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Ambrose Burnside posted:I was working at a metal shop where the foreman forbid me from wearing hearing protection because it made it hard to hear verbal instructions. coincidentally, every single human working in the warehouse had varying degrees of tinnitus. i got out after a couple weeks because gently caress that noise, literally I'll admit to only occasionally busting out the earmuffs for tinkering in the shop/mowing the lawn, but I do wear them religiously at the shooting range. If I were in the military, I'd totally get something like this: Metal Geir Skogul posted:Or you get some Howard Leight amplifying earmuffs and call it a day. I used them in the Army, and have two sets at home. They block loud noise but can amplify so well you hear a squirrel fart at 20 meters. Also they have an aux in. There are also earplug-with-a-box-behind-the-ear and fully in-ear versions meant for hunters. No line-in, but I'm amazed they haven't made a set with Bluetooth. If I know I'm going to be doing a lot of grinding/mowing, I'll wear earbuds under the $15 shooting muffs and listen to a podcast. Same with shoes -- when I'm in the shop or at work (rearranging grocery stores*) I only wear safety-toe footwear. You can get reasonably stylish steel-toe sneakers and even dress shoes these days. *I wasn't there, but I've heard of an incident where a coworker needed surgery because a can of soup fell off the top shelf and broke her foot.
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Jun 3, 2017 08:01
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Those are cool but holy poo poo $700.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:12
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 better bring the deer to the stand for that money.
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Jun 3, 2017 21:27
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So over the weekend I made a part to fix my neighbors mig machine. Lincoln wanted $70 + s/h for this thing. :p  Comparison to the old part that stripped out:  I might make a piece of bent angle to index the markings so you know how tight you've got it.  Et voila:  So for a couple hours worth of work I saved him $70 and it was an excuse to do something more than make a bracket. Pimblor fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Jun 5, 2017 |
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Jun 5, 2017 16:17
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And if you charged him just the labor rate for a one-off custom-machined part he'd quickly see why $70 is a great deal :p
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Jun 5, 2017 20:44
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Sagebrush posted:And if you charged him just the labor rate for a one-off custom-machined part he'd quickly see why $70 is a great deal :p Yeah, that's true, but I'm no machinist and he leaves the mig welder in my garage as a semi-permanent loan. I don't exactly have people beating down the door for my services anyway.
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Jun 6, 2017 11:30
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Nothing too fancy, but I started up my welded figurine thread in SA-Mart again. Just made this timely thing:
jovial_cynic fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 17:34
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Hey Dave, have you seen my calipers? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QpxDL9BaL0
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Jun 9, 2017 06:15
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shame on an IGA posted:Hey Dave, have you seen my calipers? That's loving awesome. Now I know where my calipers always go... And here I was blaming it on the QA guy.
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Jun 9, 2017 11:49
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I've been learning to use the plasma cam at school cause I've needed it this term for a pile of my students projects. Just basic poo poo like signs and clock faces really. I really like what it can do but there are some downsides. The CAD package that it runs on is a pile of hot garbage that can't be hosed off fast enough but it's what works so we need to use it. In 1.5mm mild steel it also has issues cutting finer details. I get that if what it's trying to cut is too fine the initial puncture will affect the metal outside of the whole but the remainder of the line will be a little on the wobbly side. I've played with the cutting speed but it doesn't completely fix it so I think what's happening is the sheet heats up too much on the first cut of a numeral and then distorts when it cuts the other half. Running one clock face at a time causes issues but they mostly went away when I did at once so I dunno. Anyone have experience with these and where to start troubleshooting?
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Jun 9, 2017 13:03
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jovial_cynic posted:Nothing too fancy, but I started up my welded figurine thread in SA-Mart again. Just made this timely thing: Cool man, I was wondering what happened to you. Welcome back, and nice work as always.
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Jun 9, 2017 16:46
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Slung Blade posted:Cool man, I was wondering what happened to you. Welcome back, and nice work as always. I went off to california and became an insurance agent. Was there for about 7 years, decided I wanted to come back home to washington, and came back. I officially turn in my keys to my agency 6/30, and start my next career in Washington as a territory manager for another insurance company. Fun. Something about washington makes me enjoy welding, so I'm back at it again. 
