Woody's Workshop – Page 31 – Keeping the Grey Matter active

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021

Kant Clamp and Engineering Drawings in Fusion 360

Bondie Hacks is a YouTube site that I have on my YouTube listing and a recent video featured Quinn building a Kant clamp from a kit. Needing some lockdown distraction I decided that I would attempt to build a clamp from scratch. Searching on Google revealed a plethora of drawings and from these I distilled a plan of action.

I created a Fusion 360 assembly for my hybrid version. The clamp was made with 3mm steel side plates and the other fittings from various diameters of silver steel. From the Fusion drawings I created two CAM programs to profile the side plates and the other fittings were all straightforward lathe work with the exception of the gripping blocks. I made these in aluminium which I ran freehand on my manual mill. If the clamp is to be used for welding then it is traditional to make the clamps and the screw from copper.

I opted to fasten the side plates with screws and washers but the pillars could have been peened in place. This would have made replacement of the gripping jaws difficult however so screws seemed like a better option.

The result turned out very well and I was pleased that I had made the effort.

Stylised Fusion 360 model of my Kant clamp

I have produced engineering drawings on Fusion previously but all were a bit ad hoc. Fusion is capable of automating the process of creating drawings for each component but I had never got to grips with it. Having created the clamp I decided it was a good excuse to dig deeper into the drawing process.

There are various YouTube videos on creating Fusion engineering drawings but the one that helped the most was by Bryce at Autodesk. The key to the automation process is creating Templates. This is really worth watching if you are debating moving up a level with the quality of your engineering drawings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av7rFL-opVo&ab_channel=AutodeskFusion360

The video goes into detail on how to create a customised set of drawing sheet blanks with customised title blocks. Having watched this a couple of times the mists began to clear.

The result of my labours is the complete drawing set for my Kant clamp in the following pdf file. Feel free to download and build your own.

Kant Clamp Structure Drawing v9

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April 16, 2021April 16, 2021

Converting a vernier to a height gauge using 3D printed parts.

Maybe not the full shilling but functional

This concept was passed to me from a friend and is based on a design published by Ralph Patterson in 2007. The idea was to make a mounting block and extension arm in metal to allow a vernier to ‘stand up’ and be used vertically. My contact sent me the drawings. I don’t seem able to find any link to this or other files by Mr Patterson.

Entering the design into Fusion 360 did not take very long which indicates how well it was drawn originally by Mr Patterson. There was one major modification however. The original design was made from metal but our spin on it was to use 3D printed parts. The base would therefore not have any really mass to keep it stable. My friend suggested we added ballast in the form of lead shot into a cavity in the base. I reduced the height of the base print by 3mm to allow an aluminium plate to be fitted to the bottom and added a honeycomb of holes into the base. Once printed the honeycomb is filled with lead and the base screwed in place. Conveniently and by fluke rather than design, the honeycomb holes will hold two slightly squashed 0.22″ air gun pellets. This makes the base feel somewhat more solid on a surface plate.

The slot in the top of the base that takes the vernier is a tight fit on two of my verniers and the third one won’t fit so care is needed in choosing the right vernier for the job. That aside it works very well for a quick and dirty measurements.

If anyone would like the STL files then let me know on the blog email or post a comment.

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April 12, 2021September 8, 2023

Lempor Nozzle added to Poly V 5″ steam locomotive

Lempor Modification to my Poly V

This post was corrupted when converting from Classic Editor to the new Block Editor and has been re-created.

I have made mention of my Poly V 5″ gauge live steam locomotive elsewhere on my blog. With lockdown having restricted running the engine on the Club track, the loco has sat idle in the workshop.

The locomotive has always been a struggle to maintain steam over a full running day. It starts off enthusiastically but then begins to struggle. This is frustrating and also embarrassing when I have to push it round to the steaming bay.

I was sent some notes on Lempor Draughting to change the blast characteristics in the smoke box. With time on my hands I spent some time on Fusion 360 drawing up a possible Lempor assembly. This is shown below. It consists of four nozzles each having a cumulative aperture area equal to the original blast nozzle as fitted in the Poly V.

The assembly was quite tricky. I bought in a new standard nozzle from Poly and then modelled it and the new sub nozzles in Fusion 360 to create the toolpath to mill out on the CNC, The new nozzles were created on the lathe and the mating butt flats machined on them in the mill. It was very fiddly. I wired them together and silver soldered them in place. Here is a picture of the finished assembly before fitting.

Because the new blast is diverging I had to increase the height of the petticoat. I did this experimentally by fitting a small grub screw at the back of the smoke stack to grip the petticoat as I moved it up and down. This resulted in the petticoat being almost at its maximum height. One idea suggested by a club member was to make this adjustment on a cold morning with the smoke box door open so you can see the blast pattern.

My subjective conclusion is that the engine now steams from cold much quicker and it runs very well (providing I keep the fire level high in the firebox….). Whether this is the new blast pipe or the Rosebud grate or the coal or a combination of all three is difficult to judge. It is certainly a different engine and a pleasure to drive.

