigue due to vibration and once-per-revolution load variation from the blade passing the grass chute.


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Every mower blade I have dealt with has been soft enough to easily file. I file the edges to sharpen them. The blades have to be soft enough not to shatter or crack when they hit stones, even large buried stones that stop the blade.

That is likely not hard enough to be an issue. If it can easily be filed, it is not much more than 35RC or so. If much harder than that it gets to where the file does not want to cut.

[danlb]

DC braking on a Haunyang VFD.

This whole month has been hot. Early morning and late at night it cools below 80. Day time temps have been in the 90s and 100s. I have not been too busy.


This morning I looking for information to help a friend set up his VFD and I realized that I'd never tried DC injection to stop the spindle on my mill. I had accepted the fact that I did not have a braking resistor nor did I have a way to install one since the VFD was missing parts needed to use it. It took about 6 seconds to coast to a stop from 1200 RPM.

I stumbled across the settings for DC injection on MY VFD and thought I would give them a try.

The result is below, a 30 second video

[darryl]

What did I do today- got up a bit late, around ten or so, got cleaned up and met with friends and had coffee and breaky. Went home, set up the mill to hole-saw about 200 holes in small aluminum plates. Got some of that done, went out to check thrift stores. Came home with a nice solid aluminum computer case, which I'll turn into a lighting control panel. On the way home I visited a Chinese food restaurant which I haven't been in for a decade or more. Same friendly old fellow running it, still smiling. Went home and cut out more holes, played on the computer for a while, went out for one beer and to see how the band was (no band tonite). Met some more friends, two beers, a shooter, and some nachos later, I'm at home checking up on you guys while sipping some Grand Marnier. Got what I think is a great idea for a project I'm working on, mellowing out and getting ready to go horizontal. Not worrying about what's wrong with my XXX lathe, and thinking about a girl I talked with today. LG

[michigan doug]

Welding on a mower blade sounds really risky, due to the potential for cracking. Any mower blades I’ve dealt with are at least somewhat hardened to hold an edge. If the blade can be hardened, it is susceptible to cracking when welded. Even if welded carefully, I’d be very concerned about fatigue due to vibration and once-per-revolution load variation from the blade passing the grass chute.


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Sure, there is risk. Don't try this at home. My post was strictly for entertainment purposes only. My assessment of my blade/steel suggested no hardening, or even the ability to be hardened. Your mileage may vary.

[jdedmon91]

I did this last week, modified this tool for a viewer. Video is attached

https://youtu.be/punzWc5R5_g

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[CCWKen]

I did this last week, modified this tool for a viewer. Video is attached
https://youtu.be/punzWc5R5_g

More action and less fluff. I kept skipping ahead. Got to the 6:00 mark (about half way) and still no action. Waste of time. Blew it off then.