Besides various types of steel, metalworking methods and tips are included for alternative metals -- some familiar and some fairly new. If you got to this file directly from my HOME PAGE, return there by using your browser's back button. BUT if you came to this file as the result of a web search engine, see more than 70 additional files on my home page Machining and Metalworking at Home http://www.janellestudio.com/metal/ SAFETY WARNING BEWARE: DO NOT ASSUME that any subject matter or procedure or process is safe or correct or appropriate just because it was mentioned in a news/user group or was included in these files or on this site or on any other web site or was published in a magazine or book or video. Working with metals and machinery and chemicals and electrical equipment is inherently dangerous. Wear safety devices and clothing as appropriate. Remove watches, rings, and jewellery -- and secure or remove loose clothing -- before operating any machine. 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Hazardous tasks beyond your competence or expertise should also be contracted to professionals. Let's be really careful out there. (c) Copyright 2003 - 2008 Machining and Metalworking at Home The form of the collected work in this text file (including editing, additions, and notes) is copyrighted and this file is not to be reproduced by any means, including electronic, without written permission except for strictly personal use. ========================================================================== From: bonkers Date: Tue Feb 8, 2000 11:05am Subject: Re: brass chip troubles Original Message----- From: Keith Yundt kyundtx~xxj... >Last night I was machining a brass cylinder for a brass model manhole I >am making, and ran into something I have not experienced before. The >brass is not typical 360, I think it is much harder but don't know the >exact type--It is actually pipe. I had it gripped from the inside with >the 3jaw chuck on one end, and the steady rest about 6" down the bed, >and was machining close to it but the chips kept imbedding themselves >in the finish and making it all rough. The best I could do was feed >very quickly and make deeper cuts, which helped, but did not eliminate >the problem. I tried both HSS and carbide bits, and the carbide worked >best by far. In the end I used emery cloth to get it smooth. Is this >problem just the type of brass I am using? The pipe is about 2" in >diameter. Maybe my steady rest was just not tight enough? On a more >positive note, I finally got my milling attachment for the lathe and >just love it. The vertical lock works well, and I am very happy with >the quality of it. The only thing I didn't like was on the rotary >column attachment there is a little plastic magnifier, which I found to >be rather hard to read, so I made a little aluminum wedge with a mark >on it instead. Thanks again, Keith. Keith.....The pipe you're using is most likely 'schedule 40'. Not really suitable for machining. Take care, J.B. Neiswander ------- From: Rich Dean Date: Tue Feb 8, 2000 12:32pm Subject: Re: brass chip troubles Keith: Brass pipe is made of "Red Brass". You must use a cutting fluid as it is a gummy metal to machine like softer alloys of aluminum. I use dark thread cutting oil for lube, but WD-40 may work too. Rich D. ------- From: Dan statman Date: Tue Feb 8, 2000 4:37pm Subject: Re: Source for aircraft grade titanium needed [sherline] >Dan there is a web site called www.titanium.com they claim to have it >many forms. Saw your web site,is that stuff as hard to machine as i've >heard? good luck steve It certainly is harder to machine than 316 stainless, but not impossible. On a 1" outside diameter you can turn about 0.005" at a time. It gives a nice finish as long as the tool is properly sharpened. I form my own tools from 5% Co HSS blanks. They work pretty well, but you have to keep them sharp. I just ordered the 3/8" tool holder from Sherline to accept the insert style cutters, and I might get some longer life that way. The eBay thing for the stock titanium doesn't work, since nobody ever puts up uniform bar stock, keyword titanium on the search list gives a bunch of hits for golf club, baseball cards, etc. etc., so its not really feasible that way. titanium.com won't sell small quantities. I have used Titanium Industries before, but they have a $300 minimum order, and I just need a few small pieces for now. Dan. ------- From: Dan statman Date: Sat Mar 4, 2000 1:35pm Subject: Re: Aircraft Titanium supply source Tom, The aircraft grade is sometimes called grade 5 and it is an alloy consisting of 6%Al and 4%Vanadium (also called 6-4 titanium). This grade is the hardest grade, it is stronger than steel and as light as aluminum. Pure titanium, Grade 2, is available at 99.9% purity. It is not as hard as grade 5, but it is hard. Grade 2 titanium is very abrasive and it is much more difficult to obtain a clean machine cut. Although grade 5 is harder than grade 2 it is not as abrasive and produces very clean cuts when the tooling is sharp. I prefer to grind my own tool bits and I use 1/4" HSS with 5% Cobalt. These last a reasonably long time, and they are easy to resharpen and custom grind. A Sherline lathe can only shave about 0.005" of aircraft titanium in a single pass. Titanium Industries does have a web site, search at Yahoo (or another search engine) I cannot remember the URL. They have a $350 minimum order. ------- From: Rich D. Date: Tue Sep 12, 2000 12:58pm Subject: Re: Black anodizing of aluminum Tony Zampini wrote: > >From reading other posts, I see that some of you are > doing black anodizing of aluminum. Can anyone doing > this please teach me how to do it? Is it a dangerous > job? Is there any good information on anodizing on > the web? Thank you Tony, there are many articles on the web about this. Try Metal Web News http://www.metalwebnews.com/ and the "r.c.m. dropbox": http://www.metalworking.com/ I have 2 articles that seem very well detailed that I can e/m to you. They are about 300kb total. Let me know off list. I have done anodizing here a lot. Not a particularly dangerous procedure, no worse than driving a car. A little battery fluid and a power supply and some metal bits is about most of it. Rich D. ------- From: Flosi Gudmundsson Date: Tue Sep 12, 2000 1:36pm Subject: Re: Black anodizing of aluminum Try these links. http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Galaxy/7004/ http://www.ptw.com/~gsxr1100/anodize2.html http://www.atmpage.com/anode.html http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~chrish/t-anodis.htm Flosi ------- From: Rogerio Odriozola Date: Wed Sep 13, 2000 1:04pm Subject: Re: Black anodizing of aluminum I used the method in this link, it worked very good. The only difference is I used a car battery and fixed resistors instead of a battery charger. I would not try using a battery without some kind of fuse or resistor as shorting it could destroy it. The other problem is dyes, black is the most difficult color to obtain with cheap dyes. http://archive.dstc.edu.au/BDU/staff/ron/meng/anodizing.html Hope it helps. Rogerio Odriozola ------- From: Steve Tarvin Date: Tue Oct 10, 2000 6:07pm Subject: which alloy ? I have a question which I know someone in this group will be able to help me with.I am makeing a boring bar holder for my logan lathe which will be a square cube 2.5 inches. I want to use steel but my experiance with steel is limited can someone recommend an alloy which is machinable yet tough enough to hold threads and not get to dinged up. Your help would be appreciated. Thanks steve ------- From: Marcus & Eva Date: Tue Oct 10, 2000 10:20pm Subject: Re: which alloy ? Hi Steve: For easiest machining, get a chunk of 12L14 "leadloy". If you want something a bit tougher, use leaded 4140. If you want it really tough, P20 is a good choice. Good luck Marcus ------- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 06:20:57 GMT From: "robert B" Subject: Turning cast iron ????? I am having a devil of a time trying to turn down to size a flywheel for a subaru ea-81 aircraft redrive conversion. The wheel appears to be grey cast iron. And when I turn the damned thing, the surface will dull a hi-speed, or cobalt tool bit, to a dull nub in about 30 seconds. Once I break through the rough cast surface, I get into better iron, which means that my tool bits might last a minute, rather than 30 seconds. I've literally destroyed two tool bit blanks so far, and they dull so fast that I don't even hone them...just grind them and go to it. Sparks everywhere when I turn the cast, and the bit turns blue and chips almost instantly. I assume there are some inclusions in the metal...though, I cannot see any. (good Japanese steel too...) Question, are there any tool bits that will cut this stuff? Are any techniques that I can use to cut it? This is becoming a real pain in the ass. Bob ------- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 03:29:14 EST From: BestRushx~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Turning cast iron ????? try a carbide cutter slow speed and feed , either an insert or brazed should work ------- Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 22:45:22 EST From: PATDKx~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Turning cast iron ????? Flywheels should be ground not turned. They develop some very hard spots, sometimes the entire clutch disc surface, from frictional heating and rapid cooling. They also need a smooth surface (32 micro inch or less) for best grip and disc life. Grinding on a Blanchard or an old Van Norman flywheel grinder is the best way to resurface a flywheel. Pat ------- Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 14:43:29 -0000 From: steambikex~xxhotmail.com Subject: simple cylinder for steam engine Some one had a question about boring or reaming a steam engine cylinder. I've made a lot of the little engines, before I had reamers and such, I would buy the brass tubing from the K&S hobby displays at any Ace hardware store, to line the inside of a cylinder after I over size drilled it. It can be soft soldered into the cylinder or use lock-tight. Works like a champ. Paul ------- Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 15:10:52 -0000 From: steambikex~xxhotmail.com Subject: PS. simple steam cylinder This same tubing can be used to make bushings for the crank arms. I also keep some of the aluminum tubing on hand to aline two parts that I want to solder together. Solder dosen't stick to the alum. and can be removed after the parts cool. Paul ------- Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 19:28:01 -0600 From: Jim Irwin Subject: Re: 12L14 CRs Todd Williams wrote: > CRS is corrosion Resistant Steel (stainless steel) can be very soft.. CRS means cold rolled steel. 12L14 is low alloy medium carbon (0.14% C) leaded for machineability. CRS is identifiable by being somewhat shiny as received, where HF (Hot finished) steel (typically the architectural/ structural shapes) are nearly black with scale from being rolled to shape while red hot. Best regards, Jim Irwin ------- Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 18:08:31 -0500 From: Reames Subject: Re: Re:12L14 Hi All, After the discussions regarding the 12L14, I bought some today at our local steel plant. Now I have a LOT! I got some 1" hex, and 1/2" round & it does cut like butter and threads beautifully. Beats the heck out of the old steel blower shafts I have been using. Thanks to all who participated in the discussion, Now I gotta figure out what to do with 12FT each! Mike in cold wet Ohio Atlas 3990 ------- Mike: Just for the record, 12L14 is definitely not corrosion resistant steel. It is a carbon class steel and will rust as fast as any steel. In order to attain corrosion resistance it would need nickel and chromium (stainless steel). bill Burky, Orrville,Ohio ------- Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:25:09 -0500 From: "Rich D." Subject: Re: Metal Ordering Question dqrwagonerx~xxcompuserve.com wrote: > I am trying to find a source that carries the "Lead-Alloy" steel. I > think that the Taig arbor blanks are made of it. I was on the Metals- > Online site that the Sherline site points to and they have something > called CF 1018. Is this the same steel?. Also, are the prices at this > site reasonable? Is there a better site that I should be looking at, > or is this site typical of all small-quanity online metal suppliers? > I like how the arbors cut on the lathe so I would like to get more > to make "stuff" out of. Thank You Dave Wagoner Dave, CF = Cold Finished = cold rolled. 1018 is ordinary mild steel. Leaded steels = free machining, such as alloy 12L14 (.15/.35% lead). Goes by many trade names. There are several free machining alloys such as 1212, 1213, 1215 and 1117. 1117 (resulferized) is a good substitute for leaded steel. Rich D. ------- Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:49:25 -0800 From: "Craig Libuse" Subject: Re: Metal Ordering Question Dave, Lead alloy steel or "Lead-loy" (12L14) is used extensively in Sherline tools because it cuts well, takes a nice finish and can be hardened later if you desire. Sherline sells a chuck blank which is a threaded but unfinished hunk of 12L14 steel 2.5" dia. x 1-5/16" as P/N 3070. The #1 Morse Blank P/N 3055 is also made from 12L14 Lead-loy. These will save you some setup time but most people just order a raw hunk and turn it down themselves and save some money. Near the top of the "resources" page at www.sherline.com/resource.htm you will find a list of 7 or 8 other suppliers of metal in small quantities in addition to OnLineMetals.com. Shop around. Craig Libuse Sherline ------- [INFO FROM www.rodchuck.com THAT MAKES TWO STAGE DIES FOR THREADING WELDING ROD FOR 2-56 AND 4-40 FOR SMALL MODEL AIRCRAFT PUSHRODS] What are welding rods? Welding rods are lengths of mild steel that are used to fill the welds created in ox-acetylene welding or a type of welding known as "gas shield arc welding". Generically the rods are called "filler metals". We have had a number of people question the quality of these rods. These rods are very carefully controlled in their composition and quality. The reason is that they are used by bonded welders that must certify the quality of the work. What types are there? Rods typically come in 1/16", 3/32", 1/8" and 3/16". For use with RODCHUCK, we are interested only in the 3/32" for 2-56 and 1/8" for 4-40. Pick up some of the other sizes they are quite useful in other applications. The most useful material is mild steel called ER 70S-3. The secret decoder ring is shown in the attached diagram for what this means. The important number is the 70, which denotes 70,000 psi of tensile strength. Without a lecture in strength of materials suffice it to say this is good. ER 70S-3 ER MEANS Electrode or Rod 70 Tensile in ksi S Solid -3 Chemical composition and shielding gas ER 80S-D2 ER MEANS Electrode or Rod 80 Tensile in ksi S Solid -D2 Chemical composition ------- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 01:22:02 -0400 From: Stan Stocker Subject: Re: Milling Cheap Steel beepeenacanx~xxaol.com wrote: > Any tips for getting a good cut on steel conduit? I am using the milling attatchment on the lathe to do some work on a landing gear for a 1/2 size airplane. Simple work, some 2" slots , nothing major, but they must be SMOOTH for good operation. I am getting fairly good results going thru one wall at a time ( all the way thru)- but I get some tearing(?) along the edges that must be filed off, as any burrs will interfere with the action of the gear. Should i not try to go all the way through in 1 pass? I am going slow at the slow pulley...the inside of the cut is Very smooth... What am I doing wrong (besides using the conduit!!)