ER11 Multi-purpose tool

[steamer]

That's looking like a very interesting tool Arnold, I've got 5 days off, next week, I hope to get back out in the shop for some of it!

Dave

[swilliams]

Still watching Arnold

Steve

[arnoldb]

Thanks Vince    At the risk of sounding vain, I sometimes do go back through my old posts - to see where I've made progress and often to look up suggestions offered by others while making things.  And it does work like a diary - there's a lot of good memories captured in them, as well as couple of sad ones.

Wrong way around Eric - I prefer "Irish Beauties"    Thanks for the welding tips  - I've found that in the past I used much too "square" an angle with the rod, so things have been improving.  Welding tuition here has been pretty much non-existent in the past, but about a month ago I saw an advert for a local welding course; I think the next time it comes up I'll sign up.

Thank you Jim - it's a pleasure to share, and if you find some useful bits, even more so 

Dave, thanks bud  - Enjoy your shop time - I'm looking forward to what you get up to

Thanks Steve    You're doing a great job on your simple dividing head as well 

Things continued on Sunday after a bit of a late start in the shop (I caught up on some more beauty sleep, and while that didn't improve my appearance one iota, at least it made me feel good).

The 'orrible bit of welding on the right side of the workpiece from the last post was ground out to a V again with the small angle grinder, and given the once-over again with the stick welder.
After some fly-cutting, things looked a bit more acceptable:


The block I made needed a base to sit on.  And the base should be easy to mount on the mill vise.  A block of 12mm HRS was squared up, and a cut-away milled on matching sides:


After the cut-aways was de-burred, it was easy to plonk the base-in-progress down on the mill vise jaws and fly-cut the top:

Talk about a scratchy mirror finish...  A finely honed HSS bit in the fly-cuter and a dead-slow finishing pass would have improved that no end, but this was good enough.

Next up, I spotted some hole locations.  I keep forgetting to add proper spotting drills to my shopping list, so I used a center drill:


Four holes were drilled 6mm for M6 clearance:


The other two was drilled 5.9mm and reamed out to 6mm - these are for dowels:


De-burring holes is always a bit of a pain, but I have an old drill chuck with a counter sink mounted in it for doing this - makes life very easy to manually de-burr holes; it just takes a couple of wrist rotations :


Back to the mill with the base - upside-down this time, and the four 6mm clearance holes counter-bored with a 10mm slot mill to 6mm deep.  This is for clearance for M6 socket head cap screws:


Back to the riser block - and I set it up in the vise using a small square:


A matching bolt-hole pattern was drilled in it.  I nearly made a fatal mistake there...  Had the 6mm drill set up in the chuck to drill the holes, but little "Gut" screamed that something was wrong...
So I stopped and thought a bit .
- Colour me purple with neon pink stripes and green spots, but little Gut was right.  I needed 5mm holes to tap M6 there!  So 5mm was drilled:


I also drilled the middle holes 5.9mm and reamed them to 6mm.  Then it was on to tapping the 5mm holes.  I just used the mill on it's slowest speed (80rpm) and power tapped the holes.  I use a naughty trick for power tapping though...  I don't have a proper tapping head.  So I cheat, and don't fully tighten up the tap in the mill's collet chuck, so if the tapping torque gets too high or the tap gets jammed in the hole, it can spin in the collet without breaking.  So, really not good practice, but it works for me:


The whole lot together, and some 6mm "dowels" cut from a bit of silver steel:


I knocked in the "dowels" and bolted the lot together.  Then it was mounted in the mill vise to bore the spindle hole.  I didn't want the "block" sitting flat on the vise base as I had to drill and bore a hole in it, and I have no intention of drilling or boring into the vise.  I used a dial test indicator to align the base vertically with the mill spindle:


The hole needed to be a fairly accurate 16mm to fit the arbor.  My collection of bigger drills is a bit gap-toothed - there's a 13mm one and the next one up is 16mm which is too big - so I drilled a 6mm pilot hole followed by a 13mm drill:

I sometimes forget how powerful the mill is - it breezed through that 13mm hole as if it was there to begin with.

