Author Topic: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show  (Read 23934 times)

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #45 on: August 13, 2017, 11:08:40 PM »
Wow, you have been busy Hugh!! No doubt you gave saved a lot of $$$ compared to sherline's prices for the same accessories too.

Bill

Bill:

I will lose access to my large machines, at least for some time, soon. I want to get this tooling made before that happens. Much could be built on the Sherline but it would be difficult and some wouldn't be possible. At least possible for me, I suspect others here could.

I think about half of what I'm doing has Sherline equivalent tooling. Even at minimum wage I think I'd be ahead buying tooling. But even for those available it's enjoyable making it, and I'll remember every time I use it.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #46 on: August 13, 2017, 11:37:44 PM »
I've seen several places that a large fly cutter works well on Sherline mills. Clickspring shows one. A large disk with stub cutter protruding. Part of the reasoning is a larger mass to hold a more constant speed. I have a Sherline fly cutter but it is a real light weight compared to Clickspring's.

Poking around I found an interesting concept. One build put two cutters in a large disk. 180 deg separation between cutters but one further outboard than the other. The outboad cutter was set some 0.005" higher than the inboard. Thus the outboard cutter did a roughing cut and then the following inboard cutter did a finishing. Neat concept. Not too useful for little machines where every cut is a thousandth or two.

I made a large diameter one to fit my Sherline:


It is 4" diameter and about 0.6" thick. The two 3/8" holes are for cutters and the 10-32 screws hold them in place. No plan to use two bits at once but for balance I made it symmetric. OK, OK, the whole truth. On the first C-bore the part slipped and the bore ended up "too far" in board. So I went around 180 degrees and cut one correctly. But if anyone asks I'm going with the balance explanation!

Here's the cutter in action, and the finish obtained on a small test piece.


I'm sure the cut and the finish are mostly controlled by the tool bit. I'm not great at off hand grinding tool bits so I'm sure better results than I show can be obtained. I used the new "Tryally" vice and it worked very well.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #47 on: August 13, 2017, 11:51:14 PM »
I got a deal on an entire Sherline machine shop some time ago. It came with a Sherline boring head. I've tried to use it but it was quite frustrating for me. Hard to accurately adjust. (This was my experience and may be due to lack of skill. No knock on Sherline.) But again poking around the Internet, the bane of my existence, I found that Criterion makes a 1 1/2" boring head which works well on the Sherline. It is a Criterion S 1 1/2A Boring Head. Again poking around, it's the Internet's fault, I found one on EBay and couldn't resist. It's a beautiful piece of tooling.

I made an adapter which threads onto the Sherline 3/4-16 spindle and takes the 7/8-20 boring head mount.


It accepts 3/8" boring bars. Finally a picture mounted on the mill.


Haven't used it yet but look forward to it.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #48 on: August 14, 2017, 12:16:06 AM »
One last thing. Not sure how useful it will be but I have a few ER-20 collets so I made a ER-20 "Chuck" for the Sherline. Pretty simple, a long 3/4"-16 tool holder with an ER-20 taper in the end.


The threading for the ER-20 nut is loose. The ER-20 nut uses a 25mm-1.5 thread. My lathe thinks this is the same as 16 TPI. 1.5mm is 0.059" where 16TPI is 0.062". This seemed to cause problems. However, I think this is secondary, the ER collet is just pressed into the large taper by the nut, so the thread fit is not important.  It mounts onto the lathe spindle as:


It overhangs quite a ways, more chance for run out. I checked it on the fake stub shaft on the large lathe and it had about 0.003" TIR. Not great but usable. Haven't yet checked it on the Sherline.

I have ordered an ER-32 chuck from Beall Tool which is supposed to be here Monday. Both the ER-20 and ER-32 have larger capacity than the standard Sherline collets. Hopefully they will both be useful.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline crueby

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #49 on: August 14, 2017, 01:34:12 AM »
That's a nice solid looking boring head, be interested in how it works out. I've been using the stock sherline one, never been happy with how it adjusts, always over/undershoooting the desired setting.

Offline Flyboy Jim

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #50 on: August 14, 2017, 04:58:10 AM »
Looking good Hugh. Lots of nice new tooling.  :ThumbsUp:

I'm looking forward to seeing how all this comes together when the "Currin Traveling Sherline Show" hits the road.

Jim

Sherline 4400 Lathe
Sherline 5400 Mill
"You can do small things on big machines, but you can do small things on small machines".

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #51 on: August 15, 2017, 12:21:13 AM »
cureby: I look forward to using it. It has a real nice feel to it and I expect it will work well. It has a standard mounting so can be used on larger machines also.

Jim: Nearly tooled up. Now I have to figure out how to carry all the pieces. Current thinking is a number of stackable toolboxes. I think one toolbox will end up weighing too much. But figuring all that out is the next task.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #52 on: August 15, 2017, 12:28:28 AM »
And the last piece of the puzzle. A number of T-nuts.


Making the vice and other tooling above I made a few lengths of T-nut stock. Today I cut some to 1" length and tapped them 10-32. I like these better than the stock Sherline T-nuts. After this I cleaned up the shop, a very drastic move.

