ballen
Diamond
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2011
- Location
- Garbsen, Germany
Hi All,
I haven't posted much work here recently, thought I would show my FP2 in action. This makes good use of a cool 3-axis vise that came with my machine:
The problem is to cut an oil groove on an inside dovetail. This is the auxiliary swiveling cross slide of my Studer cylindrical grinder, it's about 480mm (19") long and the groove is about 250mm (10") long. The pros like Peter do it with a hand grinder in 15 minutes. But I lack the experience and confidence so did it with the mill.
The tool is a 4mm HSS ball cutter stuck into a long extension holder.
Here is clocking in the vise to hold the part so that the path I need to cut runs parallel to X.
Here is the long cut partway completed:
The groove is shaped like a Z, and the short legs of the Z do not run parallel to any of the axes. So to cut these I needed to advance Y and Z together. I did this by interpolating in 20 steps, using a spreadsheet to get my coordinates.
Here is the finished groove:
Just in case anyone is wondering, the other side of the dovetail has a tapered gib, so that was easier. I clamped it to an aluminium "lifting table" which I could tilt along one axis (you can see the shim sticking out on the left). Here is that oil groove:
Cheers,
Bruce
I haven't posted much work here recently, thought I would show my FP2 in action. This makes good use of a cool 3-axis vise that came with my machine:
The problem is to cut an oil groove on an inside dovetail. This is the auxiliary swiveling cross slide of my Studer cylindrical grinder, it's about 480mm (19") long and the groove is about 250mm (10") long. The pros like Peter do it with a hand grinder in 15 minutes. But I lack the experience and confidence so did it with the mill.
The tool is a 4mm HSS ball cutter stuck into a long extension holder.
Here is clocking in the vise to hold the part so that the path I need to cut runs parallel to X.
Here is the long cut partway completed:
The groove is shaped like a Z, and the short legs of the Z do not run parallel to any of the axes. So to cut these I needed to advance Y and Z together. I did this by interpolating in 20 steps, using a spreadsheet to get my coordinates.
Here is the finished groove:
Just in case anyone is wondering, the other side of the dovetail has a tapered gib, so that was easier. I clamped it to an aluminium "lifting table" which I could tilt along one axis (you can see the shim sticking out on the left). Here is that oil groove:
Cheers,
Bruce