The Shop > Tools
Making Simple QC Tool Holders
vtsteam:
All holders slit. It was uneventful, and though i"d taken as many as 6 passes to complete to begin with, I found that by taking it slowly, it really only required 2 passes by the last few blocks. Important to judge feed by both sound and feel. A bit of coolant was also helpful. It went well and I'm very happy with the result.
Also in the pic foreground, the stainless steel socket head cap screws arrived for the toolholders. Scored for $8 per 100. They were a better deal than the plain steel versions.
vtsteam:
First slitting, now slotting. First milling pass.
I decided to do this in the lathe instead of the mil to show someone without a mill how the whole process cab be done that way. Well the slitting wasn't, but could have been if you have a boring table or milling attachment. Or possibly padded the tool holders above the carriage. One other possibility would be making a jig using a horizontal section of rod the same size as the regular tool post.
As you can see the toolpost works well as a vertical milling adjustment for the tool holder. In fact I'm thinking that for very simple milling of small parts, you could make a tool holder in the shape of a milling vice that would be tightened onto the tool post.
vtsteam:
And the result.
vtsteam:
I slotted three of the new tool holders conventionally, and then I made a couple of specials today. The first one, shown below, was originally intended to take a cutoff tool.
To make it, I brazed two pieces of 1/4"steel top and bottom to allow for the extra tool thickness. As it turns out, it will also accommodate my lantern style Armstrong tool holders, including the cutoff holder.
Also shown here is a cool threading tool I haven't yet used. It has a snail shaped tool bit profiled to cut a 60 degree thread. To sharpen you just rotate it slightly and grind a new flat across the top. It's offset and raked already.
Also the cutoff tool holder -- I may just mount a cutoff tool this way instead of blade only in the QC tool holder.
Nice to still get some use out of these holders.
vtsteam:
The second special tool holder is for boring bars. I was originally just going to bore a hole in the block to fit a 5/8" bar shank. But I realized there wasn't room in the blank to clear the center post hole. It might be beneficial to anyone else doing the Mason design to make the holders a little larger than his 2 x 2-1/2" x 1" spec.
Anyway, I decided to cut off the shank of my Armstrong style boring bar holder, and braze it to the long side of a QC holder(instead of the end). Shown below. I like this design a lot because it accommodates a wide range of bar sizes. It has two square head cap screws to hold down a vee block which is reversible. You can see the shallow groove on top for smaller bars. The underside accommodates at least a 5/8" bar.
I could still slot the end of the QC holder blank to accommodate a facing tool. But not sure how useful that would be.
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