My first ever attempt at milling

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putputman said:
I have always used a conventional cut for stock removal and leave a few thousands for a final climb cut. A light climb cut will generally give you a better finish. I find this is true with most materials also.
Does anyone else find this works for them?

Absolutely. I do it all the time. In fact, with many materials, there's no need to dial in a final cut. Simply running the cutter back over the surface in the climb direction will improve the finish.
 
tel said:
Yes, if the cutter ended up where it is shown after the cut in the first two pics you were climb milling.

Doh!

And I went to so much effort to make sure I wasn't, maybe I should turn my book upside down to read it. :big:

Atleast we have an explanation as to what went wrong then which is always good.

I better go back and read my book again and figure out how I got it the wrong way round.

Thanks for the help everyone. I'll get a new endmill next week and have another go.
 
Tony
I'm told that toilet water swirls the wrong way down there too....(grin). You might as well expect a few tool casualties along the way. You'll get a feel for the machine soon enough and then speeds and depth of cuts will come almost naturally.... as will cutting from the right direction. Luckily the machines are pretty tough and the base of the learning curve isn't too terribly steep.

Steve
 
tmuir, I like the way you held down your piece of steel to the mill table. Well suited to the job, nice and simple with sacrificial nuts.

My first mill project was to make T nuts, I won't embarrass myself by detailing the convoluted holding methods I used.



 
I can't lay claim to the hold down method. It's straight out of Workshop practice series book 35
Milling a Complete course.

Its the catch 22 situation isn't it.
How do you hold down anything when you are first making all the things you need to hold down everything? :big:
 
tmuir said:
I can't lay claim to the hold down method. It's straight out of Workshop practice series book 35
Milling a Complete course.

A couple more chapters and you will be up to where I am then. Actually bought the book for the grinding rest, but couldn't resist this one. I'm considerably further along than this pic tho', I'll try and get one of current progress later.

spindle8.jpg
 
Here's a couple of quick and fuzzies

body1.jpg
body2.jpg
 
Looking good.
I've look at these projects a few times but think it will be some time before I'm ready to try something like that.
Once I've made the T nuts I will skip a chapter and then make the clamps.
Then I can actually start thinking about making something other than tooling on it.
 
Tel, that's an interesting device. Is that a dividing head? Are you using it on the mill, lathe, or what?

Chuck
 
Yes Chuck, it's the start of the 'Harold Hall Dividing Head' from his book 'Milling, A Complete Course'. I'm building it for use on the RF30 mill, but the beauty of it is it will accept the chucks, small faceplate, MT2 collets etc from the Myford lathe.
 
Went to a different tool shop on my way home today and bought myself an endmill.
I normally only use this shop for taps and dies and odd size drill bits as they usually have everything in stock unlike other shops. But as this shop really caters to industry not hobbiests they tend to stock only high quality expensive stuff, but atleast if you buy from them you know it will last.
I was quiet surprised to see the endmill they sold me was made in Australia, which makes the higher price easier to swallow as you know it wasn't made by almost slave labour in China.

This time cutting in the correct direction everything went much smoother and I finished milling the T to size.
Forgot to take any photos but I still need to drill and tap the T nuts, cut them away from each other and then endmill the cuts square.
Will take photos of the finished products.

Thanks everyone for your help.
 
You don't really need to clean up the ends of those T nuts. Just saw them apart.
I know at the beginning everything has to also "look good" :) You'll eventually
grow out of it. :)
...lew...
 
Lew
I hope I never get that jaded. Being able to take personal pride in even a mundane project is one thing I never want to lose. Here, the last step is just as important as the first step. When I can no longer enjoy that, I'll offer my machines up to someone who can. "It'll do" is not my definition of craftsmanship.

Steve
 
tmuir,

Glad your T nuts went well. Remember this is a hobby and we do it for pleasure. If it pleases you to have your T nuts all ship shape and Bristol fashion - go for it. ;D ;D You will feel much better and that's what counts.

Best Regards
Bob
 
I know I don't need to finish it off like that but Its still an easy operation and gives me more practice on the mill.

My wife tells me I'm a perfectionist so I don't think I could live with leaving it rough.
I draw the line at getting a mirror finish on the nuts but I don't like to leave saw marks on something I will hopefully be using for some time to come.

Once it is all machined I will oil blacken them to ;) ;)o.

There not perfect due to me stuffing up by milling the wrong direction and breaking my endmill on my first try but they will definately be serviceable and I already feel a lot more confident in using my mill.

It's pay day today so might have to have a look at buying some of those upgrades for the mill tonight. ;D

I think a DRO will be one I want very soon as the backlash is huge and makes it hard to reposition exactly.
 
Well 3 nights playing in the workshop for an hour or two each time and I have ended up with these.

Tnut8.jpg


Yes I could of just bought them for $15 but the point of the exercise was to get practice on my mill with something simple and I'm quiet pleased with them for my first attempt on the mill.

To stop the threaded rod from screwing right through and bottoming out I top the simple but effective option of using a coal chisel to put 4 marks on the last turn of thread, damaging the thread so the bolt can't pass through it.

Tnut9.jpg


It might be a 'dirty' solution but it works well.
 
I do find it funny that I spent 3 nights and $25 to make the parts of could of bought for $15 but it wasn't so much the end result that was important as me getting practice on the mill. :big:
 
And then there's numb-nuts like me who didn't know that and tightened the bolt too much...damaging both the bolt and the nut.

Thank you for posting.

Some of us just started...and engines are down the road a piece...I like seeing things I can try as I travel down that road.
 

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