Ox's Shop

[Ox]

Well - yeah - sure, I got the right inserts and all, but come to find out - I needed to order screws too.

My local toy store didn't have "inch" in stock, and so I looked up McMaster, and they had what I was looking for!

But their screws were not quite up to par.
They had the next size smaller torx, and they were simply not nearly as hard. In a pinch they did OK as long as everything was solid.


Trouble was, I was milling on weldments, and there must be something about how the parts were stressed as to how they each "wrang out".

Some were solid going one direction, others the other....

In the end, I had to back down to a smaller cutter for that job. Lesson learned... Leave the big dogs for the solids and stick with smaller toys for weldments.

So keep in mind fellers - buy your screws from an "insert" type source.


-------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[Ox]

Yer gettin like Russ, let see some more pics of some current iron!

I' been wanting to git a little more on this recently, but ....


Current timeline is roughly '96 / '97, and one thing that was an issue was most assuradly - ROOF. Not the condition of it, but the qty of it, as the current situation was REALLY cramping our style!


One day me and Mamma were on our way home from the black-oxiders in Jackson, Mich and for whatever reason - this particular building in a small town about 30 smiles from home, ratt on the hwy, was screaming at me as we went past.

We both been past here forty-leven times and never give it no never mind, but I noticed the weeds were growing up around it a bit. Seemed like maybe it wasn't being used? But it was BIG and seemed fairly new?

So I jerked the wheel (actually that is likely NOT the case as I tend NOT to doo that) and pulled in there. I drove around it real slow and saw no Signs of Life.

This is the 90's! As far as manufacturing is concerned - this may as well be the roaring 20's eh? ...and here sits an empty - nearly new building?

So I drove all the way out back and decided to try the back door ... which happened to be open!

Ahead of me lay 12,000' of open space. New enough that it seemed that some of the concrete hadn't even been driven on with a forktruck yet!
And buss line running all around the perimiter!

...but ... remember the back door being open? Well the kids had gotten in there and they had bike tracks all over - which is no worries, but the idiots had tossed stuff up and broke out every Metal Halide bulb, and had thrown stuff up and ripped holes in several places of the vinyl backed insulation that stuck above the sheet metal on the inside.

I wondered on up front where there is _ what would be considered a Shipping and Receiving Dept, and that is about 2500 sqr feet I guess. ??? This is older building from here fwd. I wonder into the office up front and it screams 1970! So of course - I was at home!

...but aggin - the dumb kids had torn down the drop ceiling, busted out some glass walls, .... just dumb stuff!

I don't git it to this day! When we were kids, we usta find nothing and try to make something of it. Heck, we'd'a gave our left nut for a kewl place like this to hang out!

But I guess this stuff is more of cosmetic issue than real cost, and could logically be of a buyers benefit. ???

.... and the whole building had a huge A/C unit out front! Not sure I wunna see what the light bill on that bad boy could be? I believe that it is on Consumers Power. I lived on Consumers for a yr at one point in another life, and as far as I know - the light bill should not be real bad. The light bill is kind of a big deal as I am on a co-op as it is, and trying to swing the payment on a newsed building and a significantly higher light bill would not go too well.

So I am like

After asking around - it seems that this was an old screw machine shop that had burnt, and been rebuilt. The the old man died, and the kid couldn't handle the cash flow. (thought that it was never ending as I understand) Tits up. .... 'least that's the story I got.


But here's the real kicker:

There is no For Sale sign out front!

I am in the wrong county on the wrong side of the state line to have personal knowledge, so what to doo?

So I started calling around. I called the county office or whatnot and started asking questions. I got ahold of some lady that was "all about" helping to get some new business in a vacant building - and she picked up the ball and ran with it. It took her a while to locate the owner, but eventually called me back to tell me that they did not want to sell it.

While it is no skin off her assets, she was about pissed! LOL!


