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Author Topic: Po' man's live tooling  (Read 25786 times)

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Po' man's live tooling
« on: May 23, 2015, 02:57:54 PM »
I built this thing up recently with stuff I had lying around to save some time when making model airplane engine venturis for a friend.  The venturis have 4, #58 holes in them and I’d been drilling them in the mill using a square ER32 collet block.  It worked fine but my mill’s top speed is a bit slow for the little drill and it required tedious setup for each one.

With the part still chucked in the lathe and the hang-on QC drill’s offsets stored in Mach, it’s now easy-peasy with a little bit of g-code to drill the holes right on the money.  I just mark the 4 positions on the chuck flange with a magic marker and use a simple wire pointer to index the holes.  Their positioning isn’t super critical and there’s not enough torque generated from the little drill bit to move the lathe spindle around while drilling.

The motor is a 24VDC 3450 rpm Pittman given to me by forum member Jim Glass, thanks Jim!  I run it with a cheap ebay KB controller that I ordered by mistake.  It came with a Peco add-on board that runs off 36VAC so I used an old 36V transformer to power it.  With a few tweaks I got the motor running at a bit under 5000 rpm.  Still slow but it’s twice as fast as the mill & zips through aluminum like butter.  I tested it with bits up to 3/16” dia and they do great.

I made an ER16 chuck for it and was going to just press it on the motor shaft but my .3115” reamer somehow made an oversize hole.  Excessive chip buildup I think.  Anyway I drilled & tapped it for 4 setscrews and with a lot of cussing got the runout down to .0002”.  I would’ve liked to have used ER11 but don’t have the collets.  The drill bit holder shown was originally made to use in the mill but I’ll now make a shorter one to give more clearance.  The z-axis homing probe comes too close to the part for comfort.  If I bend that probe, after making a new one I’d then have to reset all 15 tools’ Z offsets, YUCK!









Milton from Tennessee ya'll.
Re: Po' man's live tooling
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2015, 03:53:15 AM »
Dude........dude...that is way cool. video please

Offline RICH

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Re: Po' man's live tooling
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2015, 05:57:13 AM »
Hey Dickey,

Cool...always nice to make use of stuff one has. Now just make a band for around the chuck so can youcan index accurately.
Also use the macros to do offset drilling in the face. Great for model making. Have a look at some of the things I made for my
Atlas lathe.

Have fun,
RICH
Re: Po' man's live tooling
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2015, 10:51:32 AM »
Dude........dude...that is way cool. video please
Thanks jr.  Unfortunately I'm old school when it comes to video tech.  I haven't been able to find a port on my old 'puter to insert a VHS cassette...or 8 track tape for that matter.;)  Just visualize a tiny drill going in & out of aluminum with tiny little spirals flying out.  Probably a lot better in your mind's eye than what I could come up with.  Seriously though, I'll see if I can borrow son-in-law's camera if I can figure out how to post up a vid.

Rich I'll probably make some kind of index wheel system to go in the other end of the spindle if the need for precision arises.  For what I'm using it for now though, a fine point Sharpie's plenty good.

And yes, I've seen your Atlas accessories.  Very cool stuff indeed!
Milton from Tennessee ya'll.

Offline RICH

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Re: Po' man's live tooling
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2015, 03:36:44 PM »
FWIW,
For real small holes do use peck drilling, but one of the things i used to do was allow the drill to create it's
owne center drill point. ie; I would let it dwell for a short time on the face and then proceed to drill the hole.
Also i use good old fashion "spit" as that seems to cling on and lubricate better than anything I experimented with.
Btw, I was drilling from 18000 to 60000 rpm range and down to #90 and smaller. And only buy good drills as the
other cheap ones are useless. Best I was able to do was with #90 thru 3/8" thk steel plate as a test.
That was done with the sensitive drill that i built.

Have fun,
RICH