Next I re-checked the alignment with the DTI again - just to make sure something hadn't moved while drilling, and mounted the boring head. I've never used it on steel before nor for any really accurate boring, so this was new territory.  The arbor shaft mics in at 15.95mm, and I wanted a fairly close fit - something in the area of a "slide" to "precision running" fit.  A quick check on Marv's "FITS" program revealed I needed to bore the hole about 0.9 thou (which is as close as dammit to 0.02mm) bigger than the shaft, so I shot for 15.97mm. On the first pass I took out about 0.5mm in diameter - the finish was horrible, so on some subsequent 0.5mm passes I tested a couple of different speeds and feed rates and things started to come together.  I made the boring head with a 0.5mm pitch feed screw  - that means for every full turn on the feeding dial, it enlarges a hole by 1mm, and the dial was made with 100 divisions, so a theoretical resolution of 0.01mm is possible with it. 
  - It was! - As I neared size, I used a telescoping gauge and the micrometer as shown earlier to check the hole size, and was able to dial in the final cut dead-nuts on the boring head dial.  I'm not completely happy with the bore finish though; next time I'll make up a nice sharply-honed HSS boring bar when machining this type of steel:


I had to assemble things a bit to test it - the tops of the block still needs a bit of finishing - as well as slitting on the side and screw holes added for adjustment/locking.  There's also another bunch of small bits to make to accompany this lot:


Kind regards, Arnold

[Don1966]

Hi Arnold, still following along and I think I am finally understanding your tool project. Nice work bud.
 

Don

[arnoldb]

Thanks Don 

I was so eager to get going in the shop today, I started off completely arse-about face  and first slit the column on the workpiece:


That should have been done much later, and I was left with the "springy" task of tidying up the top of the column, and drilling and counter boring holes for the adjustment screws.
To clean up the top, I ditched the tungsten tipped tool from the fly-cutter, honed up a HSS cutting bit really well on the oil stone, dropped the mill's spindle speed right down, and settled in for a slow and steady feed cranking the mill's X handle.  One pass at 0.5mm depth of cut sorted out most of the crudeness, and a second even slower pass at 0.1mm DOC left an adequate finish:


To help alleviate the "springiness" that would be caused by the already-slit sections while drilling, I inserted a close fitting bit of 16mm silver steel in the spindle position, and spotted, drilled 6mm to the slit section, then 5mm to tap M6 below that and finally counter bored 10mm x 6mm deep to match M6 cap screws:

Then I tapped the bottom hole M6, and used the same procedure for the other hole.

Next I turned up and parted off a spacing ring from phosphor bronze:


A bit of turning to shape, boring to 15.9mm and a 5mm through-hole in an off-cut bit of steel from the "scrap" bin followed:


That was then tapped M6 as deep as my taps would go.
It was reversed in the chuck, faced off to make the thick end a bit shorter, drilled 6mm for clearance to meet up to where the M6 threaded section from the previous step ended, counter bored 10mmx6mm deep to fit an M6 SHCS, and given a quick 0.5mm diamond knurl with my VERY crude scissor knurling tool with lots of lubrication:


After liberally adding chamfers either end of the knurled section with a file, the finished workpiece - with an M6 SHCS in place:


All the bits together:


Seeing as this is a multipurpose tool-in-making, that knurled knob has a place on the small lathe as well  :


I turned up another bit of steel ring from the scrap bin to fit the spindle made earlier with the same bore and thickness as the Myford gears.  Then mounted that on the workpiece's spindle, chucked the spindle up in the Myford's ER25 chuck, mounted that on the dividing head in the mill, and milled a "ratchet wheel" from that:


Some de-burring later, I had this:


All assembled for now:


Kind regards, Arnold

[swilliams]

Looking good Arnold

Steve

[arnoldb]

Thanks Steve 

The last bit that needed doing for the indexing part of the tool was to make a detent.  I wanted it simple and easy to use.

