Stuff you have made today

[Hood]

Today I made some progress

My CNC lathes spindle drive crapped out a month or so ago and I haven't had time to do anything about it.
The servo drive that it uses is about £5-6k new and even a repair is £2k so I wasn't wanting to splash out that much as I do not use the lathe for production work and in fact it can sit for several months or more unused.
I was going to put the lathe back to the way it was when I originally got it, a 12Kw induction motor working through a gearbox that had electro magnetic clutches to give a range of speeds. My friend however had a 15Kw VFD sitting doing nothing so I got that. I will, at least at first, just set one gear up and use the VFD to vary the speeds. In the future I may get fancy and have it set up so that the gears are used and the VFD will vary the speeds within a range, that is the future though and I may not even need to do that.

So today I raked out a spindle control board I got years ago from Peter Homann in Oz and decided to wire things up and do some bench testing. Everything is working as it should so all I have to do now is get some more time to remove the servo motor and fit the belts up to the gearbox and then work out the PLC and other I/O and then wire things up and I should then have a working CNC lathe

Pic of the VFD, the spindle board and a USB SmoothStepper I am using to bench test things with.

 

[gav0994]

Not quite finished yet, but in the process of fabricating a decent door for my workshop to replace the temporarily made wooden ones from over a year ago.

50x50x5 angle frame on 100x5 flat bar base with 40x40 box doors. its a split door with a 32" wide and 12" wide section to allow for normal door use and a wider gap for the big stuff! Integrated euro lock and door handle system.

 

[Badger1bear]

I was asked if I could knock up a little Mercedes Devil

 

[rosinante]

Not technically me, but i was supervising...
Prepared the blank for this yesterday, then after football practice and watching Johnny English this afternoon, he's finished his first pen, his chosen body and blank. Bit nervous of the chisels, so a bit of help wielding them, otherwise all his own work.

Might be a bit keener to do some handwriting practice now!

Excellent stuff , good tosee the youngsters getting skills

 

[Hood]

Today I made a start to removing the servo from my lathe.
When I put the servo on I managed to lift it into position myself but that was quite a few years ago and no way I could manage it myself nowadays. Thankfully I got a hand from an unwitting skipper who just happened to come into my workshop at the right time (wrong time for him )

It is a bit of a lump.

 

[Hood]

Today was one of these days where not a lot got done. It is always the same when there is bad weather as the skippers come in to ask about getting jobs done and then stand for hours yapping and then wonder why I am running behind

I did manage to weld up a couple of boxes this afternoon, both for the new Cheetah Cat, the smaller is a bait box that will get welded to the gunwale, the other is a box to house the hydraulic power pack (Donkey engine)

 

[indy4x]

Nothing fancy, was fitting a replacement SS downpipe to my Disco 3 yesterday and it was a very tight fit into the centre box, no way was it going in there without significant help from a BFH so knocked up a pipe expander out of some aluminium I had kicking about. BFH did get used to hammer it into the exhaust pipe and remove after it had done its job



This was the bodge the previous owner did to the old downpipe

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Pic of the VFD, the spindle board and a USB SmoothStepper I am using to bench test things with.

I put a 'like', but in reality I understand very little of what's going on there.

 

[Hood]

A VFD is a Variable Frequency Drive and is used to control a 3 phase AC Induction motor.
The SmoothStepper is a CNC controller board that is used with Mach3 CNC software.

The software tells the SmoothStepper to send out Step and Direction signals and then they will normally go to a stepper drive or a servo drive to control the speed and direction of an axis motor. The VFD however needs an analogue voltage (0-10v) to vary the motor speed so the spindle board converts the step signal into a voltage and passes that on to the VFD. A Step signal is a pulse of varying frequency.

The VFD I have seemingly can take a pulse input but I have decided, for the time being at least, to use the normal 0-10v input instead.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Today I repaired someones bodge.

all the white visible was 2 part filler.
When I looked.at the job initially it looked like the wood had split but turns out it was filler.

Routed out and a new piece resined in.
Then routed out left and right styles half the depth of the first to create a tenon. No pics. Then all joins buzzed out with a die grinder and resined. Nice strong window again.
Long day once id started I had to finish as barely any bottom rail left.

3 cill repairs too and all ready for sanding in the morning.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Before.

Unfortunately its a cheap make good the worst job. Ideally id prefer to strip all paint and replace all lowers but working to a budget.

Il snap finished pics tomorrow.

 

[Gritineye]

Not today but the other day I made a 90 yr old camshaft work again, the end journal had some properly deep rust pitting so I sleeved it with some EN27 and finished it with a sheer tool.

A few marks left by trapped swarf annoyed me a bit, must get an air line in there next time.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Still got some finishing to do on the box but repairs went in yesterday.

 

[Hood]

Bit more Alu welding, this is the lid for the Donkey engine box.

Closeup of the weld, I am starting to get into the swing of the new EWM.

Cut a flange on the plasma and then welded 2x 90 degree bends and a bit of thin bore tube together to make a swan neck to take the wires from the mast, on one of the new Cheetahs, into the wheelhouse. The tube was only about 1.5mm wall so had to keep all the heat on the bends as they were about 4mm so needed a bit of amperage.

Seems my Davits are getting popular A skipper saw the one I did last week and said he wanted one so it was onto the plasma with another chunk of 12mm 5083

Now I have the jigsaw puzzle parts ready for welding later in the week.

 

[chris pruteanu]

Worked a bit on a few projects...

 

[chris pruteanu]

Few more...

 

[chris pruteanu]

...

 

[Pete.]

Started last night, finished today. A new cross-slide screw for my South Bend. I'm not 100% happy with it so I'll probably make it again.

 

[Gritineye]

Started last night, finished today. A new cross-slide screw for my South Bend. I'm not 100% happy with it so I'll probably make it again.

Looks like a pretty good effort from here, although the thread might need a bit of tidying..

 

[Pete.]

Yes that's why I need to make it again, I missed my mark on the threading dial and ran over the top of the first few threads. No way to fix it, doesn't affect the operation either especially since that first half an inch is very rarely used but I want it made right.