Shop tooling organizer

Gary Paine posted on the Home Shop Machinist forum about some nice storage boxes he made:

Often I turn to woodworking to supplement my metalworking activity. Usually this turns into some form of organizer for the tooling and cutters. Such is the case with the accessories box that resides beside my Burke horizontal mill. The milling cutters are sharp and fragile, and I needed a way to quickly find the right one without handling a whole pile of them. The tills fitted in on top make it a bit less than instant to get at one of the cutters on the bottom, but they are individually and safely wrapped in protective wood on the bottom layer.



In a drawer of the custom cabinet that lives under the legs of my Delta Milwaukee Toolmaker Grinder are partitions for the fragile grinding wheels that are used on the machine.



Different diameter wheels needed different dividers, or it would have been less convenient to get out the small wheels from the large dividers.



The purpose of this post is to try to give something back to this great group by sharing the construction method for the dividers. Many times this turns out to be just two dowels, two end plates, and a bunch of leaves or dividers. I size the dividers between 60 and 80 percent of the cutter diameter in height and about ½ inch or so wider. I space the dowels so they are just clear of a tangent to the diameter, trying to be at least 1/2 in. from side and bottom of the leaf. The dowels are fitted into the end plates at least 1/8 inch from the bottom more than the dimension on the divider so they slide freely. The hole in the end plates for the dowel is not drilled through, but only about ¾ of the way. That way, the dowels act to hold the end plates up against their support. No glue is needed. The holes in the dividers are a generous clearance for the dowel. A side plate such as I show in the photo can be added if desired for full protection of the cutter or ease in handling the assembly. Tip: drill the dividers first as a clamped together stack, top leaf in the stack marked LEFT. Take that leaf and lay it in finished place on the right end plate with the LEFT mark up and transfer the holes into the end plate. Then lay it on the left end plate with the mark against the end and transfer the holes. Doing it this way cancels layout or drilling errors and assures all the holes line up sweetly and it all sits flat. The dividers can be anything from 1/8 inch thick up, and cardboard works but I fear it will absorb moisture from the air and go limp in time. Hope you like the idea.

Lathe Spindle Stop

darryl posted on the HSM forum about a spindle stop he made. I particularly liked the pin wrench for adjusting it:

A few pics of this simple project. The morse tapered stop piece with threaded adjustment bar, and the wrench to adjust it-



Inserted into the spindle taper-



With chuck in place- here it's set to give about 1/2 inch of material in the jaws behind the face of the jaws.



The diameter of the face on the adjusting bolt is just under 1/2 inch. There will be another adjusting bolt made if I need it to be a smaller diameter. The bolt is a friction fit, which I got by choosing a galvanized bolt over a chromed one. I polished up the bolt so it wouldn't chew up the threads in the pvc piece, and gave it a bit of grease. This was a carriage bolt, chosen to give enough of a head that I could machine it to give me a decent sized flat on the end. I also machined away the squared portion directly behind the head, reducing that diameter to 5/16 for this 3/8 bolt. That way I can screw it right in til it touches the plastic. It goes about as deep as I'll ever need it to, but if I do need it to be deeper, I can just cut off some of the plastic. The threads go in a bit over an inch, and the bore is drilled out from the other end to 3/8. No need to thread it all the way.

I could have simplified this and just used a normal bolt, but I wanted to be able to grip material down to about a half inch. This would have meant turning off the hex on the bolt head, leaving no way to adjust it. Otherwise I could simply have used a socket wrench. An alternative would have been to re-grind a hex head for a smaller socket, but I chose the pin wrench instead. If I need to use a smaller diameter adjusting bolt, I'll be forced to grind a hex onto it so I can adjust it. No way I'm going to cheap out and put a simple slot on the end of it. I hate those slippery flat blade screwdrivers.

Simple hold down

Zinom posted on the HSM forum about a simple hold down clamp he made:

Hey all, I often need to drill a hole in some thin stock that doesn't require a lot of precision so I don't like to spend much time on the set up.

*disclaimer* I use a small screwless vise almost exclusively so this may not be too useful to those with vises without vee grooves.

Threaded rod, scrap strap and a couple of set screws that fit in the vee groove to prevent the clamp from pulling upward.

Not a complex thing but for me it speeds up some operations and I hadn't seen anything similar in all the web surfing I've done.

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This looked like a pretty handy thing to have. I think for a vise with V slot across it you could also use a rod for the bottom piece, and you wouldn't have to bother with the set screws. Also, a brass tip on the end of the thumbscrew would keep you from messing up the top of the vise.

