Home machining newbie

2010-01-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

I needed a new set of jaws for an old vise, so I figured it would be a good first project.

I had to flatten a ledge on the vise body to mate better with the jaws I wanted to make.

My first three attempts ended up in scrap metal. On the first one, I forgot the size of the screw holes and drilled them 1mm too big (plus I forgot to centre drill them first). On the second one, I cut the step 2mm too wide on the first pass, so I fly-cut the whole surface to start over, then counterbored the holes on the wrong side. On the third one, I decided to counterbore the holes on the same side as I was drilling them so I wouldn't need to unclamp the work, but forgot that my drawing was of the opposite side of the piece and each screw hole was a different distance from the sides of the piece. The fourth one was uneventful. On the fifth one, I didn't tighten the drawbolt enough and the endmill was drawned out of the collet an extra 2mm or so. Fortunately, I separated the 14mm-wide cut into two sets of passes at 7mm each and this happened on the first set, so it was still salvageable. I can see myself using an endmill holder instead of collets for sidemilling from now on.

The jaws didn't line up perfectly, partly because of some inaccuracies in measurement. They work fine though.

Trying to load more than 1 picture

2010-01-06T19:19:00.000-08:00

I wanted to show some pics of how I have things set up at the moment. The table in the picture above has been replaced with something much sturdier. Many people have recommended that I bolt the milling machine to the table and some even suggested that I bolt the table to the wall. I haven't gotten around to doing neither so far. The milling machine is bolted to a piece of MDF (mediuem density fibreboard) I had laying around. It's about 18" by 22" if I remember correctly, and I attached some rubber feet to the bottom of it. So far, it's sturdy enough for the light cuts I'm making. It only wobbled a little once when I tried to use the boring head at relatively high speed.

So far, the Sherline accessories seem to be of good quality.

I got a grinder for sharpening tools and some hand taps for M3 and M4 sizes. They are cheap and crude but should be enough to get me started.

My equipment

2010-01-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

I got my Sherline lathe and mill about two months ago. I'm mainly planning to make small parts for radio-controlled cars out of aluminium and acetal (often called Delrin).

I got the ultimate package that comes with the 5410 mill, the 4410 lathe, and lots of accessories. Both machines are metric. Along with that, I also bought two books on home machining - Joe Martin's Tabletop Machining and Doug Briney's Home Machinist Handbook. Almost immediately after everything arrived at my house, I bought a cheap bench grinder which I plan to use for sharpening dull HSS (high speed steel) lathe tools, and some single-ended metric endmills with 6mm shanks. When I am ready to venture into making my own tools out of tool blanks, I'll likely need a better grinder.

If I'd know then what I know now, I would have also ordered the Sherline mill vise parallel set (part #7505) and saved myself a lot of headache. I tried making my own parallel set out of 6061-T6 aluminium but found that it was very difficult to do so without already owning some parallels (and preferably a good dial test indicator as well).

That's basically what you need to get started making metal chips.