Casting Metals

[Norman]

Those are very nicely the finished, looks like mirrors. How thin are they?
I did some casting today made a new sanding disc for the sander,cast a couple of aluminum blocks to make a vice for the shaper,and cast a small sheave for the motor on the shaper.
I ran out of metal on the sheave it was a 3 step sheave got 2 of the three poursed,so I melted more and poured in on the other. I seemed to have bonded, I don't plan on using it that way. I
only want one groove and its the small one so I'll cut off the rest. I was really surprised that the 2 different pours stuck together. I even beat on it with a hammer and tossed it up in the air letting it fall on the concrete drive , it would not come apart.
I was going to take photos of my progress today but it was so hot and things didn't go as planned.
I spilled some oil filling the burner tank made a small mess, ran out of melted metal on the last pour had lots of dross on all pours that I had to skim off and then melt more metal to fill the crucible. I guess I need to make some flux to wring out the aluminum on the next melt.
Norman

 

[Ilikeabikea]

Sorry I haven't been able to come over Norm. The grandsons have been wanting to go out to airport and ride bicycles and go karts and fly the kite, so we've been doing that in the evenings. We are supposed to go to the lake camping tonight unless we pop some of those big ole thunder boomers.........

 

[Norman]

My shaper doing its thing,planing off a chunk of scrap aluminum
YouTube - video shaper.avi

 

[GearNut]

I like the sound of it. Very cool. It is nice to enjoy the fruits of your labor, especially when you created it from the ground up.

 

[Norman]

With the metal shaper done I'm now building the gingery metal mill. I started this around the middle of July. Made the patterns for the first castings poured them lots of filing and sanding,cutting and drilling tapping threads etc. I used the shaper to machine the base pads saves a lot of filing by hand. I hope some of you guys will try metal casting it dangerous to do if your careless and don't pay attention to what your doing ,but it is fun to make your own parts just the way you want them.
Here's some photos of the thing.
the patterns for the bed and the head stand which is a split pattern which means you end up with part of the pattern in the cope and the drag 2 patterns to pull out of the sand before pouring in the metal

front and back of the split pattern

here is the patterns with the finished parts behind. I have the steel ways installed on the bed and the head stand. The bed is also bolted to the bases. Lot of work went into just getting to this stage of building the metal mill.

 

[Norman]

Some more photos.
The patterns and the parts

There is a small booger on the beds side that is where I cut off the gate used to pour the metal just a small spot/ void in the metal. the bases are supposed to be 1/4" thick . I didn't have 1/4" thick wood to make the patterns so I used 1/2" MDF instead to make the bases, heaver and maybe a little more stable anyway they are twice as thick as they should be.

The metal shaper used to machine some of the mills parts, like the bottom of the head stand and the tops of the bases. The shaper is slow but saves me from having to do the work with a file or sand paper, I'm not a fan of sanding or filing. You have to hand scrape the bed and the stand to fit the steel ways. I really don't like doing the scrapping it takes for ever to get it done. If your wondering about what hand scraping is look it up on the net it is a old way of making a surface flat and true. Search (metal scraping) or something like that.

Now on to making more patterns and casting more aluminum. Got a long way to go on this project.
Norman

 

[Thud]

Looking very good Norman.
These are great projects & any one interested in this stuff should really give ot a try. It can be intimidating for sure but this is the roots of the industrial era. I am sure Norm will agree, Aluminum is absolutly beutiful when you 1st crack open a mold...before the oxidation covers it & it looks like aluminum again.

Norm, after building a few of these projects, are you tempted to scale them up a little bit?
These machines look much larger in photos than they really are. At least that is my perception. I often think my shaper would be better at 6-8" capacity...

Keep showing us the progress.

 

[Norman]

Thud
the reason for the smaller size is Dave Gingery sized the machine so any one part could be cast with a crucible that held 1 qt. of aluminum the weight of 1 qt gets a little awkward to handle.
He also used charcoal to fire the furnace I'll bet that was a slow process. I tried charcoal and it took for ever to get hot enough to melt the metal. Could be my furnace was lacking as it was just bricks stacked up into a pit form with a blower to force air into the fire.

A guy could build it larger if you want to handle a larger amount of liquid metal at one time.
Norman

 

[Norman]

More patterns are made about 8 more patterns to make then it's all casting and machining. The last patterns that need to be made won't be needed until all of these patterns are cast and machined.
I'll be very busy casting these patterns as they get different parts attached to cast multiple parts. The hand wheel pattern will be done 5 times alone as I need to make 5 hand wheels unless one of them screws up being cast or machined wrong, it happens but I can remelt the mess ups and do it again and again until I get it right.

all of the patterns made so far

the latest patterns made are in front of the mills main body, the bases ,bed ,head stand.

I flipped some of the patterns over and laid out the split parts of the patterns. I haven't counted how many casting just these patterns are going to need just to complete the parts needed. I'm going to try to put more than one pattern in the flask at a time to speed up some of the castings I'll need to do, that can cause a problem of running out of melted aluminum before I can fill the molds. When that happens the castings will have to be junked , remelted , then done again. Lots of fun!

