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captkirk posted:Any recommendations for fairly gently removing a few decades of rust from a horse shoe and then sealing against further rust? I would start with Evaporust, almost every other rust removal method is going to be 'destructive' to a greater or lesser degree (removing unrusted steel while simultaneously losing surface definition and texture) but a chelating agent is selective in only targeting rust. Electrolysis is also an option but Evaporust is a one-bottle product that's dead simple to use and almost impossible to gently caress up with. IRT sealant/surface treatment, that depends on how you want it to look, because even the most subtle surface treatments alter appearance (most alter it dramatically). For antique forged iron, I would go old-school and use a traditional finish. My personal fave is getting the piece hot (a soak in the oven/toaster oven at a high setting is good enough) and then rubbing it a block of beeswax, buffing the wax in with a clean shop cloth as it cools. It'll produce a black, mostly-matte finish that isn't weatherproof but is good enough for sheltered outdoor or indoor installations. Also it smells like beeswax when you handle it, which is nice  Linseed oil is another option but I just like that beeswax smell.
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Dec 29, 2019 01:22
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captkirk posted:I think oiled iron would look better but with oil that's something I would have to periodically reapply, correct? Very rarely if ever for something on display. How you remove the rust will have an effect on how it looks when displayed. Blasting will make it have a matte finish. Wire brush will make it somewhat shiny.
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Dec 29, 2019 02:10
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I'd go Ambrose's route. Evaporust followed by some beeswax loving. I've got an old saw file I found in the woods, circa 1900, blasted it with steel shot and dipped it in machine oil while still hot. Fast forward 15 years and it still has a great patina minus the rust.
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Dec 29, 2019 03:08
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Thanks for all the advice, I've got some Evaporust and beeswax in the mail and I picked up a wire cup and some 3-in-1from the local hardware store as a back up.
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Dec 29, 2019 03:25
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Oh yeah, if you want the de-rusted steel to show off its natural unrusted colour and appearance to the greatest degree possible, I'm a big fan of conservator's wax, originally invented by the British Museum as a chemically-inert and discreet finish for corrosion-prone artifacts on display. you just buff a thin layer into the part with a cloth buff and work it in until you can't tell you waxed the thing any more, no prep needed beyond making sure the piece is completely dry and clean. It's very, very subtle and changes the part's appearance very little. It isn't super durable but for a wall-mounted piece that shouldn't be an issue for at least a decade or two- and retouching is as simple as buffing a little more wax on, no stripping needed. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Dec 29, 2019 |
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Dec 29, 2019 03:27
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DreadLlama posted:What about 5052? When I asked that question I hadn't yet checked what was actually available in my area. Lol we’re talking very different things. For a solar cooker it doesn’t matter. If you need to focus a laser to a small point on something that is moving and several feet away alloy, heat treatment, etc. matter. If hazier than the Apple logo on an iPhone 6 is okay then you basically don’t care what alloy for your purposes. You almost certainly won’t be able to do surface prep to make a good polished mirror and some sort of coating may well be a better option. If it’s in a field it’s gonna get dusty and dirty.
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Dec 29, 2019 04:45
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When you put it that way mylar seems like the best choice. Especially for a 1st attempt.
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Dec 29, 2019 05:13
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Anybody ever use a mouth-blown blow pipe/torch or 'french torch', or alternately have a schematic/build log/just the critical dims for one? Interested in the premodern just-a-blowpipe designs you use to Enhance And Direct a fuel lamp flame, but moreso in the more modern pressurized-gas-fuelled torches that use a mouth-blown oxygen supply approach instead of bottled gas or atmospheric venturi. Supposedly they're very common in Europe and with working artisans across many poorer countries in Asia but it's surprisingly hard to find anything English-language about them except for fairly vague "oh yeah I learned to solder with one of those" jeweller's anecdotes. I figured out why I couldn't find anything on these- they are indeed in common use everywhere, except 1) a foot bellows or small electric air pump gets used instead of direct lung power, and 2) for convenience they're fuelled by a "gasoline generator" ie an unpressurized tank of gasoline or N-hexane which the supply air is percolated through to produce a stream of fuel vapor. apparently this sort of kit runs for less than $10-equivalent in china or india  no direct valve control of the gas mix but apparently you can still tailor the flame in more general way by how much fuel is in the generator vs. the flow rate of pumped air there's also simpler and chibi-er alternative to the traditional blow-pipe + alcohol lamp which combines the alcohol lamp, bellows and blowpipe into one wee little handheld assembly-  probably too small to be useful for me, but people seem to love em for waxworking and hyperdelicate spot soldering and the like Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Dec 29, 2019 |
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Dec 29, 2019 06:01
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I got a Sieg SX2.7 (Little Machine Shop 5550) bench mill a few months ago and am looking to upgrade the end mills from the cheap set that came with it. I've picked out an assortment of Niagra Cutter 4-flute carbide TiAlN square end mills from MSC in 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2" diameters (series C430). Also looking at getting a 1/2" cobalt fine-pitch roughing mill and a 1/2" carbide 90 degree AlTiN drill mill for countersinking and chamfering. I don't know anything about brands of end mills and have no real experience with different coatings other than what I've read. Does this seem like a good assortment that would cover most needs for small projects in aluminum, brass, and steel? Aside from a fly cutter (which I already have) are there any glaring omissions to the list? Any thoughts on the brand or the coating? Thanks!
