Hello welcome to another engineering I'm Alan
today in the workshop I'm making a clamping plate which bolts onto the milling machine spindle
so I can use this to hold the sensor on the direct readout
this is the plate it consists of a 10mm thick plates and
I've clamped it onto a face plate in the lathe to bore the 93mm hole
using my rotary head I've held this in a chuck and machined the outside
so we'll see how the rotary head performs on machining some aluminium
and then that gives me this point here which has got two tapped holes in
for holding the direct readout on the z-axis
so let's go into the workshop and see how we make it
Today I'm doing some faceplate work
I've just set this block of aluminium up on the lathe
using these four clamps just to hold it in position
and you can see where I've just touched the tool
I want to cut a 90mm hole in this plate
I looked at doing it on the milling machine
and the boring head will only go up to about 60 to 70mm
the only other way to do it as I can get this on the swing
and the problem with the swing is when you bring the saddel in
at the bottom here on the saddle you've have to make sure
I've got about 4mm clearance on the casting of the saddle here
you see this just clears the saddle
that's at 89 so I don't want to go any bigger than that
I want to try and cut through and what I'm having to do is
make the groove slot wider as I'm going deeper
so that the tool has not got all the pressure in the one area
that's over 10mm the depth
so I think what's happened is I've cut through
and its just pushed the aluminium back into the centre
Now its cut through at the bottom here
89.5mm I will put my boring bar in
see if I can get that a better finish
that's 89.65mm
92.92mm
I'm just going to go in
I'm not going to put a cut on I'll just go in just clean it
those are the two t-bolts that I lost in the middle
you can see the shape I'm going to cut out next
on the bandsaw just cut this out
this is my bandsaw
and I'm just resetting the blade to cut this aluminium we've just machined
and I'm making sure that the two disks that come in each side of the blade
which are on a bearing and not rubbing the blade all the time
so if I tighten this one up lock it
you see as the blade goes through the disks are rubbing and turning all the time
so if I slacking it off a bit that's what I want so the blade goes through
and they only rub when the blade moves left or right to guide the blade
and you notice that the blade teeth are well away from the disks
if you set the blade too far back
these teeth will go into the middle and all you'd be doing is flattening the teeth on the side of the disk
and it's bearing at the back
that's there to stop the blade going backwards as you put force from the front
so normally as it goes around it shouldn't be touching that bearing
that bearing only comes into play when there's force put on the blade
You can see now it's moving without any force it shouldn't be moving
so if you've got this engaged all the time you're pushing the blade forward
and if these are engaged all the time you're either bending it either way
now under the table if I can get this piece out
at the bottom there I don't know if you can see
right down the bottom just at the end of the rule
inside there there are two wooden guides
and they do exactly the same as that the metal guides at the top
they are to stop the blade moving left or right
I've just set those they are just missing the blade put that in
the next thing to do obviously if I have the blade this guard right up
you've have a big gap here this blade is going to flex in between
so you need to lower the guard just above the thickness of the work that you're going to cut
so you can get the work under there without touching the guard
and that cuts the gap down then we can close this
so that's reduce the gap so there's less likelihood of the blade moving
Just shut the door
I've got some vibration with it and the reason for that is
The stepper motor belt is moving backwards and forward slightly
If I touch the metal it takes it out
what's happening with the cutter going round this has got a little bit of play in it
so the cutters pushing it back and the motors trying to pull it forward
so we get that vibration set up
But the finish you can see from that it's very good
the other thing I've definitely need is a lock
because the motor when I want to lock it in position for exemple
I can bring it round to this part
now if I could lock that at 90 degrees
I could come in and just come down there with the cutter on the face
but because I can't lock the spindle and the stepper motor
you've got that little bit of play in it
I think that might be able to take that up on the belt
By adjusting the tension a bit more
But if I had a spindle lock on there I could just lock it machine the flat faces
and then do the radius but you can see on that I'm pleased with the finish
so it's sort of 50/50 it's working not quite there yet
and what I have to do now is all I'm doing is using the A axis on the CNC
you've got X Y and Z
and then you go into rotary axis ABC I've wired this up as the A axis
so although i've got my computer on in the background the CNC is on but it's not running
all I'm using is the one axis to control the stepper motor in this head
this will be ideal with the spindle lock
if you're doing a dividing plate because you're just coming down
you're not fighting the chuck as it's moving
so the backlash problem wouldn't be there
you would just drive it one way lock it drill you might not even need to lock it
because going down you're not pushing the chuck either way
but it's getting there
I've got an idea for putting a spindle lock on there
so I don't think there's too much of a problem there was plenty of room in the box to fit it
just want to do now is come in with this
that's 29 degrees
let's lift the spindle up test it
so I want to go from zero to 29 degrees
it's rotating it with the computer to see where it will go
this speed is running at 60mm per minutes
I'm tapping a M6 x 1 thread
so that's nearly finished now got two screws here which will hold another piece on
that screw goes through all I need to do is split that by using the bandsaw
to cut across
now here's the finish ring on top of the original depth stop
this part you can alter for your setting the depth of your drill
and what I've done it's just bolt on this ring that we've just made above
so that on this side it gives me peace jutting out
I now have this platform here
oh well that's it for today I hope that was interesting hope it's useful
and we'll see you next time on
Enots engineering