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April 12, 2021June 7, 2021

Burgess BK3 replacement lower blade guide

Burgess BK3 Final Modification – Lower Blade Guide

This is the final piece in my Burgess BK3 bandsaw upgrade jigsaw. Having successfully replaced the top guide with a double bearing assembly my attention turned to the lower guide. Using the same principle as the upper guide I came up with the following assembly.

Burgess BK3 bandsaw replacement lower guide assembly — Stylised Fusion 360 image of the replacement lower guide assembly on my Burgess BK3 bandsaw

This seems to work well and is straightforward to implement. The bearings are standard 1/2″ size parts from Bearing Boys. These need a small brass bush to mount them on the sliding brass blocks. The blocks need a single M3 washer to space the bearing from the block and the body.

The blade pressure roller is made from silver steel and can be heat treated to improve wear from the blade edge.

The mounting bracket arm picks up on the original M5 mounting screw concept. The bracket could be milled onto the main body as a CNC operation but the two part assembly works fine and is very rigid in operation.

Here is a set of drawings for my BK3 lower guide assembly

The link below is a complete set of notes and drawings pulled into one ZIP file to cover all the modifications I have done and separately document in my blog and other author’s notes that I have come across. I hope that helps.

Updated file link to BK3 Modifications v2

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March 21, 2021

Enclosure finally added to my Tormach PCNC440

Reduction in Sparkly Bits around the House

When I bought my Tormach PCNC440 in 2016 I included the enclosure kit in my order. On receipt I thought that fitting the enclosure would dominate the size of the workshop so I never got round to fitting it. It has sat in its shipping box since then. I have consequently shared quite a bit of my swarf (chips) with long suffering family.

After a recent (particularly heavy) CNC run I had a serious covering of swarf in the machine tray and because I had no enclosure round the mill, I had quite a lot distributed further afield (i.e. into the house). Domestic peace was becoming an issue. Time to do something about it.

Out came the enclosure kit, cobwebs dusted off and around three hours later I had the enclosure fitted. I have to say it looks good and does not overpower the workshop as I thought it would. My wife is impressed and says it looks a more professional machine and ‘if you had it why didn’t you fit it before now’ ?

My Tormach PCNC440 with its enclosure fitted — The picture above shows the enclosure mounted on my PCNC440 with the monitor in the original position before fitting the extension arm to the ISO bracket. The keyboard tray uses a domestic drawer rail mounted on the top of the standard Tormach cabinet. My recently fitted dual fogbuster system and my Hall Effect based tool height setter (yellow top) are visible.

The fitting did however create some follow up problems.

My control monitor had up to now been mounted on the side of the 440 on a standard ISO TV mount. With the enclosure fitted this meant it was ’round the side’ and difficult to get to. I debated a new long reach ISO but they are expensive. Plan B was to make something. I rummaged around in my aluminium stock and with the help of Fusion 360 came up with a seriously overengineered extension arm to add to the existing ISO mount. This would allow the monitor to move forward to be in reach at the front of the mill.

ISO bracket extension on Tormach PCNC440 — My seriously over engineered extension bracket to move the ISO mounting of the monitor more to the front of the 440

This bracket became the first CNC job to run after fitting the enclosure. I am pleased to say it was the cleanest my workshop floor had ever been after running a job.

Having fitted the new bracket and mounted the monitor, all the cables needed extending. Fortunately I had had the foresight on my original order to include the extension cable kit. As a result I only had to extend the power supply lead from the monitor 12V ‘brick’ supply.

The second issue was where to mount my ITTP probe as this had formerly mounted on the side of the 440. With help of some more Fusion design I modelled a corner mount that picked up on the enclosure fastenings.

After that first heavy machining run I noticed for the first time the slight smell of the mist coolant when opening the enclosure doors. Before the enclosure was fitted the smell must have dispersed into the general workshop air. With the enclosure fitted the air was concentrated inside the mill and I only got the smell when sticking my head inside. While it had never been a problem (as far as I can tell …) I thought I should do something about it.

Sometime ago I installed a ceiling extract duct in the workshop. This vents to the outside world via a custom roof tile. Normally the system sits with a flared cowling (made from a cut down flower pot) on the ceiling entry duct. The system normally acts as a background trickle extract. The cunning plan in the design was to use various pipe components to provide bayonet style connection pins (Nylon screws) to allow extension trunking to be used. A bit like a BNC RF connector if this is familiar to you. This would allow me to use an add-on length of expanding flexi trunking to bring the extract nearer to any heavy fumy activity such as welding or oil bath hardening.

With the use of further scrap odds and ends of aluminium, I mounted a pair of support bars across the top of the new 440 enclosure. These would fix the ducting over the enclosure during heaving CNC sessions. Not a total solution but certainly one that will reduce the general smell of XtremeCut 250C when I stick my head in the enclosure.

Workshop extract system — Extract system showing ceiling mounting intake, trunking adapter and mounting on my Tormach PCNC440. Note the two Nylon screw protrusions are for a bench mounting clamp when used for welding extraction etc and now used on this new use of the system on the mill.

A good day’s activity with all the issues addressed and domestic bliss hopefully restored.

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