Help! > Tooling Review
ebay Tooling Plate
propforward:
I always feel like I should be attempting to make as much tooling as possible in this hobby, just because that seems to be the norm. And the reason of course is that tooling is expensive, and it is often more interesting to a hobbyist to make a thing than buy it, especially when considering the actual hard earned $$ outlay. That is true of me too, but I am not yet retired and don't get as much time in the shoppe as I would like. So I do sometimes lean towards a purchase over making something if it is a fairly mundane item, and not very specialist. Since I sold all my motorbikes that gives me some means to do it also.
Anyway, rambling aside this is such an item - a simple tooling plate.
I bought this from a chap on ebay, who makes these on his CNC machine and sells them at a fairly reasonable cost stateside. This one is a 6" X 6" plate, with 1/4-20 tapped holes, 4 counterbore holes and 4 recess clamping features. It was $45 shipped, and I considered that very fair for the time saving for me to make one.
Here is a picture:
Why the numbers? Well it wasn't flat. In fact it was about 9 thou out of flat, and on a granite surface plate had a noticeable rock to it.
On the face of it that's a bit disappointing, on the other hand it wasn't that hard to deal with.
By taking a very light cut (after tramming the mill as best as possible) each side I had it within about 0.003" parallelism / flatness. I actually cannot detect any kind of rocking on the surface plate.
I think that if I were to now clamp directly to the mill table, shimming in each corner and in the center so as not to distort when clamping the plate down, I bet I can get it even better.
So my review is that this plate is adequate for the price. Be prepared to skim it to get it better, but it certainly takes the laborious activity of drilling and tapping a bunch of holes on a sacrificial plate away, which is fine by me.
I'm not going to list the ebay seller publicly, as I don't want to look like I'm trying to trash the guy. The point of the post is to let people know such items are available, the rough price, and that people should bear in mind that they may have to do some quick facing to get it just so. It's not so different to buying a new lathe chuck backing plate in some ways.
I'm happy with it, and I think it will help a lot with fixturing small parts on the mill. I have some aluminum toe clamps to complement the plate.
propforward:
Anyone wanting to buy one can PM me for the ebay sellers name and a link. :ThumbsUp:
Pretty easy to find searching on ebay though. The guy makes a couple of different sizes. This one is perfect my milling vise.
mklotz:
When I built my small job milling table, I provided it with drop-down fences that are a big help when setting up jobs. My plate is fitted with a block that can be clamped in the mill vise. In that configuration the fences are automatically aligned with the x-y axes of the mill.
You may want to think about adding some of those features to your new tool. A full description can be found here...
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/miniature-milling-table-27312
propforward:
Absolutely yes - I see the value in those fences for sure. I will definitely be adding those. Thank you for adding those to the thread.
Roger B:
I can see that without heat treating that plate could relax over time. Maybe it was flat when he sent it :thinking:
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version