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Jun 9, 2017 19:20
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Carbide drills, coolant through spindle, and hurco questions. Shop I work at recently changed owners from they guy who started the shop and ran it for 30+ years to his son and we're having a bit of a technological revolution. I've been tasked with trying out some of the new stuff and I'm a bit out of my depth. I've got the first machine in the shop with coolant through the spindle and I want to find its limits without royally screwing something up. Can I really stop pecking when drilling? I realize it's somewhat depth and material dependant but for most of what I do going 5x diameter would just be full depth. Should I just dwell at 5x diameter or retract? I'm getting feeds and speed straight from the supplier but I'm leaning to the slow side, should I stand on it harder? Also I've had some trouble on tool changes when using smaller drills. The cts pressure sensor trips an overpressure alarm if I don't give it a few seconds to drain first. I've been adding a position block or stop before tool changes as a workaround. It sucks though because I would like it to continue without intervention on my part. Is there an easy dwell command in WINMAX to make it wait for a preset amount of time? Same for NC programming. I'm using both atm, much more comfortable with conversational from experience but getting better with NC as I use it. All that being said, carbide drills are loving awesome.
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Jun 10, 2017 01:55
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honda whisperer posted:Carbide drills, coolant through spindle, and hurco questions. It's really difficult to explain how much difference TSC makes for holemaking chip evacuation, it's an absolute night and day difference. 5xD should be no problem at all. G81 should be fine, no need for a dwell. That being said: what pressure do you have? 300psi is great for every day usage, but for longer drill lengths you'll need to be more conservative for chip evacuation than you would with 1000psi. You should be able to ramp up to higher feeds and speeds, but I'd say do that gradually as you get more comfortable with it. Call up your tool supplier if you've got questions, as always. I don't know anything about WINMAX, but the standard NC dwell command is G4 X_. If you're doing whole seconds remember to put the decimal after the time, eg "G4X2." dwells for two seconds, while "G4X2" would dwell for two milliseconds. The following manual confirms that it http://cncmanual.com/hurco-winmax-mill-programming-manual/
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Jun 10, 2017 03:00
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Fairly obvious, and I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but one thing with through coolant to keep in mind is that depending on the layout of your coolant vat, you can have a lot of issues with pressure alarms that have nothing to do with programming. There's a screen in front of the pump that prevents chips from getting in, and it can get clogged with very fine chips pretty frequently. Depending on the machine and what you're running, that can need cleaning as much as once a day. It's also best to keep coolant levels as high as you can without it foaming over. We have one machine that will start alarming out with TSC when the coolant level drops below 3/4 of a tank, because otherwise, the pump will drink coolant significantly faster than it can being replaced. Also chip buildup anywhere in the tank can affect the flow of coolant from one side of the vat to the other, which can mean one side of the vat is full, and the side where the pump draws from can be inches lower when the pump has been on for a bit. So that's another culprit to look out for.
Volkerball fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 11:35
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Karia posted:It's really difficult to explain how much difference TSC makes for holemaking chip evacuation, it's an absolute night and day difference. 5xD should be no problem at all. G81 should be fine, no need for a dwell. That being said: what pressure do you have? 300psi is great for every day usage, but for longer drill lengths you'll need to be more conservative for chip evacuation than you would with 1000psi. You should be able to ramp up to higher feeds and speeds, but I'd say do that gradually as you get more comfortable with it. Call up your tool supplier if you've got questions, as always. It's 1000 psi. I'll go for 5x and beyond monday. Thanks! Volkerball posted:Fairly obvious, and I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but one thing with through coolant to keep in mind is that depending on the layout of your coolant vat, you can have a lot of issues with pressure alarms that have nothing to do with programming. There's a screen in front of the pump that prevents chips from getting in, and it can get clogged with very fine chips pretty frequently. Depending on the machine and what you're running, that can need cleaning as much as once a day. It's also best to keep coolant levels as high as you can without it foaming over. We have one machine that will start alarming out with TSC when the coolant level drops below 3/4 of a tank, because otherwise, the pump will drink coolant significantly faster than it can being replaced. Also chip buildup anywhere in the tank can affect the flow of coolant from one side of the vat to the other, which can mean one side of the vat is full, and the side where the pump draws from can be inches lower when the pump has been on for a bit. So that's another culprit to look out for. No worries, I'd prefer everyone assume I don't know anything and learn something new than miss something obvious I should know already to avoid possible insult. The error I'm having trouble with at the moment happens right then the tool change starts. When the tool change arm pulls the tool out of the spindle there is a huge burst of coolant, a loud wet popping sound, and the machine stops and throws an error for coolant pressure to high. It only happens after a tool using cts, and usually when it's a small drill. Last two jobs I've done I added a stop before tool changes and haven't had the error since. I have seen some of the other coolant errors though. I got some garrolite parts recently and that made a mess of everything. Even with adding a paper filter (think coffee filter but huge) between the tank and the return and changing it often this stuff still plugs every filter in the machine. It's so bad I told my boss to add 2 hours to any garrolite quote just for cleaning afterwards.
