INHERITANCE MACHINING

Shout out to Rowan @noengineerhere for finally overflowing my shame capacity of the Box of Shame with your fanmail. The box said, “Yum!” Now, to make room for some more of my future foibles… Let’s make a bigger box!

The lathe has been glaring at me for 4 months, it’s time to put it to work. And by “it”, I mean me.Which, as you might expect, never goes quickly. And while I can’t promise a super satisfying reveal, can I tempt you with a negative side project total? Who would have believed it?!

I tend to always make tools but sometimes you get an itch that you just have to scratch. And of course what I thought would be a “simple catch up project” ended up being one of the hardest things I’ve made to date. Partially due to the complexity, and mostly due to the lack of planning I put into actually making it. Oh and something about the Young’s modulus.

No really… this changes everything. All my tooling to this date has missed one thing. Hardening. Hardening means grinding. And grinding I can’t do (sortof). But not anymore!

Taking on a part that was most definitely meant for CNC seems like a good way to spend a week at the mill. But where’s the fun unless I’m racing an actual CNC machine. Time to put my machines where my mouth is.

New Lathe. No Tooling. What’s a guy to do? Make everything he’s missing of course! Never mind that the lathe has its own set of issues. But this is related to solving those. I swear… or “putting the cart before the horse” is my middle name.

Ignoring the larger issues with the “new” lathe in favor of a simple project. Remaking the lead screw and nuts for the compound slide. Little did I know simple… does not mean easy…

We’ve all seen the new lathe looks like it was ridden hard and put away wet… but how bad is it actually? The answer may surprise you…

So… something happened that I never thought would happen. I was given something. Something big. And something I’ve always wanted. No.. no.. get your mind out of the gutter. I promise you this is PG-13 (ish).

A sticky subject for me… rotary broaching. I thought I had it figured out. But maybe not. So let’s build one not from my imagination this time.