Stuff you have made today

[Kram]

Im not so happy with the chuck today. I wanted to test it on something the lathe struggles with - en19/708m40. Chucked a 30mm bar and needed to make a 21.5mm x 12.5 x1.5mm washer. It kept moving until I added the copper shim. Parting was a massive pain, and had to swap the iscar tool which doesnt normally work well for me.

Im not sure its the chuck, but Ive parted this bar held in collets, chinese inserts and 3-4x higher rpm without much problem.

I then needed to male an m12 nut. After doing the washer I wanted something easy, used brass. Reassembled the aldi bandsaw vice with the new parts.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

View attachment 303038

"made" this... still some stiffeners to add to it but since its for ourselves, I'll wing it in real life. Got all the materials on hand already, bar the main slew pin.

20mm plate DXF shapes ready to get plasma cut.

Pivoting jib for the telehandler?

 

[Other Daniel]

View attachment 303038

"made" this... still some stiffeners to add to it but since its for ourselves, I'll wing it in real life. Got all the materials on hand already, bar the main slew pin.

20mm plate DXF shapes ready to get plasma cut.

What's it for ?

 

[Munkul]

What's it for ?

Pivoting jib for the telehandler?

Yup I needed to make some sort of jib for installing our shed steelwork anyway, and thought, may as well put a bit more effort into it and make a really nice pivot jib, I think the slew function will be really handy.

 

[MCKDAVID]

customer has one of these agricultural quads, monster of a thing.... needed a means of transporting bales, feed etc on the back, asked me to make up a removable rear basket for it. Working load max 50kg, but knowing fine well that'll be exceeded daily, I made it a bit heavier duty.. Hanging off the back, with me in it, it'll take my 115kg, no problem, no flex, no movement, the rear suspension compresses almost to max, so no worries about the frame / mount. Told him he needs to get heavier springs for the rear axle though, as I'm damm sure it'll be used for a lot more than 50kg...
it's only for off road, so no homologation issues, which is clearly marked on my bill to him. High mounted on the quad chassis for maximum ground clearance, 3 pins to secure, takes seconds to mount / demount, sides are removable held in with large butterfly bolts which also double up as lashing points...1100 x 700 usuable surface, back 300, front 550mm, mount, 10mm plate, braced, into 50 x 50mm tube receiver, with 12mm pin, main frame 16 x 16mm tube, mounted on a heavy wall 40 x 40 tube chassis, 1mmm expanded metal. He wanted it light, around 25kg, ended up a wee bit heavier than that, 28kg all up, but easy to manouver, so he's happy..

What made it awkward to make is that he didn't want it permanently mounted so it had to be designed in such a way as to leave no trace when he sells it, but wanted the basket to be transferable and reusable on to other quads later, so I had to come up with a mount system that was easily adaptable, and easy enough to copy when changed, and bolt on, it would have been far easier to weld directly to the quad chassis, but there you go.

Still need to get some high tensile bolts for the mount, shouldn't really need them as the load on them is in compression, so they're there to hold the mount against the frame but for the sake of a few quid better safe than sorry.

Don't normally get involved in fabrication of such big items in one hit, it's mostly repair type fabrication, or small parts, so this next issue is to paint it, not really geared up for this size of paint job, so will need to create some sort of paint booth in the container behind the workshop. I tried to fob the paint off to him, but that's down to me now.... Off to the paint shop to get some decent paint for spraying, not my favourite job, did suggested powder coat, but too pricy apparently.

 

[Fraserb]

More assembled than made.

736 m12 nuts tightened up today.

 

[Kram]

Looked like it would be wet this afternoon. My gas hose had an hole in it Turned down the fitting for slightly smaller hose.

Plate from @Dcal , I dont trust my stick welds so tig practise inside and outside beads.

When its cooled off I will chuck it up.

 

[Maker]

Spent all day doing this and all I've really achieved is a headache.




The microscope has two DC motors in it, one controls zoom, the other raises and lowers it to focus (Not when it's sat on a table like this mind), I think originally it would have had foot pedals to control it. The plan was to control the motors with a pair of rotary encoders, the speed of the motor would be proportional to the speed you turn the dial, it all worked so well in my head. It turns out rotary encoders are an absolute f'king nightmare. Hours of testing example codes, writing code, learning how interrupts work, writing new code, debouncing with hardware, debouncing in software and I'm ready to give up. As a final attempt I've set each click of the encoder to run the motor for 100ms in the appropriate direction and even that doesn't work, it keeps randomly deciding to turn the wrong way.

I think rev.2 is going to use four pushbuttons, one per motor, per direction, no fancy microcontroller, no speed control and these horrible Amazon encoders are getting Widlerized.

