Mitutoyo Height Gage

The Taiwanese height gage I have has been giving me problem with its erratic readings. I stripped it apart a few times to clean up whatever I could find that appear foreign and it'll work for that session in the shop. In the next session, it went crazy again. This prompted me to search for a more reliable brand with a price tag that won't hurt too much. The search landed on the Mitutoyo 570-312. Next was to find out if it's available in SG. Mike had me call Region Supplies, which quoted me $628+GST. Mike found another source at much lower price (slightly more than $100 cheaper) but its waiting time of 4 months is a little too long for me. When I was at Chan Man Lee last week, I brought this up to Ah Hoe and he immediate gave Region Supplies a call. He was quoted $561+GST. I jumped in after talking to Mike.


The huge box the gage came in sitting on an empty table in my office.



The box was rather well padded to protect the gage.



I didn't expect it to be bigger than the Taiwanese gage.



In fact, it is taller by quite a bit. I like the large handwheel for height adjustment. It turns rather smoothly. I've to also admit that was attracted to this model because of its colour. It is a 12"/300mm, digimatic absolute gage with 0.0005"/0.01mm resolution and accuracy of 0.0015"/0.03mm.



Standing it to the lathe. I used it (with the brown paper removed of course) to measure the tool height from the bed and compound slide. The large base stood steadily on the bed when I was doing the measuring.

It is now standing on its home, which is the granite surface plate. I actually prefer something smaller like a 6" version but the 12" is the smallest they have.

It'll be put into actual when I mark out the slider of the Set-Over Centre.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I found this in SG!!!

Didn't expect to see this! I had an appointment around Arab Street earlier today. Was a little early do went walking around a very old mall of sort. I saw this old shop selling wall clocks and spotted a skeleton clock. Went in and asked if it is for sale. 5 min's later, I walked out with the clock without the wooden case.

This is it:


I'll take more pics when I get home.

So much for now.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Trip to Chan Man Lee

I'm planning the building of the Set-Over Centre from the kit I bought from Hemingway Kit in UK. This tool allows tapers to be cut by offsetting its half dead centre at the tailstock end. Good for my type of tailstock, which is fixed.

Provided in the kit are some steel pieces, a MT2 taper, 2BA, and BSF screws. Given my limited experience and skill, I'll be following the plan as close as I can. That started the hunt for BA & BSF taps & die.


The kit came in 3 bubble wrapped of steel stocks, fasteners, MT2 arbor, construction notes and drawings in a clear plastic pocket.


The content being laid out.

Prior to going down to CML today, I searched at hardware shops in the neighborhood. None of them sell these type of taps & dies, only metric & some imperial type are available. While at the mechanic's, I called up CML and was told that they've the whole range.

Good service, as usual, was encountered at the shop. Had a good chat with the guy by the name of "Ah Hoe" (hope I got his name right). Left the shop after 1/2 hour with a box of stuff of almost SGD200.


The content of the box: 2BA tap & split die, 5/16" BSF tap & split die, die holder for 2BA, 5.1mm & 6.4mm dia drills (1 of each), 7mm dia 2 & 4 flute endmills (1 of each), 1/2" Jacobs chuck & MT2 arbor, cutting oil for steel.

Before I start my build, I'll be reading the construction notes a few more times and visualize the process of manufacturing the tool in my mind.

That's all for today. Have a blessed Saturday.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Trying out new way of work holding in the lathe

My children will be going away with their grandparents to Malaysia tomorrow.  Their mother will be having appointments from the morning till just before Mandarin Service at 5pm.  Most importantly, I don't think its a good idea for me to be home alone with just the our helper.  Not that I don't trust myself but I don't want any possibility of any false accusation should she be unhappy about things or is missing home.  Anyway, there goes my plan to have a good 1/2 day in the shop making the ball bearing thrust collar for the X axis.  I'll be going with her for her appointments (as her chauffeur of course...), bring the car to the mechanic to check the strange sound while accelerating from stop, and to pick her mom up for church.  If time permits, I would like to drop by the metal shop to pick up some brass plate and free machining steel for some projects I've in mind.

Though feeling a little tired, I spent some time in the shop trying out a way I saw on MadModder on holding a thin piece of round stock in the lathe to machine the round surface.  I've never tried that before though I saw some pics on some blogs/website of it being done.  The thread Ross started on his oscillating steam engine build can be seen here: http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=6711.0.  He was making the flywheel and holding it in the chuck jaws will not allow the cylindrical surface to be turned.  A big washer with insulation tape covered evenly was used between one face of the flywheel and the closed chuck jaws and the other face held by the revolving centre on its centre drilled hole.  Driving by friction, he was able to turned the surface down to the required OD.

I was wondering how I can turn the OD of the 15mm thick aluminium round stock down to 39mm diameter with the jaw gripping the OD.  For the Y axis, the stock was 40mm long, providing a portion of the stock to be held in the chuck jaws.  Now that I'm left with 15mm after the completion of the Y axis thrust collar, I'm unable to do the same.  Ross' way of doing it may just work for me.

