Plans, projects and How-to's for Home Machinists and Other Makers
Rob
The typical Sieg X2 mini-mill [HF 44991, Grizzly G8689, Micro-Mark & others] has a lot of backlash in the Z-axis. In my case it was .053-inches, which was almost a full turn of the fine-adjust knob.
I heard that putting a shim behind the rack on the column would help by causing it to mesh tighter with the pinion gear in the head.… Read the rest
I recently needed to mill down the thickness of a 7-inch long piece of steel from .25-inches to .20-inches. As the metal became thinner I started getting chatter and a bad finish on the ends because they were not being supported enough by my 3.5-inch wide precision screwless vise and 6-inch parallels.… Read the rest
A few days ago I posted a story about Harlan’s homemade optical punch. I forgot that I also had a link to John Moran’s web site, where he describes with a little more detail how he made one.
I couldn’t resist buying a steel letter/number stamping set from Harbor Freight. They are not very expensive to begin with and I think I bought a set on sale for three or four dollars. It turns out I did not really have a clue how to use them until I read this article. … Read the rest