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Dec 29, 2019 11:41
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SkunkDuster posted:I got a Sieg SX2.7 (Little Machine Shop 5550) bench mill a few months ago and am looking to upgrade the end mills from the cheap set that came with it. I've picked out an assortment of Niagra Cutter 4-flute carbide TiAlN square end mills from MSC in 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2" diameters (series C430). Also looking at getting a 1/2" cobalt fine-pitch roughing mill and a 1/2" carbide 90 degree AlTiN drill mill for countersinking and chamfering. I don't know anything about brands of end mills and have no real experience with different coatings other than what I've read. Does this seem like a good assortment that would cover most needs for small projects in aluminum, brass, and steel? Aside from a fly cutter (which I already have) are there any glaring omissions to the list? Any thoughts on the brand or the coating? Thanks! A cobalt drill index would be handy. Not sure if you need taps. I like OSG. 4 flute will work on aluminum, but you really want 2 flutes. You can go a lot faster. I wouldn't recommend carbide for a chamfering tool, they are very likely to chip. You may be better off picking up a single flute ma ford countersink. Niagra is fine. I like Atrax also in that price range. Also, I've found for most of the stuff I do at work, we end up using just a 3/8 or 1/2 for the vast majority of things, then switch to a smaller one if we need detail work. Not sure what your needs are but you may not necessarily need all those endmill sizes.
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Dec 29, 2019 12:15
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beep-beep car is go posted:As a (former) musician I can weigh in a little bit on circular breathing too. For those who don't know it's basically learning how to breathe in through your nose and out your mouth at the same time. But Beep you say, what about your lungs? Yes. It's very easy to pass out (at least for me it was). I was a double reed player (bassoon) and we were told that if we wanted to be really really good we'd have to learn how to circular breathe. Obviously I'm a former musician based on my comment, that's why I stressed that it's something that he needs to try to do before investing in gear. We weren't likely to pass out on my instrument, tuba, but like I said, it put you into a weird head state. Y'all bassoon players had a much harder job. Ambrose: you've had multiple people familiar with this comment on it. Please, give it a jury rigged attempt first. I am not all joking about doing drills with a straw. Look up circular breathing drills with a glass and straw on youtube. Until you can do it, you can't use one of those torches. So, practice free.
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Dec 29, 2019 12:22
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SkunkDuster posted:I got a Sieg SX2.7 (Little Machine Shop 5550) bench mill a few months ago and am looking to upgrade the end mills from the cheap set that came with it. I've picked out an assortment of Niagra Cutter 4-flute carbide TiAlN square end mills from MSC in 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2" diameters (series C430). Also looking at getting a 1/2" cobalt fine-pitch roughing mill and a 1/2" carbide 90 degree AlTiN drill mill for countersinking and chamfering. I don't know anything about brands of end mills and have no real experience with different coatings other than what I've read. Does this seem like a good assortment that would cover most needs for small projects in aluminum, brass, and steel? Aside from a fly cutter (which I already have) are there any glaring omissions to the list? Any thoughts on the brand or the coating? Thanks! The thing about little machines is that coatings really don't matter, at all. Not. At. All. On most of the little machines you **should** run HSS. I watch a bunch of youtube dudes, and, you probably shouldn't use carbides. Period. (literally everything that follows is production poo poo you don't need to care about) That's poo poo that matters only in a production shop with good tracability. Very, very little of that matters at all with a little machine. It's one of the big reasons most suppliers won't deal with us at all. When you're making like 10,000-100,0000-1,000,000 the tool coating matters, because it makes a difference on how often you change the tooling out **proactively**. Some of the machines in my former shop would run a part ever 8 seconds, for **months.** It wasn't unusual to dedicate a machine to run a couple variants of a part to run on a dedicated machine for like a decade. It was hard as hell to hire those guys. We were literally the only "shop" that made them do setupups constantly: the guys that setup those machines where used to doing it a few times a year instead of daily. When you're running a big job you've run before and have optimized, you change out the tooling after it hit hits X number of parts. Is the tool still good? Doesn't matter. You change it out when your told to. If the Engineer wants to look at the tool he'll tell you to send it to him.