Changing the carbide insert to HSS.  I bought this some time ago from AR Warner through LMS.

Facing off to clean up the part.

Centre drilling the face to put a 60 degree hole for the revolving centre to bear against.

Sticking insulation tape on the chuck jaws.  This may be where this setup fail... I didn't use a washer to provide sufficient surface area.

The revolving centre bearing down on the stock in the centre drilled hole. Some pressure was applied before locking the tailstock spindle in place.

Light cuts were taken at around 0.05mm per pass.  Nice...

The stock start to shift out of position as I was just about 0.6mm away from the diameter I want.

I took the piece out trying to think of a solution.  Then I remembered seeing someone on the web using a bolt through the centre hole drilled in the stock.  I rampage through my drawer of hardware to find a bolt of right size for the job.  Found a small bag of bolts of 3/8" with washers and nuts.  I quickly encountered the next problem - how do I drill the hole in the middle of the stock when I know that I will definitely hit the chuck jaws as the drill exits from the back of the stock?  at 39.6mm diameter, the jaws were in its reverse direction.  The step on each jaw gives very little room for me to clamp down the stock and no room for me to insert a piece of parallel to do that.  So, over to the mill I go.

The spindle was centered using the centre drill hole with the MT1 dead centre.  This don't have to be very accurate as I still need to drill and bore the centre hole for the bearings.

After drilling through with a 6.5mm drill, I took out the 3/8" drill to enlarge the hole for the bolt. But the drill is too long to be used on the 5410...

Found another bag of bolts and nuts that are smaller than 3/8" (can't remember the size. Sorry...).  The drill for this bearly clear the stock.  Anyway, managed to drill out the hole I need.

Test fit with the bolt. Just a slight wiggling room can be felt.  This should work.

Fastening down the stock in the bolt.

And into the lathe it went...

From the side.

I pat myself on the back for this part of the job done.

And a big smile when I measured the OD!



Its now passed 3am.  I've to leave the boring of the bearing mounting hole and the 2 recesses for the flange till the next session.  Don't want to be sleeping on the job tomorrow, especially at the wheel.  Time to wash up and hit the bed.

Bearing Thrust Collar for Y Axis - Rectification

I was given 3 days medical leave from yesterday to Friday and decided to stay a day more at home to nurse the swell.  But I will return to office on Friday to clear my work; I've a client coming by tomorrow noon to sign our offer.  Come to think about it, unless its school holiday, I rather be at work.  Its strange, I know, but... got to learn how to let go.

Anyway, spent some time in the morning trying to find ways to rectify the error in my calculations.  I was looking at Graham's drawings on the Z axis mod and saw that the mounting holes he is using were slotted to allow adjustments.  So I went back to my 3D CAD file and put on the slots to derive the locations and the amount of material I need to removed.

The part was put back in the vise and tapped down.

After clocking the part to find the centre of the bore and edge from the flat surface, I dialed to the new hole location and start off with the bigger slot mill to cut the counterbore.

Lots of chatter during the cut. I was feeding the tool very slowly to form the slots after milling to 6mm deep. The 5mm slot mill was used next to mill the through holes.

Slot done - the ugliest around...

From another view.

I tap the mounting hole deeper to avoid having to shorten the #8-32 capscrews, taking the opportunity to clean up the holes.

If you enlarge the pic, you can see that I cut the right slot a little too long.  No harm done.

The thrust collar is now ready to accept the handwheel.

You can see that either I had the leadscrew adaptor a little too long or the thrust collar a little too thin, the handwheel couldn't seat in properly causing huge amount of backlash.  Two thick washers were employed to see how much I missed.  Looks like I've measured the length of the leadscrew adaptor that extends out of the thrust collar wrongly...

I went back to measure the amount of adaptor protruding from the stock thrust collar.  The difference was about 2mm.  Time to go back to the lathe...

I carefully trimmed off 2mm from the end. The wall of the counter-bored hole is rather thin. I was worried about it going out of shape.

The micro boring tool was up next to increase the depth of the counter-bore by the same 2mm.

I brought the table forward to avoid alignment problem later. Time to see if the shortened adaptor works.

Beautiful!!! The handwheel turns free and smooth.

I went ahead to tighten up the anti-backlash nut till the wheel is hard to turn and slacken it a little.  The handwheel still turns smoothly.  Finally... I DID IT!!! (giving myself a pat on the back...).

