My work as a graduate student

J Gilles · Apr 1, 2016

I thought I would start a thread for some of the parts I have made during my time as a graduate student. My position is teaching undergraduate engineers how use the machine shop and help seniors with their capstone design projects. Our shop has 2 manual mills, 2 manual lathes, 2 CNC mills, and a CNC lathe, plus the usual accompanying machines. Pretty much every part we make is a prototype with units ranging from 1 to 10 and for a wide range of applications.

On to the goodies:

Titanium muffler flanges

Custom YZ250F Flywheel

Old custom vs. OEM

Made an arbor to hold it in the lathe

Old Custom vs. New Custom

5.5" aluminum scaled down rocket parts

Nozzle

Support Plug

J Gilles · Apr 1, 2016

More rocket pieces

Outer surface with plug

Finished nozzle

Middle section (Inside also has complex curves, but I don't have a picture of it yet.)

Front cowling(Same as above)

Exhaust Flange

J Gilles · Apr 1, 2016

3D Printed Gears

Fire probes

Milland · Apr 1, 2016

Neat stuff, good to see you're getting "hands on" opportunities for the students.

Spencer in NH · Apr 1, 2016

Yer having way too much fun. Nice work!

Dupa3872 · Apr 1, 2016

Nice work, show us some complete assemblies. Are you building Rocket engines ? I would love to see more of that. I'm proud of you for doing well in school and passing it on to other students. I have a daughter in Grad. school right now. It's a long road and takes a lot of commitment.

Congratulations I wish you well. Use what you have learned to save the planet and make the world a better place. You could go on to create the next SpaceX

Make Chips Boys !

Ron

michiganbuck · Apr 1, 2016

Very nice looking parts for sure. I think engineering students should imagine a concept, sketch, draw with tolerances, make parts to the checked prints and assemble the what ever. Then draw the needed improvements if it should not work .My friend John built a single cylinder air compressor At University of Michigan (or State) with starting with pouring the casting. He gave it to me and now perhaps 60 years old still works well. He spent his life as a shop teacher and passed a few years ago. Yes I think John made the compressor form school plans so did not design.

Pic #4 and 5 could have been done differently as dependent on the quality of the chuck (they are rarely perfect).Arbor could be made with the nose having a turned thread made between centers, then hub turned with the arbor between centers.
Easy way to check your part would be turn arbor 180* in the chuck and run an indicator on the hub.

Yes run in a collect might get you .0003 or so on a good day..If wanting to keep the screw and washer over a nut for some reason.

I teach the scouts knot tying.

Speedie · Apr 1, 2016

Now all you need is the element of stress and your a complete machinist. Stress as in your going to be fired if you ruin a part and hurry up the boss is standing over you.

evidence_UA · Apr 1, 2016

Concerning HAAS lathe - Where are the verniers on turn-handles? How are you getting the toleranced size on parts without them?

Ries · Apr 1, 2016

its a cnc lathe- its all digital.
the movement is shown on the screen.

michiganbuck · Apr 2, 2016

Would not wish grinders in the same room but think cutting tool geometry and grinding perhaps having a surface grinder might have a place if teaching machine shop practice for the complete machinist. If the class is rocket engine design then no.

Is the part held between centers to become an aerospike nozzle? if so what material is it?

J Gilles · Apr 2, 2016

Dupa3872 said:
Nice work, show us some complete assemblies. Are you building Rocket engines ? I would love to see more of that. I'm proud of you for doing well in school and passing it on to other students. I have a daughter in Grad. school right now. It's a long road and takes a lot of commitment.

Congratulations I wish you well. Use what you have learned to save the planet and make the world a better place. You could go on to create the next SpaceX

Make Chips Boys !

Ron

Thanks for the positive words Ron. The rocket is just a scaled model that will not be fired. It is meant to show off a new style of design and will be quarter cut so the inside surfaces can be seen.

michiganbuck said:
Very nice looking parts for sure. I think engineering students should imagine a concept, sketch, draw with tolerances, make parts to the checked prints and assemble the what ever. Then draw the needed improvements if it should not work .My friend John built a single cylinder air compressor At University of Michigan (or State) with starting with pouring the casting. He gave it to me and now perhaps 60 years old still works well. He spent his life as a shop teacher and passed a few years ago. Yes I think John made the compressor form school plans so did not design.

