12-11-2017, 01:54 AM
Good work CrossSlide.
As you know it would have been much quicker/easier to just buy a couple of nuts, but as a (fellow) newbie I think its these simple jobs that help build our skills and experience so that we can do more complex stuff later on.
In my case I was messing around last night on the mill truing up a lump from a cast iron drainage grate (about 40mm x 40mm x 300mm long and trapezoid section).
It was a very basic task, but I'm pretty new to milling so I had a bunch of new things (for me) to deal with:
Quite a bit of overhang from my 4" vice, trapezoid section that wasn't easy to grip in the vice, cast/rusty surface and machining cast iron.
I could have got the job done much quicker if I had turned my attention to making an arbor for the 63mm facemill I've got sitting in the drawer, but I persevered with the 12mm HSS endmill and experimented a bit with depths of cut, feed rates and cutting oil/coolant etc.
I now have personal experience with a job moving in the vice (due to overhang and lack of support/clamping pressure), know that cutting oil and cast iron makes a heck of a mess to clean up, and realise that I need to adjust the gibs on the table as I was getting some heavy vibration even with the z and y axis locked during cuts.
As a job it could be considered a relative failure, but from a learning experience it was great :)
Steve
As you know it would have been much quicker/easier to just buy a couple of nuts, but as a (fellow) newbie I think its these simple jobs that help build our skills and experience so that we can do more complex stuff later on.
In my case I was messing around last night on the mill truing up a lump from a cast iron drainage grate (about 40mm x 40mm x 300mm long and trapezoid section).
It was a very basic task, but I'm pretty new to milling so I had a bunch of new things (for me) to deal with:
Quite a bit of overhang from my 4" vice, trapezoid section that wasn't easy to grip in the vice, cast/rusty surface and machining cast iron.
I could have got the job done much quicker if I had turned my attention to making an arbor for the 63mm facemill I've got sitting in the drawer, but I persevered with the 12mm HSS endmill and experimented a bit with depths of cut, feed rates and cutting oil/coolant etc.
I now have personal experience with a job moving in the vice (due to overhang and lack of support/clamping pressure), know that cutting oil and cast iron makes a heck of a mess to clean up, and realise that I need to adjust the gibs on the table as I was getting some heavy vibration even with the z and y axis locked during cuts.
As a job it could be considered a relative failure, but from a learning experience it was great :)
Steve