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General BS forum I guess anything is fair game in here. Just watch the subject matter doesn't get carried away too much.

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Old 11-15-2021, 04:10 PM   #11
WebSlave
Way back when, I guess I could have used a CNC milling machine to make up the little deli cup water dishes I was using to put into deli cups with the baby corn snakes.



A friend of mine made up a little jig to clamp and hold six of the PVC end caps I was using to cut grooves into them in one pass on my manual milling machine. I bought that mill specifically for this purpose. At least I had a motorized traverse table on the thing. I wound up selling a bunch of those water dishes and that actually paid for the machine. I bought the PVC endcaps in bulk, which wound up costing about 14 cents each, and was selling the finished water dishes for $1 a pop. I'm not sure I really broke even if I take my time and labor into consideration, however.



But unless I had someway to automatically feed the raw end caps into a CNC mill, I guess it would still be a mostly time consuming manual process.
 
Old 11-15-2021, 04:19 PM   #12
WebSlave
Oh yeah, recently I installed a digital readout display on that milling machine. It's not very precise because of the play in that old Chinese made mill, but it is good enough for what I have had to use it for.
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Old 02-07-2022, 02:57 PM   #13
WebSlave
OK, so I get carried away, sometimes... So what? :)

A few months ago I started thinking about this upcoming Spring when I wanted to put fertilizer spikes into the ground around the citrus trees. I had been using a long chisel I have, but it was too narrow and I had to work with it to make the hole wide enough to put the spikes in properly. Yeah, I know you are supposed to just pound those spikes into the ground, but invariably they would shatter and not go very deeply where the roots would most benefit from them. So I needed something else.

So I thought, "Hey, I have a lathe, why not make something?"

I figured I would buy a 2 ft length of 1.5" diameter rod. That would give me the diameter I wanted, and the length would be handy enough so I wouldn't have to be stooping over so far for too long. I had wanted to use stainless steel as the material, but abandoned that idea when I realized how heavy it would be for these feeble old arms I have. It would wear me out in pretty short order lugging that thing around. So I decided on aluminum instead.

I put a 20 degree point on one end by setting up the lathe to cut a taper, and rounded the edges of the other end with a cutting tool for that purpose. A friend of mine mentioned that the spike might get kind of slippery if it got wet, and having the spike drop and hit my foot might not be all that pleasant. So heck, I had a knurling tool that I had bought for my smaller lathe, so why not use it? Unfortunately, it was too small for that large diameter, so I had to find a bigger one. Ebay had some that were advertised as being with 1/2" shafts, so that would work with the quick change tool post holders I have. Unfortunately, that specified 1/2" shaft they advertised turned out to be width, and not height, so unless I wanted to mount the knurling tool sideways (which was ridiculous) it would not fit my QCTP holders. So I mounted the knurling tool on my milling machine and took off an eighth of an inch from the height so it would fit.

I practiced on some other pieces of rod stock I had here to make sure my knurling efforts wouldn't just ruin that rod I was working on. I did find that using too slow of feed for the carriage made a pretty messy pattern, so the fastest speed seemed to be ideal. Fortunately my lathe has variable settings using control knobs to adjust the carriage speed in relation to the chuck rotation speed. Having to change gears would have been a pain in the neck.

Seems that the accounts I read of having to turn a rod to be a multiple of the diameter of the knurling wheels was not accurate info. Apparently when you crank down on the knurling tool to get the wheels to bite hard into the rod, as the knurling tool moves up the rod via the carriage, the pattern in the wheels just tracks automatically in the knurled pattern already made. Either that or I have been just darn lucky.

I knurled over half of the rod, figuring I wanted to have a good grip on it while pounding it into the ground, and also when I was carrying it with my hand on the center of gravity. It was a pretty long span, but the knurling operation went better than I had hoped it would. Beside, I find just watching something like this to be fascinating. I have watched an untold number of videos on YouTube of people doing things with machinery that most normal people would find stone cold deathly boring.