Some time later the joint got looted by a little older kids.
This time the buss line was gone. The [electrical] entranceway was gone. Don't recall what else? That was a lot of $ ratt there buddy!

The door got locked soon after that! Not sure why you would bother closing the gate after the cattle are all gone, but....


Then a few yrs later, finally someone moved in that building, and I had seen him on this site once, but not in several yrs now. I drive past and they seem to be dooing OK, so good for them. I have not stopped in to see the joint. I prolly should.



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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!

 

[Ox]

Y'all ain' gunna believe this h'yah!

Someone - here, hold my Dew....

This is nutz... I was there, I saw it, I heard it, I'm gunna pay for it, and yet I still kant believe it!

Last weekend I was trying to finish up a big pipe job that included puting a 5.5" x 10' 7" long pipe all the way through the headstock on Big Bertha to have the end turned down and a slight bore job, and then put it up in The Money Pit to have the end drilled and tapped. This is just outside the scope of my personal abilities to handle, and so I was employing the services of my big forktruck and a jib.

My smaller truck would have handled the job, but the mast settles/tips way too fast for a job like this, so I really need the big one. Soon enough I noticed my rear tire started going flat. Pump it up, and by the time I'm ready to go aggin - I gotta pump it up aggin! By the time I finished the job on Sunday, It was going flat all too quickly. Usually this included having to use a big rubber hammer to beat the split rim clamp back into place as I filled it too.
I was not liking this added bonus all that well either...


I have had flats on the rears twice in the last several yrs that I have had this truck. The first time was just before I went sledding one time, and I tossed it in mamma's truck and told her to take it to the tire dealer and have a solid pnue installed. I got home, only to find the tire had been fixed - still takes air!

???

She said that they told her that "I didn't want a solid tire on it. It just won't handle properly."

???

It's a forktruck. It weighs nearly 7 ton empty. It does go pretty good in high gear, but come-on. ???
Another time I popped a hole in it, and took it over myself, and they talked ME out of it aggin! (I prolly didn't have time to wait on a solid tire that day?)

This time I want what I want, and I will go to where I can git it....


Monday morning I pump it up and get the load of pipe onto the truck, and bugger on back towards the shop, only to roll the tire off half way back... Oh well... So I went'n delivered my parts and came back and called the forktruck outfit and had them order in a solid pnuematic tire to replace this bladdered POS.

They got it in on Tuesday, and Mamma took the rim/tire over Wed morning and got it all fixed up. I put it on early Wed afternoon and decided that I wouldna't hafta worry about the back of the truck comming off the ground anytime soon as the solid tire must weigh at least 60# more than the bladdered one!

Unloaded on steel truck this morning (thursday) and all was good.
Then this afternoon I heard a VMC blow an air line, but before I could get over there, I could hear the air pressure dropping quite a bit, but the machine was still running. ??? It sure sounded like it was below 30# by now, and the mill should have faulted out, but it wasn't...

So now I am walking around back of the mill to find the leak, only to realize that it aint the mill at all!
"Well what the heck is leaking?"

So I sniffed it out, and it was the OTHER back tire on the same fork truck!
"Oh _ you _ have _ got _ to _ be _ kiddin' _ me.... "

Then Ricks 3" bars show up, and I have to unload it with the baby truck...
No worries....

So tomorrow it gets the last pnue tire replaced!
What's the odds?


I'll take my Dew back now, thank you....


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I am Ox and I hate to say - this post is all true.

 

[david n]

Boy, a day in the life of OX. What an adventure.

 

[dkmc]

While it is no skin off her assets

By the time I finished the job on Sunday, It was going flat all too quickly. Usually this included having to use a big rubber hammer to beat the split rim clamp back into place as I filled it too.

Holy Moley.....I do not think thats a good idear.
But now with no more R-tires you shouldn't hafta doo that enymore eh?

 

[DDoug]

I thought the tire shops would foam fill 'em instead of having to order
in the solid ones.

