1/144 Revell Germany Type 214

[crazygary]

Wow!! Self-taught AND still have most of yer OEM digits!!
Gotta say, I'm impressed!! Hah!!

I've been doing this hear machinin' thing for a little better than 42 years,
and still have all ten o' them bad boyz!! They've been nicked up and cut alot, but still hangin' in there!
I've either been doin' it right for all these years, or I'm just really damn lucky!! Whatever the reason, I'll take it!!


Looks like your mill, and mine, are real close cousins!! Got my little old
mill-drill from Harbor Freight, as well as my little 9X17 benchtop lathe, and
have yet to come across a part that can't be made with them! Fun stuff, too!!

Thanks for the link to the magnets you're using! Good info to have for any
possible future applications!!

Take care and maintain them there 9 3/4 fangers as long as ye can!!
crazygary

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Good eye. Yes, Harbor Freight's nasty old, belt-drive vertical mill with nice tight gibs and no frill's. Love the thing. I've gone through about three Taig lathe's over thirty-years, that's about it for the precision machines here, and good enough for me.

Sounds like you've been slinging chips for a while. Stay healthy and enjoy the hobby -- on your own terms.

David

[crazygary]

Mornin', David!!

The unfortunate thing about those mill/drills is that the drawbar is a little "frail"!!
Have you run across something that works better??

I'm considering a set of ER-11(?) collets instead of the conventional end mill holders. Have seen them on Ebay
pretty cheap.

Otherwise, I, too, think it's a pretty decent little machine! Haven't run across anything yet that
it can't do!

Have a nice, relaxing Sunday and stay healthy!! The current flu bug is a real beyotch!!!

crazygary

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Mornin', David!!

The unfortunate thing about those mill/drills is that the drawbar is a little "frail"!!
Have you run across something that works better??

I'm considering a set of ER-11(?) collets instead of the conventional end mill holders. Have seen them on Ebay
pretty cheap.

Otherwise, I, too, think it's a pretty decent little machine! Haven't run across anything yet that
it can't do!

Have a nice, relaxing Sunday and stay healthy!! The current flu bug is a real beyotch!!!

crazygary

The rigidity of the draw bar is fine for my gross type work (I'm not making space-shuttle turbo-pump parts here). And I don't cut anything harder than 303 stainless. And after nearly five years of use, the spindle bearings are nice and tight. No chatter so far. But the damned Y-axis hand wheel has developed a lot of back-lash, damit! One of these days I'll have to dig into it and see what I can do to tighten that up. Other than that I would adopt this thing if that were legal!

I wish they had an indexing plate and hand-wheel option for the Z-axis though -- some of my work calls for a precise depth of cut. *****, *****, ***** ... Wish I could vertically travel the bed. But, for $400 some dollars, I should stop bad-mouthing this machine.

I'll use collets on the lathe sometimes, but the three-jaw chuck is good enough for my milling work.

[crazygary]

A possible solution to your Y-azis backlash may involve nothing more than tightening the gib! Refer to your machine manual, if ya can find it!! If not, you can print one here:

http://images.harborfreight.com/manuals/42000-42999/42975.pdf

As far as indexing, you may be able to get away with a spin fixture, which utilizes 5C collets to hold your workpiece.
Got some pretty cheap on Ebay! Go to Ebay.com and enter 5c spin fixture to search.

And yep, I know exactly how you feel about some kind of vertical "gizmo" for precision depths! A geared vertical feed capability would be way cool!! I rigged up a dial indicator and a couple of parts to my spindle so that I could get. at least, some degree of vertical precision. It's a bit "crude", but has worked for me. Will take a couple of pix later in the day, and PM them to you!

[Subculture]

My milling machine, which was a secondhand unit, had a quite a bit of slop in the acme/trapezoidal feed screws. The original equipment was bronze nuts on steel threaded bar, and the nuts had a lot of wear in them. I could have made new bronze nuts, but decided to try an experiment. What I came up with may sound like lousy engineering practice, but it works fantastically- I use plastic nuts. These were made from melted plastic pipe. The pipe is the type they use for water mains, which I think is a polypropelene type plastic. It's designed to melt at a low temperature, and goes like candle wax. They join the pipes together using heat. A chap down the road works for the waterboard and got me lots of offcuts, which normally get skipped.

I melted the plastic around the steel threaded rod, which I greased first, and that made for a perfect reverse form of the thread. As the plastic cooled, it shrunk back just enough to get an easy release. This plastic was then held in place with a sheet metal cage. I made the nut long, so that it has plenty of grip, and the end result is a thread that moves fluidly and with the absolute minimum of backlash. Because the plastic is inherently slippery it needs no lubrication, and the nut should have a very long life, however it eventually wears, I can just remelt the plastic and reform the thread as new!

[Scott T]

Wonder if that type plastic would stand up to a piston-tank-screw installation? Or propellers? Nice bright orange or yellow propellers!

[Subculture]

Wonder if that type plastic would stand up to a piston-tank-screw installation? Or propellers? Nice bright orange or yellow propellers!

Well possibly. What's the advantage though?

[crazygary]

David-
O.K., so I can't figure out how to add attachments to the forum e-mail, so am hoping to be able to do that here!!

Wow!! I managed to pull that off!! I'm pretty jazzed!! Hah!!

First photo is showing the bottom end of the spindle. The attached part is, basically, a shaft collar bored to the diameter of the spindle. A piece of 5/16" diameter rod was threaded on one end, screwed into a 5/16-18 tapped hole made in the side of the shaft collar, not the existing set screw hole, and bent to a 90 degree angle so it sticks up vertically, parallel to the axis of the spindle. The piece attached to the rod will be explained later! The shaft collar set screw holds it quite well to the spindle!