? Thanks, Brad < Brad; Thanks, I now have a new material to put on my list of things not to consider for use in projects unless there is just nothing else available! To see what you were talking about, an 8 inch piece of 1/2 inch EMT was cut off and mounted up using a V block in my homemade screwless vise. My mill is a Grizzly G1006, about 660 lbs worth with 2 HP. Using a 3/16 two flute EM in a 3/8 EM holder, I burned the sucker in a heartbeat at about 1000 RPM. Switched to a 1/4 inch 2 flute EM in the same holder and dropped the speed to 465 RPM. One pass was made at about 10 thou depth to get through the skin, subsequent passes at about 15 thou per pass, using heavy cutting oil. Once the slot was cut through, a minor deburring with a swivel deburring tool cleaned it up just fine. The work wanted to grab and bang about to the point I snugged the gibs more than typically needed, and 30 to 50 thou cuts in steel are not a rarity around here. Nasty stuff to machine! Based on this, I don't know if you can get a rigid enough setup using a lathe with milling attachment to get good results. Having to deburr work after milling is pretty common, but this stuff is a pig. Looking at the piping on the surface, I thing the material has lots of work hardened spots from the drawing process. The swarf was nasty little crumbly bits of stuff, not the sort of swarf I typically get in milling operations. As the cutting was consistently lousy throughout the cut, embrittlement of the surface from the galvanizing process or pickling isn't a likely cause, it just seems a lousy material to work with. Perhaps a nice 6061 aluminum tubing would be a better bet if you can get a thick enough wall to meet your loading requirements. Combined with some nice squishy tires to reduce the shock if you set it down hard it might work, but my largest RC plane only has a 6 foot wingspan, so you're out of my league! From your post I'm guessing this is a sprung suspension, if the calculations were made based on the weight of steel tubing you would likely have to change your spring rate or tension a bit. If anyone has some tips on machining this stuff please share them, I'm sure curious. Thanks, Stan ------- Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 22:37:27 -0700 From: "Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein" Subject: Re: Milling Cheap Steel I just ran a test as well on 1/2" conduit. Using a new, sharp HSS endmill (made in USA) 5/16" dia. I plunged into the conduit and cut a 2" slot. I flooded the work with "Cool Tool II", my current oil of choice, and I had absolutely no problems. This was running on the 3rd step of the pulley, 1K+ rpms, on the new Taig mill (beefy column). So it seems that possibly: 1) Perhaps the piece of conduit I had was of a better quality than what you guys were using (possible, as my scraps may be over 5-10 years old). 2) Are you guys using sharp, new, endmills? 3) The oil I'm using may help (although Stan used pipe oil, so?) I bet it's #1, and there is really crappy conduit these days. Perhaps a tour of the local scrap yard will net a better quality of conduit, or? See our web pages http://www.casco.net/~felice ------- Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 22:39:01 -0700 From: "Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein" Subject: Re: Milling Cheap Steel Having reread the post, part of the problem is that the conduit thins and leaves a large burr - after deburring, the slot should be clean. Do you have one of those nifty swivel deburring tools? See our web pages http://www.casco.net/~felice ------- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 02:57:18 -0400 From: Stan Stocker Subject: Re: Milling Cheap Steel Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein wrote: >I just ran a test as well on 1/2" conduit. Using a new, sharp HSS endmill >(made in USA) 5/16" dia. I plunged into the conduit and cut a 2" slot. I >flooded the work with "Cool Tool II", my current oil of choice, and I had >absolutely no problems. This was running on the 3rd step of the pulley, >1K+ rpms, on the new Taig mill (beefy column). So it seems that possibly: >1) Perhaps the piece of conduit I had was of a better quality than what >you guys were using (possible, as my scraps may be over 5-10 years old). >2) Are you guys using sharp, new, endmills? >3) The oil I'm using may help (although Stan used pipe oil, so?) >I bet it's #1, and there is really crappy conduit these days. Perhaps a >tour of a local scrap yard will net better quality conduit, or? Nick; I hope it's that your conduit is a better quality, although the stuff I used is probably 5+ years old. The 1/4 inch EM used isn't new, but looks to be in good shape, no rounded corners, sharp to the fingertip, and cuts well in other chunks of steel. It may well be that it isn't sharp enough to give good results on such thin stuff. I'll have a try with a new or freshly sharpened one Tuesday. The 5/16 EM you used would also be a bit more rigid than a 1/4 inch one, by a bit more than 25% as a rough approximation. The oil used was Mitee cutting oil, which typically gives pretty good results on steel. While flood isn't available here, the cutter was running in a nice pool of oil, not just a film. While playing with this stuff Tuesday, I'll try both Tapmagic and some edge lube and pass on the results. From your posting am I correct in thinking that you plunged through and then cut the slot in a single pass at 1K RPM? I can replicate your conditions first to see if we get similar results, or if in fact we have very different bits of stuff at our respective shops. Did you mount the conduit flat to the table or do the vblock and vise thing? I may have allowed some flex to get into the mix, that would go along with the scorched 3/16 EM that resulted from my first test cut. My eyes were telling me that I was into a chatter cut, but the ears and hand on the wheels didn't detect a problem. I think the 3/16 EM may have flexed and tried to self feed a bit hard. I have very little practice milling thin walled tubing, about the only tubing I've milled is for telescope piers. Quite a bit thicker and larger than 1/2 inch EMT. Stan ------- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 07:50:57 EDT From: beepeenacanx~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Milling Cheap Steel I think that my problem with the conduit is the conduit itself.....I, too have results varying from piece to piece. The results are good enough, but not Perfect. Thank you all for the help!! My tool is the 3/16"er that came w/the TAIG. The inside edge(the important one) is mirror smooth....but ... I think the steel idea is going to be scrapped for a 3/4" or 1" aluminum rod in a 1" or 1 1/4 " tube (alum. 1/8" wall.). Much easier!!! I will keep yall posted, and thanks again, esp. to those who chucked up a piece!!!!!!!!!Brad Yes the gear has a big spring for shock....and mushy 10" tires. The slot limits movement and prevents rotation. ------- Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 08:19:03 -0700 From: "Marcus & Eva" Subject: Re: Cutting tool steel with a sherline mill Original Message From: jmorrphdx~xxscripps.edu Date: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 > I have to make a replacement part for a lathe from tool steel >to replace a worn out 9" long pinion about 7/8" in diameter. What >should I do to anneal the metal before cutting gear teeth along >its length? How do I machine tool steel and what sort of cutter >should I use? This will be either A-2 or O-2 drill rod. >I have posted essentially the same question on the home_machinist >group, but this list is more active. Any worthwhile suggestions >are appreciated. Thanks, Jim Hi Jim: The tool steels you describe come already annealed. A2 is a better choice than O1 for applications in which stability in and after heat-treat is important. A2 is also good for abrasive conditions but it is not so good for shock resistance. What you want is an air-hardening steel (best stability). H13, 420M, S7 are all good alternatives, and are readily available. (try begging at a local toolroom) You must also ask yourself if you really need a fully hardened part. You could, for example use a prehardened steel such as 4140 or P20. It will be harder to machine, but it will require no heat treatment, so you save both the cost and the bother. You also will avoid the potential problem of distortion. Another alternative is to machine your part from Leadloy or mild steel and get it case hardened. With regard to cutters, HSS tools will do just fine on this job. My preference would be a home-made flycutter. Commercial gear cutters are too limited, too expensive, and too difficult to get for a one-off job. They also don't cut worth a hoot on a Sherline. I'd rough out all the teeth within 0.005" or so, and then grind a new finishing tool and just kiss the part to clean it up. Use Rapidtap or something similar on it and it will work beautifully. The hardest part will be getting a decent profile on the flycutter. A Dremel tool, some patience and a decent template (use the old gear if you can) will be your best friends here. Cheers Marcus ------- Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 18:33:07 -0700 From: "Marcus" Subject: Re: Re: Cutting tool steel with a sherline mill Hi Jack: Air hardening steels will retain their altered crystal structure, and thus their hardness, even when cooled relatively slowly (in air). This means that the stresses will be less on the steel; consequently, it will distort less. That in turn, means that you will have to do less rework on the steel part after heat treat, in order to get it back to dimensional spec. ------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 22:50:45 -0700 From: "Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein" Subject: Re: one other question [TAIG BLANK ARBORS] The blank arbors (arbours to our commonwealth friends) are made of Austrailian (!) free machining steel, which is not stricly hardenable. You can use Kasenit or other case hardening powders to put a hard case on the surface, but you risk warping the arbor when quenching - usually arbors are ground after being hardened, and made oversize on account of that. I wouldn't bother hardening it. See our web pages http://www.cartertools.com/nfhome.html ------- From: "John Welch" Date: Sun Jul 22, 2001 7:44 pm Subject: Re: [atlas_craftsman] Metal Sources >Hello group...Anyone have handy an email site or other sources for >round bar stock, bronze, brass, cast iron ...etc >I have checked Metal Express but after going into deep shock over the >price of bronze, I think I need to check around....Definitely need to >get my skills up to speed before I start turning that stuff! Thanks...Ron Try ASAP Source in Ann Arbor Michigan, they have an on-line site, and ordering, and will ship almost anywhere. http://www.asapsource.com/ John Welch ------- From: doogdoogx~xxh... Date: Mon Jul 23, 2001 5:06 pm Subject: Re: Metal Sources Aloha Ron, check out these places: 1) www.shapirosupply.com St. Louis Missouri 2) www.midlandexpressmetals.com 3) www.execpc.com/~metal Mahalo, Howard ------- From: Randy Gordon-Gilmore Date: Thu Jun 28, 2001 5:45 pm Subject: Re: [taigtools] Tungsten Hi Jim, At 08:59 PM 6/28/2001 -0000, you wrote: >Anyone know where I can get a short (2") length of Tungsten rod? I've >looked all over. Thanks. What diameter, Jim? TIG welding electrodes are largely tungsten, with other minor alloying additions. Up to about 1/8" diameter. Also, custom dart makers generally use tungsten for the bodies, but I don't know if it's pure tungsten or tungsten-copper alloy. Best regards, Randy ------- From: Tom Benedict Date: Fri Jun 29, 2001 7:31 am Subject: Re: [taigtools] Tungsten > Anyone know where I can get a short (2") length of Tungsten rod? I've > looked all over. Thanks. Actually, yeah! Check at your local movie theaters. Find out what kind of projector they use. See if any of them use arc lamps rather than filament lamps. A friend of a friend who's a projectionist gave me one half of an electrode pair. It's a 1" diameter tungsten rod about 2" long. I wrote to the list about it the day after he gave it to me (close to a year ago). Of course he didn't tell me what it WAS, just said, "Hey, can you cut this?" So I chucked it up and proceeded to dull every tool I had except for a diamond grinding burr that I used on a toolpost grinder. Only tool I had that'd make a mark. I spent the rest of that shop session resharpening all my lathe tools. ;) Neat material! Tom ------- From: Alison & Jim Gregg Date: Sat Jun 30, 2001 4:51 am Subject: Re: [taigtools] Re: Tungsten Sorry to be difficult here but Tungsten metal is NOT particularly difficult to cut or machine!!! At least in the more commonly available forms. Now Tungsten CARBIDE - what the cutting tools are made of, is something else! Most of the comments re Tungsten that I've seen so far are clearly referring to Tungsten carbide, or confusing the Carbide with Tungsten metal. How do I know this - well I spent about 6 months working with the stuff establishing a small manufacturing set up for a client who was custom making competition darts,-( Darts as in throwing at a dartboard). We were usinc 2 Myford 3.5" centre height lathes (7" swing in US terms), and an EMCO (Austrian) CNC 5 - 5" swing CNC lathe which is a just slightly bigger Unimat 3/4, with CNC. Not a very rigid industrial type lathe. We used Tungsten carbide tipped tooling, and ordinary HSS tooling for form tools, and it worked. Mind you, Tungsten is NOT a nice material to cut - you must keep the tool sharp, and cutting at all times - if it rubs the edge goes in seconds, the Tungsten grabs and the tool starts ripping chunks out of the job. Sharp tools and high speeds will give you an acceptably good finish. The Tungsten we used was supplied in short rods from 1/4" to 5/8" diameter about 2.5" long in a choice of alloys - ranging from about 98% Tungsten through 95%, 90%, 85% and 80% - I believe the alloying component was steel. The reason Tungsten is used for darts is its weight - as someone pointed out it is darned heavy. It has a specific gravity of about 20. - Lead is about 11 - so it is nearly twice as heavy as lead for a given size. It works like a rather nasty work hardening steel. I would not use it from choice but it is much better than people fear. If the original person who asked is looking for a piece 1/2" or less in dia I may have one in the material stock. Jim Gregg. ------- From: leon_heller... Date: Tue Jul 10, 2001 7:39 am Subject: Cheap metal I've just been to a scrap metal yard near me, to see if I could pick up anything useful. There were piles of old car engines, transmissions, etc. and lots of machining off-cuts. Most of them were too big for the Taig, but I picked up a couple of 3" dia. rounds of MS, and a length of Al I-section channel for 2 UK pounds. They didn't bother to weigh them, so I should have taken some more. I looked around for old machine tools, but all I could find was a massive 3-jaw chuck, about 10" across. It's a cheap way to build up a stock of metal that might come in useful one day. Leon ------- From: J.C.Beech... Date: Tue Jul 10, 2001 8:55 am Subject: Re: Cheap metal You need to be very carefull picking metal (Steel/Mild) up from scrap. You don't know what the composition is, or how its been heat treated. Best source of high quality alloy I have found are, old lorry or marine engine pistons. Great stuff for small IC engines Joules ------- From: "Craig Libuse" Date: Wed Aug 1, 2001 6:40 pm Subject: Re: [sherline] metal source Gordon, You might try a local machine shop. About every small town has one. They probably have boxes of cutoffs they are sending out for scrap that you could pick through. They can also point you to stuff that is easy to work with. If you try a local scrap yard you might end up with something too tough