 

[Ox]

Happy to report - no flat tarrs in the last cpl months now.

Being chained fast to this h'yah machine for a while yet, and wanting to git off my feet, maybe I could take some time to conjure up a few more paragraphs betwen 12 minute feeds...


.... Still working the late '96 / early '97 timeline....

As I said at one point before, this is a big sledding yr for us, and we are back on our second trip of the yr. We had put a camper on my chumms uncles plot in the UP for a place to stay and not be sponging on any chumms for couch room, but as of early feb we are now on our second trip N and we decided to go back to Ontario aggin instead. This time Mamma was commin' along. Up to now she always rode her own snowmachine, but this trip she is bouncing along on the back of my machine.

So we drove back up to Wawa and unloaded at the Bristol Motel. We headed E out of town to Hawk Junction, then N to Duebruilville. Mamma wasn't doo'in too good back there. She said that she felt out of control and was getting motion sickness. She wasn't having fun to say the least.

What to doo?


Well - what could we doo? _ What COULD we doo?

Well _ what you doo is you rent a room at the motel for her and ride on!


So we headed west in the afternoon sun (happy to report that the sun WAS actually out for once!) we had a bit of an issue at one particular spot that we couldn't see anything but sun! We were going the exact direction with uphill grade as well! Slowed to a crawl and trying to block the sun with our paws, and Shirley hoping that no one was comming the other way b/c we couldn't even tell which side of the trail we were on or hardly even if we were actually moving! We prolly aint seen a sled all day - yet if your gunna meet another one - you know it's gunna be on a corner during the day, or in this case - in the open when your heading directly into the sun!

Well there weren't no other sleds, and we didn't hafta test our liability insurance. Doesn't make quite as dramatic of a story, but it seemed like a positive note to us at that time...

We chased sun on into White River where we ponied up to the pumps and fetched us some petro. Now we had full intentions of pickin'm up and put'n'm back down for a while yet, but we were git'n a bit hungry, and we were both eyein' the sign in the winder of the resto accrost the hwy that read "All you can eat Spaghetti". I'm lookin' at that sign, and then I looked at my chumm that was eyein' that sign, and lookin' at me .... ....

Yeah - we farred up our machines and headed 'cross the Queens Hwy to the resto and fetched us a booth and ordered up two plates of spaghetti! It soon became painfully apparent that noodles is cheap, but beef and sauce apparently aint....

We soon ate our fill and were both tiring quickly, and now we are eyeing the motel back on the other side of the hwy...
Yep - we cried Uncle and fetched us a room. Same feller owned the Husky next door and for an additional $5 each, we were allowed to squirell our snowmachines away in the garage bays for the night.

Next morning we called a feller from Manitauwadge to see about conditions. Were the trails open to and from town? Says the trails between us and them are all open, but the trail back east to Hornepayne has only been packed, and it is deep! Feller asks when we think we'll be in town? We figger we should be there by noon prolly? Says that he just might ride east with us.... So we git into town and fetch us a quick sammich and we head out with our third wheel.

This is shaping up to be one of the best winters in terms of snowfall, and this packed trail was definately a testimate to that fact! By packed - what I mean is that the snow was way too deep for the groomer to even think aboot pulling a drag, and so they just simply took the power unit down through by itself. There was no actual packing bar used.

The snow was deep and the terrain was absolutely perfect! Lots of topography with no tracks on it - other than the deep trenches that the groomer made. We could always use these tracks as a help back up when needed, but they were not something that you wanted to try to actually stay in and ride. But the assurance of solid trail was helpfull with our "trail" machines being way out of their element. We were diggin' it!

By dark we had made it to Hornepayne, and our new chumm dbl backed on our tracks to home, and we went and fetched something to eat. I don't recall anymore whether we stayed there the night, and picked up Mamma the next day, or if we rode on and stayed with her that night?

