Rod's Aussie Shed

[gus]

About time I put in a DRO on to my Sakai Min Watch Maker's Lathe. Will look around for one.

Hi Gurus.Your expert advice is seeked.

 

[rodw]

Space saving is one of the biggest issues i have in my shed or sheds i have in had. I seem to be adding more bench and storage space frequently!

Thomo, some of us don't have the luxury of adding ad infinitum!

About time I put in a DRO on to my Sakai Min Watch Maker's Lathe. Will look around for one.

Hi Gurus.Your expert advice is seeked.

Gus, Have a look at Ditron. I think I will go with their system on my lathe

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/903293

I exchanged a few emails at the beginning of the year with them but decided to buy my tooling first which is almost done so it is almost time.

The reason I suggest them is that they have a real slimline scale which will be excellent on a small lathe. I initially saw these in a glass cabinet at Hare and Forbes where I bought my lathe from and wrote down the brand. Also for a small lathe, get the 1 micron scales.

Having said that there are a couple of suppliers on eBay based in Singapore so you might get a good deal with a bit of face to face haggling!

Track these guys down locally, both are OK.

Meister http://www.meisterdro.com/servlet/StoreFront
DRO Store http://www.thedrostore.com/

Here are a couple of phone photos of progress to date on my mill.







I just have to mount the X sensor (hopefully this evening) and align the X & Y scales and it is done. I can't believe how long the cables are on this kit. I have metres of stuff to coil up.

 

[rcfreak177]

G'day Rod,

I reckon the DRO will be a welcomed addition to the mill.

How has the SX3 treating you?

The bench for the lathe came up well, I have been following this whole thread hiding the background with interest.

I am coming back to Perth to work, had enough of the FIFO for now. Will be looking after the warranty department for Atlas Copco blast hole drill rig division. Over fixing the machines for a while.

Hopefully I will be able to get some more shed time.

Keep up the good work mate.

Baz.

 

[doortoh]

Howdy Rod w i am not too far from you and would like to hear from you some time and see your shed...my shed is a little on the large side for a hobby..but it is what i have.....5hp turret mill..1mt precision grinder..1.5 mt centre lathe...1 mt centre lathe...bolt making lathe and small coventry die head...hare and forbes mill drill...small horizontal mill set up to do small gears..small surface grinder...air float mill drill...tig welder..mig welder power hacksaw...large band saw..small valve refacer...cylinder boring machine...i think i could produce full size if i cared to do so......Wayne

 

[rodw]

G'day Rod,

I reckon the DRO will be a welcomed addition to the mill.

How has the SX3 treating you?

The bench for the lathe came up well, I have been following this whole thread hiding the background with interest.
.

Baz.

.

Baz, i figured you would still be watching... I am amazed at the number of hits this thread has received. It is actually hard to believe that my shed has been transformed so much since I bought my gear in January.

I really have not done much milling with my SX3, mainly been used as a drill. That is because I have been too busy doing other projects to have any spare time to play. The good news is that I got the last axis fitted on the DRO tonight at about 9:30. I still have to align the scales yet and fit out the covers and tidy up the wires etc but at least it is operational. There is still a few more projects left to finish off my shed, it hard to find the time. Tomorrow I am on removalist duties, Saturday I have a plumber sorting out a coolant line from my lathe stand to the mill, Sunday, I got a mate coming over to check my shed progress and Monday I have a couple of doctors appointments. I need to get a minor operation done on my wrist which may slow me down for a week or two.

The FIFO lifestyle must get tiring after a while. It seems they work you guys a bit harder now than they did 20 years ago from what I recall from mates that did it back then.

Howdy Rod w i am not too far from you and would like to hear from you some time and see your shed...my shed is a little on the large side for a hobby..but it is what i have.....5hp turret mill..1mt precision grinder..1.5 mt centre lathe...1 mt centre lathe...bolt making lathe and small coventry die head...hare and forbes mill drill...small horizontal mill set up to do small gears..small surface grinder...air float mill drill...tig welder..mig welder power hacksaw...large band saw..small valve refacer...cylinder boring machine...i think i could produce full size if i cared to do so......Wayne

Wayne, by all means catch up, I will send you a PM. Sounds like you know a lot more about this stuff than I do! I am sure you will reach me a thing or two!

 

[rodw]

Well, I got a bit more of my DRO done over the last few days.