Draw bar hammer

hornluv posted this draw bar hammer on the HSM forum. I thought it looked like a neat thing to make:

Here is a draw bar hammer I made. I used a 3/4" deep socket as the base of it. I machined a square on the brass insert and pressed it into the square on the socket. I then made a steel insert to take up all the empty space in the middle of the socket so I would have something to tap into. Drilled and tapped to 1/2-20 (The socket was hard-ish, but softer than I expected). Turned and knurled an Aluminum handle to fit and voila! Now I can loosen and tap in one fell swoop. Soon the world will be mine, mwahahaha!

Digital Microscope

On the Home Shop Machinist forum, Evan posted a nifty microscope he made from a camera lens and a webcam:

Yep, Macro Scope, using ordinary camera lenses in macro mode. I have been taking micrographs by snapping pictures with a digital camera held to the eyepiece of my stereo microscope but isn't easy to achieve good focus and contrast. I decided to build something more suited to the job and easier to use.

It uses a generic 1.3 megapixel web cam. Various camera parts were used as well as a variety of raw materials. The base is flycut recycled HDPE that looks like black granite, the main column is a solid bar of extra hard mystery stainless steel that was .030 out of round to start. Gave a bit of pucker factor when I needed to drill and tap two 4-40 holes in it. The rack and pinon are machined from brass as are the supports for the twin lens adjustment rails. The elevating housing is made from acetal bar stock and the lens height/fine focuser screw is aluminum. It took a week of on/off time to make.





It can be dissassembled into 4 main components without tools in a few seconds. Different lenses may be attached via M 42 pentax screw mount or adapters. Long lenses (telephoto) work best because they give more distance to the subject for a given magnification and back focus distance.




Some sample images:

1: The edge of a broad radiused HSS cutter that I thought looked pretty good. That's why I built this device.

2: The point of a carbide graver that I hand sharpened on a diamond wheel. This is one of my best gravers for brass and it's because the flats are very symmetical.

3: An insert that looks ok to the eye but suddenly started cutting poorly.

4: The same type insert new. Note that the edge isn't very sharp.



To Do list includes an X-Y stage, measuring software overlays and an inserted illuminated back light in the base.

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Evan later posted about a modification he made to it, replacing the webcam with an NTSC camera, and mounting a cheap LCD display on it.

I think that one of the inexpensive import granite comparator stands that Enco usually has on sale would work really well to base this on, if the size was right. You'd already have a solid base, and nice column, and fine adjustment mechanism. I think you could probably do a lot of things that you might use an optical comparator for with one of these, at least for simple HSM stuff. It would be easy to overlay a drawing of a gear tooth cutter on an image from this, and see how it compares.

Crossdrilling block for lathe

black85vette posted on the HMEM board about his build of a crossdrilling block for the lathe:

Saw it in this post:

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=5361.msg57395#msg57395

Thought it was such a cool but simple tool that I just had to have one. So here is mine. Used some 2" square aluminum stock and then faced it on the lathe on 3 sides (left the other 3 alone). Mounted it on the compound in place of the tool post and made a groove in it with a 90 degree drill mill. Nice thing is that it is centered on the spindle without any effort. Then drilled 4 holes to use to clamp the round stock in the jig. I went with bolts rather than studs so I can work closer to the collet. So there it is; dirt simple but very useful.

Full credit to Foozer for the great idea.

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In one of the posts, the following YouTube video was posted:

Frank Ford posted on the Home Shop Machinist forum about his simple radius dresser:

Coincidentally, I just this week made a radius dresser for my tiny Sanford surface grinder. I just used materials I had on hand, and didn't make drawings. I'm at work now, but I'll post a photo or two here when I get home tonight.

Update, tonight -

Here it is "in situ," on the mag chuck:


I had this welded angle with a big hex nut stuck on, and I used it as the basic support. Just another item from the salvage bin. I bored the nut and angle to 1.125" to insert a couple of standard ball bearings that could accommodate a half inch shaft.



The "arm" of the dresser started out as a piece of heavy hot-rolled angle.



I turned and knurled the entire shaft from a piece of 1.5" 12L14 steel I had in the bin, and made a little flat spot to be able to lock it in place at exactly vertical so I could use the rig as a standard flat dresser as well as swinging it for radius forms. I did the graduations mostly because I could, and I can always use the practice, dontcha know.



Once I was finished, I spent some time with a height gauge and measured the center height accurately. As you can see, I wasn't so concerned with neatness as when I stamped the graduations on the knob. Oh, well, I never really expected to photograph this one. . .