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Dec 29, 2019 12:58
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SkunkDuster posted:I got a Sieg SX2.7 (Little Machine Shop 5550) bench mill a few months ago and am looking to upgrade the end mills from the cheap set that came with it. I've picked out an assortment of Niagra Cutter 4-flute carbide TiAlN square end mills from MSC in 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2" diameters (series C430). Also looking at getting a 1/2" cobalt fine-pitch roughing mill and a 1/2" carbide 90 degree AlTiN drill mill for countersinking and chamfering. I don't know anything about brands of end mills and have no real experience with different coatings other than what I've read. Does this seem like a good assortment that would cover most needs for small projects in aluminum, brass, and steel? Aside from a fly cutter (which I already have) are there any glaring omissions to the list? Any thoughts on the brand or the coating? Thanks! I'd get HSS, bargain MSC brand (Interstate). It's what we use in our maintenance shop. They sell some assortment kits for around $150. For sheer durability they work great. In order for some of the newer coatings to become active you need to get the coating to a certain temperature. A production shop running it through a giant block of steel for hours on end, that coating makes sense. We sell some custom reamers and our customers measure differences based on thousands of holes. Coatings are also an enormous markup. We were having some reamers coated with a high end CrN mixture, it cost us $20 per reamer. Seemed fair. Then we had the reamer manufacture have the coating applied and the price dropped to $3 per reamer. The finished reamer shipped from the same place we had do the coating originally.  My pricing may not look like your pricing. MSC gives price breaks for industrial customers. It's funky though so I'll get a great price on micrometers but maybe not on end mills. Though if I call my rep she'll give me a sweet deal.
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Dec 29, 2019 15:11
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Yooper posted:I'd get HSS, bargain MSC brand (Interstate). It's what we use in our maintenance shop. They sell some assortment kits for around $150. For sheer durability they work great. In order for some of the newer coatings to become active you need to get the coating to a certain temperature. A production shop running it through a giant block of steel for hours on end, that coating makes sense. We sell some custom reamers and our customers measure differences based on thousands of holes. Seconding uncoated HSS everything, use that savings for all the reamers and taps you won't know you need until you're halfway through a project.