When we git back - we find that Mamma had not been sitting in that room all day! Turned out that they were having a festival in town that weekend, and since they knew that she was hold-up for a cpl of days, they knocked on her door. They were lookin' for an impartial judge for the "most ____ sled" classes for the kids's sled catagories. This is a northern version of a soap box derby! I think she had fun?
(I tried to find a video of The Little Rascals at their race, but no go... That was a good eppisode if'n I recall corruptly)

Then we headed back to the truck and came home.
Nobody died. Nobody lost a sled in the slush. Nothing overly dramatic to report _ this trip.
Not even sure if'n I have any pics of this trip?
Just part of our "Year to remember".



Mamma has NOT been sledding since.

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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!

 

[Ox]

What's going on @ Ox's Shop these days?

I know y'all are biting your nails on the edge of yer seat - just waiting for that last sledding trip of '97 to be posted up, but yer gunna hafta wait a bit yet. I have a more recent project to show y'all.


Had this job come in that required a face groove.
1" wide by 13" diameter
.
.
.
.
.
by 5.25" deep!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

In 316SS no less!


But there was 5 of them, and I am a sucker for volume, so _ sure, I took it on.


Plan A between my customer and me was to toss it up on the HBM and drill it all out with a coolant through drill and then go back and take the remaining webbing out. This wouldn't make the nicest finish by any means, but it is just a water jacket, and finish not real important - just git the groove in there!

... and that was my plan ratt up to the day I went to order tooling.
By the time I ordered one drill body and 2 inserts, one mill body and a few inserts for that, I was at $1000.
I had 5 of these to run, and I knew that there was no point buying just one of any of these. So I figgered at least $2K in tooling - provided the job ran good! But man - what if I lose a drill / insert down that hole? Man - that could be a chore to cut that out of there!

So I am thinking about plan B, but there really wasn't a plan B yet, so I decided that now would be a swell time to think one up.

I called Kennametal, but they couldn't think of any face grooving tools that they had that could doo that....
They'd think about it, and call back if they thought of anything, but don't hold my breath....

So I meditated on it a while... (fell asleep in front of the puter?)

I wandered 'round the shop, looking, thinking, not expecting to find anything, but the parts are already due, and now aint the time to be conjuring up no Plan B!

So I wandered around aimlessly a while more..... "Think, Think, Think" in my best Pooh voice.....


... and there I found it!
No wait - there's not just one tool there, but TWO!

Oh - I was so embarressed.
I mean - doo you know what these things cost?
And here I had left them both, outside in the snowbank! (well, they HAD been there for a few years)

Here they are:

So I went'n fetched a forktruck and scurried them inside to the bandsaw as they were still attached to some other high value tools yet to be needed.

What doo you think? Will they make parts?
Yeah - they doo still need a bit of modification yet.
Maybe some clearance here and there.

So I took them over to the mill and put them both on Jenny Craig.

Starting to look like anything yet?


OK, one more pic, and then I need to go make the doughnuts (feed a machine) my beeper is going off.
Here is one of them bolted into the toolholder on the lathe:

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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!

 

[CBlair]

I will bet they peeled one heck of a chip....cant wait to see how it turned out. I am about to do the same but on the other side of the coin. 0.047 wide by .250 deep grooves in aluminum, contoured top and bottom and there are 15 of them radiating out in ever larger radii.... not sure one tool will do it but I am going to try.

Charles

 

[mbpp]

Maybe you'd give us a bit more on this ????
It's a long way off being a face grooving tool from what I can make out.
Do you end up fabricating it out of two tubes or something.
MB

 

[EarlF]

I would really like to see and read more about this as well.

 

[CBlair]

You guys have no patience...stories are best that are worth waiting for...


Charles

 

[david n]

Yup. You can make a lot of tooling for $2000. 1" wide x 5" deep in 316. Should be fun. No pics of the cut. We want vid!!

 

[Ox]

Well, even after the mill, these heifers still needed to lose some weight IMO.
Jenny did a good job of taking off the first layer, but maybe Weight Watchers can trim things up a bit more?

