Fun in the shop

[stephenc]

Let me start by saying ... you can direct your complaints to the recycle bin

Anyhow , I started a project the other day . I'm not going to say what it is . You are welcome to guess all you want but I won't say if your right or not .
It will become pretty obvious in about a month if things go to plan

First pic , a nice big chunk of heat treated 4140

Followed by cutting to lenght in the power hack .... the bar is 80mm. ( just over 3" )
Took 6 minutes to saw threw with a 6 tpi blade .

Next is a quick facing to get it in semblance of being square

And then it's off to the shaper to turn it Into a rectangle , this took awhile , about 2.5 hours to whittle it down to 1.5 inch x 2.5 inch.
@ 50 strokes or so a minute a .025 depth of cut and .012 feed. It gave my little shaper a workout , chips came off bright blue and burn you hot .
I had to re-grind the tool three times


And the last thing I got to today was getting it set back up in the lathe to bore a 1 inch hole on a 4 degree angle . Spot faced , center drilled and ready to drill and bore

[spro]

Great work with the shaper. Look at that depth and the chips! If I could have sent you the very piece you needed, it wouldn't be worth what you learned and shared with us.

[whateg0]

I have a friend who often needs a part out of a larger chunk. I've always chosen to stick the stock back in the bandsaw and let it cut it to a closer size. He always prefers to turn it all to chips. With that blade, if it would fit in the saw, I would have preferred the shorter time it would have taken and the stock left for the next project. That's pretty cool to see what the shaper can do, though.

Dave

[ctwo]

At first I was gonna go with paper weight, but with the bore at an angle, it now looks like a dual purpose paper weight pen holder (with the PPAP tune playing in my head).

[stephenc]

Got the hole drilled out and bored nearly to size .
This ended up being more of a challenge then expected , the largest drill I own is half inch . And with the piece being offset in the Chuck It wouldn't clear the carriage .
So I had to start with a way to long and skinny boring bar that would only cut about .003 per pass .
To add to the fun I could only spin the piece @ 75 rpm or so in my little lathe .

Three hours later I had enough chewed out to stick an appropriate size boring in the hole and get it finished @ 1 inch .
Surface finish ended up better then I expected having to turn it slow , if I had a reamer the right size I would probably have used it to get a nice clean bore with no tool Mark's. , instead I think I'll give it a quick hone and polish when I get to that point .
If it does go egg shaped with the hone I have enough wiggle room to just open the hole up a bit more and live with minor tool marks.

Next step is to get a 1/2" hole drilled threw the piece lenghtways and thread a short section of It

Spro
I learned quite a bit whittling that piece out ,.. along with the second one i decided to do because the left over piece was big enough .
First lesson ... Chinese hss tool bits suck compared to quality American bits .
For the second piece I decided to use a vintage "rex aaa " bit I found in my tool box .
It plowed threw the entire piece without needing to be sharpened . .. unlike the Chinese cobalt .
Lesson #2 .. shear tools do not work with my little shaper and 4140 ht . It could be I didn't have the tool ground properly , but what worked well with mild steel didn't work at all .

Whatgo
I wanted to cut the excess off with hacksaw , I really did . It would have been way faster . But I would have spent nearly as much time figuring out how to hold the stock on the saw as i would have just turnimg it to chips ... so chips it became .

Besides that ... that is my last blade and I have a few more things I need to cut with it and I'd rather not spend any cash on hack saw blades at the moment .

[Harold_V]

If it does go egg shaped with the hone I have enough wiggle room to just open the hole up a bit more and live with minor tool marks.

I'll assume you will hone with a flex hone. Yeah, you risk altering the hole, as they don't have the ability to correct existing conditions, but if you have access to a rigid hone (like a Sunnen), any errors in the hole will be corrected, with no risk of taper or egg shape. That's assuming you use good shop practice with the hone.

H

[stephenc]

Yes sir a flex hone is what I have to use . Actually a tiny amount of taper would be ideal . However a egg shaped hole won't be something I can live with .

I'll give it a shot once ... I don't think it will take much work to get the finish I'm looking for . And like I mentioned if it doesn't work I can always open up the hole a bit more .
Actual finished dimensions aren't at all critical

[JackF]

Is that the finished product or is there more to do? If so we are looking forward for the rest of the machining and trying to figure out what it is.


Jack.

[stephenc]

There is a whole bunch more to do ... the Part has two more lathe operations .
And then it goes onto the mill to lose about more 3 lbs . After that there is roughly 35 more parts and pieces that goes with it

I'm hoping to get out to the shop this evening and get the half inch hole drilled threw it and the threading finished . ... that's depending on the little woman co-operating with my plans .

[spro]

Actually, this is about as good as it gets.

[BadDog]

Sounds like lots of work, have fun. Pillar tool?

[earlgo]

I'm thinking it is the safety catch for a Kalush. This assuming you are all familiar with the Kalush Maker story.
--earlgo