I got all of the scales mounted up and covers fitted yesterday afternoon



The Z axis wires disappear back around the column as shown in the pic above.



The X axis sensor is mounted to the saddle at the rear of the table. The instructions said to bolt it down through the saddle, but I elected to use some 6mm aluminium angle iron instead



The Y axis looks neat too.



I still have to work out how to tidy up the wires to the X and Y sensors neatly while still allowing for travel.

I had to rip a ledge off the covers for the X and Y covers as it was getting in the road. This was easy on my bandsaw in upright mode. You can see the ledge in the pic of the Z axis earlier. I may trim this off yet too.

The Seig SX3 has the electronics in side a cover over the column that has a couple of removable covers. I notched the back of the case (and the top cover) with a file so the cable goes inside with the electronics (well it will when done) and emerges out the other side near the DRO.



The X & Y axis wires feed in through notches on the bottom of the housing (one in each corner)



I have put a couple of bolts through the covers to secure some cable clips that were supplied. These let me hold the surplus cables with a cable tie.

There is an enormous amount of spare cable to tuck out of sight.



I still have to notch the back cover in two places. I tell you using a file really sucks when you have a perfectly good milling machine at your disposal. I still have a couple of notches left to file in the top cover.



I am going to have to be careful to secure and maybe insulate the steel cables so there is no risk of shorting out a board.



The installation will look nice and neat once the covers are back on.



I am also going to install a cable gland below the DRO arm mount so the mains power lead can go into the cover and pick up power after the main switch so it is powered up with the machine and does not waste a power point.

The family plumber came round today and bent up some copper pipes to run coolant to the mill but it will be a while before I get to this, so be patient!

Once this is all tidied up, it will almost look like a factory install. I would not mind getting rid of the cable ties on the arm and securing the wires in a different way so it looks neater from the operators side. Any ideas?

Staggering to see this thread has had over 19000 views since I started it in January.

 

[canadianhorsepower]

Once this is all tidied up, it will almost look like a factory install. I would not mind getting rid of the cable ties on the arm and securing the wires in a different way so it looks neater from the operators side. Any ideas?

nice clean work looks good,

this is what I used on mine, wire loom
http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Wire-Loom/1-in-x-25-ft-Split-Flex-Wire-Loom/8218844.p

 

[rodw]

nice clean work looks good,

this is what I used on mine, wire loom
http://www.princessauto.com/pal/en/Wire-Loom/1-in-x-25-ft-Split-Flex-Wire-Loom/8218844.p

Luc, Thanks for that. I have some of that here and used some to make sure that the metal DRO cables could not short out the board. More on this later. I think I will just run with cable ties for now. some box conduit screwed to the back of the arm would be good but I have to buy full lengths and the one I have on hand is too big so I will leave the cable ties in place for now.

Well, I grabbed a cable gland today and finished of the install. I cut the power plug off and fed the power cable from the DRO into the case.





You can see the split conduit I used. I usualy have some of this laying around. The big one was good for two cables but it would have been better to have some 13mm for the third cable but the bigger one had to do.

Splicing into the power was pretty easy. There is a big EMI filter that the power passes through first thing but I decided I would wire the DRO in before it in case the additional power draw was a problem. After refreshing my memory about power cable pinouts, and confiring the SX3 power switch was a dual pole one with a multimeter, I started by splicing the active (brown wire) into the outside of the fuse using a double adapter spade connector to the one on the outboard side of the fuse. I covered the connector with shrink wrap.



The earth was easy as there is a BUS bar for all of the machine earth wires. I did not have the right sized bolt so I doubled it up with the mains earth



You can see the DRO earth has a blue crimp on connector on it.

This left me with the Neutral (blue wire) to deal with. I decided to cut the wire leading from the switch to the EMI filter and splice in with a mains screw in connector (which I later covered with shrink wrap).



I decided there was no need to secure the cables now they were covered in split conduit and routed them down past the main board.



Then it was just a matter of putting the covers back on





I put a cable clamp on the existing bolt securing the cover to hold a cable tie



And drilled and tapped one more hole in the machine to tidy up the X and Y sensor cables



Leaving room for full extension of the Y axis



And it was done!



Here is the Z axis at full height.