From the exercise, I know what I've gone wrong and what I need to take note of for future projects.  This has been a very rewarding learning experience for me.  The bearing thrust collar for the X axis is up next.  The hole locations are the same as the Y axis except that they're upside down.  I'll be starting with the thrust collar first before working on the leadscrew adaptor as the length of the adaptor depends on the thickness of the thrust collar.  This will give me some room to play after boring the small recess for the flange bearings to seat in.  Not sure if I want to start working on it today.  I've slight discomfort (not amounting to pain. kind of sore...) at the place the dentist operated on.  It can be a little distracting especially when counting handwheel turns.  I started over twice this morning when dialing in the distance after finding the edge.  Maybe I'll just rest a little while and read the George H Thomas' "The Model Engineers Workshop Manual".

I've Mike Kong of SG Tooling (http://shop.sgtooling.com/) to thank for teaching me the centering method used in the bore. It works really well.  I dare not say that I'm right on centre but I should be very close.  Thanks Mike!

Ball Bearing Thrust Collar - Completed but...

In less than an hour's time (at the time of writing this), I'll be going for stage 2 of my dental implant.  I've been fasting since 6.30am and are feeling very hungry and thirsty.  I was told to fast 6 hours before the surgery as, this round, I opted to be sedated during the process.  This is my third time going through this - hope this is the last.  I have to remind myself not to bite on sweets that, I was told, causing tooth fracture.  Kind of hard to rid of this bad habit...

To distract myself (excuses excuses excuses), I went to my shop after having my mandatory 2 cups of coffee just before 6.30am, to complete the thrust bearing mod on the Y axis leadscrew.  It was a good session as I made no mistake and was rather proud of myself to be able to find the centre of the bore with the DTI using the method Mike taught me.  Though completed successfully based on the drawings I did (with slight modifications due to the size of the stock I started with), I'm not able to mount the bearing holder with the leadscrew adaptor inserted.  My measurements and calculations of the distance between the leadscrew and the stepper motor mount's screw holes was off by quite a fair bit.  I thought I was getting smarter when I did the measurements and project the numbers using the stock thrust collar - I am obviously not.  But I'm still happy as I managed to fabricate the parts with quite a good level of accuracy from the plans I drawn.

Trimming the face with bearing mounted so as to make the bearing sit flushed in the recess. This was done on both sides in the same manner.

Done! Nice...

Marking out the amount to cut off for the witness mark using the stock thrust collar as a gauge of how much I need to cut.

Flycutter was used to flatten the top for the witness mark.

Nicely done. About 6.8mm was taken off from the top.

I was looking around for the 1mm endmill but saw this in the box.  Been there for maybe a year, sealed in its plastic wrapper.

The witness mark engraved.

This was how the part look before the mounting holes were drilled.

First hole done, shown with a cap screw inserted.

The completed part.

Time to test if this works.

The new bearing thrust collar mounted using 2 x 8-32 3/4" capscrews borrowed from the lathe. They're a little longer than needed.

From the back you can see that the distance between the leadscrew and the 2 x 8-32 mounting holes are quite off.  My measurements were off.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I'm quite pleased with the adaptor and the bearing thrust collar that I made.  They're both accurate to the dimensions I layed out on the plan.  The error in the thrust collar is in my measuring of the distance between the leadscrew and the mounting holes.  This is something I've yet to learn - accurate measuring from existing parts.

More to learn.

Shop closed for the day

I was kept out of the shop today though I've quite a few things to try out.  My little Ruth is having a fever that went off after medication but came back up a few hours later.  Her mommy was out to transport an elderly person to church and her elder sister, Alicia, was stuck with her activities on the Internet.
Ruth was crying when mommy left home.  So I distracted her with the 2 Mr Bean movies I bought last Sunday after church.  We had fun watching the silly fella.  When she was feeling better, she got restless and wanted to play.  So my right hand was transformed to a snake head attacking her while she fended herself laughing away.  She fell asleep when she got tired and drowsy from the medication. I fell asleep too, tired of being the snake...

If time permits, I'll do some work tomorrow.  Otherwise, it will be 2 weeks from now - we'll be going to my dad's factory in Malaysia next weekend.

I read about a gear making software today, written by Art Fenerty, the creator of Mach3.  From the videos I've been watching, it seems a good piece of software for me on learning how to make clocks, especially if it only cost USD75 for a license which I can use on both the computers I'm using for my CNC work.  I'll start with the demo to see if I'm up to using it.

As I think about it, the more I want to start building my first clock, the skeleton wall clock from W.R. Smith, in acrylic.  If I can put all the parts in my CadCam software, I can mill them out using CNC and put them together to form the clock.  I may be thinking too much about the likely problems I may encounter, like do I need a faster spindle with very small endmills and if the cut length of these small endmills long enough to cut through the thickness of the parts called for in the plan.  There is also concern about the speed and feed of the cut on acrylic, a material I've not tried playing with in the mill.  I don't have proper cooling to keep the endmill cool so that it wouldn't melt the material.  More research is required.

Anyone with experience in milling acrylic with smallish endmills, please chim in.  Kindly leave your name with your input so that credit can be given when I've the post up on the build.

I'm going back to check on Ruth with the thermometer.  Until the next session, be blessed.