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Dec 29, 2019 16:10
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SkunkDuster posted:I got a Sieg SX2.7 (Little Machine Shop 5550) bench mill a few months ago and am looking to upgrade the end mills from the cheap set that came with it. I've picked out an assortment of Niagra Cutter 4-flute carbide TiAlN square end mills from MSC in 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2" diameters (series C430). Also looking at getting a 1/2" cobalt fine-pitch roughing mill and a 1/2" carbide 90 degree AlTiN drill mill for countersinking and chamfering. I don't know anything about brands of end mills and have no real experience with different coatings other than what I've read. Does this seem like a good assortment that would cover most needs for small projects in aluminum, brass, and steel? Aside from a fly cutter (which I already have) are there any glaring omissions to the list? Any thoughts on the brand or the coating? Thanks! See all the above, but with the proviso: it's not that you should never buy carbide endmills. Just very selectively. Why do machine shops use carbide tools? Cemented tungsten carbide has three advantages over high speed steel: 1. It gives much longer tool life, due to a combination of extremely high hardness and maintaining that hardness at high temperatures. 2. As an extension of that, you can run carbide at much higher surface speeds before tool life tanks. That means more productivity. 3. Carbide has a much higher elastic modulus than HSS, about 3 times as high. That means that a tool with equal dimensions is going to be 3 times stiffer than one made of HSS, with a natural frequency about 80% higher. For a home shop, 1 and 2 are pretty much useless. At least initially, you're far more likely to snap an endmill off or otherwise abuse it into uselessness before you'd ever wear out a tool through normal abrasive wear. And productivity isn't super important, especially since your max spindle speed is quite low compared to modern machining centers, so you won't be able to actually make use of a lot of that productivity. That leaves 3. Tools are stiffer. That lets you get away with longer length/diameter ratios on your tools, gives less deflection, avoids chatter. Consider carbide endmills for particularly deep cuts where your HSS tools are chattering, giving bad surface finishes, or deflecting too much. That transition generally seems to happen somewhere in the 2-4 length/diameter ratio depending on the specific application, but that can vary a lot. It's not a hard limit: there are other ways that you can cheat this limit (e.g., grind back the flutes for everything except a very small cutting edge at the tip of the tool to stop rubbing/gouging on the rest of the flute length.) Also, take caution: carbide will only help if the tool is your limiting factor. The disadvantages of carbide are basically cost, and that it's fragile: it'll chip much more easily than HSS when your setup isn't stable. Carbide is much less forgiving, so you need to know what you're doing. They should be in your list of options, but most of the time they're not going to be the first thing you reach for. I used to use these Melin Tool drill-mills a lot, they work reasonably well for chamfering, spot drilling for HSS drills (yeah, it's not best practice, but it'll work OK), and c-sinking. Keep in mind the tip diameter when calculating depths. If you're doing heavy c-sinking, a 0 flute is probably a better choice, they work well when you don't have much stiffness. https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/00291898
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Dec 29, 2019 20:16
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I would start with Evaporust, almost every other rust removal method is going to be 'destructive' to a greater or lesser degree (removing unrusted steel while simultaneously losing surface definition and texture) but a chelating agent is selective in only targeting rust. Electrolysis is also an option but Evaporust is a one-bottle product that's dead simple to use and almost impossible to gently caress up with. I'm giving it a soak in Evaporust right now (it's working, it's a bit slow though). I'll probably beeswax it up right away after but if I want to try smoothing the surfaces later will a light treatment with a wire cup do the trick?
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Dec 30, 2019 05:06
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Protip, check part with a file before you try broaching a keyway slot    Now looking for places who can do wire-EDM... Or I will have to file it by hand with a diamond file...
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Dec 30, 2019 10:10
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His Divine Shadow posted:Protip, check part with a file before you try broaching a keyway slot You're somewhere in Europe? I do wire but I'm in the US.
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Dec 30, 2019 11:22
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Yeah I'm in Finland. There is a toolmaker business only like 10 km from me, not sure if they will want to take the job though, kinda small. Only need to enlarge the key slot to 6mm on three gears.
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Dec 30, 2019 11:55
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tbh I'd probably file it by hand w some diamond needle files if you're not taking a ton of material off, any quote you get for slightly enlarging 3 keyways in already-hardened parts will, I'd wager, be 50% setup cost and 50% "We Don't Really Want This Job And Hope You Go Away" Premium Fee. a die filer would make this a p painless task, good luck finding one though. Maybe you can commit some horrible indignity to a scroll saw to get the same effect, I've seen that done a bunch to varying degrees of shoddiness
Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Dec 30, 2019 |
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Dec 30, 2019 23:34
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I've decided to simply pay for this job. The tool making company that's 5 minutes from my place wanted 120 bucks to do this and I am willing to pay that to finally get this done and quickly. I got everything else ready to reassemble the gearbox after this. And yeah a die filer would be lovely, building one is definitely a future project.
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Dec 31, 2019 05:54
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 Beeswax didn't seem to give it the blackened color I've heard people talk about but here's the shoe after Vaporusr, wire cup, and beeswax.