to cut. See if you can get some 12L14 "leadloy". It machines easily and can be hardened if need be. If you want to buy small quantities of known brass, aluminum, steel, etc. by mail, see our resources pages at www.sherline.com/resource.htm for the names of a number of suppliers that have no minimum order. Craig Libuse Sherline Products ------- Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 02:45:13 -0000 From: luisguillermo98x~xxyahoo.com Subject: Re: Suggestions for a deep grooving tool In sherline, "Dan Statman" wrote: > I make many repetitive cuts into aircraft grade titanium on my Sherline > lathe. One of my common cuts is a 1-mm wide square groove that is 1-mm > deep. I have been grinding my own grooving tools from 5% Co HSS 1/4" > blanks. This was fine when I was making so many parts. But now I find > that I need a tool with a longer life, and it just takes too long > to make the grooving tools by hand. Can somebody > suggest a CHEAP 3/8" holder (I have the 3/8" tool post holder > already) and type of grooving insert (coated carbide) that will work for > this operation. Ideally the groove should really be between 0.038" and > 0.039", which is slightly less than 1-mm. I could probably get away > with a 1-mm insert if that is all that is available. > My other specification is that the tool must allow very close proximity > to the chuck face, as I tend to work in this area almost exclusively. > I appreciate any and all of your feedback. I would like to spend not > more than about $75. > Thanks, Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs > http://members.rennlist.com/statmandesigns I want to know if you had success working with titanium. How long it took to make the slot you mention above? ------- Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 01:51:17 -0400 From: "Dan Statman" Subject: Re: Re: Suggestions for a deep grooving tool Plenty of success, check out my website in my signature line. I purchased a grooving insert tool holder out of the J&L catalog, it was less than $50. The inserts are $12 apiece, but you get 2 cutting surfaces per insert. Works real well, and I never need to grind those annoying grooving tools myself. Nothing wrong with grinding your own for 10-20 grooves, but for hundreds of them the inserts are the ONLY way to go. Be careful with the titanium chips they are EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE!!!!!! I cannot stress this enough, you cannot be too cautious when machining titanium on a small lathe like the Sherline where the chips are always entangled near the cutting surface which produces extreme heat. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs http://members.rennlist.com/statmandesigns ------- Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 01:58:44 -0400 From: "Dan Statman" Subject: Re: Re: Cutting fluids? I machined my entire Ph.D. apparatus out of 316 stainless. However, I did not use a Sherline lathe. 6/4 Titanium is similar, but it takes some practice to know the limitations of the Sherline. It will be obvious when you have exceeded those limitations, as things will break (tools, chucks, safety glasses, etc.). How deep is your slot going to be? I would purchase about 10 four flute endmills that have a 1/8" shank and a 0.015" cutting diameter. these will flex enough and give you about a 0.018" channel. If you need exact, then take practice cuts and measure what you get and adjust from there. If you cut 0.005" depth at a time you can cut about as fast as you can turn the handwheel (within reason, it's not a race). Your arm will be tired cutting 12" slots 0.005" depth at a time. You will break the first couple of endmills very quickly, but then you will dull the others before they break once you get the feel. the 0.015" endmills are about $15 ea. If you have other titanium specific questions that do not apply to Sherlines please feel free to e-mail me privately. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs http://members.rennlist.com/statmandesigns ------- Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 08:43:40 -0400 From: "Dan Statman" Subject: Re: Titanium...From an old-timer... was Suggestions for a deep grooving tool Original Message From: "Craig Chamberlin" > Dan, Luis, > To machine titanium easily, you must use carbide, and cool the part and > the tool with liquid nitrogen. Not freeze it, but cool it down until it > begins cutting nicely. This I learned from an old-time machinist, who > had done a lot of titanium. > I haven't had occasion to do it, but have seen it done. It is an art, > especially on a Sherline. Other liquid gases would work, perhaps even > carbon dioxide, but I would stick with the inert ones. FWIW, Craig Your use of the term inert as it applies to nitrogen is very interesting. Most people would assume that nitrogen is inert as there is only a single metallic element which can be oxidized (in the transfer of electrons type of oxidation, has nothing to do with oxygen gas) by nitrogen in the diatomic state (the naturally occurring form). It just so happens that titanium is that very element. This is one of the reasons it burns so well in air, since the major component of air is nitrogen gas (~79%). The result of this burning of Ti in nitrogen is the compound titanium nitride or TiN, which is used as a tool coating because of its mechanical and heat transfer properties. Here ends the chemistry lesson for the day. On a practical applications note, I have never used liquid nitrogen as a coolant for a machining process. It is just absolutely and completely unnecessary on a Sherline sized project. Carbide tooling works well, but is also not necessary. If you are patient and a good tool grinder, normal HSS tools will work, but 5% cobalt HSS works really quite well. For drilling holes in 6/4 titanium I have not found solid carbide drills to work well at all (as a function of their cost), and cobalt/HSS cuts really easily. If you plan to cut titanium all of the time then buy some good carbide inserts for general turning. I cut only titanium, and I cut it everyday on my Sherline machines. I have never cut any other material, except when making a holding fixture. I have had my 4400 lathe for 3 years, and it is enduring the torture quite well. I never use coolant, and occasionally I will use a cutting oil, but sparingly as it tends to fill my basement with smoke. I really only use the oil when grooving or parting. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs http://members.rennlist.com/statmandesigns P.S. at atmospheric pressure carbon dioxide sublimates and is not available in the liquid state. That is why it is referred to as "dry ice." And carbon dioxide (the most oxidized form of carbon) is an inert gas for virtually all processes (except a few high pressure and high temperature applications, and plant photosynthesis). ------- Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 06:30:01 -0700 From: "Dale L. Thomas" Subject: Re: Titanium...From an old-timer...was Suggestions for a deep grooving tool Just to throw in my 2 cents. When I was in the Navy in the early Seventys a sales rep from a tool company came to our shop showing us how his wonderful carbide tools could cut through the titanium parts we were always having to machine. My boss who was not impressed showed him how well his HSS drill bits and cutters could cut it like butter. The salesman promptly left the shop! We all had a great laugh! HSS works quite well with Titanium. Dale ------- Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 10:20:16 -0500 From: "Rich D." Subject: Re: Source for brass? kevin.sedotax~xxps.net wrote: > I'm looking for some brass tubing. I need something with 1" OD and > about 3/4" ID. This will be internal threaded. I've looked at McMaster > -Carr but the only tubing they have in Brass is thin wall. They have > what they call cored round pieces in Bronze but I'd like to stick with > brass. This will be used for a part on a musical instrument. I know I > can get a rod of 1" and bore it out but I would have thought I could > find some sort of thick wall tubing. Anyone know of a source for > this material? Kevin, If 1.05" OD will do there is 3/4" brass pipe. Also 1" decorative brass rails (foot rails/hand rails) can be found. I just got a scrap of 3/4" pipe to make a 1" whistle from. There are many online mailorder metal suppliers. RichD ------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:36:36 -0500 From: "Dan Statman" Subject: Re: Link wanted [sherline group] Original Message -- From: Al Schoepp Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 12:36 pm > Dan, very nice looking work. How do you get the inlays to stay in the > rings? Do you have any difficulty cutting Titanium with the > sherline? What type of endmill and speed (rpm and feed) do you > find works best? > Al > http://members.rogers.com/schoepp4887/ > At 12:12 PM 11/12/2001 -0500, you wrote: > >Joachim,I believe you are talking about my necklace that is surface > carved out of a solid piece of titanium. I am using a CNC Sherline mill > with a CNC rotary table 4th axis. Picture can be found at: > >http://members.rennlist.com/statmandesigns/Pendant01.jpg > >let me know if you have any further questions. > >Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com Al, I do not discuss my inlay techniques, but I will answer any other questions that you might have. I have had no trouble cutting titanium with a sherline. I do not understand why people would think you couldn't do this. If you have the right cutting tools then the milling machine or lathe does not matter at all. You must go wih very light cuts, generally about 0.005" at a time. My endmills are all solid carbide 4 flute and for surface carved patterns I use a 1/32" ball nose cutter. If I am going to inlay the groove then I use a flat nose cutter. I make multiple passes over the surface to get the carvings to the appropriate depth. I have upgrade the spindle pulleys to the 10,200 RPM maximum sold by Sherline. 2800 RPM is too slow to turn a 1/32" end mill. I do not know the cutter RPM that I use since I have no tachometer, just play with it until it is right. My feed rates are also determined by trial and error and are not accurately measured. It is obvious (at least to me) when the cutter is going to break from too much stress. And at $12-$15 per cutter you learn quickly. Dan ------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:01:12 -0500 From: "Daniel J. Statman" Subject: Re: Re: Hi-Ti - Re: Link wanted I generally cut without a cutting fluid, as it just makes a huge mess. When I do the detailed carvings with the endmill or deep lathe grooving cuts, I use a drop or two of Spray Tap fluid. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com ------- Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 15:53:29 EST From: LouD31M066x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Re: Face Plates I have shyed away from trying to work with cast iron because I've read that castings have a hard shell, impurities like sand and very hard spots due to rapid cooling. I would like very much to hear how to work with cast iron and for that matter any sand cast material on limited power lathe like my atlas 1/3 hp 12x36 and 6x24 1/4 hp. I know the problem is not entirely limited power, light machine and very limited operator experience. It is largely caution about working with a material with a different technique than turning tobin bronze, dupont corian and hot or cold rolled steel. I find execise machines out in trash have in many cases a large partially turned flywheel so cost of an interesting piece of cast iron is usually no more than a quick stop and load in my pick up truck. If you cruise for trash treasures it pays to know the trash collection schedule and to keep an eye peeled both for possible finds and traffic ahead and behind. Would appreciate knowing what techniques work in real world with sand cast materials and castings in general, enough to get started anyway. Louis ------- Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 13:20:03 -0800 From: Rick Kruger Subject: Machining Cast Iron (was: Face Plates) Tough skin and impurities on cast parts surfaces, yes, but it isn't all like that. I've bought several REMs of cast iron from the local tool steel distributor that appears almost extruded and has only a very thin skin if any. These come from long bars of round or rectangular stock, so it probably is extruded to make the bars. Machines very nicely. It does wear out HSS cutters quickly so I use carbide and cut dry, without cutting fluids. Buying steel/CI this is way seems a little spendy ($1/lb.) compared to junkyard steel ($0.25 /lb.) but I can specify what alloy and usually find chunks not much bigger than I need, or I get a bit extra. On getting thru the skin, I've heard make your first cut deep enough to bite all the way thru the skin to good metal will save your cutter. Tough skin/sand/impurities/hard spots may have something to do with the quality of the CI and casting process too. Its very dirty, often cuttings are more like dust. I cover exposed ways to keep the CI cuttings/dust from getting on wear surfaces and clean up with a vacuum and a good wipedown followed by oiling. You might want to wear a dust mask to keep from breathing the dust. Probably doesn't hurt you but it does save collecting all that dust in you nose. I'm no expert, just a dabbler, so take the above with that in mind. Maybe somebody who really knows will chime in. Rick K. Portland, OR ------- Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 21:58:55 -0000 From: walnut_charliex~xxhotmail.com Subject: Re: Face Plates I've never found that there is any problem with a skin on cast iron. Cast iron is quite soft and easy to machine. It is very abrasive and does eat up tool bits. Carbide does hold up the best. For the internal threads on a backing plate a high speed bit is practical to grind. Turning cast iron slow seems to work best. I've made several of them on a 10" x 24" ATLAS lathe with no problem. You just have to go slow. The fine grain cast iron is the nicest to turn. The things like bar bell weights which tend to be low grade sometimes have small voids but hey...its cheap! Walnut Charlie ------- Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 14:42:54 -0800 From: "John Johnson" Subject: Re: Re: Face Plates Louis, Don't be afraid to turn cast iron on your lathe. I have turned all twelve of my Shay steam locomotive wheels which are cast iron, on my 12x36 Craftsman QC lathe with no problem. In fact, I sell the castings through my business, LocoGear. The castings that I sell are made by a reputable foundry which has been in business for over 100 years. The iron castings are ductile iron and also have an alloy with Mehannite. This alloy is often used in the manufacture of lathe and mill beds. One of the things that my foundry does to the castings before they go out the door is to sand blast them. This removes all of the foundry sand. I have not found any problems with a hard layer as the foundry takes its time to let the castings cool properly. You are correct that improperly made castings can be big problems. You did not say what castings you intend to turn. If you are having your own patterns cast, then have a long talk with the foundry and work out these details. The 12x36 should be just fine with tuning the castings. I usually take about a .015 to .025 cut with the feed rate at the slowest .0042. I usually run the spindle speed at either 164, 266 or 418 RPM depending on the outside diameter (slower for the larger diameters). I primarily use carbide inserts with a wedge type QC tool post (Phase II, 200 series). Some say to dig in deep on the first pass to get under any surface hardness or impurities. This is good advise if you have "crappy" castings. If you have them made to order like I have, you don't need to bother with that. I have started with very light cuts and not found any problems. Turning cast iron does have some other issues to deal with. Cast iron will come off in nice long chips like CR steel. It rather flakes off. You should be prepared for the dust. I have found that taping the end of the shop-vac hose to the tool post so it can suck in the iron "chips" as they come off really works well. Be careful to clean up after each session to get the iron dust off the lathe ways. It can make a great lapping compound and then wear away your lathe bed if you don't keep it clean. John D.L. Johnson www.LocoGear.com ------- Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 02:05:53 EST From: LouD31M066x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Re: Face Plates My experience with bed frames is they are thin gage and heat treated hard. Difficult to drill even with a cobalt drill. Regular angle iron is meaty and soft enough to drill with any drill. As I get to know material and what it can or can't do for me I get picky or maybe it's old age. I am amazed at what gets thrown out and how useful it can be to my someday projects. I feel I have had a good day when some brass, aluminum, Corian or any potentially useful project material comes my way. Some say I am tighter than bark on a tree,but, I consider it my civic duty to recycle metal from the trash considering the effect on the environment of producing new metal by mining transporting and processing. Best metal I have ever used is tobin bronze propeller shafting from an old marina. Machines like butter and shines like gold at least until it tarnishes. Corian machines very easily. Material comes off in form of a thin continuous ribbon which is a bit of waste disposal problem unless you keep vacuuming as you turn. Louis ------- Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 10:10:52 -0800 From: "Marcus & Eva" Subject: Re: Finish Hi Devin: You need to pick your material properly.The word "steel" encompasses a terrific variety of materials with all kinds of properties. Here's where to start: If you need a good to excellent finish and you care less about strength: Leaded 1214 or "Leadloy as it is often called is the #1 choice. Machines like butter. 