Bike builders that have machine tools/shops

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indian22

indian22

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Dec 31, 2014
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Tom from Rubicon said:
I'm looking for the rotary table with vice photo. Your shop is kitting up nicely Rick.
Tom
Click to expand...
Background Tom, this pulls them more into focus.

Dividing plates still on back order as they sent the wrong plates. I'm holding off on getting the 4 jaw independent chuck, but think that my next purchase for the mill. Good DRO's are available for these small mills as well, as well as power on all 3 axis and power tool change.

The drill press is a single belt CVT variable speed transmission with digital speed read out. No belt to pulley speed changing! Better selection of speeds on the fly. 100 lbs & huge for a benchtop. It's really a floor press with a shortened column. I liked the Jet press but features on this were better and prices were similar on the Wen. It's not actually a low price alternative, but Wen makes several budget models which look similar. I see this getting most of my shop drill work once mill has been used to accurately locate hole placement. The mini mill is pretty limited on the Z axis for drilling, even with stub drills.

For the machining I do the small machines are perfect, kinda, but there are times I miss my large machine tools!

Rick C.
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indian22

indian22

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Dec 31, 2014
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Tom both you and I. I have so many active projects started at one time (not all of which are related to my bikes) that progress on those related to bikes and side car are not worthy of updates. I am close to having a solid brass tailight assembly ready and 12v light, tailight and horn setup ready to show hopefully this week. Also the wiring harness for adding a third 48v 20 amp hour battery is almost complete. Having this will boost the amp hours to 60 amp total, which pushes my no pedal range to 90 plus miles running solo, no car attached.

I will update on my most current thread.

At the moment I have no rotary table projects in mind, but nice to have options in the shop or at least fewer limitations.

Rick C.
 
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indian22

indian22

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Tom this mileage is only my guess, predicated on riding a lot with one of these battery packs and a lot less using two packs, one in fake gas tank and one in the saddlebags. Also I like to compare range at 18 to 20 mph average. We have lots of hills in every direction so this is a pretty nice speed to average and calculate battery range in my area of riding. My weight is about 155 and the bike is 170ish with two batteries and 182 with three. I consistently manage 25 to 30 miles on one battery and running two packs seems to bear that out.

The three batteries add 34 lbs total, so just riding in town one or two batteries will be used. I've put a lot of miles on this bike over the last couple of years and like it.

It has plenty of power to pull the side hack too.

Rick C.
 
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Tom from Rubicon

Tom from Rubicon

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Apr 4, 2016
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Looking at the photos Rick, is your rotary table 4" or 6" face? I like that it has a 90 degree mounting flange. Literally doubles the utility.
My work around is a Ebay find many years ago.
A1 5C INDUSTRIAL COLLET INDEXING FIXTURE (kalamazooind.com)
My rotary table has I think a 12" face. It was nothing to muscle around in my 50's. These days? Ha!
In 2004, I wanted a bow casting seat for my Boston Whaler Cohasset. The OEM seat post mount was cast aluminum. Must have been a very limited production item. Hurricane salvage yielded nothing.
To my good fortune Fisher Pierce the makers of Boston Whalers had archived dimensioned drawings on PDF. The original seat post mounts were alum. castings.
Were I smarter than I never was, I would have made a wooden pattern and had castings made. But there is always a balance of Time, Material. and Labor. VS the market demand.
I bought 4"x 6" 6061 enough to make 4. Cut enough material to make two seat post mounts, one for me and one on spec.. Good guess on how many to make. I fitted one to my boat and it took six years to sell the mate.
Sadly all my photos were posted to photobucket, and also reside in hard drives of earlier computers.

Tom
 
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indian22

indian22

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Tom the table is a 4" face and the three jaw is 3" with a matching back plate for the chuck to rotary table connection. The tail stock is a 4" as well. They sent a bigger tail stock, but we finally got that exchanged for the proper size. The vertical/horizontal combo table was the deciding feature, that plus the low overall height. On my last mini mill I made the mistake of ordering a 6" face table and it really limited the utility on a small mill.

I also thought about a small collet indexer but decided on this setup instead. I had a 12" in my big shop and yeah they are boat anchors, but so useful on large mills.

All things small in my little machine shop as I age my projects have become smaller and lighter as well. Doctors orders....but I do miss the bigger machines on occassion.

Rick C.
 
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Tom from Rubicon

Tom from Rubicon

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Apr 4, 2016
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Quote Rick,
"Tom both you and I. I have so many active projects started at one time"
Where I come from, ambition is not measured by completion's. Ambition is measured in the volume of project starts. The one how dies with the most starts, win's. It ain't a easy thing to keep going.
Sometimes you forget what you got going until you trip into it. Drives my Good Wife nuts. :D

Tom
 
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Greg58

Greg58

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May 1, 2011
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Tom from Rubicon said:
Quote Rick,
"Tom both you and I. I have so many active projects started at one time"
Where I come from, ambition is not measured by completion's. Ambition is measured in the volume of project starts. The one how dies with the most starts, win's. It ain't a easy thing to keep going.
Sometimes you forget what you got going until you trip into it. Drives my Good Wife nuts. :D

Tom
Click to expand...
I can relate
 
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indian22

indian22

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Dec 31, 2014
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Tom by your definition I have plenty of ambition so I hope to also have equals portions of patience and persistence coupled to it.

Shop topic which isn't considered by many new machinists is tool holding and work fixturing. For my little lathe I have two 3 jaw chucks, a four jaw independent adjustible, face plate, steady rest centers, and a collet chuck for example and many tool holders for cross slide (plus various tool posts) and tail stock holders. The lathe also has a taper and ball turning attachments. The mills are virtual bottomless pits for attachments and tools compared to the lathe.

I have three roll cabinets and three large tool chests full of just lathe and mill stuff and still have more stuff exposed on shelves or in shipping cartons waiting for a couple of roll cabinets to house them. So my shop is still in need of changes, but really don't see this happening right away.

Not complaining just explaining the reality of getting into actual machining with even small size equipment. There is no such thing as a cheap or free lathe or (especially a mill) unless they include a shop full of tools & so called accessories.

Rick C.
 
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Mossy

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I've got a few cranks I've got to make... I figured there's a couple of ways around it... One is to turn down the ends to fit the Happy time case.. the other is to turn down the inside of the 110 crank to fit the Polaris connecting rod and drill a 18mm hole for the pin just catching the edge of the 16mm hole that it has originally... To get it to 42mm stroke... I haven't measured anything yet just eyeballing it... Would have to shorten the pin also...
I've talked to a couple of shops about it and haven't passed it around them to get any quotes from anyone... What do you guys think about it?
 

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