I was a bit worried for a while though. The DRO powered up but the Mill sometimes did not power up even though its green power light came on. I had problems with this once before. I had a bit of a dig around and diagnosed a loose main connector to the mother board. My cables may have been pushing on the mill cable a bit, so I rearranged things so this would not happen so here is hoping! I will talk to Hare and Forbes about this while the machine is under warranty.

Anyway, it was good to finally finish this off and get the shed back together.

 

[rodw]

So now it is all back together, some of you have asked for a tour so come on in and and have a look at what it looks like now.











About the only thing left to do is to sort out the storage for my lathe tooling.



and get a roof on my materials rack and compressor, run coolant to the mill, run a new power main to the shed for 15 amp power and level the floor......With a bit of luck I will be done by Christmas.

 

[davewaldo]

You've done a great job with it all Rod, love the new lathe stand!

 

[rodw]

You've done a great job with it all Rod, love the new lathe stand!

Dave, thanks, its nearly finished.

Today after about 2 years, I finally got around to installing the roof over the materials rack and compressor





You can see, this project also included the same style of roof against the garden shed in the background.



Also during the week I went to pick up some plasma cutting tips but they were out of stock so I had to buy something!

Seeing it was on special I grabbed one of these



I wanted to have a lightweight portable stick welder I could use away from home because my MIG weighs 90kg and it was not that much more to get a 185 amp DC TIG welder. I have no idea what I will do with it, but I figured it would be handy and was the same footprint of a stick welder that also had basic TIG. The AC/DC TIG was a fair bit more than my budget so I decided that I will have to stick with MIG if I need to weld aluminium as I have a separate gun with a Teflon liner and different feed roller set up for Aluminium. Also having TIG will let me get more value out of a bottle of Argon gas as I can use it for TIG and aluminium MIG.

Also, I got the chance to spend a bit of time on a simple milling job for the first time since I fitted my DRO and it was pretty cool just reading positions off the DRO!

This is a prototype part for a new body lift kit and once it is fitted up to a vehicle in the next week or so, I will finalise the design and get a batch laser cut and send them out for powder coating.



Hopefully there is a bit of pent up demand for them. I have a 50mm tube to take a 10 mm bolt to make and while I turned up some prototypes, I was going to buy some seamless steel tube but I gotta buy 2 lengths minimum and that is enough for 120 vehicle kits!

 

[robcas631]

Some people are fortunate enough to have a man cave. You have your own house! Very cool!

 

[rodw]

Some people are fortunate enough to have a man cave. You have your own house! Very cool!

House! All 10 square metres of it!

 

[rodw]

Well guys, this thread has been a bit quiet because I had a minor operation on my wrist last Wednesday to remove a big lump of an oedema that has been there for a few years. I went back to the doctor today and got the all clear and the dressing was removed. They use disolving stitches these days so there was nothing to do but send me on my way after a cursory look.



But I have to confess after taking 3 days of sick leave from Wednesday to Friday last week, I was starting to get some withdrawal systems by Sunday afternoon, and the wrist was only really sore for one day so I decided that using a plasma cutter would not be too hard on my wrist. I was kinda motivated by my son in law who gave me some electrical cable



He tells me that the 50 metres of 10mm2 cable on the bottom drum was worth about $800 and it is a gift for services rendered! Cos he shares my cable internet via an 800 metre wireless link which I set up for free for him. So the plan is to run this cable to my shed from the swichboard at the diagonally opposite end of the house to my shed (hence the heavy cable). I will have to dig the trench by had so it can go nice and neat underground to my mini-shed. I will then have a few 15 amp circuits for my compressors, welders and plasma cutter. The top roll is to run from a distribution board in the shed to the various powerpoints.

The only available space in my shed is up in the rafters



Hmm, with a surname like that, I can see that when I eventually get round to it , my first IC engine is gunna have to be a Webster! The sign was a gift from a sign writer I knew and roughly follows the design of a logo for a business I sold about 10 years ago. (Some Aussies may recognise the likeness to Snap Printing but they have since redesigned their logo) I needed a mounting plate for the switchboard so the plasma made short work of a piece of seconds 2mm thick plate steel I got for about $13 the other day.



The big cable is probably good for 80 amps or so and I added a couple of nutserts to simplify mounting the switchboard to the backing plate.