First order of the day was to do some free-hand milling on a short section of 25mm angle iron:


After more time trimming the angle plate down, adding an M5 threaded hole in the large "ear" and a 2mm hole in the small one, it needed mounting on the base.  I'd decided to use two 3mm countersink screws for this, so the base needed to be drilled 2.5mm to tap M3.  I was a bit short of space to clear both the the collet and drill chucks.  Rather than removing the column from the base, I used the spindle from the project to "extend" the collet chuck down and get clearance.  not the first use I had in mind for it, but after all, it is a "multi-purpose" tool LOL:

I was lazy here - rather than doing the bits separately, I just used a toolmaker's clamp to hold down the mounting on the base.

I moved to the drill press with the mounting, and opened up the holes in it to 3mm and also countersunk them:

When I got my mill, I thought of selling the drill press.  Fortunately I didn't; its still extremely useful for quick jobs where the mill's accuracy isn't needed, and with the collar I turned up a couple of years ago to prevent the chuck coming out of the spindle taper, it does a great job of running buffing wheels and wire brushes.

A detent arm was milled from some 5mm flat bar - I didn't take any photos of that though.  A scrounge around some old printers yielded a fairly suitable tension spring, and I bolted the lot together:


I couldn't resist a trial run with the device.  The results are quite satisfactory - some normal 3mm stainless nuts (normally 5.5mm across flats) milled down to 4.5mm across flats in very short time.  The one on the left is original size.  That's going to be a boon for the Corliss (and other future builds):


The process is simple.  I made an arbour from some 6mm silver steel with an M3 high-tensile stud mounted in it.  This arbour is mounted in the ER11 chuck.  I clamp down the indexing spindle, screw the M3 nut on it and tighten it up, then loosen the spindle and turn it to where the nut is approximately level.  I then lock the indexing spindle again, loosen the indexing wheel and rotate and seat it against the spring-loaded detent pin and tighten it back up.  That roughly synchronizes the index wheel with the flats of the nut to be machined down.  Then I mill down the flats one at a time by clicking over the spindle and just back-turning it to make sure it's seated.  The way I designed the tool, it can be used without locking the spindle for each cut, as the machining action will tend to keep force against the ratchet wheel, as well as against the threads used so nothing will unscrew but rather tend to tighten up.  Easy-peasy and much quicker to do than typing out this paragraph.  I made a video - some moves were a bit awkward, as the only position I could mount the camera was right in the way of where I'd have done things with my right hand:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMuzyt8wLBk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMuzyt8wLBk</a>

I also made a short video showing the detent in action.  Surprisingly, it ratchets against a 25 tooth change gear from the Myford as well:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDBg--YtrhE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDBg--YtrhE</a>

That's the indexing part done.  I still have to make another knurled nut and buy a length of M6 threaded rod to finish of the rest of the tool's function to make studs.

Kind regards, Arnold

[steamer]

That looks great Arnold!.....very handy and quick to use!

Dave

[Don1966]

That look to be a very useful tool Arnold great job.


Don

[AussieJimG]

That collar that  you made for the drill press sounds interesting Arnold.

Like you, I have thought about disposing of the drill press since I almost never use it. But with a collar, it might pay its way.

Did you post the information anywhere?

Jim

[swilliams]

That collar that  you made for the drill press sounds interesting Arnold.

Like you, I have thought about disposing of the drill press since I almost never use it. But with a collar, it might pay its way.

Did you post the information anywhere?

Jim

Indeed, I like the idea of using a mop on the drill

Steve

[arnoldb]

Thanks Dave & Don 

Jim & Steve, thank you  - I did mention the collar and posted a couple of photos a couple of years ago.  After searching high and low I eventually found it - it was part of an engine build, and, in retrospect, not really very informative at all.  Give me a couple of days and I'll post up on it in more detail as it might be useful to others as well.

Kind regards, Arnold

[sco]

Arnold,

I didn't 'get it' until I saw that video of you machining that nut - now I want one!