Pic #4 and 5 could have been done differently as dependent on the quality of the chuck (they are rarely perfect).Arbor could be made with the nose having a turned thread made between centers, then hub turned with the arbor between centers.
Easy way to check your part would be turn arbor 180* in the chuck and run an indicator on the hub.

Yes run in a collect might get you .0003 or so on a good day..If wanting to keep the screw and washer over a nut for some reason.

I teach the scouts knot tying.

Your thoughts on the engineering student are very similar to ours. We aren't teaching them to be machinist, but understand the process so they can understand it and apply it to their work. As for the flywheel arbor, that was considered and was actually done later. I used the one shown just to turn down the outside material and then for getting it balanced I replaced the screw on the other side with a threaded shaft. I started from the flywheel, turned the original shaft, grabbed it, and turned the newest shaft with a center. It may not be the perfect way to do it, but I was able to get both shafts within about .001" across about 7" for the balancing.

Speedie said:
Now all you need is the element of stress and your a complete machinist. Stress as in your going to be fired if you ruin a part and hurry up the boss is standing over you.

I can't say if my stress is on the same level, but mine comes from not having the projects completed before the end of the year event for senior projects.

michiganbuck said:
Would not wish grinders in the same room but think cutting tool geometry and grinding perhaps having a surface grinder might have a place if teaching machine shop practice for the complete machinist. If the class is rocket engine design then no.

Is the part held between centers to become an aerospike nozzle? if so what material is it?

It is just a general machine shop(not only for rocket design) and we do have grinding wheels and a surface grinder in the back. I will say the surface grinder doesn't get used very much, but it does it's job very well when we need it. The part you are referencing is just an "average" nozzle for a rocket. It is just going to be a model used to show off the teams new design.

J Gilles · Apr 5, 2016

A few more picture of the rocket pieces. You can see the inside curvatures and some of the flats that will be used for mounting stuff, along with part of the nose cone.

J Gilles · Jun 3, 2016

Finally got some time to collect some pictures now that school has slowed down.

First is the completed rocket design

Few pictures of the nose cone

Custom suspension piece for a Formula SAE car

Test block for CMM that students can practice on

Current project of replacing steady rest arms with ones that have bearings

michiganbuck · Jun 3, 2016

Very nice work and I am glad you have CNC and manuals

...........? But wait a minuet ? ....? .....? Where is the surface grinder?

And I don't see cutting threads.. you could have cut the arbor thread.

J Gilles · Jun 3, 2016

I will try to get a picture of the surface grinder next week. As for the arbor, I will try to get a picture of the setup I had. I forgot I had already mentioned my process above.

michiganbuck · Jun 3, 2016

I was kidding but yes glad you have a grinder. Don't worry about the picture just add add one of something you ground along the way..Nice finish on the tube.

J Gilles · Jun 9, 2016

Have a few more pictures from this week.

Got the hardware in for the steady rest and put it back together.

Ended up making my brother a deer call based off the wooden one shown. You wrap a rubber band through the slot at the top and blow. It seems to work pretty well, just have to play with the tension on the rubber band. I also 3D printed him one earlier, but the slot width was off and it made a huge difference. Didn't really work at all.

sandiapaul · Jul 7, 2016

Nice stuff, thanks for sharing. You and I have the same job, I'm at Rutgers in NJ.

J Gilles · Jul 11, 2016

Work in the shop has slowed down a lot this summer due to our manager taking time off before he retires. I have been able to get some smaller projects in, but this is the big one I have been working on. The manager is a Pepsi man so me and some of the other graduate students are working on making him a 6 pack of aluminum pepsi bottles with a custom logo and thank yous on them. Plus another grad student is using the laser cutter to make him a carrier for the bottles. Just finished turning them today and I will post updates as they get further along.

My work as a graduate student

Cast Iron

Cast Iron

Cast Iron

Diamond

Stainless

Stainless

Diamond

Stainless

Aluminum

Diamond

Diamond

Cast Iron

Cast Iron

Cast Iron

Diamond

Cast Iron

Diamond

Cast Iron

Titanium

Cast Iron

Similar threads