I checked out the spec for my new (still unused) TIG welder. It can draw 30 amps and the plasma and compressor together will use about the same and my 90 kg MIG welder is much better behaved and only draws 15 amps max. So basically, I will only need about 30 amps max at one time but it is better to be sure! Justin reckons the street will black out before I melt this cable as it is probably bigger than the the mains running into my house!

While I had the plasma out, I thought I better fill in the spot I have allocated for lathe QCTP adapters as Justin was eyeing it off for a good spot for his switchboard.



So if I get some time this weekend, I will make a start on welding the mounting tabs onto this backing plate for my lathe tooling to finish this job off (which will FINALLY pretty well finish off my shed storage makeover).... Tinkerer would be shocked to see the mess in my shed ATM.

It has been a really busy week for us, my operation, my wife's mother's unit sold (she is now in a home with Alzheimers), my wife finished work (I am not so lucky) and we purchased $8k of photo scanning hardware. My wife wanted to scan all of her old photos and we thought there might be a few others in the same boat so maybe it will give her something to do in amongst granddaughter (and grandmother) duties. We think that my experience with printing prepress and her experience in document management, scanning and indexing will let us do a decent job of it. We have also had a logo developed and I have deployed a second web site (but it is not open for business yet). Not bad seeing we only decided to do this last Friday just 7 days ago!

So if any Aussies reading have a heap of photos or slides in shoeboxes that you don't know what to do with and would like to get them on a PC so they can pass them on to their children, don't hesitate to send me a PM. (Hope the mods don't mind a minor OT indiscretion.)

 

[rodw]

Well, life has been very hectic here so have not had much shed time but I did get an hour or so over the weekend to finish of my QCTP tool holder holder (if that makes sense)

I cut up some pieces of 40mm x 3mm flat bar so they were the same width as the dovetail on the holders. Then I cut two more pieces on a 15 degree angle to make a little jig so they were all the same angle

I tacked these bits to a short bit of 25mm RHS.

I removed the plate from the wall and welded them up (pretty poorly as they were a bit too close together to get the MIG in there easily)

I held the jig in place square where I wanted it with a magnetic welding corner gadget and it worked out pretty well.

It worked out pretty awesome! I am happy with the angle. I have a couple of spare slots and room for about 5 more in the middle, maybe a few more but I won't add them until I need to so I get them in the right spot.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to play with my lathe after this was done.

 

[rodw]

Just a bit of an update.

I have been very busy and the electrical stuff is still sitting there to be installed as I have barely been in my shed for moths.

A bit of excitement however today as with the warmer weather, my wife looked up to see a snake emerging fro the wall cavity a couple of metres from my shed door.

We are not sure whether he is a venomous one or not but of course he made a bee line for my shed and slithered under the door. I had a good look though the shed a few hours later once I got home (with a long handled shovel in hand but fortunately he had moved on ...I hope!)

Of course it goes without saying Australia has some of the most venomous snakes in the world and the most dangerous live in our part of our continent.

I grew up with them in the bush and am snake aware but my wife is not so well trained... and on our wedding anniversary too!

Looks like I have to fill in some gaps around the door.

 

[rcfreak177]

Careful Rod that looks like a young King Brown. (Eastern Brown)

Shame we live so far away, I'm a licenced snake handler, would love to come and have a play and re locate it for you.

Baz.

 

[Cogsy]

I have been very busy and the electrical stuff is still sitting there to be installed as I have barely been in my shed for moths.

So there's a possibly venemous snake in your shed but you go in anyway, yet the MOTHS keep you out...

Seriously though - take care.

Baz - I gotta come round your house one day. Machine tools, metal casting (if I'm not mistaken) and snakes! Heaven! If you've got beer as well, I'll never leave!

 

[rcfreak177]

Always welcome Cogsy,

Definitely have beer but no snakes, the wife will not let me. I leave them at work up in the Pilbara. When they become a nuisance I will come in and carefully relocate them to a safe area away from harm. Great fun though

 

[Cogsy]

My house is a nice, safe area for snake relocation . I told my wife I wanted a snake or a ferret - she let me get a ferret but the bugger just wouldn't stop biting lumps out of me and the kids so I had to get rid of it. So now I'm on the lookout for a nice, gentle Stimpsons, or a mild mannered Gwadar...

If you need a hand with anything, give me a yell, I'm just round the corner in Armadale (and I'm a furniture removalist so I can lift heavy things...).