tense moments in the shop

[ironmonger]

<<snip>>

I check everything over and over each time I light up my little Oxy - Propane brazing torch. One valve opens clockwise, the other counter clockwise. I can't help but imagine what will happen when I turn the wrong one the wrong way and cause it to burn back into the hoses.

<<snip>>
Dan[/QUOTE]

I saw this demo at the FABTEC show in Chicago a few years ago.

https://youtu.be/pWe84DyPIsg

They made a believer out of me. I was kind of cavalier regarding there use before the demo... not any more

[jasnooks]

I bet that old power feed was barking at him a bit lol

Power feed doesn't work, manual feed only. And from what he said, it was a bear to crank.

[jasnooks]

Is the yellow stripe on the mill the tip over mark?

No, that's just marking the center of table travel. I'm not sure where the tip over mark is, luckily he never got that far

[jasnooks]

Good grief, look at that monstrous endmill in a poor R-8 spindle! Tell me that didn't chatter ten ways to Tuesday. Is this a pro shop?

1" dia, about 4" long. He was just opening up a slot, making clearance for hydraulic lines. Nothing fussy, but yeah there was quite a bit of barking going on, lol.
Yes, it's a pro shop, and no, this isn't the norm for our place, but sometimes we have to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

[boslab]

With respect to the original post regarding shrink fitting, once you heat a lump of metal and it shrinks it's final size is less than the size it was before heating (provided you exceed certain pints on the equilibrium diagram for that alloy, steel being an alloy)
This rather irritating or useful fact was known way back, wrought iron is particularly susceptible to permanent shrink and was as far as I can find used as a 'fix' for over length things and oversize things, I found it's earliest reference in an old book called a practical treatise on heat by I think Thomas black, it described getting cylinder rods, cannon bores and things to fit if they were oversize by heat quench cycles, I didn't beleive it but after a bit of experimenting found it was true, there's not a lot of permanent shrink per cycle but it is there, just an interesting thing it thought.
Looking at the mill with the giant cutter amusing, might need a bigger one, mill that is, what do pilots say, pushing the envelope ( I didn't know you delivered mail I said to my mate, a pilot, he weren't impressed)
Big lumps of expensive tool steel must be scary, I've heard tales, but to be honest I've seen big car press tools with loads of mods by way of plugs and inserts so I suppose nothing is irretrievable, tig welding certainly helped fix one or two dies I was involved with!
I saw some giant double helix gears, about 10' diameter on a scrap pile, reason unknown but the teeth were only half formed, someone blundered as they say, teeth to the left of me teeth to the right and none right!
I'm glad I only do rough stuff for myself, no stress
Mark

[brian Rupnow]

Tense times indeed!! I have built many small/model gas engines, and since the desk in my design office is so conveniently placed just outside my machine shop door, it had often been my "test bench" for first start up of these small engines. Not anymore! Story involves an engine that wouldn't start when everything said it should, a severely flooded engine, and spark testing a sparkplug by unscrewing it from the cylinder head and laying it on the engine block to check for spark when turning the engine over. It HAD spark--Lots OF SPARK. Thank God for handily placed fire extinguishers and quick reflexes. Now I do my start up testing out in the main garage, away from all things flammable!!!

[bborr01]

This didn't happen in my shop but in a close friends shop. He is pretty safety concious but sometimes things slip by.

He has a car hoist and does a fair amount of car repairs for friends and family. When he does brake work he would put the oil drain catch cart under and wash away with brake clean.

One day he was welding on an exhaust system and the oil drain cart was too close. He told me that in about a second flat he had about 8 gallons of drain oil all over the floor. The flames went out almost instantly but he had a real mess to clean up.

Brian