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 I am a big fan of community building exercises. And harassing my friends. - Amanda Morrison [more] |
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Introducing: The Mill Grinder
This is actually 4 pictures, but they work well in a group. This will either make you incredibly giddy or make you gasp in shock and horror, read on for a little bit more...
Basically we had a problem in that our rack and pinion did not have documents about how it was made, and when we tried to take it apart it would not come apart, we were to afraid of breaking it to try and force the main shaft out. Because of this we wanted a secure means to connect the extender that gets driven. We settled on set screws on flats, and since it was a hardened shaft we had to use abrasive. Instead of sticking it on the angle grinder or dremel we put one of the best tools ever invented: the Bridgeport, to use. Basically I created a custom arbor on the lathe from the 1" igus stock and then used a die to put treads on the end.
Extra details: The shank end is .4950 as designed to fit into a 3/4th R-8 collet, and it fits perfectly, luckily the aluminum is strong enough to hold its own and come out of the collet perfectly. The next second is a spacer which leaves the black ring untouched, this could be cut if you wanted to, but no point. Bad planning made it extremely short here (about 3/16th of an inch) but it works, and can easily be made longer. The next section is a 'seat' for the blade based off the original angle grinder, it has a special washer for this, but since we were only using cutting/grinding wheels I just make it permanent. It’s just under the size of the cutting disk original planned to be used, though thankfully we found a grinding disk just before it started. Check your disk for size if you want to make one, but I believe it’s around .89". The final section is just 1/2"-13 since we had some decently sized washer and a nut that would fit. The Grinder fit 5/8th and it would probably be preferred to use it, though 1/2th works find with a washer(s).
The whole device worked perfectly, though there was some thought to it exploding during use. The couple has 4 1/4"-20 bolts as set screws, which is painful overkill because the sprocket it gets power from only has 2 #10-32nds.
All in all, a good machine shop is one that can make its own tools, and today our (mentor's) shop finally met that.
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