Well for starters I finally got all the TIG welding done for my batch of BIG strut braces! Most of those have shipped out, I still have to finish polishing two bars and then that project will finally be complete. I also finished powdercoating the plates and firewall braces for that group buy. And in that bag is also 8 reverse lockout tubes for my shifters, fresh from the oven with black powdercoat on them. In the bag you see mostly super gloss black with some chrome firewall braces on top, and on the table they're chrome on top, black, transparent blue over chrome, and silver with a clearcoat.
On the shifter front, they're sooo close to being done. Today I'll be nickel plating the shifter shafts, then once that's done it's just assembly. Yesterday I nickel plated 16 of my hardened lower pins (pictured a few posts below) and luckily every single one turned out perfect! Also pictured is how I drill the hole in the shaft for the overdrive wiring. I used to use drill bits and step up in size, but that left rough edges and a horrible burr on the inside, now I just use a 3/8" 4 flute endmill and it cuts like butter! Barely any burrs at all, I take a quick pass at the edges with my dremel before calling it good. And when I put the wiring in, I use a rubber grommet to protect it from the edges of the hole. There's a pic of some M90 shifters that I nickel plated a few months ago, I've got a bunch more that need to get plated here soon. The last pic is one of my nickel tanks, notice I wrapped it in bubble wrap to keep the heat in there. One tank has to keep ~113° F and the other one should be 160-200° F, so now that it's starting to get really cold out this bubble wrap helps to keep the heat in. It's 11am here in early october and it's only 4° C!! What's that in Fahrenheit, 39.2°. Nice and sunny though. I know some place in canada have well below freezing and snow right now, so I'm not complaining too bad.
Whaddoya know, another shifter picture I just found, forgot about this little guy. These are nylon tubes that I machine and are installed in the reverse lockout mechanism (black slider) on the shifter. Just a tiny bit of grease and the reverse lockout slides up and down silky smooth. Two springs go below the nylon to spring it back to the down position. The big chips are from parting them off at the exact length required, and the little chips are from turning the outside from around 0.754 to 0.740".
I've also been working lots on my CNC milling machine! Boy it's just about done, I'm ecstatic! FYI for anyone thinking about doing the conversion, you have to be pretty passionate about it to have the drive to get it done, there's a lot to do and a lot to spend. Eventually I want to create a page on my website dedicated to my machining adventures including all the details of the conversion, but for now these random bits of info will have to do. I've been doing a ton of wiring, I decided to wire up the mill for 5 axis control, just cause I can, and cause I plan to actually have it be 5 axis someday. For now it will be 4 axis (XYZ and a rotating 4th axis) and the 5th will control a stepper motor for my tapping attachment, so that I can tap threads into holes easily and repeatably. I covered all the wiring that will hang out around the milling machine with hose, just automotive vacuum hose, to keep any water/coolant/chips out. I sealed the ends with a big goop of silicone sealant and that cool heat shrink with the glue inside. The connectors are also sealed, the pics show that. In the future I will build a large enclosure that houses the milling machine and keeps all the chips under control, and also keeps the flood coolant contained and recirculated.
I am basically following the instructions by "Hoss", from www.hossmachine.info. He has done an incredible amount of innovation with his machine (the same one that I have), and I plan to do practically all the mods that he's done, and a bunch more that I have in mind. For the initial conversion I don't really have to do a lot of physical modification to the machine, just drilling/tapping a few holes and grinding away a few casting spots to make room for the new goodies. All of which is completely reversible, but who the heck would convert BACK to manual control after the joys of CNC??????????? I certainly never will. Ever.
Hoss is even kind enough to post all the cad drawings for the parts you need to machine for the conversion, making the swap a whole lot easier. I ran into a few snags when I tried to modify his plans and add things of my own, just a few things I overlooked, no biggie. The pics show some holes in the machine that I had to drill and tap for metric M6, that's what I did last night. All his plans are for imperial bolts, but I like to use Metric since I'm a volvo fan, and since the machine uses metric bolts too. At first I had a really really tough time drilling through the cast iron with my cordless drill, it just wasn't biting at all. I thought there might be a trick to cast or something, then I bought a new drill bit and it sliced through like butter! The pics also showed some parts that I had to grind away. Hoss said that he used an angle grinder for all of it, but I found that it would only get me half way, then I used my dremel with a double cut carbide burr to finish it off, worked awesome!
I bought my ballscrews and nuts from Mcmaster.com, same place I got the ones for my lathe. They only list right hand threaded nuts and screws on their site, but they shipped me one RH and one LH, with three RH nuts! At the time I received them I though "no biggie, I can reverse the direction in Mach3 to compensate, it'll work fine. I didn't realize that the RH ballnuts won't work on the LH screw, figured that gem out yesterday too. And I already machined the screws and threaded them, don't really wanna do that again, so I might see if I can find a cheap LH ballnut and get it here quick. I e-mailed Mcmaster but haven't heard back yet.
Other than that, I just have to throw the machine back together, lap the ways with valve grinding compound to make them slide smoother, get myself a LH ballnut, then the X and Y (left/right and in/out) axissesses will be done. I need those two done and CNC'ed so that I can finish up the Z (up/down) motor mount, which won't take long at all. I just need to mill a big ~2" pocket into the plate for some bearings to hide, so the computer will control X and Y and I'll manually feed down the Z axis for each pass. Then bolt up the Z stuff and holy cow I'll be done! I would still have to wire up the E-stop button and the limit switches, along with the tach and the touch probe, but that stuff can wait until I've made a few fun chips with full CNC control!
2 comments:
Complex control systems using valves requires an automatic control based input of an actuator. The actuator strokes the valve allowing the valve to be positioned accurately and allowing control over a variety of requirements.
Umm, okay.... thanks? Not sure what that has to do with anything I've posted. But you're basically talking about a camshaft (at least in car engines). Ahh you know what, I wonder if this is some sort of automatic reply because I used the word "valve grinding compound". Ohh well, I appreciate the lesson.
Post a Comment