Finally a workshop/storage/mancave

[waiting for time]

Started scraping the ways of the sadle.
It is a steep learning curve and no fun for my body, but rewarding, about half way there.
started with about 10% of the blue from this picture.

 

[waiting for time]

Took a break from scraping, ordered a carbide scraper as the HSS one I’m using needs regrinding Every 2 minutes.
Its getting close to flat now.
When I repositioned the blasting cabinet I took the vacuum unit from the back and positioned it on the side wall.
This made it possible to position it closer to the wall saving valuable floor space.

I used a tube that was a bit thinner than the original connection. You can see the gray pipe going into the vacuum unit.
This didn’t work as I had expected. As soon as I start up the cabinet it fills with dust.
I know using a smaller diameter and longer distance is not the best but this thing is calculated very tight.

This leads to a small side project, again.
I decided to fabricate a duct for the back and use a bigger diameter pipe.
here is the start of the main duct.

I cut and folded some sheet metal.

 

[waiting for time]

I cut a hole on one side and made a connection for the tube to go on the other end.
The connection is going on the outside of the tube for maximum air flow.
this is the plate for the top tube connection.

the position of the to tube.

and gere it is welded together with the outside of the duct welded too.

and a cap for the top, needs a bit of grinding before welding. And the bottom of the duct needs a cap and a bracket to fix it to the cabinet.

 

[waiting for time]

don’t look at the crappy welding, this was done with some old sheet and welded from the other side.
I did not want to take the time to clean it up.

This is where it needs to be.

And in position with the bigger tube.

Here it is from the back. I glued some rubber on the back to close it off.

On the bottom on the inside I made like a funnel to make a curve for the air to follow when it is sucked out of the cabinet.
As the duct works as a collector of dust and blasting grid I made a drain in the bottom to empty it. I will take a picture of that later.
It does work a lot better now.

 

[waiting for time]

When you use a tungsten carbide scraper you need a diamond wheel to grind it.
Plus grinding a scraper insert requires an angle af about 5 degrees.
I used an old grinder and turned it into a grinding station for carbide and such.

Some tool steel washers were turned to get it running true and there is the option for larger angles if needed.
For the other side I have ordered a few different grid diamond lapping discs, these will be used for finishing the grinds and can also be used to sharpen carbide inserts for the lathe and mill.

Here is the status of the saddle for the milling machine, you can see it is slowly getting to a usable surface.
The new scraper is on there too.

 

[waiting for time]

Progress.

trying to get it running this weekend.

 

[waiting for time]

Getting there slowly but....

 

[waiting for time]

Its alive.

 

[waiting for time]

This came in today.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Oooo wonder what the new toy is!

How hard did you find it to hand scrape the saddle on your mill? What did you use as a flatness reference?

I have some machines that could use scraping, but there's a lot of equipment for scraping and measuring flatness that I definitely don't have.

 

[waiting for time]

Oooo wonder what the new toy is!

How hard did you find it to hand scrape the saddle on your mill? What did you use as a flatness reference?

I have some machines that could use scraping, but there's a lot of equipment for scraping and measuring flatness that I definitely don't have.

I used my surface plate for reference.

Did a lot of searching on the I tube for info on scraping.
It is quite a challenge especially the final scrape.
One thing before you start buying stuff, buy the carbide scraper, the others don’t work. I had to sharpen the HSS one every 2 minutes. The carbide scraper requires a diamond wheel for sharpening end ........ You need all kinds of measuring stuff.....You get the point.
In the end it was way better than before.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Yep, nice work. What straight edge do you have? Surely you didn't remove the saddle and flip it upside down onto the surface plate every time.

 

[waiting for time]

Yep, nice work. What straight edge do you have? Surely you didn't remove the saddle and flip it upside down onto the surface plate every time.

Yes I did, and its heavy.
But its the only way to make sure both ways are flat on the same plain.

 

[waiting for time]

Hmmm....

 

[waiting for time]

play time.

 

[waiting for time]

Got it build up. My frame is only 3m long but because of the extra brackets the total length is almost 5m.
time to make new brackets to shorten it to about 4meters.

 

[waiting for time]

Working on new brackets to attach the body jig to the rotissery.

and started playing with the mill.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

What's going on the rotisserie?

 

[waiting for time]

I need to make the new brackets before I can put the jig for the body on there.

 

[thegadgetguy]

@waiting for time, question for you on scraping the mill. How do you ensure your x and y ways are parallel to each other, and your z ways are perpendicular to both of them? Scraping with the surface plate as a reference obviously produces individual flat surfaces, but how do you check that the different flat surfaces are parallel/perpendicular each other? Is the flatness tolerance of these machines just so much tighter than the parallel/perpendicular tolerances that you don't really have to worry about affecting their parallelism/perpendicularity when you remove material to make each surface flat?

Hopefully my question makes some sort of sense. I've been researching building precise machines recently, and it's been very interesting, but creating flat surfaces that are perpendicular to each other via scraping is something I still don't understand.

Thank you for sharing your work. You are putting together a very nice shop there!