It has been a quiet period leading up to Christmas and it has lead to some low level activity catching up on items on the ‘Things to Do’ list.
One of these was to make a graphical representation of what the Fusion 360 Feeds and Speeds dialogue box means and the calculations behind it. To be honest this tab in the Fusion CAM section used to frighten me but I have become more confident with it. The problem is I can’t remember what each box affects so here is a visual representation which might help others. Note that the dialogue changes between a ramp into the stock (such as when cutting a pocket) and a plunge into the stock (such as when drilling).
I hope that makes sense and I have got it right. It certainly helps me to understand what is going on and the calculations going on in the background.
Each of my CNC mills has a home designed and produced tooling plate. Both have a 25mm pitch matrix of tapped mounting holes and a further submatrix of 3.7mm tooling pin holes. Why 3.7mm ? So I can turn down 4mm silver steel for the tooling pins to create a retaining shoulder.
My small CNC plate has M5 tapped holes and the Tormach 440 has M8 tapped holes. What struct me was that I has starting to create dual sets of hold down tooling, some with M5 and some with M8 mounting holes. Not a good idea. (Entertaining and therapeutic though it might be to have ‘tooling days’).
Clearly a mounting with M8 holes was not much use with tooling having M5 mounting holes but the other way round would work if I had M8 to M5 adaptors.
As a result I have spent the day creating adaptors which you could call male and female. Both are made from M8 hex head tensile screws with the female ones retaining the M8 head and the male ones utilising the cut off portion of thread. I had to undercut the thread ends behind the heads so the female adaptors would sit flush. Having undercut I then skimmed all the tops of the hex heads to be same depth.
All the turning was done with the ER25 collet chuck instead of the 3 jaw which is normally fitted to the Myford. The male adaptor versions were a pain to turn down to M5 diameter and had to be done incrementally as the M8 threaded end could not be heavily gripped in the collet.
The female versions are quite useful if a job is being run on the Tormach that needs suspending above the table so it can machined to full stock depth.
Nothing revolutionary or original but a day well spent.
A picture explains : –
Male and female M8 to M5 adaptors
M8 to M5 adaptors in place on the Tormach tooling plate
We have a couple of rigid golf caddy cases that take a full golf bag plus whatever else you can squeeze in when going on a holiday trip. Last trip to Hawaii this included lots of shoes, snorkels, flippers etc. These have or at least had two cabinet style locks on them but not anymore. Customs / security at Seattle decided they wanted to have a look inside and took the easy option and smashed the locks off, had a look inside and then Gaffa taped the case back up. Lovely.
Everything arrived home safely with nothing missing but now the debate on how to replace the locks. Clearly the idea of locking them does not go down well with baggage security teams. I have knocked up a design in Fusion that only needs a single cable tie to make it secure. I have 3D printed a concept model from the Fusion design and I have now run the finished items in aluminium using the Tormach CNC. I used a combination of CNC and manual milling to get the results and this highlighted once again that the combination of a CNC and manual is incredibly useful.
Gold caddy with 3D printed trial lock in place
Close up of the prototype lock without the peripheral shaping
Fusion 360 representation of the lock design without the locating pins and hinge pin.
I first of all edit the centre clearance hole in the boss in Fusion in preparation for printing. I then 3D print the power supply box and lid and while putting this together I get the boss print underway. The boss takes around 7 hours to print on standard quality. . Given the amount of interest being shown I think a formal write up would be useful for others with perhaps the Fusion file as a download. Working on it and more to follow.
New ring light off the production line. Note that the baking foil reflector is getting easier to do.
Update 1 – the ring lights are available on Amazon at around GBP14 per pair and you can select diameter (and colour). Buy the largest diameter you can so that there is reduced shadowing around the tool point in the mill or drill press. They are cheaper to buy on EBay from China but there is a longer delivery time.
UPDATE 2 : – Since this post I have run quite a number of ring mounts for third parties and I now 3D print them with the spindle hole offset so that the shadowing from the chuck when working with shorter tools is reduced.
Here is a Fusion image of the ring light mount with the spindle hole offset to reduce shadowing. Note I still recommend having aluminium foil to increase the down reflectivity.
Having got home from Chicago I had a few weeks at home before we left for Hawaii where my son was participating in the Ironman World Championships. This is a crazy triathlon event in 30 degree heat and he finished in just over 9 hours.
We played a few rounds of golf on the Makalei course on Hawaii which is at 2500 feet above sea level. Sometimes in sunshine, sometimes cloud and sometimes hissing down with rain all of which made it challenging. We also visited Pearl Harbour which was quite moving and this included visiting the Aviation Museum on Ford Field.
No visit to Hawaii by a Brit would be complete without a visit to the Captain Cook monument in Kealakekua Bay. We completely misjudged the arduous terrain we would experience in getting down to the monument and nearly came to grief with dusk fast approaching.
Captain Cook Monument Inscription Plaque in Hawaii
On the way home from Hawaii we stopped over in Seattle for a few days which was a culture shock on body temperature. We visited the Pacific Science Museum and the Space Needle plus a tour of the Boeing works as part of the stay. The PSM is brilliant for kids (and OAPs).
All in all a good trip but will now be glad to get back in the workshop.
CAD & Farming
Being away home and more precisely away from the workshop, allowed me to do a few write ups that might be of interest and both of which were stimulated by reading forum posts on MEW. My waffle would have been too long to post in the normal way.
The first write up is about CAD/CAM and my concern that there will probably be unfilled expectations from the news about Alibre doing a special deal for MEW readers.
The second write up is about harvest time in North Yorkshire that is based on my younger days in a farming family. This has been on the stocks for some time and the posting on the forum kicked me into finishing it off.
My travel agent (aka my adorable wife) has got my airline tickets ready so I can attend John Saunders’ Open House bash at MHUB this Sunday coming in Chicago with 3 days afterwards at IMTS 2018.
Hopefully I will meet up with some of the friends I met at the NYC CNC training week and last year’s Open House plus all the new contacts that I have made via this blog. Also hoping to be blown away with seeing new technology (totally out of my budget) at IMTS.
