substandard
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2009
- Messages
- 65
- Reaction score
- 4
Not much to post, I had some nice "action" shots of the milling, but the computer died taking the pictures with them.
I started with the engine base, made out of .5" (12.7mm) aluminum. Used a flycutter to even out the flat surfaces, and then squared the edges with an end mill. Being clever I bought a metric square making it a lot easier to layout the parts. Converting from metric to inch repeatedly was just begging for a math error sooner or later. (Sooner than later to tell the truth).
The base then went into the mill vise and out came the edgefinder, the inch edgefinder with the .20" diameter tip : Yeah, I was soooo clever buying the metric square and eliminating the conversions. So production was stopped for a few minutes while I considered my options. Then I had the DUH moment! My DRO was set to metric, all I had to do was switch back to inch, locate the X,Y edges, move in .10", rezero, and then switch the DRO back to metric.
The holes were drilled and counterbored, the drawing calls for four mounting holes in each corner. I omitted these for now, until I decide exactly how I want to mount the base. I used a edge rounding end mill to radius the edges, and that is when the trouble started. You can see in the one picture where the cutter dug in. Nothing major should clean up during final polish.
I started with the engine base, made out of .5" (12.7mm) aluminum. Used a flycutter to even out the flat surfaces, and then squared the edges with an end mill. Being clever I bought a metric square making it a lot easier to layout the parts. Converting from metric to inch repeatedly was just begging for a math error sooner or later. (Sooner than later to tell the truth).
The base then went into the mill vise and out came the edgefinder, the inch edgefinder with the .20" diameter tip : Yeah, I was soooo clever buying the metric square and eliminating the conversions. So production was stopped for a few minutes while I considered my options. Then I had the DUH moment! My DRO was set to metric, all I had to do was switch back to inch, locate the X,Y edges, move in .10", rezero, and then switch the DRO back to metric.
The holes were drilled and counterbored, the drawing calls for four mounting holes in each corner. I omitted these for now, until I decide exactly how I want to mount the base. I used a edge rounding end mill to radius the edges, and that is when the trouble started. You can see in the one picture where the cutter dug in. Nothing major should clean up during final polish.