The Die Filer Build

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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by Netpackrat »

I may decide to table the motor issue for now until I get closer to having the machine built. They got back to me, no USPS although they will still ship the VFD for free. I am not going to pay $135 to ship a $40 Chinese motor however. Looking on Ebay most of what I see that is priced "reasonably" has high shipping of 2-3 times the item cost, which I guess they think is a clever way of return-proofing their sales. I did see a nice looking supposedly unused Dayton of similar specs for $125 with free shipping, but add that to a $145 VFD and it's getting into real money. Would probably last forever though, so I may end up just saying "fuck it" and ordering them.

Edit to add; learned that the 115v VFDs will constantly trip the GFCI outlets in my garage, so probably a good thing I wasn't successful in ordering that setup. Maybe will look into the Sherline DC motor w/speed control like the "Clickspring" dude used with his die filer. That seemed to work very well for him.
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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by Netpackrat »

Started on the crankshaft today. The plans show this from a single piece of mild steel; I used 2" 4140 and I can definitely see why the guy in the video started with a piece of 5/8" drill rod and made his flange out of a separate piece. This really did create an impressive amount of chips. I had ordered a 12" piece so I still have quite a bit of it left. In this picture you can see it hanging out of the 4 jaw chuck:

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I forgot to take any in-progress pictures; I didn't really like this hanging out that far, but I didn't want to cut it until I needed to, and at 2" nominal, it was too big for the 1-9/16" spindle bore of my lathe. Also, it was a few thou less than the nominal dimension (I hadn't wanted to order the next size bigger), so in order to come as close as possible to the 2" flange diameter on the print, I indicated it to true in the area where the flange would be. Then I faced off the end, center drilled it, and used a live center in the tailstock to give it some support at the end. And then proceeded to make chips... And more chips, and still more chips.

I made the radius on the flange just by eyeballing some angle cuts into it, which I then rounded over with a file. After polishing, I parted it off most of the way and then finished taking it off by hand with a hacksaw. The parting actually went better than I had expected but I didn't feel like sticking the blade out far enough to take it all the way off and having to readjust the height of the tool, OR trying to catch the shaft. I had figured I would need to bring my porta-band over and cut it off, so to only need to hacksaw maybe the last 3/8" was a pleasant surprise.

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Anyway, part of the plan for tomorrow is to try machining the other end of it. There is an offset crank pin so it will continue to be 4 jaw chuck work. Although my 5c collet chuck has yet to arrive, the set of collets and a couple of collet blocks I ordered did arrive, so I have the narrow end secured in a 5/8" collet in a 4 sided collet block. I will start by facing off the flange, and laying out the location of the crank pin. Then using the same technique shown earlier with the 2 dead centers and an indicator, I will offset the assembly in the 4 jaw and then machine the crank pin diameter, and the flange for thickness. I left some extra material so I should have plenty there to face off my center punch mark for the pin location as the last step of the process.
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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

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Gunsmith buddy is kind of butt-hurt that I turned all of that "good gun steel" into chips. Not sure what he expected.... He talked me into buying the brute-force lathe instead of the smaller one I was planning to get, so rather than make the crank out of multiple pieces, I used brute force. Anyway some of the next few photos are not necessarily in the order the steps were done, but are presented to better show how the parts were made.

Getting set up to turn down the drive pin on the end of the crank flange:

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Finished product... I am fairly pleased with how this turned out:

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I did this the other day; preparing to flatten the top of the table casting. The setup was kind of sketchy but I yanked on it a bunch before starting, and couldn't dislodge it. It honestly worked a lot better than I expected it to. I shimmed it out in the jaws to get the mounting flange to clear the face of the chuck, only about .002" clearance there:

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Then I switched chucks again, turned it around, and made the hole in the center. I made it a little bigger than the drawing shows, because they revised the casting and the mounting point at some point to make the table tiltable, but it didn't look like they made the hole any bigger to allow for file clearance when the table is tilted. Then I set it aside until after I had turned the crank and parted it off.

Before removing the remnant of that 2" chunk of 4140 that was all nice and indicated true, I faced it off, turned a little nub to center the table, and then drilled and tapped a center hole to take a 5/16-24 bolt left over from some other project. Then I mounted the table with the machined flat against the face, using the bolt and a stack of fender washers.

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About as far as I am going to get this part until I figure out how I am going to mill the mount.