303 Stainless is also very good. If you need high strength: 4140, 4340, P20 or other moderately alloyed steels are all good choices. They are supplied both fully annealed or prehardened. They are MUCH tougher to cut and much tougher to get a good finish on just off the lathe. If you need hardened and want to machine after hardening: The best, bar none, is 420M stainless steel. It machines well in the annealed state, goes up to 54 Rockwell C (can just barely be filed) and can be machined to beautiful finishes with carbide tooling in the hard state. If you want really hard: Case hardened mild steel is good, so is A2. (By the way, you can case harden Leadloy too.) A2 will warp much less in hardening than most other hardenable steels, but really needs to be ground for finishing after heat treat. Don't even try to harden it yourself. If you want to harden it yourself: O1 is really the only realistic choice. It hardens easily with a torch, is quenchable in oil so it doesn't warp too badly and will go in excess of 60 Rockwell, so it's hard enough for cutting tools. All of these steels are readily available almost anywhere (that's part of why I picked them for this list). So now, when you pick up that rusty axle shaft at the junkyard, you will be thinking: what the H-- is it really? Can I cut it? Will I get a decent finish? Your choices here will have a FAR greater influence on the result than any tinkering you do with tool angles and coolant choices. The only thing left is tinkering the speeds and feeds; and that's experience driven, so make lots of chips and you'll figure it out pretty quick. Cheers Marcus ------- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 21:08:50 -0500 From: "Daniel J. Statman" Subject: Re: Trying my hand at turning some titanium From: "Van Lupo" To: >Trying my hand at cutting some titanium (Grade 2 for you scientist). Does >anyone have some suggestions on what kind of cutting fluid works best. >Tried some tool and instrument oil using a .040 cutoff tool with reasonable >success but found it still hard to control the feed rate without the bit >starting to bind on the sides from the heat I would guess. Speed and feed >seem extremely critical with this stuff. Used very low speed and tried to >feed aggressively enough but not so much as to over load the motor. Chips >were nice and long curly cues between lateral binding episodes. Interested >in suggestions from the pros! Van Van, I lathe cut all titanium with no cutting fluid. I used to grind my own Cobalt HSS tools, but have since gone to titanium nitride coated carbide insert tooling. I have no problems cutting any grade of titanium on the Sherline, but I prefer to machine grade-5 since it is not as abrasive as grade-2, but it is quite a bit harder. I will use some lubricating tapping oil while parting off and doing surface carvings with miniature endmills, but for normal turning I use nothing. Just watch the tool and part temperatures as titanium has a nasty habit of igniting when you are least ready. Keep your workspace clear of excess chips and keep a bucket of sand and a fire extinguisher nearby. The fire extinguisher is for everything else that catches fire from the titanium, and the sand is for the actual burning titanium. Good luck and be careful especially when polishing with emery cloth. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com ------- Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:05:04 -0600 (CST) From: Tom Benedict Subject: Re: Hardware Store metal stock All the stuff I've ever picked up from the hardware store has been 1018 steel. The flat bars are almost exclusively hot rolled steel, so they've got scale all of them. (That scale will eat cutting tools for lunch, so be sure to get it off before machining it.) The round bar is almost exclusively cold rolled steel (CRS). Great for turning, but getting a nice surface finish can be tricky. It tends to look like a rat chewed on it unless your tools are dead on center, sharp as a razor, and have a slight nose radius (1/64" or so). Tom ------- Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 10:40:30 +0100 From: Tony Jeffree Subject: Re: Re: Diemaking & Moldmaking Titanium can burn just fine - titanium dioxide (the end product of burning titanium) is used extensively as a white pigment in paints. Most (if not all) elements that can exist as a stable oxide can be made to burn under the right conditions. Iron burns just great if you get it fine enough - wire wool will light from a match. Aluminium can be made to burn - Thermite is an example where this happens. Take a look at this weblink for some info from the horse's mouth on how to keep safe when playing with titanium: http://www.alleghenytechnologies.com/titanium/pages/help/tech15.htm These guys should know what they are talking about - they manufacture the stuff. Note that at the bottom of the page, they say that it is possible to make an explosive mixture of titanium dust with air if you get the dust fine enough. I bet that would be spectacular to watch from a *very* safe distance... Regards, Tony ------- Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 13:55:26 -0000 From: "duwayne" Subject: Re: What is ZA12 In Metal_Shapers, toolroomtrustee wrote: > A comment about DuWayne's Adept 2 shaper clone mentions this: > > ZA12 What is it? Larry Murray It is a Zinc Aluminum alloy about 88% zinc, 12% Aluminum, and a little copper thrown in also. It is supposed to machine and have similar properties to cast iron, and pours at about 900F. DuWayne ------- Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 19:34:16 -0000 From: "volzmechatronic" Subject: Re: What is ZA12 Larry-- To see the specs on ZA12 click on this URL tag: http://www.purityalloys.com ; once there click on "zinc die casting". ZA12 is an improvement over the older Zamac zinc alloys and is castable also by gravity pouring as well as by die casting. Purity Alloys, a Canadian company, is reasonably priced and sells in small quantities to hobbyists--payment includesdirect shipping. One of our Houston HMSC members purchased some alloy from Purity earlier this year. If you want to brew your own, contact Ray C. this list: he's got a "buzzard nuker" in which he mixes-'n-melts his "witch- zinc": "37 pounds of zinc hinges from off the squeeking doors of a haunted house on C-adaver Hill, a dozen bat wings dusted with aluminum powder, a suitcase of consumed National Lube of Texas...and....". I suspect that ZA12 would also make good change gears for lathes. Atlas ( http://www.clausing-industrial.com ) equipped most of their hobbyist size lathes with zinc-alloy die cast gears. The ZA12 alloy has better strength characteristics than Zamac and, possibly, may not have inherited the curse of intergranular corrosion cancer from the latter. I imagine that they could be directly cast into FULLY BAKED AND DRIED plaster molds as ZA12 has little shrinkage and retains good definition when molded. Alternatively, gear blanks could be cast and machined as John and I intend to possibly do...after my extruded 6061 aluminium rounds experiments. Art (Houston) ------- Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 15:24:27 -0500 From: "Ray Ethridge" Subject: Re: Re: What is ZA12 Art, ZA12 does have a tad of shrinkage, something on the order of 1/8" per foot. If you try to cast gears with the original as a master you will probably be making undersized gears. Whether it will be enough to matter I don't really know, but having seen functional gears with heavy wear I bet they would be usable. A 3" gear would only shrink about .030 so you may get by with it. But casting the blanks and machining may be the best solution. And by the way I have been experimenting with the recipe a little. I tried substituting gopher toenails for the bat wings, with the mosquito problem I want to leave the bats alone so they can do their job. So far the gopher cuticles seem to be work just fine. But when I substituted some Coors cans for the Lone Star ones the alloy was pretty weak and crumbly. Ray Ethridge ------- Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 20:52:51 -0000 From: "volzmechatronic" Subject: Re: What is ZA12: Shrinking Gears To Size? Ray--That poses an interesting question, that I'm going to have to ponder. Of course, when die casting, the molds are designed using a shrinkage rule to compensate for expectable shrinkage in the casting. That's how Atlas cast their gears--probably took several renditions until they got the molds just right. The question is this: if ONLY off-the- shelf standard cutters were used, could a pattern be cut with the next larger cutter DP size, a plaster mold made, and then the gear cast would (magically?) shrink to the proper size? Would a DP14 shrink to DP16 size...???? Where's my calculator???? Now, if we could only get a mix of lead and...to shrink into a bar of gold...heck, everyone would be taking that great leap forward, even if their backyards were 'squitoe infected, buzzard-nuking every bit of lead they could find. And then, that old WW2 adage of "What ja gawking at? Pull in your neck, the guv-ments looking for rubber." could be updated to "Better get your rear end into gear, the guv-ments looking for lead." :-) Art ------- Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 13:39:37 -0500 (CDT) From: Tom Benedict Subject: Re: turning titanium On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, rtracing7 wrote: > i have never tried this and was wandering if or what special tools and > any other info that you can give me. i am going to try in turn a shaft > down to 2.5mm and then try in thread each end. any help would be > greatly appreciated (tools,speeds etc....) Turns out on a lathe the size of the Taig, HSS tooling works better than carbide. The temps generated in using carbide tooling are enough to make the titanium chips ignite. (This is both from stuff I've read and from first-hand experience.) The big thing you're trying to avoid with titanium is heat. The chips really honestly will catch fire. Problem is, titanium work-hardens almost faster than stainless. What this means is you need to use a fairly low speed, fairly heavy feed, and use sharp sharp sharp tooling. If at any point your tool starts to rub, the titanium will work-harden in seconds, and the resulting friction can start a fire. (Quick aside: The fires I ran into were pretty easy to handle. Keep your lathe clear of chips and swarf, and let the fire burn out if one starts. If it's risking your tools, take the toolholder off the lathe and put it somewhere where the fire can burn out. Mine were all small fires.) As far as speeds went, I think I wound up using my slowest speed. But again, I was cutting 1" bar. 2.5mm would probably be a little faster. Even so, I'm guessing that it'd be on the slow end of the range. I've never cut thread in titanium. Can't help you there. I'd guess use lots of tapping fluid and treat it like stainless. Tom ------- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 21:39:46 EST From: LouD31M066x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: OT; A material question.... dswrx~xxwebtv.net wrote: >I just got to do my first cuts on my newly acquired Grizzly Mini-mill. I >am machining a part made from 6010 Aluminum stock. I seem to be getting >a ragged cut. (pushing up metal ahead on the cutter). >Is 6010 difficult to machine? (or is the machinist to blame?) 8-) >Turning it on my lathe went very well. What should the spindle speed be? Aluminum in general is sticky to mill. Formula rpm = (cs x4)/dia yields high rpm. and is not realistic outside speciality machining shops. Are you using 2 flute or 4 flute mill? 2 flute clears ships easier but you must slow rate of advance as you are cutting with half as many edges. Some alloy and heat treatment make for easier machining but clearing chips always troublesome. If you have small vacuum with suction hose try that to keep up with chaff ( I have done this while machining Corian a real source of high volume chaff.) Louis ------- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 19:55:19 -0800 (PST) From: t t Subject: Re: OT; A material question.... use conventional milling techniques for roughing cuts and "climb milling" for finish cuts. Climb milling cuts should be no more than .003"-.006" depth of cut. Put a slight amount of drag on table w/locks so that the cutter doesn't suck work into it. LIGHT CUTS WHEN CLIMB MILLING. This should take care of your ragged surface finish. Good luck. Let me know how you make out. Anthony ------- Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 22:19:02 -0800 From: "JAMES BEGGEROW" Subject: Re: Re: Having problems cutting copper on Taig mill Robbin, Copper as you know is a soft gummy material nad will tend to pile up on the flutes and requires a good amount of coolant to lubricate the tool also the tool should have a fair amount of top rake, take a look at the hi-shear end mills I think they have a 60 deg helix angle they will shear the material this. Take lite cuts and start with lite feeds and a good cutting oil, I use mobilmet omicron oil it costs about 35.00 for five gallons and will not stain the copper and produces good tool life. I have a swiss automatic screw machine and make copper tips for metal spraying machines by the thousands. Jim ------- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 16:30:17 -0000 From: "j0hn_0ls0n" Subject: Re: Having problems cutting copper on Taig mill Thanks for all the help. I finally got through the entire cut without breaking a bit. What I did was turn down the RPM on the spindle to 5000, turn up the feed rate to 20ipm and ramp into the material -.01. This worked great but took 3 hours. It is now time to go back and see if I can do -.05 or better to cut down the cut time. I see what I was doing before was wrong. The copper was being pushed around like butter because the spindle RPM was too high. The only thing I do not understand is the broken end mills were never hot and copper was never imbedded in the flutes. Thanks again. John ------- Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 13:40:17 -0000 From: "kvec1" Subject: cutting titanium i would like to use a slitting saw to cut a 2" long slit in 0.040 titanium sheet stock. thickness would be .032". what would be the recommended number of teeth and rpm to run the saw at? any advise on this subject would be most appreicated as i've already burnt one saw. ------- Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:53:55 -0500 From: "Dan Statman" Subject: Re: cutting titanium Use an endmill. Solid Carbide. Preferably TiAlN coated, but TiN coated or uncoated will also work. