Custom rack for my lathe

[PEU]

They say that necessity is the mother of all inventions, well I wanted to machine a large chunk of alu in my mill and the small vise I have is not big enough, so I designed a way to extend its travel a little without machining the vise itself.

I have two of these vises, I still need to make an extra extender, but I tested this one and so far so good!

The white thingies are delrin bushings I had laying around, I will eventually replace them with alu drilled rods.

Ideas to improve it are welcome


Pablo

 

[LLCoolBeans]

Re: Custom vise extender

Oh, that's the quick vice. I ordered one of those last week from littlemachineshop.com.

I like the convenient travel adjustment, but I'm not able to hold a workpiece square. I was about to return it and order the screwless vice.

Do you know any tricks to make the quick vice work? Or did I just get a bad one?

 

[PEU]

Re: Custom vise extender

you square against the fixed side of the vise, the other side just keeps the piece there.

I found a nice tutorial on squaring an irregular shaped piece:
http://rick.sparber.org/Articles/cb/cblock.htm

Now that I finished the second extender I need to do this with that chunk of alu. Never machined such a big piece in my mill, its going to be the lathe T-slotted table for tools.


Pablo

 

[precisionworks]

Re: Custom vise extender

A two piece milling vise, like the one above, can be pretty handy. Mine probably gets mounted two or three times a year, when not much else will work, and it's a real life saver.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00077KKPG/?tag=cpf0b6-20

 

[PEU]

Re: Custom vise extender

in my case that would't help since the width of the table is 15cm and the chunk of alu is 11cm. Never saw a vise like that one.


Pablo

 

[gadget_lover]

Re: Custom vise extender

Let us know how that worked for you. It looks like it's not well supported on the ends, so I'd be real cautious.

Daniel

 

[PEU]

Re: Custom vise extender

Let us know how that worked for you. It looks like it's not well supported on the ends, so I'd be real cautious.

Daniel

You were right Daniel, unluckily I just saw your post, otherwise I would have avoided the problem you can see in block side the first two photos.

The project started with the wrong asumption, two vises purchased at the same time from the same provider should be exactly the same right? Wrong! one of them was 1mm taller than the other, so my first facing operations shielded non parallel top/bottom faces.

So, before continuing, I had to solve this problem, off to my friends at the CNC shop I went, they machined and leveled both vises with a Haas VMC and then they used a manual surface grinder to leave them at the same height (they used mics to be sure!)

Having both vises at the same height allowed me to start the facing operation with my widest endmill (3/4") removing 1mm at a time from the virgin 60mm block to the desired 48mm height. Man... I need a facing head PRONTO!

At this point my workbench/floor/hair/body even my soul was covered by alu shavings :D but I left both sides parallel to 0.05mm and 48.1mm height:

Then I started milling the slots using a 1/2" endmill which provided, again, my workbench/floor/hair/body even my soul lots of more shavings.

After the slots were made, off to the CNC shop I went again, first thing they did was to face the side that is going to be facing the lathe chuck so measurements using this side will shield consistent results.

Since my mill does have, but I can't use, a flood coolant circuit, due that my office floor is wooden parquet, I had to ask them to do the T slotting, which they did with very nice tolerances.

Before leaving the CNC shop, the piece bottom was surface grinded, so perfect contact would be obtained with the lathe base plate. You know that surface grinding alu is not the best idea, so this operation costed the shop a few mm fractions of the wheel that had to be honed with a diamond tip.

Back at my office I had to make a small cut at the bottom to allow for 3 screws in the lathe base plate, so I milled this 4mm deep pocket. Also you can see in this pic how the surfacing was made till the area covered by the screws was flat, no point in going on with the surfacing to remove a couple more 0.01mm...

And this is how it ended:

on the other side (oposing the lathe chuck) is the side that was mis-machined (1st photo)

And here is the new rack in action, and how I would be able to place more tools.

In the future I will remove the chuck and put an ER40 MT3 collet holder, this will allow me to machine up to an inch stock and place more tools in the rack, because the ER40 holder diameter is far smaller than the 5" chuck.

As for the CNC shop work, they done it for free, unluckily work is slow these days, global crisis is hitting us too, so they had plenty of time for my project. I gave my friend a digital caliper as a symbolic gift :)


:buddies:


Pablo
PS: this same post goes to the CNCzone, so others can benefit of it too :)

 

[65535]

Re: Custom vise extender

That's really cool. I'm surprised you faced and milled the slots yourself. That is a chunk of aluminum.

 

[will]

I do a lot of woodworking on my lathe. Some jobs create a lot of chips and the resulting mess. I have a shop vac with a 2 1/2 inch hose. I will attach the vacuum hose to suck up the chips as they are created. This is not a perfect solution, but it does help a lot.

Is the rack going to be used for CNC operations?

 

[precisionworks]

two vises purchased at the same time from the same provider should be exactly the same

Kurt vises, when special ordered from the factory, will height match any number you want to order, within .0005" TIR. If you buy vises one at a time (Kurt or Kurt copy) it's easy to remove the front & rear jaws and grind those at the same time on the surface grinder:

http://kurtworkholding.com/downloads/guides/D-Series_Rework.pdf

Nice job on the T-slot table:D

 

[PEU]

I do a lot of woodworking on my lathe. Some jobs create a lot of chips and the resulting mess. I have a shop vac with a 2 1/2 inch hose. I will attach the vacuum hose to suck up the chips as they are created. This is not a perfect solution, but it does help a lot.

Is the rack going to be used for CNC operations?

I have a very small vac, I should to something in this regard soon, Im tired of cleaning the chips after every work.
My problem is noise, the mill and the lathe are sitting on vibration dampening surfaces and they dont make too much noise, I tested this myself by going to the office front door while machining and with the door closed you barely hear them.
I guess a nice vac does not vibrate but generates a lot of noise, so when I decide to purchase one I will need to think something about cancelling noise...


Pablo

 

[will]

Pablo
I have a Sears shop vac. I put the high hat on top of the motor, I put a hose on the blower side and vent out side. You can also install a muffler on the vent side. Most of the noise comes from the blower side of the vacuum. The muffler and high hat cut down most of the noise.

this should give you an ides of what I am talking about,

http://www.thinkvacuums.com/nutone/highcombo.html

 

[precisionworks]

The inlet muffler / outlet muffler are the easiest way to go. You can also build a box around the vac, line it with eggshell foam, & provide ventilation with one or two computer fans.

http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=14046

 

[PEU]

The CNC lathe is gone :)

Im going to retrofit this one myself http://www.weiss.com.cn/products/wm280vf.php


Pablo

 

[mototraxtech]

wait what happened to the CNC lathe. That think was awesome!

 

[PEU]

Sold it :)

A customer accepted a discount for the showroom (my office) lathe and there it went.

The one I plan to retrofit looks very similar to the one you have.


Pablo

 

[mototraxtech]

Oh ya you said something about being a machine salesmen in a previous post(I think it was you)


Yes the lathe you are looking at is the exact lathe as mine only with a different name.

I like mine a lot just hate the stand.

Since I decided to keep it I have designed a new stand tat should be much more rigid and help keep ships out of my way.