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Meeting began at 9:10 as we allowed extra time for some those with a
longer commute. While we waited Merlin showed us his portable air
compressor made from a Cadillac air suspension pump. It was nicely
tucked into small piece of luggage and looked to be very handy indeed.
Thanks Merlin! Everyone did a great job on carpooling and participating
in the meeting, Which was a good thing as this was our largest meeting
yet with 25 members/guests attending. They were in no particular order;
Neil and David Butterfield, Glen and Jeff Lynch, Bob Harbour, Robert
Riesman, Neil Peters, Merlin Darlton, Richard Bennet, Russ Stillman,
Jerry Hine, Bob Sanders, Doug Wilson, John Clayton, Ron Watkins, John
Cannon, Robert Stewart, Robert Gallagher, Doug Wilson, Scott Brown,
Lance Greathouse, Dale Schmidt from Queen Creek, Owen Jeffers from
Prescott, Tom Jenner and Roger Mathewson both came down from Havasu and
last but not least Bob Hanson came over from Wilcox. That's what I would
call a "driving commitment" towards education!
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 | | Picture of members attending |
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Gene began with a discussion of the tooling that is used on a vertical
milling machine. Our target audience is that of the home shop machinist
and Gene did a very good job of displaying the full run of tools as
evidenced by the following picture.
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 | | Table o' tools |
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A milling vice, a stud and nut set, and some end mills will get you
started but how are you going to hold those end mills. With a chuck
right ? Wrong! A drill chuck (Jacobs/keyed or Albright/keyless) is great
for downward pressure but has limited lateral stability. A collet would
be better and can also get the job done but the proper way would be to
use an end mill holder. Why? Because an end mill holder will retain the
end mills by applying pressure on the "Weldon Flat" or that handy little
flat spot on the side of you end mill. This handy little flat was
actually patented by (you guessed the Weldon company) and allows for
better torque to be applied to the end mill. While there are many sizes
and descriptions of end mills we covered 2,4 and multi flute and shell
end mills. The 2 flute are good for roughing, 4's for finishing cuts and
multi flutes have many uses but come in really handy for facing.
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Gene has been in the biz for a while and has accumulated quite a
collection. You might not need all of these starting out but eventually
you will find a use for all of them. Each tool was held up or passed
around needed to describe it and what is used for. One particular
mystery was the edge finder. After aligning all the pieces of the tool
and setting your rpm to around 400 you bring the mounted work piece into
the tool until it is knocked of axis. Now you can set your zero and
begin whatever operation had in mind. Below is a picture of Gene
demonstrating its use on a drill press.
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 | | Gene at drill press |
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As Gene went about identifying and describing each of the tools he also
advised us to be on the look out for yard/estate sales and online
auctions. Here is a tool he was very proud of and indexable face mill
procured for a song and a shipping fee on one of those auctions. These
can make facing much easier than a fly cutter as mentioned earlier. The
nice thing with this one is many shells can be placed on the end the
shaft. Since the shaft is smaller this can be used on smaller home shop
equipment like the Ronfu's you see in many home shops. Below is a
picture of the face mill.
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 | | Indexable Shell End Mill ? / Face mill |
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It was stated that milling is a very versital and often abused practice.
Climb vs Conventional milling was covered and aided by a drawing that I
have failed to replicate here. Basically if the tool is turning
clockwise and you are feeding the piece into the cutter the chips should
be peeled up and away from movement of the work and not along with it.
Think of it like your cars back traveling over a rock while driving
forward, if this rings a bell turn off your machine cause your climb
milling. It was strongly recommended that on a manual machine that climb
milling is not practical. If any backlash is present bad things will
happen like breaking end mills and nasty metal noises coming from your
valuable machinery. It was also noted that if you can feel a pulse in
the feed handle of your machine this is a bad thing as well. Here are
some of the formulas that we covered;
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CS = is Cutting Speed and is always in surface feet per minute.
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RPM = 4xCS / Diameter of the tool
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Feed rate is dependant on the HP of the motor and the number of teeth or
flutes on your tool. You will want to remove no more than 2-10
thousandths per tooth per revolution. When working with steel 1 HP is
equal to 1 cubic inch of steel per minute and for aluminum it is .28 HP
dependant on coolant. Coolant can be used on most materials EXCEPT cast
iron, when working with cast iron use air. If in doubt about speeds and
feeds, error on the side of feed rate not RPM or you will defeat rule #1
which is cutting speed. It was noted that if your surface is bad or you
are doing a finish cut that you should double your rpm and cut your feed
rate in half. It was clarified that chip load is the thickness of
material being removed by a single tooth or flute.
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At this point we stopped for a quick break and some doughnuts. Some of
the group took this opportunity to ogle the table O' tools and ask Gene
more questions. Here Neil Butterfield and Neil Peters wait to ask our
esteemed instructor more questions.
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 | | The Neil's getting ready to ask Gene more questions |
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After the break Gene covered the parts of the mill, it was stated that
the z axis is always the rotating portion of the machine or the spindle.
The quill is that nifty little thing that goes up and down in the
spindle when you pull the handle. Inside the quill you have a drawbar
and fixture for holding your tooling. This could be a chuck or collet
but preferable an end mill holder if using end mills. Below is a picture
of Gene changing out the tooling and showing us the drawbar.
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 | | Gene and quill / drawbar |
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The X and Y axis are always on the table. This type of mill is a bench
top mill so the table is fixed, with a knee mill you can raise or lower
the table to facilitate changing tools of checking parts.
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We then engaged in a discussion about the CNC SIG and the progress that
they have made on the project.
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