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Jun 10, 2017 14:59
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Could you get a check valve added to the TSC line? It'll reduce coolant drawback time because less fluid has to drain and also make the coolant start up faster.
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Jun 10, 2017 15:07
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Karia posted:Could you get a check valve added to the TSC line? It'll reduce coolant drawback time because less fluid has to drain and also make the coolant start up faster. That might work. I'll have to look at how it's plumbed and see if I can find a check valve rated for that pressure.
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Jun 10, 2017 15:12
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How much ore does it take to make a useful amount of iron? I found an interesting rock in my yard that I'm pretty sure is high-grade ore (as opposed to the red sandstone rock beside it and the red dirt it was embedded in, which are the less-economically-useful/more diluted oxides of iron). Photos forthcoming as soon as it cools (I washed the dirt off it and put it in the oven at 250F to dry it).
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Jun 10, 2017 19:18
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Delivery McGee posted:How much ore does it take to make a useful amount of iron? I found an interesting rock in my yard that I'm pretty sure is high-grade ore (as opposed to the red sandstone rock beside it and the red dirt it was embedded in, which are the less-economically-useful/more diluted oxides of iron). Photos forthcoming as soon as it cools (I washed the dirt off it and put it in the oven at 250F to dry it). 30%-70%. The Taconite pellets near me are on the low end, 30%. While a high grade magnetite or hematite can approach 70%.
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Jun 10, 2017 19:35
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Delivery McGee posted:How much ore does it take to make a useful amount of iron? I found an interesting rock in my yard that I'm pretty sure is high-grade ore (as opposed to the red sandstone rock beside it and the red dirt it was embedded in, which are the less-economically-useful/more diluted oxides of iron). Photos forthcoming as soon as it cools (I washed the dirt off it and put it in the oven at 250F to dry it). "Depends". Iron content of the ore is obviously a huge factor (ranging from the economic viability threshold of ~25% to high double digits to high-purity iron oxide in mineral form), but scale of operation and smelting method are also important. Assuming we're talking about bloomery smelting, because it's all you'll have access to, a high-quality ore charge is important (the addition of scrap steel or bulk rust/millscale is frequently recommended to increase the overall iron ratio of the charge), and even then you'll supposedly get a lot of waste from part of the charge overheating and melting into cast iron or reducing to metallic iron but without being located and folded into the bloom promptly. There's no hard and fast rules there, beyond "have a lot more charcoal on hand than you think you'll need".
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Jun 10, 2017 19:49
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shame on an IGA posted:Hey Dave, have you seen my calipers? This, uh, this seems like A Pretty Huge Fuckup that just happened to not bite anyone in the rear end this time. I work with a guy who helped produce Canadarm components and they did all their work in a cleanroom where all swarf and cutoffs were carefully collected and weighed afterwards and compared to the part + original stock weight to figure out if any metal crap had gotten missed and left in the assembly. SpaceX failing to control + track tooling for that kind of work seems a level of magnitude worse. e: low-effort but basically obligatory https://goo.gl/8WIUpe Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 19:59
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The rock in question: (1" square tubing for scale)   I doubt I'll ever get around to building a backyard foundry, but it'll make a cool paperweight/doorstop until I do. Edit: (I may have left the ISO cranked to max+ from the last job for the first one. As for the other two, any excuse to use the ol' "macro" lens.) Edit: other camera with macro-er lens and better color rendition:  More here. It's about fist-sized, I could probably make an X-Acto blade out of it, right? 
Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 21:04
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Thats unlike any iron ore I've seen in my area. Found a good write up on similar rocks to the one you have. http://www.fivenine.co.uk/local_history_notebook/South%20Bedburn/Byrkeknott/Ironstone_Dir/ironstone.html Most everything near me is hematite, taconite, or magnetite. If a magnet sticks to it you should be OK.  
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Jun 11, 2017 00:04
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I tried putting a magnet to it but all I have handy are lovely fridge magnets, they are attracted but not enough to hold their weight when I turn it over. There is an actual defunct iron mine 20 miles from here, so it's perfectly plausible. I know of taconite pellets, having read about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Should I boop it with the ol' death wheel and see how it shines up?