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Dec 31, 2019 06:21
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Thanks guys. That gives me a lot to go off of. I do have sets of HSS drill indexes in all four flavors, so I'm good there. Maybe as I break bits, I'll replace them with cobalt. The TiN HSS Interstate mills look exactly like the set I got from LMS. At almost triple the price, I'm hoping they're much better. I wrecked my 3/4" 4-flute mill taking a .020" pass on some high carbon steel. However, I was running at about 1000 rpm which is about 3x what my "feed and speed" app tells me I should have been at, so that was probably more my fault than the end mill. I slowed it down to about 350 rpm and did a 0.2" pass with an 11/16" 4-flute and it cut fine without damaging the end mill, but at that low of speed it was really causing the whole mill to vibrate (but not chatter). I have it bolted to a stand, but the stand isn't bolted to the floor. The stand isn't really that sturdy so I don't know that it would matter much if it was bolted to the floor. Higher RPMs to reduce vibration is one of the main reasons I was looking at carbide. I think I might still get a carbide roughing mill to reduce the vibration by running at much higher RPMs, then replace my other mills with the Interstate ones as I wreck them. Good to hear that a single flute countersink will work for chamfering. I hadn't thought of that, but I do have a couple uncoated HSS single flute countersinks, so that will save some money by eliminating the drill mill. I tried taking a small chamfer in that steel mentioned above and went okay, albeit slow and with vibration. I'll have to look up how to calculate the feed/speed for chamfers. As for the sizes of the end mills, 1/2", 3/8" and 1/4 seemed like good all around sizes for general work, 5/16" because that is what the blanks for my lathe are and I want to make more tool holders, and the smaller ones because they weren't that expensive. I don't have a slot cutter, so I figured they might come in handy.
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Dec 31, 2019 09:37
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I bought cheap carbide from banggood myself, to get some basic end mills to get started with. I asked about this elsewhere earlier and my main takeways were: -chinese carbide is ok value for money -chinese hss tooling is junk and it's worth buying better quality or 2nd hand HSS tooling Though I have not yet used the tooling so I dunno if I bought a bunch of crap yet. I would recommend the NYCNC video where he visits Stefan Gotteswinters shop in Germany, they have a good discussion on HSS and carbide in it.
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Dec 31, 2019 10:23
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His Divine Shadow posted:I've decided to simply pay for this job. The tool making company that's 5 minutes from my place wanted 120 bucks to do this and I am willing to pay that to finally get this done and quickly. I got everything else ready to reassemble the gearbox after this. And yeah a die filer would be lovely, building one is definitely a future project. That's about what we would charge USD to do something like that, so I don't think he's screwing you. Not sure about exchange rates though.
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Dec 31, 2019 18:11
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captkirk posted:
Looks good! About what I'd expect. Different alloys darken differently in the evaporust. The grades of steel we use turn a deep smokey grey.
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Dec 31, 2019 18:44
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A Proper Uppercut posted:That's about what we would charge USD to do something like that, so I don't think he's screwing you. Not sure about exchange rates though. Yeah I thought it was a fair price, there's probably a minimum cost for any job for setup and time spent on all the other things not actually machining, and this is mostly that. Though there is another workshop in the opposite direction from my house that milled the new slot in the shaft for me and they only took 30 euros to fix that which was cheaper than I thought. But it's a completely different type of operation. A family owned job shop that mostly does stuff like repairing farm machinery, welding and fabrication, vs this shop that is a tool & die making shop with high end equipment.
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Jan 1, 2020 08:50
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Well the motor has been reassembled with the new bearings and put back in place:   I've hooked it back up and it runs really nice and quiet now. Now I just need to reassemble the lower gear shaft and adjust the belt tension. I've fitted the upper gear shaft with the new and larger 6mm key. I had to hone it to size in order to get a good fit. I honed it until it was 2-3 hundreths of a mm undersize (around .001" to .0015") and that allowed me to push it in most of the way by hand, and I could still knock it out again easily with a punch.  I needed to remove more material to reduce the height of the key sticking out, the depth of the slot was 4mm so there was 2 mm stickout. But I needed to still remove a few tenths (of a mm) in order to get the bearing seat to clear, it has to clear the key if you want to be able to disassemble it. Every part on the shaft is carefully designed so everything can slide on and off in the right order. Now only the gears still remain.
