The Home Machinist!

One other question: what is the purpose of the o-ring that is visible in the photo? I repaired my kitchen faucet a while back, and that has o-rings top and bottom; the ideas is that a cylinder presses over them; they allow the head to swivel, and the water exists through the side of the cylinder. Th...

Guys, My shower was driving me NUTS!!!!! Too cheap to call a plumber, too busy (and chicken) to deal with it, until today. It it looked easy enough to do and I could no longer ignore the dripping. The silence is now a little deafening, but I will adapt :D Please note that I had a plastic container u...

Even more basic than pulling out, I am still trying to figure out how to reliably engage the half nuts at the right time; to get started, I'm just practicing engaging on a particular number on the dial. Either I am being too timid with the lever, or I need more practice to lead it correctly. Sometim...

Harold, Much reading will need to happen on soft jaws. I just finished my first real use of the new post, and I'm sold. In particular, the parting blade and holder worked wonders. Well, it would have if I had drilled the hole as far as I thought I had :oops: The really embarrassing part is that I di...

I have not used the tool in question, but I have used an expanding arbor at least similar to Enco's 319-3078 (it might be that). It worked for what I was trying to do, which was to grab a 0.5" plate using a bored hole. It was unconventional at best, but it worked _really_ well.

Bill

Harold, As always, thanks for your help. Others have taught me things over the years, but you stand out as the most influential of my mentors in metalworking. I have yet to use soft jaws, but they make sense. There are two challenges I have, one being easily, though not necessarily cheaply, correcta...

Harold, Understood about roughing, and I'm pleased to say that I did think of that. In this case, it probably would make sense to face crudely, center drill, drill the "real" hole, face, and then part off. That way the stresses relieved by the drilling would not affect the parallelism of t...

Harold, One other question has been rattling around my head. At one point, I asked about making several copies (a large run in my world :D) of a part, and you said that I should be (for lack of better words) running them all through a given step before moving on to the next step. At least I _think_ ...

Hello all, I finally got a Phase III AXA attached to my 12x36 geared head lathe; add a couple of extra holders for turning and facing use and a couple of commercial parting blades. I was able to grind something that parts, but it takes a fairly wide cut, and for $12, it seemed reasonable to try the ...

Harold, This is maybe a little out of sequence (I should gloat about having gotten my QCTP mounted _before_ asking "now what?"), but since I ran across advice you've given before, I'll ask first. Clearly, staying out of trouble requires starting slow and gaining confidence. For a guy who c...

QCad (http://www.qcad.org/qcad.html) is 2D only but worth a look. It is very stable, inexpensive, and cross-platform. I do almost all of my work on Linux now, so the latter is a big plus.

Bill

Hello all, One of these days I'll figure this out - maybe :) I am designing my next strange gizmo (this one is medical disposables cast in jello[*]). Actually, I am making a frame that holds the parts while the gel sets, and we need various spacings. One way to do that would be to part off some &quo...