Hi folks, newbie (to machining) here from the Wirral (near Liverpool)
So far, I've got a Bridgeport Series 1 miller, and - hopefully next week - I'm taking delivery of a rather superb Edgwick Mk1 wot I won on eBay for £notmuchatall.
No pics of the milling machine (you ALL know what one of those looks like).
The lathe looks like this:
I've not done much yet, just been gathering tooling & other ancillaries such as a tiny DeWalt bandsaw to cut aluminium with. I did make a "thingumajig" to give me a Z-axis DRO on the Bridgeport, only to discover a 0.002" per 0.100" error in the scale! Not happy...
Here's a pic of a couple of the parts when partially made; I've since made & tapped holes to secure each part to the next. The part shown on the paper is already on the mill, see the next photo.:
I also made a couple of "whatchamacallit"s which replace the Z-axis felt scraper holders, these also hold some rubber swarf covers. A picture of the whole lot installed (I've only got the Y-axis cover so far, RDG ran out of the concertina type, doh!):
Those parts were the first ones I ever made. I scrapped 2 of the swarf cover holders, but (amazingly) none of the scale holder parts - although the piece that the scale readout fits in does have one hole in the wrong place by a few thou - just enough to prevent a screw going in like it should do. Fortunately, the other hole is OK, so the scale is a nice firm fit.
I found this forum via HMEM, and I have to say I am
seriously impressed by what I see
(on both fora). Just by reading (for hours & hours) many of the threads, I feel like I'm really learning stuff, without even touching a machine. I'm hopping eager to get going with the lathe, as I have plans to build some kind of model engine, as well as bits for my racing car.
I learned the basics (speeds, feeds, how to use a milling machine) via Darrell Holland's excellent video series. As a result of his videos, I've only scrapped 1 3/16th cutter (trying to mill a flat in a hardened drill chuck key) and one cheapo handmade t-slot cutter I got for about £1 from a second hand tool shop, when I accidentally fed back into a slot too quickly, snapping the flutes off...
Other hobbies: Racing car (Capri, just sold an ex-BTCC machine, building a new one now), Lister CS Start-o-Matic lighting plant, sadly with a ruined alternator, but the engine is excellent. I write software for a living, mainly wallboards for call centres these days, but I'll do anything to keep me in machine tools & food. I have a diminishing collection of antique computers which are paying for most of this, and I rent a big industrial unit to keep everything dry and some approximation of warm.
Now, back to the reading....
