Simple L5 improvement

[small.planes]

Evening,
First post here, so I thought Id make it a useful tool thingy

It a block that replaces the top slide from my Harrison L5. I dont use the topslide much, and removing a slide should help with the rigidity.
Its been sat clamped to my mill table (Love having a big mill, can leave jobs setup and still use the rest of it ) for a couple of weeks, as I needed a 13mm (1/2" actually) collet to hold the woodruff cutter I borrowed (Thanks John) to press into service as a T Slot cutter.
This is the scariest cut Ive made so far on my mill, the slot is full width of the (borrowed) cutter, the small part of the T is 16.5mm across. The block is a piece of Thyroplast 2085 I picked up, its a stainless mould steel. Its hard, but it does polish up nicely though.

Dave

 

[CrewCab]

Dave ........... welcome aboard

CC

 

[wareagle]

Dave, welcome to HMEM. Glad to have you with us! May I suggest that you introduce yourself in the Welcome Area as not everyone will be reading each and every post.

Your tool block thingy looks great! Did you have any trouble cutting the materail with the woodruff cutter? I imagine that stuff is easy to work harden.

 

[rake60]

Welcome to HMEM Dave.

Using T Slot cutters are often a charactor building experiences.
Happy to see all went well for your project.

Rick

 

[small.planes]

I suspect it will work harden as bad as normal stainless, its composition is 0.33%C; 16% Chromium: 0.5% Nickel, and with 0.05% sulphur for easier machining! I used plenty of sulphated cutting oil, and the power feed, so just a steady cut, and no rubbing, which AFAIK is how to deal with stainless.

The main part of the character building is using someone elses cutter because you didnt want to fork out *how much!* for a single job...

Dave