 

[Ilikeabikea]

Norm, you need to take a break and go play disc golf with me sometime................

 

[Norman]

Did some more casting yesterday
spindle head slide, carriage, 2 small parts,one is a mounting pad for a feed screw(round disc with the short leg). The little square pad will mount on the end of the spindle head slide. This how they look coming out of the sand just the thin vent spruces have been broken off. The spindle head has a steel core that will be knock out then used again to cast the other half of the spindle head slide. I'll need to saw off the spruces and risers then the machining on them will start.

slide side of the spindle slide with the pattern

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front side of the spindle head with the pattern. You can see the steel core(3/4" dia) that will be taken out to leave 1/2 of the hole for the mills spindle. I now need to cast the other half of the spindle head.

here is what they look like after cutting off the spruce and risers a little filing and sanding ready to be machined. I also knocked out the 3/4" steel mandrel it came out very easily.

 

[Norman]

I've been off of here for a little while.
I'm still working on the mill its been slow going getting the hand scraping done on the ways for the head stand etc.
If any of you are doing any metal casting post a photo of it I would like to see your work.
Norman

 

[Ilikeabikea]

So are you back home now Norm????????

 

[Norman]

I've been holed up in the man cave building the mill casting parts machining cussing and whining
. I'm now boring the spindle head for the mill.
I'm using the shaper drive system to power the boring bar, it is a temporary set up just to bore the spindle head.

quill support with the boring bar

this is the business end of the boring bar

the spindle head, you can see the boring bar at the other end, this boring bar will open the
hole up to 1.125 right now the bore is at .875 after a couple of passes, I'm going slow trying to
keep the bore square, true. with some mods a guy could bore a china engine with this machine once it's all built. You could maybe make a complete engine with this milling machine?

 

[Norman]

some more photos

you can see the small dark sheave in this photo attached to the boring bar right to the left and down a little is the hand wheel to move the boring bar down the mill bed to bore I run the motor to spin the boring bar and crank the hand wheel which moves the bar into the spindle head cutting a small amount of aluminum out the spindle head around 0.010 per pass starting at 0.750 dia. hole going to go to
1.125 dia so it going to take a little while.

on the end of this bar is a 1/4" set screw( not visible) holding the bit in place after each pass through I loosen the set screw and move the bit out around 0.005 or 1/2 of the dia. I want it to bore on the next pass.There isn't a power feed like on a lathe. One complete turn of the hand wheel moves the quill support 1/16" so it takes a lot of turns to move the bar the 4 1/2" for one pass through the spindle head. I guess that is why it called boring?

Am I having fun yet? You betcha!!

 

[GearNut]

It appears as though as you turn the hand wheel it moves the quill support closer to the spindle head forcing the boring bar into the spindle head. How do you keep the drive belt aligned? Is the boring bar a splined bar and tube arrangement?
Or do I have it a bass ackwards and the spindle head is pulled into the boring bar?

 

[Norman]

Gear nut
what I'm doing is boring the spindle head so a 1" dia shaft with bronze bearing can be installed
in the spindle head. It will be the holder for the mill bits or a face plate.
The boring bar rotates powered by the motor and the jack shaft around 100 rpms and I crank the quill support with its boring bar attached through the spindle head. The small bit on the end of the boring bar is spinning and it cuts the I.D. of the spindle head larger. After 2 passes I move the bit out around 0.010 then cut through in and out.
The boring bar is a 5/8 dia bar on one end is the cutting bit, on the other end is a belt driven sheave to keep the boring bar spinning so it will cut on the way through the spindle head, there is bronze bearings in the quill support that the bar turns on there is a set screw collar on either side of quill support so the bar can't slide out of the quill support.
The motor is mounted on the back of the slide that the quill support is mounted on so both the motor and the quill support move together.
Norman

 

[GearNut]

The motor is mounted on the back of the slide that the quill support is mounted on so both the motor and the quill support move together.
Norman

I understand you now. Just by looking at the pictures it looked as though the motor was bolted down to the workbench. It looked as though when you cranked the quill to move the bar into the spindle head the pulleys would go out of alignment. I thought perhaps you had the bar set up as splined telescopic arrangement to maintain pulley alignment.
Silly me.......

 

[Norman]

I sort of thought the same thing when I first looked in the book on how to do the boring.
I thought the motor was bolted to the bench, but then the drawing of a plywood mount for the motor jackshaft assembly is bolted to the back half of the slide that the quill is mounted on, I then understood how the set up was supposed to go.
There's 2 slides on the mill the bed slide goes left to right(16" long bed) and the other which set on top of the bed slide goes forward and back, the top slide is 19" long. Then there is the spindle slide it goes up and down 8". I still have 2 more slide to build one for the compound for using the mill like a lathe and a tail stand slide for working the mill as a lathe for turning bars or for over head milling.
Soon as the spindle head is finished and some cutting tools made the mill will be able to machine it's own parts.
I have about 0.050 to bore to get the bearings to fit the spindle head should have that done today. Then I'll start building the motor mount / transmission to power the mill's cutting head.

 

[GearNut]

Only 5 more passes with the boring bar. You must be getting anxious!