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Jun 11, 2017 00:32
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Man it must be cool living somewhere where you can just find ore rocks laying around, here in Florida all our rocks are lovely globbed-together masses of ancient seashells and we don't even have granite unless you dig down like a mile 
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Jun 11, 2017 00:45
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Yeah, but you have shell fossils. Our oceans are old enough that it's just oil and gas. Er... The local iron mine I mentioned used to be a mountain. Well, a big hill by the standards of anybidy with real mountains, but anyway they cut the top off it and made it into liberty ships. Rock update: I cut some corners off it with an abrasive wheel:   Slag clinker or magnetite? If it helps in the diagnosis, It feels the same as cutting mild steel, but doesn't throw identifying sparks. Edit: the setup for the second photo, drat that 15-year-old Canon P&S can focus close. 
Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jun 11, 2017 |
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Jun 11, 2017 01:28
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It looks very ironish now. Especially photo #2. I think you're good to melt it into something awesome.
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Jun 11, 2017 01:44
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So what does it take to smelt iron? I can get charcoal, I have various air-blowing machinery ... do I need a proper crucible or just a hole in the ground? I mean, the Iron Age started sometime in the last century BC, I'm pretty sure I can do better than that in my backyard. My brother has a halfway-decent forge, I may have to spend next weekend at his place. 
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Jun 11, 2017 03:02
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Delivery McGee posted:So what does it take to smelt iron? I can get charcoal, I have various air-blowing machinery ... do I need a proper crucible or just a hole in the ground? I mean, the Iron Age started sometime in the last century BC, I'm pretty sure I can do better than that in my backyard. Check out something called a bloomery. I've only read of it and seen some youtube videos. But if you do it be sure to snap lots of pics and share with us eh?
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Jun 11, 2017 03:08
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Yooper posted:Check out something called a bloomery. I've only read of it and seen some youtube videos. But if you do it be sure to snap lots of pics and share with us eh? I attempted a bloomery smelt a couple years back, you can find it in my post history in this thread. I'll get the link to the exact post when I'm not on mobile. Going to try another one at the park this year in August. Supposedly the guild has a pair of pallets of refractory brick that I can quickly put together.
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Jun 11, 2017 06:32
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Or you get some Howard Leight amplifying earmuffs and call it a day. I used them in the Army, and have two sets at home. They block loud noise but can amplify so well you hear a squirrel fart at 20 meters. Also they have an aux in. FFS.... $37 on amazon if you live in the US. 100 Australian loving dollars on ebay from an in country seller. Time to see how terrible the amazon shipping fee is i guess
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Jun 11, 2017 14:28
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I got a pair of those earmuffs for myself and another for my wife and they're pretty great. Cranking up the volume is a surreal experience: amplifying every small noise while damping the sound of the tools is very weird. Playing music at the same time... Delivery McGee posted:So what does it take to smelt iron? I don't want to be a debbie downer, but I don't think you're going to get good results. -In a bloomery process you break up the ore into very small chunks, to improve melting speed and uniformity of results -You usually process a loooot more ore. Like a hundred pounds of ore, minimum? Way more than one fist-sized rock. -As Slung Blade discovered, you need a lot of control over the process. He used wet clay of an inappropriate type, which failed as it heated and turned into ceramic. It wasn't uniformly thick, wasn't the right clay, and was wet, all of which were serious problems. A lack of experience is the issue here, you wouldn't expect any process like this to work right the first time, especially without someone experienced showing you all the small details. I'd say if you can find a lot more rocks like that, break them up into grape-sized chunks, and are willing to burn through a few hundred pounds of charcoal, you may be able to produce a fairly crap ingot with lots of slag mixed in that varies from cast iron to raw iron in consistency and falls apart when you attempt to work it. You'll need to cope with molten slag, and you'll need a place where you can have a large outdoor fire for 12 hours. You should give it a shot if you're interested! Just don't expect great results. And give yourself lots of time. If you're making a smelter from clay, for example, build it well in advance, and then do a low fire to finish drying out the clay. And use an appropriate refractory clay/cement, not potters' clay. As for your "rock," it has voids in the middle, but it's not pumice. My bet is that it's slag of some kind. If it's magnetic, it's got iron it it, so you can smelt it anyway, though! e. I should say I have not myself done a smelt. I've been present at an iron smelt, read about the process in several books and online, and watched some videos. It sounds like a fun thing to try out! Just try to improve your odds of success by using the right materials, having enough time, and get a lot more ore. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jun 11, 2017 |
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Jun 11, 2017 19:35
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Leperflesh is correct, my clay was too wet, and the smelter was lumpy and misshapen. Though I had the right clay (used a mix of ball and EPK) according to the guides I had read, but I mixed in too much sand in mine. Powdered ore works well too, so don't be afraid to smash it up. It's not a cheap way to spend a weekend. The charcoal will be your biggest expense.
