Saturday, 23 September 2017

Setting up the stock for the cover

Hacked off the required lengths of 3/8" and 1-1/2" stock, deburred and clamped it up in the vise. set my zero to the top back left, as per the CAM. 





Then drilled it out 7mm through to 15mm below the surface of the bottom "fixture" part, with a simple CAM deep drilling (pecking with full retract) operation.

Then into the Blidgeport to drill out the plate to 8.0mm (to clear an M8 bolt) and tap the fixture M8 with a spiral flute machine tap.

Job done, work mounted and ready for some machining:



But first, let's actually finalise the diameter of the large hole in the cover. This is to allow the ballscrew and handle to pass through the cover plate. Currently it's 36mm dia, which is a placeholder number I just pulled out of my ass so I could model the assembly up in Fusion. I suppose I could accidentally machine it with a 36mm hole but the chances of it being right seem slim.

The required diameter for the large hole is about 48mm or so. It has to clear the boss of the hand wheel. It's a cast iron wheel and the boss isn't fully machined, so the dimensions are a bit ill defined. I will turn it down to a consistent diameter when the time comes to fitting the stuff to the machine. And the cover plate is 3/8" thick (almost 10mm), so I'll probably also need a modest spacer between the wheel and the pulley.

So I modified the CAD to incorporate this final dimension, reposted the g code and got out there to do the business.....

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