Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bad lathe week

A good bullchitter too, I know first hand.

Great thread. I spent the day freehanding a couple complex parts to finally fix our 100-yr-old oven's door. These function as hinges but are solid parts.... the originals were cast parts and nothing but arc's and slopes and recesses and..... a pain to do on a mill.

That Hardinge is a pretty machine. I'd love to play with one.

I'm sure liking my new Webb lathe.... a DRO would be a very nice addition. Holding a thou is easy enough; I've not tried to work any tighter than that on it.

A lot of what I do now is small lots, and I enjoy that as well as prototyping, though getting PAID properly is trickier. Protyping when I'm being paid hourly is heaven; I love tinkering with stuff and chasing ideas. Just got the material in for a prototype tap handle for my buddy's upcoming brewery.... I'll get paid in free beer for life for that one, which sounds great, except with these guys my beer is always free anyway!

One of my many blessings is that I've never had to machine anything for pay or for anybody else.

And don't think that I haven't appreciated it!

But I've learned a few hard, solid truths about working for myself �
� Good help is rare.
� The help is stupid.
� The boss is a jerk.
� The boss is a tightwad.
� It's impossible to please him.
� It's impossible to get away from him.

We must work for the same [bleep] <grin>...

This is the part I was making a functional copy of, as well as an opposite-handed version. It does several important things but failed due to materials they used. It'd broken and been brazed together before, and the other one was in pieces when we got the stove with the house a long time ago. Stove is around 100 yrs old.

Anyway I just freehanded the curves on the mill. Most of the part is hidden away anyway. It was still a pain. I started with 3"x 3"x 3/8" thick aluminum "L".

I just broke down and bought a 5 gallon pail of way oil... I suspect it'll last me a while.

Anyways... the part... if you look close you can see it grabs springs, retains a hinge pin, screws onto things...

Up early,...another 8 hours of turning tiny details.

Before I start today however, I get to spend time at the surface grinder making up tiny form tools.

woo,........pee.

I would rather do that than stand in front of a cnc making the same part for a year straight. The shop I worked at went from a one of a kind and repair shop to a cnc production shop. I ended up leaving and going on my own and they would sub or direct the repair jobs over to me. Now I just tinker, haven't turned a machine on in over a month.

My dad was a tool and die maker, then got his dream job in the physics and chemistry dept in a major research university. I swear all he did after that was make stuff for the professors pet projects and race car parts. he loved it. I followed him, got a 2 year degree and got a job making nuclear reactors for the Navy. Very boring, even in the tooling shop. Decided to go back to school and got a part time job in a small job shop. Really learned how to be a machinist at that place. Machinist is a great hobby, just hated trying to earn a living doing it. Working for the govt now

They have a Tool and Die program at DMACC that is barely making it. No one wants in it. I'm doing the CAD program but want to make the change to T&D but at age 59 I don't have much of a future. I won't be around long enough to get good. There are so many young kids out there who think it's all gonna be handed to them. Not a one of them know you have to earn it. kwg

A better explanation for Greg...



The back of the bed is machined flat and has a T-slot milled into it. The taper attachment bolts to that surface. The three holes you see at the back of the cross slide are used to attach the cross slide to the taper attachment (only one at a time), you use a 3/8-24 cap screw to connect the slide to a block on the taper attachment. Then you loosen the bolt that's visable just in front of the compound rest (in the photo) which allows the cross slide to slide freely as you crank the long feed.

I made capillary tube dies for the medical industry using this exact lathe for ofer 20 years. The BIGGEST hole I drilled was .014" in molybdenum, using 1.1.1. triclorethelyne as a coolant. And the smallest diameter I turned was .007". I made huge money doing that, but I'm glad that's over. Still worl in a toolroom and will till they plant me. BUT I also like what I do and who I work with. Bristoe, I'm glad I'm in good company. Thanks for the post.

Haven't gotten the opportunity to crank handles for over 15 years now. Really miss it.
All I do these days is sit and stare at a computer screen 12 hours a day, programming machine centers. Programmed quite a few ones and two prototypes lately. Something not quite right about making a part that will fit into a small coffee cup on a quarter million dollar A61 Makino 500mm horizontal mill. Even worse when you know it won't get used, just get it back with several design changes, along with all the other parts it fits on.
Apprenticeship isn't what it used to be, this shop brings a kid in from stocking the local grocery store, lets him follow around a guy with a whole 6 months experience for a day and magically he's all trained, ready to go. We've got setup techs that have less than a years experience. Had a conversation with the boss a while back. He said we were saving money doing it this way. He didn't like it much when I asked him how much he'd spent on repairs and downtime last year. He didn't answer either.

Always interesting to watch the bosses favorite suckhole
Pile drive the new wonder CNC mill.
Always got a kick out of that one.
Especially when the repair bill came in....

dave

Started my apprenticeship in `61, retired in `08.In the end, the only good toolmakers I could find, came from eastern Europe. Best lathes I ever worked on were the Hardige and the Monarchs, but what tool maker could forget the old 13" belt driven South Bend?

Thanks, Se�or !

I had a Hardinge "Chucker" ( H.C.). It was a pretty fantastic piece of American Iron. I LOVED the way the Carriage came "up on oil", and that turret was one of the more precise devices I've encountered.

Dittos to all the observations about "apprenticeship", and a NATIONAL CRISIS.

GTC

These days im an inspector in one of that largest machine shops in this or any other country.The place is unreal big.
Its kinda like being a cop.
All you get are the problems and the messes.
But at least its someone elses mess or problem.
The young guys for the most part that can pass a pee test and breath do pretty well if you can pry them away from there iphones long enough to actually do anything.

As a manufacturing country ,,, power house that we used to be.
We are screwed.
The college boys think you can run a guy through a 6 month course and everything is hunkie dorey.
Well its easy,right?
Anybody can do it.
Figure 6 to 8 years to make a good machinest and at least 10 to make a good toolmaker.
When you do the math and look at who and whats retiring in the next 5 years.
Its a good thing the chi-coms are tooled up to make all our chit.
I have really enjoyed the companies the went chi-com and got burned with a boat anchor of a tool in return.
Icing on the cake is when the person responsible for decision to go chi-com gets fired.
Makes my day.
Everytime.


dave

this is one thing i would love to know how to do....especially to help keep my 40-90 year old presses up and running.....when something breaks on the Solna i often have to get a new part out of Sweden and they have to make it.....last set of gears i needed took 6 months for me to get cause they had no more on the shelves and had to get their machinists to make me some....

Runnin gear hobs is a specialized area in machining. Most shops don't have the equipment or the capabilities. The cost of tooling can be prohibitive...

that was an extreme example but even for alot of fairly simple stuff i have to wait while my order gets through the the lineup because they are still making and servicing printing presses and the part for my 50 plus year old machine isnt high priority compared to the guy that has a maintenance contract....so for anything not on the shelf its 4-8 month wait, hell for stuff on the shelf it can bee a 2 month wait while it works its way through customs ect.......

I have made several gears the old fashioned way on a pre WWII Cincinnati horizontal with a dividing head. Not a well finished as a ground gear but they worked.