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Jun 11, 2017 23:33
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Ferremit posted:FFS.... $37 on amazon if you live in the US. Jesus. Yeah. However, they are extremely durable. My OD green pair has lasted a deployment and 3 years of home use.
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Jun 12, 2017 00:07
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^^^ I've been thinking about getting a pair of those Howard Leights. How long do the batteries last in them?Dr. Garbanzo posted:I've been learning to use the plasma cam at school cause I've needed it this term for a pile of my students projects. Just basic poo poo like signs and clock faces really. I really like what it can do but there are some downsides. The CAD package that it runs on is a pile of hot garbage that can't be hosed off fast enough but it's what works so we need to use it. In 1.5mm mild steel it also has issues cutting finer details. I get that if what it's trying to cut is too fine the initial puncture will affect the metal outside of the whole but the remainder of the line will be a little on the wobbly side. I've played with the cutting speed but it doesn't completely fix it so I think what's happening is the sheet heats up too much on the first cut of a numeral and then distorts when it cuts the other half. Running one clock face at a time causes issues but they mostly went away when I did at once so I dunno. Anyone have experience with these and where to start troubleshooting? The sheet distorts and cutting slowly, one at a time, fixes the problem? So that definitely sounds like you're putting too much heat into the work. When you say you messed with cutting speed, did it help? Did you speed it up to minimize the amount of time you're putting heat into the material? What sort of machine, amperage and voltage? What is your cutspeed like? The issue with the cut being "wobbly" and the sheet heating up distorting sounds like a problem I had a while ago. The drawings I was using had so many vertices. My files were huge, and Mach3 was pretty much having trouble reading so many lines of G-Code to move such small distances that it was almost stuttering as it was going along, slowing down the cut speed and putting far more heat into the work. This problem is way worse with thinner sheet. It would have a distinctive stuttering sound to go along with the jagged/wobbly edge. My fix there, unfortunately, is to go back to the drawing and simplifyit as much as I can. If you're using fonts like possibly in a clock face, they can be bastards with how many vertices they got. Your point with the initial pierce distorting the outside, do you not have an arc-in/arc-out for your cut paths? Like, say you want a square cutout in a larger piece, the black in the drawing, your cut path would be the red outline. The arc in/arc out would have it line up fairly nicely so you don't get any of the pierce oddities in your work, and instead it's in the waste.  I only have experience with my specific machine, so I don't know how much it'll help you, how much that transfers over. Anyway, hope some of that helped, somehow? If not, I'll try again?
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Jun 12, 2017 16:23
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Rotten Cookies posted:^^^ I've been thinking about getting a pair of those Howard Leights. How long do the batteries last in them? I've only replaced the batteries once in my multi-year-old pair. My second pair I bought in January and I'm still on the batteries they came with. They auto shut off after 4 hours. Howard Leight claims 350 hours.
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Jun 12, 2017 16:57
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I need to increase the size of a 17mm pulley ID to 19mm to mount on a motor. Can I just put the cylindrical pulley in my regular vice and drill/bore it out with the mill? I don't have any special fixtures for grabbing circular parts but I figure the forces if I go slow will be small. I was thinking of buying a chuck and rotary table - something like this - https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/R0065 - then I could do gears and my own GT2 pulleys as a bonus (?). All the rotary table options are confusing.
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Jun 13, 2017 12:43
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Mudfly posted:I need to increase the size of a 17mm pulley ID to 19mm to mount on a motor. Can I just put the cylindrical pulley in my regular vice and drill/bore it out with the mill? I don't have any special fixtures for grabbing circular parts but I figure the forces if I go slow will be small. All you'd need is a V block between one jaw and the part so that you have 3 points of contact. You don't need to mill a set of jaws or anything for it if you're just running the one. If you just try to clamp it in normal parallel jaws, something bad is gonna happen. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 13:13
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OK, thanks. I will go with the avoiding bad stuff option. To locate the centre of the hole, since it's not a high precision operation, can I just use a 17mm drill bit or piece of stock in the chuck? Then raise the quill, put in the 19mm bit, and drill away... (or 18, then bore it out to 19mm)
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Jun 13, 2017 14:03
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