So I think that's all the tooling I envisioned making. Next is to use the tooling and figure out how to pack the pieces for travel.

Thanks for following along.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #53 on: August 15, 2017, 12:44:07 AM »
I am with you guys as to the Sherline boring head. It works but impossible to set accurately as noted. That Criterion one looks very nice!!

Bill

Offline crueby

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #54 on: August 15, 2017, 12:54:29 AM »
I like the t nuts, look more like the a2z ones, the extra length makes them hold up much longer.

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #55 on: November 16, 2017, 04:32:29 PM »
It's been awhile. We spent September traveling from Oregon to Wisconsin and back to visit family. Way too much driving but overall a good trip.

October I built some boxes for the Traveling Sherline Show. It takes me a long time to think through and build stuff. They are from hemlock with biscuit joinery.  The results will work well, not quality furniture finish but OK. Below is a pic of the two boxes and toolboxes with, duh, tooling in them.


The tape measure is there for scale. The large box is the Sherline lathe/mill. The small box is the controller, computer and driver.

The machine and controller opened up are shown below.


The lathe/mill are below in traveling configuration. Here the head is turned 180 degrees for a more compact package.


It looks like the below once the head is turned the right way and the milling column moved out of the way.


Sorry these are a little fuzzy, I really did use a tripod. The controller box below has a mini-ITX computer along with the CNC driver hardware. The main driver is a Gecko G540. The rest of the space contains the power supply and storage for wires, etc. The keyboard and mouse fit inside the box on top of the controller.


The shot below shows the system set-up, wired and ready for use.


The unfolding doesn't take too much time, maybe 5 minutes. However, getting it all out of the car will take some effort. The computer is running a standard version of Linux-CNC. One configuration for lathe and one for milling.


I don't know yet if this is workable or not. Looking around the Internet I find very few traveling hobby shops, and none CNC. The two main problems are 1) How much effort is it to get the equipment out and set-up. If it's too much trouble I won't use it much. 2) Will the Sherline equipment work for me. I know many here do amazing things with them, but can I make them work. It should be quite an adventure, I just hope a successful one.

Thanks.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Hugh Currin

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #56 on: November 16, 2017, 04:50:31 PM »
Oh ya! A lathe/mill isn't a lot of good without associated tooling. So the Bosch L-Boxes hold all the tooling I could cram into them. Some years ago I purchased a “complete” Sherline shop. Most of the tooling below are from that purchase or shop built as described in prior posts. Here's a quick tour.

The top of the first box is planned to hold materials and projects in process.


Under the materials is the start of the tooling. Lathe QCTP with holders, boring head, collet blocks, draw bar, drill chucks and arbors, low profile vice, lathe die holder, backside cut off tool, ER20 collet holder for lathe, and steady rest.


The next box is closer to a toolbox.



Lotsa stuff here, lathe and mill tools, chuck jaws, end mill holders, tie downs, boring bars, loctite, small  telescope gages, test indicator, micrometers, dial indicator, a few reamers, calipers, etc. The toolbox that lives in the trailer contains other standard tools, allen wrenches, crescent wrenches, screw drives, hammer, etc.

The third box contains the larger tooling components. Three and four jaw chucks, tilting base, Sherline riser blocks (1” & 2”), tail stock and riser block, three toolmakers vices, face plates, and tooling plates.


The fourth contains cutting fluids, drill bits, taps & dies, a tiny broach set and a set of parallels.



The two drill sets are fractional (inch) up to 3/8” and numbered. Both sets are screw machine length (stub) drills.

The Bosch boxes link together but when combined are too heavy to carry. Should keep them from sliding around too much though.

Finally there is a large box I think I can sneak on top of the SUV without the wife seeing it. I know this is iffy but it could work.




This car top box has a clamp on vice, sawzall, various small fasteners for engines and a tiny Harbor Freight grinder. Hopefully the grinder is up to grinding small HSS tools. The hand drill is included more for general use than machine shop work.

Don't know till I start using it if I have all the tooling I need, and/or what tooling I'm carrying around that I don't use. In one sense it looks like too much, but then again it could be too light. Only time will tell.

Wow, cool, another grand adventure! Thanks for looking in.

Hugh
Hugh

Offline Flyboy Jim

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #57 on: November 16, 2017, 05:58:01 PM »
I think you're going to need a bigger car, Hugh!  :shrug:

I'm interested to hear how you envision using your shop. I looks like a really nice set-up.

Jim
Sherline 4400 Lathe
Sherline 5400 Mill
"You can do small things on big machines, but you can do small things on small machines".

Offline crueby

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #58 on: November 16, 2017, 06:40:03 PM »
So, you pull in to a rest stop on the turnpike, machine a bunch of stuff, and drive off, leaving all the swarf behind? 

Works for me!!

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Currin's Travelling Sherline Show
« Reply #59 on: November 16, 2017, 07:01:24 PM »
Amazingly organized Hugh. I hope it works out as well as you expect. Keep us posted on your travelling shop and what you are making with it.

Bill

 

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