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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

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Running out of things I can do until more tooling and the rest of my material shows up. Decided to make the debris shield that the vertical shaft passes through. Drawing calls for 20 gauge brass, gunsmith buddy was trying to convince me to make it conical, wouldn't let it go. I'm like, "no, I have this piece of bronze that I want to use, it will look good." Gave me shit about that, too. Ended up polishing it too just to annoy him (since it's going to get covered in filings) when he sees it. I've seldom found it necessary to work through all 3 stages of compound and buffs, but in this instance I went to the trouble. :lol:

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So yeah, I had a couple nasty pieces of 1/8" bronze that I salvaged from some seized up piece of marine hardware 20 years ago. I marked out the part, drilled some holes, and then I roughed it out using the bandsaw. Mounted it in the lathe using the same left over piece of 4140 that I used to turn the table OD, and made it circular.

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Then I opened up the center hole to the final dimension with a step drill in the drill press, and made a flat where it needs to clear the base casting. The print shows a notch, but I didn't see the need for corners there. Radiused the bottom edge of the flat, and then polished the top side down to 320 grit, and buffed it out with compound and cloth wheels using the bench buffer.

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Of course, it is destined to eventually turn green (because bronze) and get covered in filings. Another thing the drawings show which is stupid, is the felt pad on top of the shield, where the whole thing will get loaded up with filings. I am going to glue mine to the bottom of the shield, and put a short spacer under the mounting screw. The edge of the felt around the center hole will still get crap on it, but the shaft collar should deflect most of that outward.
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HTRN
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by HTRN »

Netpackrat wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 5:36 am Of course, it is destined to eventually turn green (because bronze) and get covered in filings.
Clear coat it.
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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by Netpackrat »

Yeah, that's one possibility. In general, I don't like clear coating polished parts because the clear coat gets nasty but I may make an exception for this.

Goofed a little, was looking at machine files on Ebay and found a seller with an assortment of 8, but no "buy it now" option. Saw the same seller had another listing with that as an option and I didn't look closely enough, so I ended up buying a set of 12, but they are all half round fine cut, although I did get a pretty good price per file. Will probably keep what I can use and put the rest back on Ebay later.
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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by Netpackrat »

Not been a huge amount I wanted to do on this over the course of the past week since I am mostly waiting for tooling and/or materials to show up before I can proceed. Sounds like I am screwed for the time being as far as my collet chuck goes; Grizzly initially contacted me on Monday morning and said they were shipping out another one, but after several days of no new tracking info, I called them and was informed they had to wait 30 days before doing that, Because Alaska. Apparently they were going to just leave me hanging until that time was up. They also wouldn't cancel the order for the same 30 days, so I informed them I would be disputing it through my credit card company and I did so. That's something I have done only rarely, and it's not like Grizzly lost the package, but they called me and said they were shipping out another one and then decided not to, and also not tell me. Either way now I am stuck waiting for the claim process to go through (before ordering the chuck elsewhere), unless by some miracle it shows up here, whereupon I will have the charge reinstated and everybody goes away happy. But that doesn't seem to be the way to bet.

Bunch of other stuff delayed too. A package of steel that shipped on December 11 stopped moving on tracking on the 16th of that month, my Amazon stuff is all delayed, and Grainger ended up backordering the piece of 1.25" bronze I need to make the bearing for the die filer. I have litle stuff I can do on it here and there, which would go way better with the collet chuck, so I have been holding off.

But a piece of 1" bronze stock that I ordered to use in making a tool post drill showed up the other day, so I went ahead and got that project done today. I did come up with this idea on my own, although I have since seen at least one other dude on YouTube who did effectively the same thing. I took a quick change tool holder that is meant to take a 1" diameter boring bar, and made a 660 bronze bushing to fit it with a reamed 7/16" ID. I used a piece of left over 7/16" drill rod that I used to make the vertical shaft for the die holder to make the drill shaft. Turned the one end down to 1/4" so I can use it with pretty much any hand held drill chuck, then drilled and tapped the business end to 1/4-28, so it will take the threaded drill bits that are very common in the aircraft industry.

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These drills are available in very short lengths which will enhance the rigidity of the drill setup, and eliminate the bulk of a chuck for better access into tight areas. I always have a bunch of these around anyway for use in right angle and pancake drill attachments for aircraft and other sheet metal work. There are also a wide array of 1/4-28 threaded reamers available which will fit, as well as small collets of various sizes to use regular drills, counterbores, countersinks, etc. Here I have a 3/8" counterbore with a 1/4" pilot in a 1/4" collet threaded into the tool post drill:

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Another view:

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There were several places on the die filer project where I could have used this tool already if I'd had it, but the first use is likely to be the 1/4" mounting holes in the die filer base. After the mounting holes are drilled, I plan to use the above setup to counterbore them for socket head machine screws, with which it will be bolted to a sheet metal base housing the motor.