 

[Cheesie]

a new bench just waiting on casters coming

 

[mtt.tr]

Sanity test today with polarity winding on induction motors.

I've only had to do this once before and that was a long time ago, knowing I have a badly labelled motor to look at and knowing others have fiddled I wanted to get the technique down.


Popular culture tells you that a dmm can't be used, well for that crowd yes it can. Hardly any use cases for a galvanometer anymore modern dmms are brilliant.


Well it went as I remembered but I wanted to see it on the o-smell-o-scope so here is the results

Pretty damn clear


U1 positive




U2 positive




So I made an addition to the memory bank and some traces

Additionally put some notes together for the really keen lad at work.

 

[Kram]

As it stayed dry here I wanted to test the bandsaw vice now that it has a proper screw. It is 999x better than it was. Needs a vertical clamp to stop work raising up under its weight, I have a few ideas.

This was chromed bar but I marked the diameter and ground the chrome on the line to give the blades an easier job. A few cuts in 50mm bar with a worn 18tpi milwaunkee blade.

What about 100mm bar? swapped the newish, 6tpi blade, got 80% through it. Poo. I think the weight was pulling it in the vice or it jammed. The milwaunkee blade didnt last either. I might try to tig the coarse blade, still very sharp.

Hacksaw finished it. I'll need to grind some of the chrome off before I try chucking any of them.

 

[Gragson]

With this bandsaw, although I've got my clamp working well now with a few mods, I roughly chock the back and front undersides of any overhang material to relieve stress while cutting, like train track and even 50mm mild round. To stop riding up I have used lead strips in the clamp sides on round and I binned the Milwaukee blades ages ago total - shizer. Never cut anything as hard as chrome mind, are you letting the blade do the work without too much pressure?

 

[MCKDAVID]

@Cheesie frame looks familiar, suzuki GS 750/11? looks like a bit of bracing going on for the rear sets?

 

[RichardM]

You really need a bigger vice for 4" diameter. Look where your tightening screw is on the diameter, if under the centre line it will be forcing the bar up.

Milwaukee blades, I'm with @Gragson on those and won't buy any more.

 

[Aff]

These are the best blades I've found for these portable bandsaws so far.

I use the M42 10/14 vari-tooth ones.

1/2" - M42 Portable (Pack of 3) - Up To 1200mm

Made from triple tempered M42 cobalt high speed steel with hardened teeth, these blades will last on average around 10 times longer than other blades. M42 blades are also available in a vari-tooth format, vari-tooth blades can cope with a wider variety of thicknesses and types of metal than

www.tuffsaws.co.uk

 

[dan.taylor.1]

I might be able to help you out with some 100 year old cast, if it hasnt beeen skipped already.
I did tell the lads to keep it but with the price of scrap at the moment

Had it been scrapped?

 

[Maker]

Spent all day doing this and all I've really achieved is a headache.
View attachment 303145

View attachment 303144

The microscope has two DC motors in it, one controls zoom, the other raises and lowers it to focus (Not when it's sat on a table like this mind), I think originally it would have had foot pedals to control it. The plan was to control the motors with a pair of rotary encoders, the speed of the motor would be proportional to the speed you turn the dial, it all worked so well in my head. It turns out rotary encoders are an absolute f'king nightmare. Hours of testing example codes, writing code, learning how interrupts work, writing new code, debouncing with hardware, debouncing in software and I'm ready to give up. As a final attempt I've set each click of the encoder to run the motor for 100ms in the appropriate direction and even that doesn't work, it keeps randomly deciding to turn the wrong way.

I think rev.2 is going to use four pushbuttons, one per motor, per direction, no fancy microcontroller, no speed control and these horrible Amazon encoders are getting Widlerized.

Rev.2 took about an hour and most of that was rummaging for switches.

Only had spring loaded ones in spdt so had to use plus and minus 12v rails from the power supply. I'll buy some better switches for Rev.3 and try to figure out how to short the motor when it's not running so they stop faster.

 

[Kram]

Had it been scrapped?

Somewhere theres a bridge with a pair of great big holes in the side

 

[Maker]

Rev.2 took about an hour and most of that was rummaging for switches.
View attachment 303220
Only had spring loaded ones in spdt so had to use plus and minus 12v rails from the power supply. I'll buy some better switches for Rev.3 and try to figure out how to short the motor when it's not running so they stop faster.

Rev.3 uses relays, one changes polarity, one either connects the motor to power or shorts it, the switch powers either one or both coils. They're 24 volt coils so I haven't eliminated the -12v supply, and I feel like it should be possible using just one relay per motor, but it is finally performing how I want so I might leave it alone.

 

[Kram]

Tried parting too much chatter. Who put that sodding shelf there