Nice job and thanks for showing us the way,

Simon.

[arnoldb]

Thanks Simon   I don't know about "showing the way" though; I'm just doing what I think will work for me to get some less-than-interesting jobs done.

I haven't forgotten about the drill collar; there's some fine-tuning to images to do, then I'll post that up in a separate thread.

After having mentioned "rainy days" earlier in the thread, we've had a couple of those.  I didn't build the micrometer stand though...  Just like with mechanics and other professions, IT people sometimes never get round to sorting their own stuff.  So for Saturday's rainy day, I did some much-needed admin work on my home PCs; my regular "use" PC is seven years young, and starting to behave like a seven-year-old.  Earlier this year I bought a nice PC with lots of gigas and terras and cores and so on for my studies.  The "poor thing" has been used to simulate some of the larger corporate IT environments here in Namibia, and didn't put a foot wrong, so I decided it was OK to trust my own data to it as well.  Needless to say, it took a lot of work and time to move things across - with some reorganization in between.  I'm schlepping along about 25 years' worth of IT stuff...

For the next stage of the project, I needed to make some things for my small lathe.  Seeing as Sunday was still a rainy day, I didn't take things too seriously.  When I once again had to reach for an Allen key (hex wrench) to remove the fiddly screw that keeps the drive-train cover on the lathe locked, I decided to address that irritation first.  So some 12mm aluminium was turned down, tapped M3, inserted with a bit of 3mm all-thread, knurled and generally filed into submission:


The finished knob next to the cap screw it's replacing:


In place - much better to use IMHO:


On to the next problem.  The through-hole in the cover on the lathe wasn't exactly on center - and slightly too small for my needs:


My first thought was to take the plastic cover off the lathe, stick it on the mill and open the hole...  That would have been neat and tidy - but, unfortunately, the cover seems to be held onto the lathe with melted-in pins.  Rather than risk breaking things apart, I took the Dremel to it:

Looks like cr@p, but it will have to do.

Last week, I purchased another two 1m lengths of M6 high-tensile threaded rod.  If you think by now I seem to have a fetish about using M6x1 threads around the shop, there's a simple reason.  I blame the Myford's lathe's T-nuts for it.  Not because they are M6 (they are 1/4" Whitworth), but M6 happened to be the closest metric equivalent that was available to me when I started making my own tooling add-ons for the lathe.  It plays nicely into most of what I do in the shop.  It's strong enough for most of my clamping needs on small engine work, the thread pitch is convenient for adjustments (1 turn = 1mm), its fairly cheap to tool up on - falls sort of in the budget range where both "smaller" and "larger" tooling gets more expensive and so on.  It's become a standard in my shop, making a lot of things interchangeable between machines which is terribly convenient.

A suitable length of the threaded rod was cut off.  This was screwed through the ER11 spindle and clamped at the front to turn it down a bit and face it:


During the above process, the other end of the rod was snuck up on the outside of the spindle with the knurled nut from the "indexer":

I wasn't concerned about the nut unscrewing, as the lathe has a soft-start feature - making the likelyhood of the nut unscrewing itself very slim.

Another knurled nut was made from steel:


That fits into the back of the nut used earlier:


That will serve as an additional lock nut on the back-stop.  As it's much lighter than the big nut, it will have even less tendency to unscrew in use, so with the big nut snuck up the spindle and this one in turn locking it, things should be safe in use.  The whole lot goes together like this:


To try out the setup, I continued work on some studs that I started quite a while ago for the MEM Corliss engine.
On the left, the lot as I'd started them.  In the middle, I'd turned them to length using the backstop.  On the right, the other threads cut using a tailstock die holder:


This lot pretty much finishes off the little side-track project - though I will make more accessories for it as needed in future:


If the wear on the spindle seems to be too much from chucking it up in the lathe future, I'll just make a duplicate and use one on the lathe and the other on the indexer.

Kind regards, Arnold

[smfr]

Some useful bits and bobs there! I like the back-stop. I need to make something similar 

Simon