I also have a spare 1/4" Jacobs chuck which came off an old drill that died, so eventually I expect I will make another shaft to use a regular drill chuck with this.
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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

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Finished the vertical shaft today. I had previously rough cut this out of a piece of the 7/16" drill rod, but left it about an inch long to give me a little bit of room for error when making the hole and cut on the working end. I had held off doing any more with it, thinking I would have a collet chuck to use which would give good concentricity, and also avoid marring the surface as might happen with chuck jaws. I do have my collets and the collet block I used in making the crankshaft, but that's kind of a pain in the ass for general use. So I made some copper jaw covers for the 4 jaw chuck (which I was eventually going to do anyway) and I used that.

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Faced it off, center drilled the hole, and drilled it to the 1.3" depth called for in the drawing with a 7/32" bit, which I followed with a 1/4" chucking reamer. It called for a flat bottomed hole, so I took the worst of my 1/4" drill bits, and ground a flat tipped bit to finish the hole. I intentionally made the hole a little deep, so then I faced it off again to achieve the 1.3" depth. Took it out of the chuck, and marked the final 6.5" length by eye with a scale (I only have a 6" caliper as the 12" one I ordered has yet to ship. :x ), then put it back in the chuck and trimmed the other end. Not really a critical dimension so eyeball is close enough although it pisses me off that I don't have a tool to make a more precise measurement.

Then I had to cut half of the diameter away to a 1/2" depth at the hole end... This ended up being fairly easy to do using the lathe with a 1/2" end mill in the chuck. Wasn't sure if the end mill might harm the chuck jaws so I left the copper pieces in place. I put the shaft in a tool holder with a piece of aluminum under the grub screws to protect the surface, and milled out the cut using relatively light passes. Between passes I would loosen the tool holder and adjust the height up a little more. Not really a replacement for an actual mill (or even a milling attachment) but it worked OK for a simple part like this.

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Also, the files that I found on Ebay arrived, so here is the shaft with the shaft collar, and a file installed:

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Netpackrat
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Re: The Die Filer Build

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Using the tool post drill I made to drill the mounting holes in the base. I drilled the first one, and then used the indicator as a pointer along with the chuck jaws to locate the subsequent holes 120 degrees apart. As a result of this operation, I discovered that the tool post's dovetail is not perfectly aligned with the axis of the lathe, so the drill shaft isn't quite parallel. It didn't make any significant difference here, but I now have another reason to upgrade my tool post to a better one. I checked both locations and the other one appears to be dead on at least.

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Counterboring the mounting holes using a 3/8" counterbore with a 1/4" pilot in a 1/4" threaded collet. The print shows a larger diameter counterbore for slotted screws, but I will be using socket head screws here.

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The lathe... It's a tool for making round objects square. :D

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The crank follower. The print shows mild steel, but I think 660 bronze will be much better here. The prints actually show mild steel for almost everything that isn't a casting but I don't think I have used any yet.

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Drilling and counter boring the scotch yoke casting for the pinch bolt that it uses to clamp to the vertical shaft. As before, it shows a larger diameter counterbore here for a slotted screw, but I am using socket head screws.

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Screw installed.

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The yoke still needs to be cut so it can clamp to the shaft, but I need to make an arbor for the slitting saw I purchased for this. I also need to decide how I am going to hold it for that operation and also to cut the slot for the crank follower. Ideally both operations would be done in a mill. Looked around in the shop and couldn't find one of those, so I am stuck doing it in the lathe.

I have a few choices... I can booger up an oversize tool holder I have that is just a little too small to accept the casting, I can stick another piece of steel in the tool holder and clamp the casting to that, or I can spring for one of the milling vise setups which includes a vertical slide for adding another axis of travel to the lathe. Would probably have to remove the cross slide and then drill and tap it to accept the milling attachment, neither of which I am particularly eager to do.

Need to obtain a piece of steel for making the saw arbor too. I had planned to use an old axle shaft that I had, but when I cut into it with my bandsaw, the cut started to close and pinch the blade as soon as the blade made it about halfway into it. So its heat treatment left quite a bit of residual stress locked in. Probably not worth the trouble of dealing with it, so I need to find another piece about 1-1/4" diameter (saw fits a 1" arbor).
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Precision
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Re: The Die Filer Build

Post by Precision »

always like your build stories
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