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Jan 1, 2020 13:39
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captkirk posted:
For the beeswax to darken I find you need to get the metal hot enough to really scorch the wax and burn it instead of just melting it, and usually do a couple coat-buff cycles as it cools. the first coating will immediately burst into flame and char, the last one when it's too cold to keep going will just melt. If you do it 'properly' it's fairly messy, smoky and involves having a quench tub/fire blanket on hand. the merely-melted beeswax layer you have now is a fine protectant, for what it's worth- you can try again by reheating the horseshoe and re-treating it at a higher temperature, it won't hurt the metal, but it isn't necessary to protect the metal itself. If you redo it I would also use a torch if possible, you will be burning off the first wax layer and it will be too smoky for an oven/indoors. You may also need more heat than the oven is providing. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 02:51
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A Proper Uppercut posted:That's about what we would charge USD to do something like that, so I don't think he's screwing you. Not sure about exchange rates though. Currently it's about 1.12 USD to the euro so it's almost on parity
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Jan 2, 2020 02:53
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Exchange rates reflect relative strength of central banks and speculation by forex traders: they are not tightly coupled to purchasing power. If you want to know how much foreign money is worth, you can't just check the exchange rate: consider that every time the dollar strengthens or weakens against the euro, this does not mean that burgers or bread or fuel or steel suddenly got cheaper or more expensive to buy with euros all over Europe, nor with dollars all over the US. The term to google to learn more about this is "purchasing power parity."
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Jan 2, 2020 03:13
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captkirk posted:
Ambrose is 100% correct. You need to burn it to get the darkened coloration. To shortcut this with easily found materials and far less chance of burning down your house, just get some black tremclad in a can, cut it with some thinner (I usually do about 10:1 thinner:paint), apply with a brush like normal, lightly sand it with a sanding sponge and then just clearcoat it. Works a treat and shouldn't cost more than 15-20 bucks, might take an hour of your time.
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Jan 2, 2020 05:15
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I dropped off the gears today at the workshop who agreed to the job. Pretty friendly place, even gave me a shop tour. The owner seemed impressed with me just for knowing what wire-EDM was and asking about it and thought my renovation project was impressive. They even demonstrated the EDM machines they had to me in operation and showed me stuff they made, some of it was some really small stuff with details I could barely see even with glasses and test pieces like a cutout through a block of steel that was hearts on one side and clubs on the other, cut in a single piece and operation, like when you removed the piece it was hearts on one side and it morphed across the length until it was clubs. And some other stuff that looked like the only way to make it was to 3D print it.
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Jan 2, 2020 15:33
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His Divine Shadow posted:I dropped off the gears today at the workshop who agreed to the job. Pretty friendly place, even gave me a shop tour. The owner seemed impressed with me just for knowing what wire-EDM was and asking about it and thought my renovation project was impressive. They even demonstrated the EDM machines they had to me in operation and showed me stuff they made, some of it was some really small stuff with details I could barely see even with glasses and test pieces like a cutout through a block of steel that was hearts on one side and clubs on the other, cut in a single piece and operation, like when you removed the piece it was hearts on one side and it morphed across the length until it was clubs. And some other stuff that looked like the only way to make it was to 3D print it. Haha yea, 4 axis stuff like the heart and club was stuff I would do when I was starting to figure how wires work. Been running wires 18 years now. Eesh
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Jan 2, 2020 20:03
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MisterOblivious posted:Obviously I'm a former musician based on my comment, that's why I stressed that it's something that he needs to try to do before investing in gear. Forgot to reply, sorry- Yeah, a direct mouth-blown torch design doesn't make much sense in a couple ways, I understand why they're very rarely still sold with the traditional mouthpieces vs. foot-bellows or electric air pumps. No circular breathing required, less on your plate while soldering, the air supply has more oxygen b/c it hasn't had a pass through the lungs, and you don't have to deal with moisture in the air supply + condensation inside the torch. Still, the ability to directly control the airflow with an extremely responsive and precise mechanism like lung pressure is attractive, it's a sort of tactile feedback-equivalent approach that's almost never drawn on for modern metalworking, despite how often we could use a third hand. I wonder if there's some middle ground here that's DIY-friendly, something that uses a modern air supply method but with flow metering controlled through low-pressure lung-blown air, like, idk: - torch air supply is provided by a small compressor or air pump w air receiver buffer tank inline there somewhere - section of air line upstream of mixing point + flashback arrestors is made with soft, thin-walled elastomer tubing, and a