Two Years ago at the NAMES Expo, I was looking for a project and came by the PM Research Booth. I was looking for a project so that I could try my hands at Castings. The #3 was too small, and the 4 was too expensive for an amateur like me to butcher. So, I settled for a #1 BI. You will have to forgive some of this thread, because I get going on my projects and forget to take pictures. We will first be doing some catchup. As of this writing, I am working on the cylinder and have quite a bit of the rest done. I do have some pictures that I have taken so lets see if we can get started.
I started with the Base. The first step with the base I stole From Brian's build. I used the table saw and lapped the bottom of the base casting with an emory sheet. Once that was done, I drilled the holes for the bottom hold down bolts. I then indicated the base and attached the base to a piece of Aluminum I had in the shop. You can see the base attached here.
In the previous picture, the base is set up to mill the locations for the Crankshaft bearings. As you can see, this is a pretty big model to mill with the mini mill. Also, trying to come up with a setup to get the base at 45 degrees, is quite interresting. Just remember folks,
"Do NOT try this at home."
Actually, I was a little nervous, but this setup worked pretty well and the base milled out quite nicely.
Then drilled and tapped for the 3-56 holes for the bearing caps. Is there a reason that all of the kits I see seem to love odd size screws???
I don't have pictures
, but to mill the front of the base, it calls for a 1.5" + circular flat to mount the cylinder. To accomplish this, I did not have a flycutter or Facemill that size, so I improvised with a boring bar that had a 1/4" square hole for the tool bit at 45 degrees. I was able to set the tool bit to get a 1.6" diameter cut. Also to drill out the holes really pushes the mini mill to its height limit. So one cheat that I made with the mill is I bought the long rack from LMS(Little Machine Shop) that was not drilled. Since I have the R8 Version of the Mill, I set the spindle on the table and then set the rack where the last tooth was still engaged with the rack gear. That left the rack gear sticking up about 1.5" above the column. I don't use it for milling, but it works well when you need the extra space to get that drill bit into the chuck.
