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| John Hill:
Tough yakka! Making the side frames, 5mm steel plate, chain drillings, cold chisel, file, lots of file! (Both sides will stay rivetted together until I get to the finishing stage that way I hope they will have at least a partial resemblance to each other!) |
| John Hill:
On to the next stage, I am milling the side frames after getting them near to shape by manual means. |
| bogstandard:
It looks like you are getting the hang of that vertical slide John. It does seem to be a rather good one, nice and robust. I see it can rotate about the spindle axis, does it also swing around the crosslide mount as well?, and have you found any major limitations with it yet? By the look of it, the vice area is the weak point. Another mod coming soon maybe? John |
| John Hill:
John, I am very pleased with the vertical slide and it does seem to be at least as robust as any other part of my machinery! The gibs are rather tight at one end of the travel which I may have to slacken a little if it does not ease up a bit. The vice arrangement is indeed a frustration to me as I have not yet determined how to mount anything better to it without excessive overhang. Yes it has both horizontal and vertical axis of rotation. Apart from the vice, which I am sure I will eventualy figure out an improvement for there are a couple of limitations and the most obvious is that the slide being mounted on the compound mount position can not be moved very far back behind the spindle centreline thereby considerably limiting the size of workpiece that can be handled. The other frustration is that visibility is extremely poor while that b&**%$ safety guard is over the chuck position! Much as it goes against the grain to remove safety equipment I fear an exception will soon be made in this regard! I have managed to avoid climb milling incidents, so far, but doing so does tax the ancient gray matter somewhat. I am using 380rpm spindle speed, does that sound about right for a mill cutter in mild steel? The 16mm one really makes the whole machine shudder if I get too enthuisiastic with the feed. |
| bogstandard:
You have asked an unanswerable question there John, I am sorry to say. Feeds and speeds are chartable items, but only under ideal conditions. I think any machinist with a bit of experience will tell you the same thing, they are for rough guidance only. In your situation, where you have so many non standard and variable items, you are going to have to do it by the seat of your pants and feel, plus the most important one, sound. The setup should tell you if it is struggling to do the cut, if everything sounds smooth and with very little vibration, you are not far out in your cutting technique. If it was me, I would tend to go with fast speed and very fine feed. OK it will take a lot longer to get rid of the material, but hopefully, you won't be setting up any uneccessary vibrations in basically an unstable setup, which is what you have. The plus side is that you should also end up with a lot fewer machining marks. I thought the vice would be your PITA. Your problem is that to machine it up, you are going to have to use the vertical slide itself. Normally, the front vice bit is removeable, leaving you will just a flat plate to mount whatever fixtures and fittings you want onto it. Your choice is to modify what you have, to allow you to do more stable setups, or wack the whole lot off, and get back to a plain face, then treat it as a normal milling table. You can obtain very small low profile machine vices, and tiny rotary tables, at a price, which would completely open up the world of machining to you. But you've got to keep that overhang as small as possible, to help reduce the vibrations. John |
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