Then I started thinking about maybe smoothing up the portion of the rod that would actually be inserted into the ground. A smoother surface would make cleaning it up go easier. And I like cleaning up my tools after every use, so.... So I mounted it back into the lathe chuck, using a cardboard tube to protect the knurled portion of the rod, and dragged out the various grits of sanding and polishing paper I had stored away from when I worked on wet sanding the paint surface of the vette a while back. I used WD-40 as a lubricant for the sanding and polishing, which worked out really well. After the 3000 grit polishing step, well, all of a sudden I had something that I was thinking maybe I should mount on my wall instead of my intended purpose of pounding it into the dirt.

Sometimes I guess I don't know when to stop... But heck, if we ever get infested with vampires around here, I guess I could test the theory to see if an aluminum spike through the chest would kill them. It does LOOK like silver!
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Old 02-08-2022, 03:28 PM   #14
JColt
Nice to keep busy. Have you ever watched TITANS of CNC MACHINING on youtube? This guy does some top notch cnc machining and really explains his business
 
Old 02-08-2022, 05:30 PM   #15
WebSlave
Nope, never watched that channel. I have a manual machine, so I supposed there wouldn't be much relevant to me there.

The idea of programmable machine tools is enticing to me, though, but realistically I don't ever expect to have to make more than one of anything. So I would certainly waste a whole lot of time and materials going through the debugging stages of any program I would write. I HAVE watched quite a few crashes done with CNC machinery on YouTube, and they are rather cringe worthy. Seems like a great way to not only waste material, but to destroy machines and tooling with really severe programming bugs. Very graphic way to illustrate the rule of sore thumbs in programming: "The program won't always do what you want or think you told it to do, but will ALWAYS do exactly what you DID tell it to do."
 
Old 02-08-2022, 05:57 PM   #16
Lucille
While I'm not really into machinery I do have to admire both the idea and the execution of your tool for the fertilizer spikes. I bet you could sell a bunch of those to feed stores and farm stores as well as, of course, those who don't want vampires
 
Old 02-08-2022, 08:04 PM   #17
WebSlave
I kind of wish now I had taken video (time lapse, of course, since this was a pretty slow process) of the knurling. I think I did a video of cutting the taper for the point, but I'll have to look around for it.

Anyway, I did take some pics after cutting the taper and the rounded end before doing the knurling and the polishing, just to show the difference.

I am sure this interests me a whole lot more than most other people.
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Old 02-09-2022, 02:46 PM   #18
JColt
I mainly watch that youtube channel to watch the machine work. It can be mesmerizing especially on intricate work.
 
Old 02-09-2022, 04:55 PM   #19
WebSlave
To be honest, these machines do scare me a little bit. I know what they can do if you are not careful. Watch videos and take note of how many of those people have pretty bunged up hands. Especially the knuckles. A spinning lathe chuck contacting your knuckles would be a bad day for you. With CNC machinery, I would be REALLY worried that I might accidentally program in a command set that instructs the machine to KILL THE HUMAN WHEN HE ISN'T LOOKING.
 
Old 02-20-2022, 09:02 PM   #20
WebSlave
I guess I should be careful about what I wish for. Seems I will be using the rod I made for putting fertilizer spikes into the ground around the fruit trees as a wall ornament after all. It just didn't do the job I had intended it for.

After the third tree with four holes each, I was plumb worn out! Much more difficult making the holes than I had anticipated. I didn't expect the soil to be that hard, since it is mostly sand around here. I even watered around the trees the day before, thinking it would make it even softer, but no such luck. I was using a deadblow hammer to drive the spike into the ground, and each whack was only giving me about a quarter inch or so more penetration. Damn.... Not only was it taking way too long, but I was about to wear my arms out whacking the spike with that deadblow hammer.

So I finally just admitted defeat and that my invention wasn't going to cut the mustard, and wound up falling back on using a 2 inch auger bit for my cordless drill and making the holes that way. Things went a LOT faster then, otherwise I would still be out there pounding those holes into the ground.

Ah well, best laid plans of mice and men, and all that.....

Now I have to polish it up again, since the soil just wore away that nice shiny finish I had on the pointy end. And make some sort of wall mount for it.

Anyone have any vampires that need killin'?
 

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