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com ------- Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:24:39 -0800 (PST) From: rodger pease Subject: Re: Re: Weight? Might be a little too late to reply to this but... A handy little trick that I learned (too long ago to remember when) was, if you want to know how much a steel plate or sheet (whatever) weighs, just remember 0.283. That is what a cubic inch of mild steel weighs. Then just take the basic dimensions and multiply them out (example: 1/4" x 5" x 10" = 12.5 cubic inches x .283 = 3.5375 pounds) to get cubic inches and use the 0.283 factor. This will give you the approximate weight for almost any steel piece. [For most people, it shouldn't make much difference whether 304 is "slightly" denser than 316 (or mild steel for that matter). As long as your using steel, there isn't enough difference in weight to "make a rat's A--). That is unless your are doing "rocket science" or you just "have" to be that precise. If you do, you probably should already know how to do all of this anyway.] Obviously, if you are using steel "shapes" (non-flat pieces), then the calculations get somewhat trickier. You might need to know a few more formulas to obtain the weight of rounds or tubes (or whatever), but the weight of a cubic inch of steel is still .283 (rounded) pounds. If the part has holes in it, you also have to "deduct" the correct amount of each "hole" to obtain the final weight, but again.......a cubic inch is still the same. Try it.........it works. Regards, Rodger ------- Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 11:36:55 +0100 From: "j.c.gerber" Subject: Re: Re: Weight? The factor 0.283 given by Rodger is correct and is using the specific weight of 0.785 found in all books and taught at school. In the metallurgy we are using a specific weight of 8 instead. From experience and all the warm and cold rolling tolerances, it is much closer to the reality. It is amazing, in particular with steel sheets, how close to the effective weighed weight one is coming. For those interested by the various formulas, I compiled some in an Excel sheet to calculate the weight either from inches or millimeters with the result either in kilos or pounds for steel sheets, flats, square bars, strips and round bars. The Excel map can be found in the Group files: "Calculating Steel Weights". Merry Chrismas to all members of the group Jean-Claude, Switzerland www.homestead.com/turnandmill ------- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 13:39:55 -0800 From: "Marcus & Eva" Subject: Re: Turning Bronze [sherline] At 11:34 AM 1/4/2003 EST, you wrote: > > I need to turn and bore a piece of bronze round to be used as a main > > bearing in a small steam engine. I can't seem to get a nice smooth > > finish using a c-2 carbide cutting tool. Would appreciate any > > information on feed/speed, whether or not to use cutting oil, > > whatever. Thanks in advance. JoeB January 04, 2003 "Orrin B. Iseminger" wrote: > Try using a nice, sharp HSS tool and a slow feed on the final pass. > I've never found cutting oil to be necessary for bronze. > I'm an advocate of HSS tooling for the HSM. After rough sharpening on the > bench grinder, bring them to a keen edge on an oil stone. I start with a > Carborundum stone and finish up with a hard Arkansas. > At the first sign of losing the keen edge, touch it up with a 1/2" X 1/2" > abrasive "stick." On a full sized lathe you don't even to take the tool > off the lathe. With a Sherline, you'll probably do better if you take the > tool off. Orrin A lot depends on the grade of bronze we're talking about. There are dozens...each has different properties. The toughest are some of the aluminum and manganese bronzes. They tend to make long stringy chips and are often yellow in colour like brass. Some cannot be cut without carbide on a really rigid machine tool, and warp all over the place. Others, such as leaded tin bronzes and phosphor bronzes are free machining and make crumbly little chips like cast iron. These can be easily machined with HSS tools and are stable when cut. Bearing bronzes are often a grade called "Oilite". This is a sintered (makes it porous to retain oil) phosphor bronze I believe, and should be cut dry. It will not machine to a shiny finish like most metals you are used to. You want to aim to get it smooth and to proper size. Ignore the "not shininess" of it ...that's not really achievable with this grade. Hope this helps. Cheers Marcus ------- Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 00:54:27 -0000 From: "crankdisk " Subject: Re: Turning Bronze I was just turning a bronze bearing a few minutes ago. I used the advice from the old South Bend book "How to Run a Lathe", which recommends a round-nosed tool with no side or back rake. It is looks just like a threading tool, but the nose is slightly rounded. It produced a very smooth but not shiny surface. I don't know the exact bronze type, but it is from an old bearing and appears to be the oil- filled 'sintered bronze'. It seems very hard and chattered and had a rough surface when I used a regular side tool. Give it a try, you'll only be out a few minutes of sharpening time. Bill ------- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 09:15:52 -0000 From: "timgoldstein " Subject: Re: Machining Anodized Aluminum In sherlinex~xxyahoogroups.com, glee wrote: > I have several rack chassis that I was thinking of getting rid of. These > have sone heavy duty panels made from 1/8" and 1/4" black anodized Al. > I'm curious to know if this material is worth keeping for machining > purposes someday? I don;t have an appreciation for how hard > Anodizing is, so I don't know what it will do to the tooling, -Eric It is aluminum oxide so it is actually pretty hard and abrasive stuff. But the layer that is there is so thin that you cut through it like it is not there. I have not machined a huge amount of anodized aluminum, but what I have done cut fine and had no adverse affect on my tooling. Tim [Denver CO] Sherline Products at Deep Discount Mach1 & DeskCNC with Credit Card ordering Contact me for discounts on DeskCNC & Sherline bundles www.KTMarketing.com/Sherline ------- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 10:13:14 -0500 From: "Van Lupo" Subject: RE: Re: Machining Anodized Aluminum For what it's worth, you can remove anodization using sodium hydroxide (lye) also sold under the brand name Red Devil drain cleaner. Just mix up a small weak solution and soak the part for about 5-10 minutes. It will come out looking sooty but you can rinse and wipe the soot off with a paper towel. Be sure to rinse the part thoroughly and careful not to get this stuff on your skin as it is quite caustic and will burn your skin badly! Van ------- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 16:29:24 -0000 From: "Paul Mendoza " Subject: Re: Machining Anodized Aluminum We deal with a lot of Anodized parts at work, (I build Lenco Racing trannies) and there are different types of anodize! There is a hard Anodize. Comes in many colors such as black or "Lenco gray" as they call it but it's more of a root beer color. It does somewhat harden the aluminum to a certain depth. It does not however make it unmachinable. The standard anodize is just a beautification and to help protect the material from harsh chemicals. We use the hard "Lenco gray" on our clutch hubs and clutch housings. Now mind you that these things are behind several thousand horsepower motors and it give the the idea of just how strong hard anodize really is. We used to use it in our boat tranies too but they are so harsh on everything that we had to go to steel hubs and housings. Like I said, it is not unmachinable but it is harder to machine. It will not be like machining a hardend peice of 350 Marage or 300M (we use this stuff alot too) though. And it will not be as bad as you think and it's only a certain thickness. You can scrape it off with a bearing knife by hand but it takes some pressure. I'd keep it and machine it for all sorts of stuff. Probably more than you needed to know. Paul ------- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 07:45:28 -0000 From: "Art Volz " Subject: Re: Forging Shaper Tooling Jeff-- SAE 1045 is not a tool steel, even if that actually is the steel in the axles you have. It is a plain carbon steel with 0.45% carbon. It is a medium carbon steel at the lower end. Although high-carbon plain carbon steels were once used for shaper tools, no one uses plain carbon steels for cutting tools anymore, not even in Dara, Pakistan. For shaper use, only high speed steels with either a tungsten base or a molybdenum base are used today. (Carbide is useable too, but that's a different story altogether.) These tools are available in square cross-section of various sizes designed for use in tool holders. They're cheap, available, and work swell. I don't know the slot dimensions in your lantern tool post on your shaper when it is mounted in the clapper, but you can also use larger HSS tool bits, without a tool holder, clamped directly in this tool post. Plain carbon steels with carbon content of between 1.10-1.30%, properly heat treated and ground to shape, can be used for lathe tools, small rotary cutters, shaper tools, etc., but consider this to be light-duty use only where extreme hardness is needed without great toughness...and they can't take the heat. Expect to be very unhappy with the results. In "Files" here, are two drawings of shaper tool holders that you may wish to scale to your shaper's tool post size. Then heat up one of your axles red hot, beat it merrily to shape, and make just the tool holders to hold off-the-shelf (you're have to grind 'em) HSS tool bits. SAE 1045 will work for making these tool holders although a steel with a slightly higher carbon content of about 0.60% would be better. BTW, have you done the spark comparison tests for your axles to roughly try to figure out how much carbon they have and to get a hint if they have any other alloying herbs and spices hidden within? There are colored charts available that show these sparkies bursting in air...just like fireworks on the 4th...but I don't know where my charts are. (Mario the Forger may have swiped mine. :-)) ------- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 03:53:37 EST From: n8as1x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Re: Forging Shaper Tooling early forged tools were hi carbon steel, not medium carbon (1045) ....they were 85 to 100 points carbon depending on usage .....1045 will harden , but how hard ,i dont know .what i do know is ur SFM speeds will HAVE to be abt 1/2 of that of hi speed (red hot working) steel ....carbon steels were hardened to R65 & drawn back to a lt. straw for the lathe ,somewhat darker for shaper.........one nice thing abt 1045 , is the core stays tough when quenched.......since u have the stock, harden a piece & put the file to it ...if u have to press hard w/ a sharp file to get a shaving ,it will be useful....., if not ,get some 01 or W/1 rectangular tool steel from enco/msc/travers....cost is one reason to make a holder & use a bit!!!!! (thats why the y came on the scene best wishes docn8as ------- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 05:05:53 -0000 From: "Thomas E. Jones " Subject: Source for thick-wall tube? (OT) [SHERLINE GROUP] Hate to off-topic this nice group, but I've been looking for weeks for a supply of thick-wall tube, which will sell low quantity. For motor couplings, I need approximately 5/8 or 3/4 inch diameter tubes (outer diameter) with 1/4 inch inner diameter. Preferably 12L14 steel, but I'll take anything. I've been drilling and reaming steel myself, but there has got to be something ready made, somewhere. I probably need sections at least 2 inches long. A few parts companies sell simple couplers, but not that long. Maybe someone sells motor couplings for 1/4 inch shaft about 2 inches long, but I can't find them. Any suggestions appreciated. Sorry for off-topic message, but I'm desperate. - tj. ------- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 22:38:21 -0000 From: "n2562001 " Subject: Re: Source for thick-wall tube? (OT) Tom, this can be purchased from any local metal suppier as manderal or precision tubing. It will come in 12 ft lengths but may be cheaper than ordering short pieces and you will always find a need for what ever is left over. Ask them to order what you need in their next order if they don`t have it in stock so you don`t have to pay shipping. In most cases a local supplier can supply standard lengths at about the same price as ordering short pieces and paying for cutting shipping etc. Jerry Kieffer ------- Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 14:56:37 -0000 From: "ruspage " Subject: Cutting brass Need information on best way to cut multiple grooves in strips of half-hard brass .050 thick (C260 I think). This is for a home model railroad track project and I am not a machinist. I do have a radial arm saw and a router available and am wondering if a good carbide tip blade is ok or do I need to get a much more expensive metal cutting blade. I plan to stack the strips together in a pack of 20 or 40 which would then be 1 or 2 inches thick. Hope that this question is appropriate for this group; there are no people with machinist experience in my neck of the woods. Thanks for any advice. Russ ------- Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 16:51:40 -0000 From: "notinsync10 " Subject: Re: Cutting brass Man, you sure got me confused (which is not all that hard to do). I'm also a mrr'der. So, why don't you tell me what you are trying to build and I'll see if I can't be of some help...'cuz this doesn't sound as if it's going to be very easy to do on either a radial or a router. No guarantees, of course. J.B. Neiswander ------- Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 19:03:38 -0000 From: "ruspage " Subject: Re: Cutting brass I am working on a type of 3 rail O gauge track called "stud rail" in which the center rail, instead of being a continuous rail (such as with Lionel), is a series of studs which poke up through the ballast and the pickup roller is modified by adding a sliding "ski". This is already done by Marklin in HO guage. The stud center "rail" is made by using a long strip of .050 brass which runs between the halves of the cork roadbed with studs coming up through the ballast and rising just above the height of the ties. Total height is 3/8"; about half of that height has to be cut out every 1/2" to make room for the ties, the remaining full height part of the brass strip sticks up through the ballast as a stud. These pieces are soldered together every 40" (the length of a piece of Atlas flextrack) to form a