The local WW rep here is "Big Bertha". (but of course eh?)

Needing to git some rads put on the sides of these blanks would be difficult at best on a mill, but no sweat at all on the lathe. All you need is a 2" LH boring bar, and find a way to fasten it in the machine. Clamping onto the part would seem sufficient for this app eh?

Well, that would have werked fine, but the handles stick out just too far, and will crash on the main body of the turret on the adjacent position, so I had'ta come up with something else....

Now we are beyond making the tooling to make the part. Now I need to make the tooling that makes the tooling - to make the part.... (oh bother)

So I made a his'n her clamp setup. One is pie shaped to go between two jaws, and the other'n is U shaped to reach around the opposite jaw. There is two rods to apply clamp pressure, and one in the middle to butt up agginst the bar since the anchor plates don't go all the way accrost.

Shown here taking a cutting pass on the inside.

Then with the tooling flipped over to the outside...
I wasn't sure if the clamps would hold good enough for the outside as they weren't designed for that, but they did OK. The bar did slip back a cpl times, but just tonk it back on center and recut and all was fine.

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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!

 

[evansmachine]

Awesome! No Pics of the finished toolholders?

 

[ewlsey]

This is a hell of an out of the box solution! What kinda insert is gonna get glued on the end?

For a deep slot, I would think a feed mill would be the way to go. I have not used one myself, but the videos look impressive. I understand the mold and die guys use them all the time. In a horizontal mill it would really work.

high feed milling - YouTube

 

[dsquire]

Ox

There is always a solution if you give it enough thought. Looks like you reached into the box and found a good one.

Cheers

Don

 

[mbpp]

Must be due another installment today !
Looks clever alright. The centre height looks to be about the middle of the block so you must mill half of it away for a bit and then go up at an angle or something then screw on some inserts and start grooving. Unless it gets done on a different machine. I wonder how you go about insert selection. Maybe a few u-drill inserts in a row. I'd imagine milling out pockets for the inserts would be akward enough. It's looking like it'll be a fairly rigid tool.

 

[DDoug]

Excellent Photo Ox, 'cept it looks like you standing directly in the "line of fire".

You're braver than me. I would have been about 3' right.

But the pix sure is nice.

 

[Ox]

Excellent Photo Ox, 'cept it looks like you standing directly in the "line of fire".

You're braver than me. I would have been about 3' right.

But the pix sure is nice.

It wasn't spinning that fast....
When I first got that big gurl, I too stood to the side, but we have gotten to know each other in the last few yrs. Not so skittish anymore.

Looks clever alright. The centre height looks to be about the middle of the block so you must mill half of it away for a bit and then go up at an angle or something then screw on some inserts and start grooving.

Yes - the tool height will be on center of the tool. When I was laying out the tool, I wanted to git as much material in that slot as possible vertically. A flat part with some rads in/out will go a long way if both above and below center. My bar is 5-1/4" HR, and if I had the insert at the top, I would have a long tail down and around the corner. Not sure how well that would have supported my cut? My guess is not as good as this design does. It may have done a slightly better job at locating in X, but it's not like this was going anywhere...


OK - the kicker of this job is that I am NOT shoving a 1" tool down that hole. My tools are prox 5/8" wide, and I have a his'n'hers tool. An inner and an outter.

I decided to use the inserts and clamps from a 1/4" wide Manchester grooving blade.
I had used this once or twice before and seemed OK, except for the time when the one insert came in .040 long! That wasn't a good day...

You can see the sample tool sitting there...

You don't see it real good in any of the pics, but I cut Clarence beside the inserts just a 1/4" or so back from the tip.

..and the finished product:

I had more, but somehow I lost it doo to this site not git'n along with "7".
...but I had it "copied" before I threw the switch!
But it wasn't there when I went to "paste"! ????

At least this much was saved via "auto save".

Will have to redoo the rest another day....



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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!