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Is there a chip-breaker "formula"?
I'm often grinding custom lathe tools for weird little turning and boring tasks. I don't know what the deal is, but only rarely do I hit the sweet spot and grind in a chipbeaker by hand that works well on the first shot. Observation and tweaking usually gets there with a couple iterations, but... -
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Plain bearing spindle design
We need to design and build a couple small spindles for some grinding operations. They need to be reasonably but not exceptionally accurate: 1 tenth TIR would be perfectly adequate. I have one small Blockhead air bearing that's the right size, but it's overkill for the task and I don't want... -
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Blanking small slugs from fully-annealed C260 brass
I've needed a bunch of round slugs as the starting point for some small parts. I made a punch and die out of A2, hardened and tempered back to HRC58, then ground to size. The slugs get punched out of fully-annealed C260 brass that was custom rolled to 0.027". The punch and die are fixtured in... -
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Charmilles E10-Isopulse P25 sinker EDM basics
We took on a prototyping project involving some small punch-press dies. The female dies are roughly 1/4" across and have some small-radius internal corners. Because this is a short-term project and die-making isn't our bread-and-butter, I bought a mid-80s Charmilles E10. It's in beautiful...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 4
- Forum: EDM Machining
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Punch and die fixturing--best practices
I've been using a punch press to punch out small discs (~0.25" dia.) out of 0.035"-thick 260 brass. Because they're round, the angular alignment of the punch and die hasn't mattered. Now, though, I need to make some parts about the same size, but with some features where the alignment is... -
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4140 heat treating questions
We have some 4140 parts that we plan to heat treat next week in our electric atmospheric heat-treating oven. These parts are one-offs for internal r&d, so we won't disappoint any customers if we get this wrong on the first try. These parts are roughly 4" diameter and 1.75" thick. The ASM... -
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Will a 900 RPM motor make a relatively quiet phase converter?
I've been running a Kay industries rotary converter in my shop for the last 12 years. It's been bulletproof, but it's noisy as heck and I'm getting good and tired of the whine. New bearings last year didn't change the noise one iota. I'm guessing a slower motor would be a lot quieter if they...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 17
- Forum: Transformers, Phase Converters and VFD
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Riggers in Tucson, AZ
Simple question (maybe for kpotter or anyone else in the area): Who are the go-to machinery riggers in Tucson? We need a machine picked up from a rural residential location, then skidded for LTL shipping. -
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WTB: Universal cylindrical grinder, rolling mill, punch press...
We've got an r&d project coming up later this summer and need to source a few pieces of equipment. Since we have a couple months to find suitable machines, I thought it'd be good to post the list here first: 1. Universal cylindrical grinder, 10x20-ish. The Landis 1R or the 24" 2R would both...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 3
- Forum: Machinery for Sale or Wanted
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Hardback vs flex bandsaw blades
One of those non-obvious things they teach you in engineering school is that the hardness of tool steel has almost no effect on its Young's modulus (stress per unit strain). If that's the truth, considering steel blades only, what is the difference between hardback bandsaw blades that are... -
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Lapping IDs on a pair of angular contact bearings
We're assembling a prototype. It turns out that the shaft diameters (40mm nominal) are about 0.0001" larger than the tolerance allowed. For various reasons, we can't machine or lap the shaft at this stage. It rides on angular contact bearings. Even though the bearings are expensive, I'm... -
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Environmentally-friendly degreasing of 260 brass
So we got this specification for degreasing some brass parts that involves trisodium phosphate, sodium cyanide, sulfuric acid, and chromic acid. There's a water wash between each step. The customer says this is to get all traces of oil off the parts. The Na3PO4 and NaCN are reasonably strong... -
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Custom-rolled brass supplier?
We need to source brass coils rolled to non-standard thicknesses with close tolerances, all between 0.015" and 0.040". We only need about 500# of each thickness. Are there any mills or rolling facilities that will produce lots of custom-rolled material in these quantities? -
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Design guidelines for custom hydraulic cylinder
We've got a little design task here. After looking at the options and the constraints involved with a module that installs in another machine, we're thinking about designing our own custom hydraulic cylinders--roughly 2.5" diameter, but with a short stroke, only about 1/4". The standard... -
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Finding a small, double-acting punch press
I just posted over in the EDM forum about the die-making side of this task, and now I need to deal with the punch press. We use a single-action punch press to produce little parts for our internal use, but there's a new part we need to make in relatively larger quantity (several thousand per...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 3
- Forum: Fabrication: CNC Laser, Waterjet, Plasma, Welding
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Selecting a used sinker EDM for a small die-making task
From time to time, we make dies for our own use to produce little parts on a punch press, typically with the longest dimension smaller than 1/2" across. Up until now, these have always been very simple and we could finish everything with a surface- and jig-grinder. We're working on a new...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 3
- Forum: EDM Machining
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Kollmorgen K-222 autocollimator issue
I recently picked up a Kollmorgen K-222 autocollimator from an auction. The horizontal axis adjustment appears to work properly. The vertical axis adjustment is stuck. My first guess was the instrument had reached a travel stop. However, looking through the eyepiece, it appears it's only 25%... -
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Wanted: 8,000+ lb forklift within 250 miles of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
For the last month, we've been looking for a bigger forklift to move equipment on pavement and packed gravel. We need 8,000 lb minimum lift capacity, 10-12k-lb would be better, but we don't want something much more than 15k-lb. (The 30k Hysters from the local sawmills are way too much...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 3
- Forum: Machinery for Sale or Wanted
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Can Vidmar cabinets be safely moved full of stuff?
Some years back I bought several Vidmar cabinets made to be mounted in a vehicle. They're similar to the normal Vidmar offerings--60" tall, roughly 30" wide and 30" deep, but they have drawer locks that keep them from rolling open when you go around a curve. None of the drawers have more than...- Borealis
- Thread
- Replies: 10
- Forum: Material Handling and Rigging
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Electrically-insulating material selection
Any suggestions for a material that is: --Machinable with conventional carbide/hss tooling --Electrically insulating --Has a coefficient of thermal expansion ideally below 25ppm/degF (~45ppm/degC) ...and then it'd be nice if it... --costs less than $5/cubic inch in quantities of ~20 cubic...