continuous circuit. So I need to make small notches about 3/16' deep every 1/2" along pieces of the 3/8" wide .050 brass strip. That's 80 notches over the 40" length of the brass strip. Tedious, but maybe not so bad if I could do 20 or 40 strips at a time. This has been done by others using a preformed tool or punch, but I thought I would try doing this myself at home since brass is relatively soft and easy to mill or cut (I'm told). Hope that helps. So do you think that a carbide tip will "cut it"? Again, thanks for any advice. Russ ------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 12:58:42 -0800 (PST) From: Pete Brown Subject: Re: Re: Cutting brass I'm new to this, but not to woodworking. If I am picturing correctly what you are suggesting, it scares me a little :-) In my mind, I see a stack of .050 brass (which is relatively thick brass strip stock) being run over by a radial arm saw and bent etc. The router is even a less pretty picture. heh. In theory, if you have the right kind of blade, you could create a jig on your saw table using some hardwood tightly clamped to behind and in front of your stack of brass strip. Compressing those together would likely hold the brass tight enough that it could be cut as a single unit. However, if this is the K&S type brass stock, with slightly rounded edges, you might find clamping the brass in such a way as to prevent individual pieces from flying up and out of the stack difficult. IN that case, perhaps soldering both ends along the length of the stack, and then unsoldering afterwards might work for you. In either case, I think it would be a mess. If I had this problem to solve myself, I would likely solder both ends, and use a metal-cutting band-saw for the task. Pete ------- Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 21:45:13 -0000 From: "ruspage " Subject: Re: Cutting brass -Pete I agree, the stack of strips needs to be bound together, maybe drill and bolt them together or, as you said, solder them together or hold them together with pieces of hardwood or perhaps some soft metal bar stock. Thanks Russ ------- Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 19:16:50 -0500 From: Stan Stocker Subject: Re: Machining CRS & knurling questions Thomas: Turning CRS isn't too bad, while not as pleasant as aluminum, leaded steel, or a sharp stick in the eye , it isn't all that bad. You won't get a lovely reflective surface on CRS as you may be used to with 6061 aluminum. In fact, unless you have a rigid setup and sharp tools or good quality carbide with a 5 to 7 degree positive rake and chipbreaker, the finish will probably be a bit rough and torn, plan on a pass with a well chalked or heavily oiled file if smooth is important. Cutting oil can help, for CRS I usually use a 50-50 mix of Mitee brand thread cutting oil and kerosene. If you intend to use HSS lathe bits, grind with a 7 degree front and side clearance, 5 to 7 degree top rake, and use M2 or better tool blanks. Stone a fine radius on the point. If you haven't read the pages on bit grinding on the Sherline web site, you might find doing so worth while. CRS is a pretty generic label, some of the stuff I've turned was a joy, some of the stuff looked like a rat with distemper had gnawed on it. Same is true for generic "weldable steel" aka HRS you get from "one or more of the following countries" at the local hardware store or chain. Sometimes you get to wondering how more than one country made portions of what appears to be a single bar :-) Because of the stress layer formed by drawing or rolling cold, the outer layer is indeed hard and under stress, and removing it one one side only will result in some warpage. You can anneal CRS, but for that amount of effort and cost in gas or coal you might as well buy a nice leaded steel or normal 1018. How much the warping bothers you depends on how good the results have to be. If I had a Taig or Sherline sized mill, I'd make the clamps and step blocks from aluminum or hard brass personally. I've used both materials for special clamping bars and fixtures on larger mills, shapers, and surface grinders. An added benefit is that the clamps don't mar the work, although you have to be careful about swarf getting embedded in the clamp faces. Knurling wheels have some side to side play, so they tend to pick up and settle into the previous knurl pattern. Certain diameters that are around half a pitch multiple off in diameter from the knurl pitch can cause the knurling to smear. This is particularly true with coarse knurls on smaller diameters, where the effect is most likely to show up. Knurling is a forming rather than cutting process, keeping the work flooded with heavy cutting oil and using good quality knurls will save you endless frustration. If you buy a knurling tool, it often comes with medium pitch knurls. Most Taig sized work is better done with fine knurls. As you knurl, you will see diamonds forming. You can knurl untill the points are still just slightly flat, or take the knurling to the point where the points become sharp. If you take the knurling all the way to completion, a gentle pass with 600 grit paper or a fine wire brushing (my preferred method, quick and it cleans up the piece) over the knurling makes it much more comfortable to grip. Left sharp, knurling is just a bunch of sharp points that stick into your fingers or palms. Same idea as breaking a sharp edge. If you are going to make a knurling tool, take the time to make a scissors style rather than the normal economy knurling tool style. You avoid having to put painful amounts of load on the carriage screw and headstock, and don't flex thin work. I think Nick has a drawing for a Taig sized knurling tool on his site, there may be one in the files area of this group also. Have fun! Sometimes you walk away with a good part, sometimes you walk away with some new questions or a new bit of knowledge. Either way you gain something. Cheers, Stan ------- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 09:52:30 -0800 From: "Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein" Subject: Re: Re: Machining CRS & knurling questions > I thought of making clamps from aluminum, but was worried they > would wear out to quickly. Is this the case? Thomas I use aluminum clamps for all my work on the Taig mill, and they work fine. The cutting forces shouldn't be that high. I use manufactured step blocks, TECO that are about $4.00 a pair. See our web pages http://www.cartertools.com/nfhome.html ------- Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:42:17 -0500 From: Stan Stocker Subject: Re: Re: Machining CRS & knurling questions Hi Thomas; I think that you'll be ready to handle just about anything that comes up in a home shop by the time you wear out aluminum clamping straps. If you consider the size of the T slots and the metal around them on Taig and Sherline aluminum tables you'll feel better about aluminum for clamps. Aluminum certainly isn't always the right stuff for holding something like a tractor head on a large mill, but most of the time we're working with much smaller objects and cutting forces. I would recommend using a washer under the clamping bolt or screw to avoid chewing up the top surface of the strap clamp though. Deburr the washer. Grade 5 or better hardware isn't wasted money for this application. Rough spots here can be a real hassle when doing an awkward setup, requiring five hands rather than the usual 3 plus a toe.... Keep all the bits and pieces together in a box or tray, whatever works for you. Once you have the set together it isn't just a few clever bits and some odds and ends from the hardware store, it's tooling with accessories and should be treated that way. The time you break down and use one of the parts from your clamp set for a repair there will be a rush job during a blizzard on a Sunday evening and the 25 cent piece you'll need will be the one you used last week. Did it, got some discipline, don't do it anymore. Cheers, Stan ------- Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 22:04:50 -0000 From: "Thomas " Subject: Thanks Nick & Stan :) Thanks guys for the advice on aluminum clamps, I'll feel much more confident in using them now :) Thomas ------- Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 19:33:35 -0800 From: Keith Green Subject: Re: Brass : cutting oil or not? [sherline] >>>From: Pete Brown Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 4:39 PM I keep getting conflicting advice on milling and turning brass. Some folks here have said to always turn or mill brass dry. The big fat sherline book by Martin, however, indicates to use cutting oil with everything. Is this one of those religious arguments, or am I simply misunderstanding something? As I understand it, the cutting oil, on a tool the size of the sherline, is mainly to make sure chips are worked out of the cut and aren't brazed onto the tool, correct? Thanks. Pete <<< Solvent for cutting brass/bronze, or thin your oil with it. Same for aluminum, but it doesn't work as well with some alloys as others. Carbide endmills don't really need any fluid unless you see some material-adhesion problems coming on. keith ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 15:47:49 -0000 From: "pksuhmann" Subject: Cutting fluid or none To all who have asked about cutting fluid with aluminum, brass and I'll throw in zamac. Any metal that gets gummy and adheres to the cutter or drill bit can use a lubricant. I have been machining zamac and that stuff gums up my cutters. A cheap lub is wd-40 for this. I use it on drill and mills. I have bunch of the plastic ampules and use the cut tip of the ampule to apply cutting fluid to the mill or drill directly NOT WHILE RUNNING. The oil prevents or limits the amount of material that sticks to the bit. Zamac means "zinc aluminum molding alloy casting" or something like that. But if you use carbide cutters you may not need it. Lube won't hurt. With a small machine like the Sherline too much lube just creates a film that holds grit and enhances wear on the machines. So keep the cutting fluid on the toolbit and work piece. Also I got a set of 1/4 carbide indexable tool bits from Harbor freight. I am surprised how nice they are they should be the ticket for cutting brass and aluminum. Pete Suhmann NMRA MER NJ Div #1 ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:04:38 +0100 From: Roger Jonsson LINE AUDIO Subject: Re: Cutting fluid or none Cutting, drilling and engraving aluminum I always use spirit, to prevent it from sticking. The cut gets much cleaner. Think it works as a cooling medium, thereby making the aluminium less sticky as it doesn't heat up as much. Works much better than any oil based liquid I tried. Some use water mixed with a drop of washing up liquid to break the surface tension. Also works great. The "feel" when cutting is that the aluminium is not as soft, which is an advantage. Don't think you should even try this on other metals!!! All the best, Roger Jönsson. ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 19:26:52 -0000 From: "Glen Reeser" Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine I do some silversmithing as another of my many hobbies. It is common to fill silver tubing (even softer and gummier than copper) with beeswax before forming or cutting. This might help with your threading as long as you kept the work cool. The wax melts out easily when you are done. As long as were talking silver, why not silver solder your boilers? I made a very small one this way from 2 inch copper pipe and a couple of flat copper disks. I later added some fire tubes to increase the heat transfer the same way. A propane torch gets hot enough to flow silver solder. Extra EZ solder will do it. It's available in wire and sheets from WWW.riogrande.com. Someday I'll discuss making triple lead internal threads on sterling silver fountain pen caps. You don't want to try it. Glen Reeser ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 11:46:41 -0800 From: Alan Marconett KM6VV Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Hi Glen, Beeswax inside? To make it stiffer? That silver must be really soft! John has also suggested filling the tubes, but with lead. I will indeed silver solder (braze) the boiler! I'm under the impression that the term "braze" is more appropriate for the 1100+ deg F. temperatures I'm using. In the past my wife had gone down to the local welding supply, and I'd told her "silver solder", and they sold her the low temp stuff. They HAD the high temp stuff there also, but didn't mention anything for higher temp. Seems they call it "brazing" as well. Luckily, that project won't be subjected to high heat/temp! I also had some confusion when ordering silver solder and flux from a major jewelry supplier. They shipped a low temp flux with high temp EZ silver solder. Needless to say, although it wasn't obvious to me at the time, IT WOULDN'T WORK! The flux burned off, left a horrible scale that wouldn't come off without grinding, and contaminated the joint sufficiently that I scrapped the crankshaft. I finally got a tip, probably from this list, and ordered from Brownell's, a gun/knife supplier! This "Super flux" worked like a champ! EVERYTHING silver brazes quite easily, NOW! And wouldn't you know it, when I went to the welding supply, and bought the new torch, they had lotsa GOOD high temp flux! Oh well... While I've been able to silver braze crankshafts and small flywheels with a propane torch, I went to a large tank propane turbo torch for my current needs. I'm told that a LOT of heat, and a firebrick "box" to work in is essential for fixing up boilers! I haven't attempted a boiler yet. Thanks for the suggestions and URL. Alan KM6VV ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 20:03:38 -0000 From: "Glen Reeser" Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine The beeswax is really to keep the tube from collapsing. You could use a stiffer wax. I use casting wax, again from Rio Grand to make lost wax cast aka investment cast silver and gold jewellry and pen parts. The wax comes in different hardness from dead soft for hand modelling to file wax for machining. The file wax might be interesting for you. I routinely turn it on my lathes or machine it on my mills. I guess the soldering vs. brazing terminology depends on what industry you are working in. Jewelers never braze anything. It sounds way too common. Silver or gold soldering sounds much higher class. ;-) For flux I like a product called Stop-ox. It is a liquid that you spray onto the workpiece after warming it a bit. You can cover the whole piece with the stuff. It makes a good flux and it keeps the rest of the part from oxidizing. It makes clean-up a lot easier. Again, I get it at Rio Grande. Glen Reeser ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 12:19:38 -0800 From: Alan Marconett KM6VV Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Hi Glen, I can see that! I've wanted to try casting with wax, maybe actually MAKE some jewelry for my wife, instead of teasing her with connecting rods and eccentric followers. ;>) File wax? Must set up pretty hard, if you can turn it! Some simple investment casting would come in handy for making engine parts. So many interesting things to try! For now, bar stock (now that I have a supply) gets me going pretty good! Yeah, it's just terminology! I'd always heard it called silver soldering, and it DOES sound a little more refined! What I DO want to find is something to stop the silver solder from wandering too far. I've tried to find yellow ochre, but my wife brought back something like a child's poster paint! That's all the "ART store" could find/suggest! A RioGrande search didn't find anything. Alan KM6VV ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 20:51:47 -0000 From: "Glen