Made a thin bushing

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Originally Posted by digr

Nice!! Looks like the shop is kept clean is that because of you or the boss?

Funny thing. About a month ago, I started taking the last 5 minutes or so, or staying late if necessary to sweep up around my lathe. Made my area a bit better to come into the next morning.

About a week later, the boss asked in monthly safety meeting for everyone to chip in a bit more and clean the shop up a bit. I didn’t need to do anything extra like every one else, because I had already started doing it. I very rarely see another one sweep up regularly anymore.

Out of 9 guys that was in shop today, four made it to within 2 minutes of normal closing time on Fridays. Business is slow for this time of year, and we are pretty well caught up. I was two minutes past quitting time when I finished sweeping area around my lathe and mill.




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[digr]

You guys could use a small but steady fab job.

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I found a good use for wood shims yesterday. I was making some alum rollers for local manufacturing plant we do a little bit of work for. The Alum tube fit thru my 4" lathe spindle easily being 3-1/2" diameter, but the other end was just sticking out of my lathe spindle. It was hard to keep running true with just the chuck jaws, so I made up some wood shims to true it in the bore.



I put an dial indicator on both sides and with the four jaw chuck and the wood shims, I was able to dial in both sides so I know the bearing bores I do will have the tube running as good as I can, without actually having to take a clean up cut across the entire 52" length. I could have run this in a steady rest, and maybe do it about as good, but this way here, I can run the RPMS much higher. The wood shims never moved, and it was running pretty vibration free.



I have made a piece that I can put in the spindle bore with 4 screws that allows me to do the same thing as the shims, but I think I can only fit 3-1/4" thru this piece, since it goes inside the lathe spindle bore for support. And with the wood, I don't have to worry about damaging the chrome on rods either.

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I also made some modifications to a sanding rod I made up a couple of years ago. I had a piece of fiberglass round rod, that I cut a slit in one end for emery cloth. I roll a piece around the end, and then I can use this to sand out internal bores easier. It is long enough that I can put some leverage on it, and I can just rotate it a bit to get a fresh bit of sandpaper too.



But today, I cut a series of grooves every 1/2" on it, so that way I can judge how far I am going into the bore. Makes it easier to only go as deep as I need to. My engraver worked good for marking every inch line too.

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This will a first of several posts about a cart I am making at work, for the machinists to use. Since it is for me and other guy mostly, I am trying to make it super nice. I have some other parts done, but got some free time today to work on a few more.

I had to start with the handles for the adjustable post I am putting on one side. It will become clear later in the build pics why.

I turned 5 handles. I only needed three, but figured couple extra will come in handy later.

First I made a center guide that slipped over the 5/8” rod, so I could use tail stock center to support rod when doing the tapered cut.

Then set up the taper attachment, and after a couple tries, had it down pretty well. Then added my signature grooves I tend to dress up my shop made tools with.









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I wanted the 1/2”-20 TPI mandrel as close to centered as possible, so I single pointed threaded it with a 1/4”- 20TPI tap held in the tool post holder. Always keep your old broken taps. You can always modify them for small lathe cutters.

I’ve even ground most of the threads away to use them, leaving just one row at the tip. Just rotate it so one thread is cutting on center.





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