Project 1: Taper attachment clamp

Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs

<< < (3/4) > >>

AdeV:
kvom - I've not decided yet whether I'll stick with using both bolts & two rods, or use Dave's idea & fabricate a piece with a single rod coming out. Either way, I want the forces pushing straight into the taper unit.

I'd already bought a chuck just like that one for the milling machine, but that of course is wedged onto an R8 taper. At 25 quid, it's cheap enough to buy a second one for the lathe - and the quality is excellent. :thumbup:

Don: Cheers m8 :thumbup: It's always a worry when posting lots of pictures; am I going too slow? too fast?

The camera is an old Olympus UZ-2100. It's only 2 megapixels, but it takes fabulous pictures (I can't take any credit - the camera really does do all the hard work). Great zoom lens too - 10x optical with mechanical image stabiliser. I saw one sell on eBay recently for about 40 quid - at that price, it's well worth buying one. Mine cost me nearly £800 brand new, back in 2000...

kvom:
Looks like you'll soon be able to cut some trial tapers. :thumbup:

FWIW, on my lathe I get better results cutting the tapers from the large to the small end. Has to do with the TA pulling the cross slide rather than pushing..

AdeV:
I had another go at the thread tonight, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke that I made it work yesterday. Pleased to report that it's not (a fluke, that is!):

This one's a much tighter fit on the threads; I'm not sure if that's because the OD or ID is incorrect, my test bolt works OK. I think it'll just need a touch of fettling to fit. I think I'll use this bar, it may be scabby mystery metal, but it machines well enough. Hopefully, I've enough to do both bars...

Tomorrow's job is to mill a hexagon just about where the yellow arrow is:

...so I can use a spanner to tighten it up! I may also have to shorten the threaded section, I'm not sure how deep the hole is in the taper attachment.

Darren:
Isn't it nice when you can turn your own threads without buying every die under the sun :ddb:

When you come to a non-standard thread it really comes into it's own .. :dremel:

AdeV:
Turning my own threads is a revelation... 6 months ago, I had absolutely no idea how to do a thread. Now, well, it works OK even if I do say so myself :ddb:

Today was mostly spent driving up & down the M62, but I managed to grab a bit over 1/2 hour at the machines. First job was to chuck the bar in the dividing head:

I've loaded up an old, second hand, of unknown provenance 1/2" cutter to rough out the first 40 thou; I'll be taking the bar from about 0.620" to just under 0.525", or 1/4" Whitworth in old money. I could have cut a bit less out & used a BA size, but I don't have any BA spanners...

So, with the cutter aimed to remove "about enough" width, cutting commenced. I didn't use coolant & fairly tore my way through the metal. Once I was 0.040" in, I swapped to my good cutter, and prepared to take the finishing cuts:

I must have fritzed a measurement somewhere because I had to lower the cutter another 0.020" (for a total cut of 0.060", or 0.120" off the diameter) to make it fit the 0.525" spanner. Maybe when I touched off with the new cutter I was touching a burr, rather than the base metal. It didn't matter, as I was taking fine cuts & measuring after every rotation. So, after using coolant & a decent cutter, this is the result:

The spanner fits nicely:

So, a quick trip to the lathe to get rid of the burrs and to slightly round the hexagon corners later; it screws in well enough:

The paper is a 3d C-o-C showing where the clamp will live. It'll not be quite that wide (but will be nearly 4"), and will be quite a bit chunkier. Eagle eyes may note that the thread isn't screwed all the way into the taper: I will have to shorten the threaded bit by about 1/2". Which is fine, I can do that with a hacksaw. The stock isn't long enough, sadly, to cut off & make the second bar; it'll end up about 2" too short. Ubggre. I'll have to be nice to the welders to see if I can't half-inch a length of similar stock...

I've also got the block of steel I'll be cutting the clamp out of.... I think I may have gone a bit optimistic; it's about 4"x3.5"x9" and it weighs A Lot. But, it was cheap enough, and a lot of it will be cut away. Pix tomorrow.

Navigation

 Message Index

Go to full version