Reeser" Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Hi Alan, Yellow ochre is the stuff you want. The Rio Grande on-line product finder isn't very good (or complete?). I am sure they have it. Order their catalog(s). They have 4: 1) Jems and Findings 2) Tools and Equipment 3) Display and Packaging 4) Packaging You will want the Tools and Equipment one. Get the Jems and Findings one too, but don't let your wife see it. The catalogs are an education in precious metal working. I could see myself with a sterling silver wobbler steam engine tie tack if I still wore ties. Glen Reeser ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 15:54:40 -0500 From: "Ned Carey" Subject: Re: Solder/ braze - was Re: Bar stock Steam Engine > I'm under the impression that the term "braze" is more appropriate for > the 1100+ deg F. temperatures I'm using. Yes this is correct. There is silver bearing solder which melts in the 3-500 degree range as well as silver brazing rod which melts in the 1100-1300 degree range, quite a difference. To confuse things even more there is nickel silver brazing rod which has no silver in it but is silver in color and melts at closer to brass brazing rod temperatures. This is also one of my pet peeves, people who use the term silver solder so carelessly. Some people (jewelers according to another message) call silver brazing, silver soldering which is incorrect. As long as they are talking to other jewelers for example they will understand each other. However this can lead to some confusion as Alan and his wife found out. It just seems to me whenever you use the term "silver solder" you better explain what you mean. Anything less is careless and poor communication. Brazing and soldering are essentially the same principal but technically brazing is done at over 700 degrees and soldering is below 700 degrees. Why 700 degrees? I don't know but I suspect this is a temperature which changes the temper or color of steel, but this is just a guess. Does anybody know? > Yeah, it's just terminology! I'd always heard it called silver > soldering, and it DOES sound a little more refined! I think that's odd. Most people have heard of soldering and any plumber, hobbyists, or handy homeowner can do it. It doesn't sound very sophisticated to me, but brazing, here's a mysterious new process that the average guy doesn't understand. Ned ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 13:45:51 -0800 From: Alan Marconett KM6VV Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Hi Glen, didn't get Rio Grande to cough up the yellow ochre, but another search for the stuff turned up Kingsley North: http://kingsleynorth.com/jewelry/solderingsupplies.html Got some ordered from them! And something called red rouge, for polishing. The catalogs sound interesting. And I notice that they give you a gift certificate for the cost of the catalog! Nice system. Alan KM6VV ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 21:54:12 -0000 From: "Glen Reeser" Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Alan, I'm glad you found what you needed. You can also get rouge from your local Ace Hardware man. It comes in different colors/abrasive size. I just finished some 14 kt gold rings for my wife and I bought red rouge there. My dog has taken a liking to red rouge for some strange reason. I have to buy more every time I need some. I keep finding the end caps in her bed and she has red all over her paws. I guess she's pretty shiney inside by now. Glen ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 17:10:39 -0500 From: Jeff Demand Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Hi Alan, Jewellers file-a-wax is VERY similar to machinable wax for cnc proofing, main difference is price. I think ENCO had the best price but check MSC and McMaster etc. Resembles plastic more than wax, melting point around 230° F. For stopping silver solder just remember the rule for any type soldering about being CLEAN. Yellow ochre is a fancy 'dirt' mixed with a little water. Water based liquid paper type products work well (solvent ones have bad fumes), ground up jewellers red rouge mixed with oil works well too. Try your poster paint, it'll probably work. Just remember all the times the #$%x~xx^ solder wouldn't flow. You do have to be careful that you don't overpower the solder stopper with flux. Jeff ------- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 02:29:49 -0000 From: "Flosi Gudmundsson" Subject: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Some people use teflon pipethread tape for that purpose and I also vaguely remember somone recomending soot. After carefully applying flux he would heat the surrounding area with high flame so as to cover it with soot and then heat the joint and apply solder. Flosi ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:52:02 EST From: catboat15x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Re: Bar stock Steam Engine KM6VVx~xxarrl.net writes: >Can I temper the copper? Heat it up, and cool it fast? I thought about >filling with solder, and I've seen the lowtemp alloy advertised. Expensive! Oh No Alan: That is the way to soften copper for forming. Copper is hardend by cold working, just opposite of steel. I guess solder would work to hold the copper tube in shape or even a wood dowel of the proper diameter. I built my boilers in accordance with what I read in LBSC's books. The process goes something like this. Make a metal or wood form the shape of your plate, allowing enough for the thickness of the metal. Flange them by (now here is the place to heat and cool) heating red hot and dumping in a pickle solution after it is at black heat. If the plate seems hard after some pounding reheat and cool again or the copper will crack. Then drill or bore the holes for your tubes. If you drill before forming you will be sure to get oval holes. Insert the tubes in the plate and if you have a morse taper small enough put that in the end of the tube and give it a whack with your hammer. When this is all done put some flux and small bits of silver solder around each tube. As the solder melts and runs into the joint you may have to use a "scratch rod" (a pointed end on a steel wire) to scratch around each joint to make sure everything is sealed (if you are lucky, and the moon is in the right quarter the Silver solder will flash around each tube in a nice ring.) Then you insert your tube bundle and plates into the barrel and silver solder that joint. Copper needs a lot of heat, not temperature so much but plenty of heat as copper conducts heat very well and it will lose heat fast too. On my larger boiler I laid the boiler on a charcoal bed and silver soldered on burning charcoal. (Hot job, don't do this in August.) Most important after all this is done, arrange a pump and put on a good pressure gauge, not one of the model gauges. And expell every bit of air then pressure to two times working pressure, and inspect for leaks, swellings etc. If it passes that test should be OK to put into service. Copper is difficult to machine, but it sure forms nicely with forms and a hammer, you can form almost any shape you would ever need. Keep it soft by heating and cooling (the cooling is not really neccesary, but when you pickle the hot copper it is cooled and cleaned of all the oxides and gunk. Don't use brass for stuff like valves, sight glasses etc on a copper boiler (or a steel boiler either.) brass can lose its zinc and become brittle and fail, use bronze or what the brits call gun metal. Have fun add another arrow to your quiver besides machining you become a coppersmith. John LBSC Virginia LBSC Tich 200 some feet of 3.5 inch ground level track ------- Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 10:56:16 -0800 From: Alan Marconett KM6VV Subject: Re: Solder/ braze - was Re: Bar stock Steam Engine Al Lenz wrote: > I have a feeling we should specify our units, Deg F or Deg C. Hi Al: You're right! I believe we've all been talking degrees F here lately (at least I am). I ran into that problem talking to Rudy K. at P.R.I.M.E. last year. I asked him about the silver soldering (brazing) he did on his engines. He said 450 degrees or so. Well, I took it to mean Fahrenheit, and he was talking Celsius! My 850 degrees are Fahrenheit. Alan KM6VV ------- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 09:23:50 -0800 From: "Nicholas Carter and Felice Luftschein" Subject: Re: Truing a 3 jaw chuck? [AND TURNING BRONZE] Original Message From: "Thomas " To: Sent: March 10, 2003 > I gave CRS a try and was really relieved to find out that it's not > that hard to machine after all :) The finish wasn't as nice as > aluminum or brass, but at least it didn't look rat-chewed either, hehehe! > I am wondering what to do about my 3 jaw chuck. I have trued it a > couple of times with the boring bar while it is chucked around the > washer supplied with it, but workpieces still don't run true. Have > I "overtrued" it? Is there a point on the jaws where truing past it > will make the jaws less able to hold a workpiece correctly? > I had an especially hard time with some oil-impregnated bronze > bearing stock. This stuff was a bitch to machine! (excuse my > language) I couldn't drill it for the life of me, and then I tried > turning the outside. It kept trying to wobble itself out of the > chuck, and when I finally got the OD right and tried parting it off, > it practically exploded! It got discolored, even though I was using > lots of Tap Magic, and then chunks of bronze, um, for lack of a > better word, chunked off all over. Watch out for this stuff! TA It will never run true for all diameters, too many variables with a 3 jaw chuck. For accuracy and strength, try the independent 4 jaw chuck. Gripping bronze with aluminum jaws will not result in a good hold. See our web pages http://www.cartertools.com/nfhome.html ------- Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 17:31:56 EST From: LouD31M066x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: new member seeks accessories for an Atlas 10-F Brass and Bronze are catchalls. I got some bronze prop shafts when an old boat yard went to auction. They were marked Tobin Bronze... a 70Cu 30 Zn brass with about 1% tin. It machines like butter and shines like gold. The 1% tin increases resistance to sea water corrosion which is why it was used for prop shafts on inboard engine runabouts and speedboats. I gave shop instructor friend a 4 foot length for his student's projects and he was very happy to get it. He had mentioned to me how he gave best student's some brass to make hammers if they were ahead on their work so I figured he could use some more bribe material as brass cost him $3.90 a pound. Anyway if you have an old boat yard around ask if they have any old short pieces or used prop shafts. Scrap metal value is only 20 or 25 cents per pound. Later prop shafts were a machineable stainless steel which is worth having if you can find it. Old boat yard may have old lathe and keyway milling equipment. Louis ------- Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 08:10:56 -0000 From: "Jim Knighton" Subject: Re: Just got a 4400 - need some help getting started In sherlinex~xxyahoogroups.com, "lansoprazole"wrote: > After several weeks of careful research and thinking and finally > saying the heck with it, I am now the owner of a Sherline 4400 lathe > with the "A" accessory package, a steady rest, and a thread cutting > attachment (for a future project). [SNIP] > If anyone is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and knows > of some local [METAL] dealers, I'd really appreciate it. If not, some > online dealers would be nice. (I already know about onlinemetals.com) Congrats on your new "baby." Regarding materials, you might want to check Metal Supermarkets. They are a franchised chain and have locations around the country. I checked their site and they show stores in Irving and also in the Fort Worth area. Their web site has a "store finder" (http://www.metalsupermarkets.com/StoreFind/). They have an outlet in my area (Salt Lake City) and I've found their selection and prices to be very good. They will sell you exactly the amount you want, and there is no cutting charge or minumum purchase. I use Online Metals to roughly estimate the cost of my projects, but I rarely buy from them. Metal Supermarkets is generally (at least in my area) about 10-15% less. I have no connection with these folks other than as a satisfied customer. Regards, Jim Knighton ------- Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 11:03:12 -1000 (HST) From: Tom Benedict Subject: Re: Coolant It's almost an absolute necessity in stainless. Stainless is a horribly poor conductor of heat, so heat tends to build up at the place you're machining. Without a coolant, there's a big tendency for the stainless to work-harden. At that point the cutter will stop cutting, the friction from rubbing will further work-harden, and things get ugly in a hurry. That takes less than a quarter second. I've wrecked a couple of stainless parts that way. Tom ------- Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 13:16:08 -0000 From: "jrw064" Subject: cast iron adapter A while ago, I asked on this forum about a 4 jaw Skinner chuck being mounted up to a 12x36 Atlas lathe. I ordered a 1 1/2" threaded Bison cast iron adapter, finally came in the mail, looked pretty nice once I got the packing grease off of it. I was surprised that the register area had been machined so I spun it on the lathe. I took some indicator readings and looked pretty good via the large face of the adapter. I ordered a slightly larger diameter than the chuck wanting to cut it down to the same size as the chuck proper. I started with a HSS tool bit and quickly found that the bit would not stand it at all. So I switched to a cemented(cheap) carbide cutting tool and it is doing better. I am running about 80 rpm and taking small cuts per pass. Does anyone have anything to offer in the proper cutting tool for this Bison cast iron adapter? I was somewhat surprised at the mess cast iron makes, but first time for everything. I am covering the ways, etc the best I can to try to keep most of the excess off the machine, but can see that a complete cleanup is probably going to have to happen. I know it is kinda old question, have read a lot in the archives, but not confident with my current tooling is appropriate. Regards, Rick W. ------- Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 12:42:31 -0500 From: Jon Elson Subject: Re: cast iron adapter Yup, cast iron is messy, but it generally cuts pretty well. You don't give the diameter, so I can't compute surface speed. But, you want to run around 100 SFPM for HSS, and maybe 200 or so with carbide tools. For 8" diameter, 200 SFPM would come to 95 RPM, so it sounds like you are in the right range. Be aware that any part of the casting that has not already been machined will contain sand, and be harder also due to the chilling of the molten iron caused by the mold. That mold surface will eat any tool fairly quickly. Jon ------- Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 18:58:32 +0100 From: "Ernest Lear" Subject: Re: cast iron adapter The first cut into a new casting of iron is always hard but after a cut or two it becomes a lot easier, as its case harden and you got to take quite a bit off to remove this hard surface. Its also a dirty metal to machine. Ernest ------- Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 18:00:25 -0000 From: "jrw064" Subject: Re: cast iron adapter Thanks for the kind replies. I found that I had a height problem with the cutting tool, lowered it a bit and things went a lot better. The finish of the cut is a lot better, so always something to learn I guess. I ended up using a cemented carbide tool and all in all did kinda ok. I tried to check the runout at the various stages to prove to myself that things were progessing ok; nice to see the needle stay still. Tis interesting to learn about how much the cast iron changes with temperature. Glad someone posted about that, or I probably would have gone too small a fit. So this afternoon is the drilling of the adapter for the screws. So guess I am underway. I appreciate the forum's help. Regards, Rick W. ------- Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 12:54:47 EDT From: catboat15x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Digest Number 1452 [cast iron adapter] > I'm going for flood coolant to try and reduce the mess. You can do C.I. dry. To keep down the mess put a magnet in an old sock and hang it near the cutting edge. If you omit the sock you never get that black dust off your magnet. John in the high desert of California 12 inch Atlas Mini Mill Rusty file ------- Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 21:35:55 -0400 From: "Statman Designs, LLC" Subject: Re: Titanium Tubing? > I am looking for some Grade 5 Titanium Tubing .500 OD .080 ID. > All my local shops cannot help, anybody have any ideas where I might > find such an animal? Thanks, Smitty Smitty, You will not find this item. I have plenty of solid bars that can be drilled with an 0.080" drill. How long of a piece do you need? Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com dan.statmanx~xxrennlist.com ------- Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 19:31:57 -0700 From: "todd smith" Subject: Re: Titanium Tubing? Thank you Dan, But I made a mistake in my Dimensions. I need a wall thickness of .080 .500 OD. What I have been doing is just drilling out the center, takes awhile, but it gets done. I thought if I could get my Ti. in TUBE, it would save a lot of time. I guess I will just stick to drilling. Thanks for the offer, Smitty -------- Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 21:04:10 -0700 From: Brian Pitt Subject: Re: Titanium Tubing? might check with some of these guys http://www.tubing-ez.com/tubing/0008142_0076020_1.html .080 might be a bit thicker walled than most of them are used to the heaviest I saw on a quick search was .5OD x .064 wall Brian ------- Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 02:03:53 -0400 From: "Statman Designs, LLC" Subject: Re: Titanium Tubing? I can get any dimensions that you wish from my titanium supplier. They have a $1000 minimum order, but I could combine it with one of my standard orders. How much of this, and what precision do you need? It will be much cheaper to have it non-precision drilled and you do a clean-up boring or honing final step. let me know quantities, I think 10 feet would be the minimum in 6" or 12" sections, but let me know what you are thinking. Daniel J. Statman, Statman Designs www.statmandesigns.com dan.statmanx~xxrennlist.com ------- Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 22:44:38 -0000 From: "dreilanderecht" Subject: Re: Steel veases Cast In Metal_Shapersx~xxyahoogroups.com, "Carl Corbeau" wrote: >If I was to take a notion to make a new cross-slide for my Clausing. >Would steel be ok to use? What are the pros & cons of steel versus cast. Depends partly what it is running against. Steel on steel is not a happy combination, while steel on cast iron or cast iron on cast iron are both good. It also depends what sort of steel you use, some cold rolled steel has built in stresses and really ought to be stress releived for this sort of application. (OK, castings should also be stress releived or aged too.) A merit of steel is that T slots should be much stronger. I have seen an old cross slide that was broken in half along the bottom of a T slot. Due to the manufacturer trying to keep the maximum swing over the slide, there wasn't much thickness of metal there. You can buy continuous cast iron bar which is very nice to machine. Of course it is round, which is a bit annoying for making large flat items from it. I trust you plan to machine the slide on a shaper, otherwise you are off topic for the list! :) regards John ------- Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 16:28:22 -0700 From: "todd smith" Subject: Re: Material buying warning! [long] [actually re a complaint about another company's change of policy that no longer favours the small purchaser.] That is one big reason I continue to use On-line metals!! John is the best to work with and has most in stock at anytime!! http://www.onlinemetals.com/ Smitty ------- Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:17:29 -0400 From: "John Guenther" Subject: RE: Unimat I classic and Aluminum material FORTAL is much harder than 6061-T6 aluminum. It should be able to be cut on the unimat, but with light cuts and careful attention to sharpening the tool bit. I have worked a little FORTAL on my Sherline mill and it was fine. John Guenther 'Ye Olde Pen Maker' Sterling, Virginia ------- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:53:07 EDT From: catboat15x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: cold/hot rolled steel and heat hardening Usually hot rolled is black with mill scale on it. Usually soft as received. Cold rolled is shiny and is soft, but beware as it has built in stresses that can deform and warp when the surface is machined. If you want to relieve the stress heat to red and let cool slowly (Then it will scale and look like hot rolled, unless you protect the surface during heating.) Both are usually low carbon and will not harden by heat and quench, but can be surface or case hardened with proper chemicals. If you need steels that harden all the way through use either drill rod (US) or silver steel (GB) for rods or gauge plate (US) for flats. Comes in either water hardening or oil hardening. Heat to bright red and quench which leaves the steel "glass hard" and almost as brittle. So must be tempered to the hardness you want. As an aside if you are doing engines drill rod un hardend makes good pivot pins and can run against mild steel or bronze for many years. John in the high desert of California ------- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:11:13 -0000 From: "Charles Hixon" Subject: Re: cold/hot rolled steel and heat hardening Isak, I'll buy off on everyone's answer to qusetions 1 & 2. Hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel could possibly be otherwise identical steel. On question 3, it depends on the alloying elements, if any, that are present in the steel sample. Different alloying elements in different amounts will cause the steel sample to respond to heat treatment differently. Simple example: if you have a 4130 grade of steel sample, it will have added carbon, chromium and molybdenum which allows the steel sample to be hardened by heating to 1650 degrees F and quenching in water (note, this distorts the part). Then you will temper it at 300 degrees F and it will be too hard to machine on the Sherline lathe. You can instead temper it at 1100 degrees F and you MIGHT be able to machine it on a Sherline lathe if you're lucky, your tool is sharp with the right rake, and you take light cuts. You can use a torch to do all of this if the part is small and you can identify the temperature of the steel by the color it is radiating. Blacksmiths could because they worked with it a lot. Folks who work in a heat-treat shop might be able to depending on their experience. The rest of us depend on thermocouples or paint sticks. If the steel sample is low alloy and low carbon, it will not respond to heat treatment and will not become hard. For these steels, you can add alloying elements so that it is capable of becoming hard. Common alloying elements to do this with include carbon, nitrogen and boron. But you are limited in a practical sense to the depth the alloying elements will penetrate the surface, eg: carbon: 0.12" max, nitrogen: 0.02" max, boron 0.003" max. Each application has its own process. The simplest way to add carbon is to "pack" carburize. One way to do this is to "pack" prepared hardwood charcoal (not the Sunday bbq briquetts) around the steel sample that is placed in a metal container and heat it up to 1750 degrees F for 12 hours and air cool. If the steel sample is still encased in charcoal, you have added the alloy carbon to a depth of maybe 0.07" deep. Then you go through a heat treatment process similar to that described in the previous two paragraphs. Sherline implies that if you want to carburize, you use leaded steel, which has lead added to improve machinability at the expense of impact strength. In general, Sherline equipment is not suited for machining steels subject to heat treatment. This review is a generalization with exceptions. Charles ------- Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 06:05:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott Meyer Subject: Re: cold/hot rolled steel and heat hardening I'm just going to add a little more detail to the answers before. 1. CRS looks like steel, but will often come oily or greasy to protect it from rust. If you get 1" square CRS, the size you will actually get is .996-.998 in that area. It is pretty flat and square on all sides. HRS does have a black scale on it, and does not come greased. If you get a 1" square of HRS, if you look at the end, you will notice that 2 sides are parallel and that 2 sides have a bulge in them. 2. CRS is essentially squeezed into shape and size while it is cold. HRS is shaped while it is hot. CRS has lots of internal stresses, caused by it being squeezed. HRS doesn't have those stresses because it is done hot and allows those to relax as it cools. If you take a 1/2" x 2" x 12" CRS bar, and cut it lengthwise down the middle, put it up to a straight edge, you'll see how much your bars bent after getting cut. I tend to dislike CRS for just that reason, and prefer HRS for almost everything, but that is personal preference. HRS is more gummy, and has a relatively hard scale on it, but with sharp tools isn't an issue. HRS is also a little cheaper, but not much. Someone else provided some excellent answers to the heat treating questions, that is obviously much more knowledgeable than I. Scott ------- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 03:25:33 -0000 From: "Charles Hixon" Subject: Re: Milling Cast Iron In sherlinex~xxyahoogroups.com, "Daniel Kaschner" wrote: > I have a couple of old cast iron table saw tops sitting around and > would like to use them to make shop tools, etc. Check their hardness with a file in a hidden area. If the file grabs into it, it's soft enough for HSS. If you have a difficult time getting the file to bite, you'll need to use carbide tooling and a milling machine beefier than a Sherline. Charles Hixon ------- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:07:17 -0400 From: "Marshall Pharoah" Subject: RE: Milling Cast Iron A hint for milling cast iron: Make up a chip shield out of sheet metal and attach it to a very strong magnet. Place the shield where most of the chips (dust) flies. The magnet will catch a large amount of the dust. You will have to stop and clean it often. You can also use a shop vac but I hate the noise of them. I should mention: Don't attach the magnet to the cast iron or the mill will gum up. I often use plexiglas or cardboard shields on my mill which attach to the aluminum table or are held by flexible arms, etc. I just replace one of these with a steel shield with a magnet, or sometimes just a magnet, but they're harder to clean off. ------- Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 00:55:52 EDT From: catboat15x~xxaol.com Subject: Re: Milling Cast Iron Wrap the magnet with clear wrap or put it in a baggie, easy to clean off then. ------- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 10:03:23 -0400 From: "Ron Ginger" Subject: Re: Buying metal question >Can someone please explain what the terms "centerless". "centerless >ground" and "rough turned" mean when buying round metal stock? Centerless grinding is a process where the stock is supported by a fence and a roller against the grinding wheel. There are no centers drilled into the stock ends. For practical purposes it means a nicely ground finish on the stock. I've never heard the term 'rough turned' applied to raw stock. The most common stock is either Cold rolled (drawn) which will have a smooth, shiny surface and Hot Rolled which will be rough and black finish. Cold rolled can have stress in it that will cause distortion when it's turned or cut. Hot rolled is nasty to cut through the outside scale, but less likely to distort from stress. ron ginger ------- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:45:02 -0000 From: "azbruno" Subject: Re: Steel Alloy The McMaster-Carr online catalog has a descriptions for the different metals. I find the site a good resource for materials. According to that... "12L14 Carbon Steel: Low-carbon steel contains lead, sulfur and phosphorus. Excellent machining characteristics and good ductility make it easy to bend, crimp and rivet. It is very difficult to weld and cannot be case hardened. Meets ASTM A108. " -Bruno ------- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 18:48:52 -0000 From: "speedphoto300" Subject: Re: Steel Alloy Indeed, the "L" in the middle means lead. I once worked in the screw machine department at the plant where Smith Bearing cam followers are made, these are (were) made of 11L17, gas curburized then induction hardened in the race area. As far as I know they are still made that way. Joe ------- Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 03:42:31 -0000 From: "Charles Hixon" Subject: Re: Carbon steel?? In sherlinex~xxyahoogroups.com, "pacosoide" wrote: > I just bought some steel stock at my local scrap dealer. > It is magnetic, these were round rods and are covered with a thin > layer of what appears to be copper. I cut one of the rods and the cut > surface is very shiny. It is not stainless steel, it did produce a > lot of sparks which from my previous readings in the forum indicate a > large content of carbon. I tried to turn some of it, it makes small > curls, black, doesn't machine very easy... > Anyone has a good guess what kind is it?? Without knowing any more, I would guess it is AISI (SAE) 5140 (UNS G51400) intended to be used for coil springs but was rejected because of a high inclusion content that caused premature fatigue failures. What do I win? I am assuming that the "copper" surface finish has a reasonably high quality, almost cold-drawn appearance, and that you live near a community which supplies components to a transportation industry. If these assumptions are not true, I want some more hints about the local industry, the diameter or the rod, and another guess. The scrap dealer would have some clues about it's origin that would be very helpful. To have better luck machining it, you might anneal it (1650F for 1 hour, SLOW(furnace) cool to 1300F, air cool). A typical machining process is to rough it out almost to finish dimensions in the annealed state, heat treat it (1550F for 1 hour, oil quench, temper at 1150F for two hours, water cool), then finish machine with light cuts to finish dimensions to remove the deacrburized surface and the distortion caused by the heat treatment. BTW, there are magnetic stainless steels like 410 and 416 which behave as you describe. If you have some nitric acid, polish a spot and dab some on. If the metal does not instantly turn black, it is likely to be a magnetic stainless steel. Charles Hixon ------- Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 22:33:44 -0500 From: "Dan Horn" Subject: Re: Carbon steel?? sounds like a copperweld grounding rod used to provide driven ground connections for radio transmitting towers. Happy Chips Dan ------- Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 06:52:36 -0700 From: k6sufx~xxdirecway.com Subject: Re: Car