Second and third photos show the 1" travel dial indicator attached to the head of the machine via a small piece of angle and a few tapped holes . The dial indicator is a Harbor Freight cheap-o with 1" travel, and works really well!!

Forth photo is a length of 5/8" diameter steel rod drilled through at one end to slide on the 5/16" vertical rod. It's drilled and tapped on that end to accomodate a thumb screw to snug it to the rod wherever you need to. The other end has a flat milled on it, at about 90 degrees to the hole for the rod. This is solely so the indicator end has a flat place to contact.

Last one shows the whole enchilada as a completed unit!! It functions exactly opposite of the way you would normally use a dial indicator!! First, run your cutter down to where you plan to begin machining. Next, loosen the thumbscrew on the 5/8" piece, and push it up so that the indicator plunger is almost all the way inside. Put the end of your cutter on the workpiece, and zero the indicator. From there, you can achieve whatever depth of cut you require!!

Pretty simple, pretty cheap, and pretty effective!! K.I.S.S. engineering from the mind of a crazy Italian!! Bada-BING!

If further explanation is needed, please don't hesitate to ask!

Hope this works as well for you as it has for me!!

crazygary

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

A possible solution to your Y-azis backlash may involve nothing more than tightening the gib! Refer to your machine manual, if ya can find it!! If not, you can print one here:

http://images.harborfreight.com/manuals/42000-42999/42975.pdf

As far as indexing, you may be able to get away with a spin fixture, which utilizes 5C collets to hold your workpiece.
Got some pretty cheap on Ebay! Go to Ebay.com and enter 5c spin fixture to search.

And yep, I know exactly how you feel about some kind of vertical "gizmo" for precision depths! A geared vertical feed capability would be way cool!! I rigged up a dial indicator and a couple of parts to my spindle so that I could get. at least, some degree of vertical precision. It's a bit "crude", but has worked for me. Will take a couple of pix later in the day, and PM them to you!

Yeah, I've tighten the gibs and that will help a bit -- I've learned to live with it till I find the time to dig into the cross-slide assemble (ugh!).

I'll look into the collets, Gary. Good stuff.

Yeah, a depth-gauge and even a dial-indicator have been used hanging off the spindle mount -- real Rube Goldberg stuff.

But enough of this, we've totally hi-jacked the thread.

David

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Wonder if that type plastic would stand up to a piston-tank-screw installation? Or propellers? Nice bright orange or yellow propellers!

Makes you think that maybe this is what Ron's employing for his non-traveling Benix gear nut that drives his pump pistons? Good stuff, Andy.

An alternative is to take the bronse nut out, slit it and compress the diameter to better girdle the Bendix/Acme drive thread.

David

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

David-
O.K., so I can't figure out how to add attachments to the forum e-mail, so am hoping to be able to do that here!![ATTACH=CONFIG]18156[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]18157[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]18158[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]18159[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]18160[/ATTACH]

Wow!! I managed to pull that off!! I'm pretty jazzed!! Hah!!

First photo is showing the bottom end of the spindle. The attached part is, basically, a shaft collar bored to the diameter of the spindle. A piece of 5/16" diameter rod was threaded on one end, screwed into a 5/16-18 tapped hole made in the side of the shaft collar, not the existing set screw hole, and bent to a 90 degree angle so it sticks up vertically, parallel to the axis of the spindle. The piece attached to the rod will be explained later! The shaft collar set screw holds it quite well to the spindle!

Second and third photos show the 1" travel dial indicator attached to the head of the machine via a small piece of angle and a few tapped holes . The dial indicator is a Harbor Freight cheap-o with 1" travel, and works really well!!

Forth photo is a length of 5/8" diameter steel rod drilled through at one end to slide on the 5/16" vertical rod. It's drilled and tapped on that end to accomodate a thumb screw to snug it to the rod wherever you need to. The other end has a flat milled on it, at about 90 degrees to the hole for the rod. This is solely so the indicator end has a flat place to contact.

Last one shows the whole enchilada as a completed unit!! It functions exactly opposite of the way you would normally use a dial indicator!! First, run your cutter down to where you plan to begin machining. Next, loosen the thumbscrew on the 5/8" piece, and push it up so that the indicator plunger is almost all the way inside. Put the end of your cutter on the workpiece, and zero the indicator. From there, you can achieve whatever depth of cut you require!!

Pretty simple, pretty cheap, and pretty effective!! K.I.S.S. engineering from the mind of a crazy Italian!! Bada-BING!

If further explanation is needed, please don't hesitate to ask!

Hope this works as well for you as it has for me!!

crazygary

Oh, that's perfect! You crazy man, you! I'm off to harbor freight for another dial-indicator.

[Subculture]

Makes you think that maybe this is what Ron's employing for his non-traveling Benix gear nut that drives his pump pistons?
An alternative is to take the bronse nut out, slit it and compress the diameter to better girdle the Bendix/Acme drive thread.

David

No he doesn't use that method, but you're kind of getting warm.

Splitting the nut and compressing will take up any radial wear, but will not deal with axial wear, which is the source of backlash in a trapezoid/acme thread. Would work well with v-threads though.

Other solutions to this are to run up two nuts, and adjust/shim them so that they remove the axial backlash. The snag with that is that it requires periodic adjustment to maintain tolerance, as the nuts wear. Sometimes a spring is put in to keep the nuts tensioned, a variation on this is to tension the spring radially so that it twists the other nut to automatically compensate.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

I like the back-up nut -- and why not a lock-washer instead of the compression spring? Good stuff. Thanks.

[trout]

You guys are talking about the issue I am trying to resolve (at least I hope I am understanding you). I messaged Ron asking for help. On the Aluminaut, I am trying to use a syringe plunger, but with the thread going through it. My theory is the rubber will form a seal around the threads....what say you?