glorified-clothespin-type spring-loaded NC pinch valve that closes off the tubing completely is added. - a small pneumatic cylinder (a boring ol glass syringe + plunger) or elastomer bladder ("a high-quality balloon") with an airline running to a mouthpiece is installed at the pinch valve, such that blowing into it will force open the pinch valve and permit air flow, and the more pressure the user applies, the more air from the pump flows. the mediocre air pressure lung power can provide is maximized with a lever-based pinch valve design- the tube clamp is right next to the fulcrum pin and needs a very short travel, while the Pneumatic Actuator has a long travel + is located way out at the end of a long arm for max leverage - Ideally a pressure relief valve would be present as a secondary outlet upstream of the pinch valve, such that a totally-closed pinch valve will raise pressure enough to promptly open the relief and vent the unused air stream back into the atmosphere. a small duckbill valve would probably work well for this vs. the high-pressure springloaded kind - probably chuck a needle valve in the pumped air line to let you mechanically-define a max operating airflow something to that effect seems like it'd work well, although the devil's always in the details- getting the pinch valve right (lever length, spring force, tubing selection) such that it operates correctly at all the various pressures involved is the main nightmare I see. that said: blown + pumped air streams are totally separate, removing condensation and Respiratory Flashback Inhalation (feat. crisped alveoli) as concerns; control is through pressure instead of flow which is much simpler to hold steady for long periods of time + doesn't require circular breathing; and the pinch valve mechanism could be made to permit easy tension adjustment for adjusting operating dynamics (low spring force = easy/quick full airflow, high = precision delivery of small air volumes) Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 5, 2020 |
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Jan 5, 2020 20:34
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e: edit not quote, rookie move unrelated: is there a service i can subscribe to that will alert me when i'm making yet another post that's way too goddamn long for no good reason
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Jan 5, 2020 20:44
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captkirk posted:
There is another way... Gather round the forge, for this one is a legit "old blacksmith's secret" for a beautiful finish on iron or steel. Step 1 - After forging is complete, remove all scale, down to clean steel. (however you want. Chemically, sandblast, wire wheel, etc. Each produces slightly different results but it doesn't matter all that much) Step 2 - Take your clean piece and put it back into a hot, running forge! Step 3 - Observe the piece, waiting until it reaches a cherry-red to orange color. You don't want to get so hot that new scale forms, but it must reach at least red hot. If it gets too hot that's okay, you'll just need to keep an eye on it and wire brush it (by hand) as it cools off. Once the pieces have reached red hot, take them out of the forge and let them cool. If you did everything right so far, the pieces should be a flat gunmetal / medium grey color. Step 4 - Apply your oil. Behold as it marvelously turns black! I use straight Boiled Linseed Oil and it becomes a beautiful dark finish. You can tinker around with various mixtures of beeswax and oil and lacquer, but BLO works fine and I can get it easily, without having to mix flammable chemicals. I don't know why step 3 (heating to red) makes such a difference, but it sure does. This is the method I use for pieces that aren't going to be outside, and are worth spending a little extra time on. Pagan fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 17:55
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I did not know hand nibblers existed until i ran into em for $20 on amazon today and i’m incredibly resentful of all the jeweller’s sawblades i’ve worn down cutting out oversized pieces with simple geometries just because the distortion from conventional shearing was unacceptable. I could never justify a stand-alone electric nibbler and was thinking of grabbing one of those stupid Aliexpress angle grinder nibbler adapters, just so i have some sort of nibbler on hand, when i ran into the manual version that I was wishing existed
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Jan 6, 2020 21:45
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I did not know hand nibblers existed until i ran into em for $20 on amazon today and i’m incredibly resentful of all the jeweller’s sawblades i’ve worn down cutting out oversized pieces with simple geometries just because the distortion from conventional shearing was unacceptable. I could never justify a stand-alone electric nibbler and was thinking of grabbing one of those stupid Aliexpress angle grinder nibbler adapters, just so i have some sort of nibbler on hand, when i ran into the manual version that I was wishing existed Ha! I've had one for years and I almost never use it.
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Jan 6, 2020 22:09
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armorer posted:Ha! I've had one for years and I almost never use it. It's exactly what's called for with the scale/requirements of my typical sort of chased + repoussed sheetwork/jewellery, medium-heavy gauge brass sheet medallions and that sort of thing. parts like freeing the piece from the unworked 'web' that remains from the starting blank, and for cutting out/shaping the tabs connected to the piece that get worked into integrated bails n other hardware. it's a looooot of heavy sheet to do by hand with a jeweller's saw but shears work too roughly and tend to warp the part in ways that are hard to correct. Enter nibbler.
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Jan 7, 2020 20:24
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