Taking a machinist class | Page 10 | Construction and DIY projects | Forums

So I picked up my piece of metal, crazy that this weighs over 100 pounds

I needed to break it down some so I threw it in the bandsaw

and cut it down again

and again

those 4 inch blocks are 8 pounds each

pork, you had asked earlier what I was going to do with this machine and I had mentioned a few different ideas, one of those is making custom dies for mini hydraulic presses, they have become pretty big over the last several years with diyer's and people that can't afford a 3000 dollar press. We talk a lot about them on the blacksmith thread.

http://thehomesteadi.....mithing-1/

I have been working on one in my spare time over the last month and am getting somewhat closed to finished, one of the biggest questions I have seen on different forums is where to get the dies for the press, this was my question as well. Some fabricate and weld their own up.

I would be sketched out putting 20,000 pounds of pressure on that.

I did find one place that offered dies that would fit with modification, they use to show their prices but no longer do, the last price I saw was 380 dollars for a set.

http://www.anyangrom.....rettyPhoto

for the diyer there is usually 2 designs, one that sits down into the anvil and bolts retain it

or one that has retaining piece that holds them down

can see it in action here

https://youtu.be/x9O6YplCdRo

I am going to mill two different prototypes and offer them for sale, this is not to scale

one that can be retained by bolts on the left, or one that can be retained by being bolted down into the top or the face of the anvil

I think I can do it for a fraction of the 380 dollars.

Need to calculate my feeds and speeds and I'm going to go and try to knock some out.

yep, the compressor works good with it

this is the set of end mills I had picked up

and these collets

and these micrometers

the list goes on 🙁

Sadly they do.

I just broke my vice, ruined a millhead and screwed up the piece. This A36 has some type of hardened outer coating that is screwing things up, need to redo some calculations and stick with conventional instead of climbing.

I think the big issue was climb milling, it grabbed the piece and ripped it right out of the vice, called smithy up and they are sending me a new one for free. Luckily I had bought a 4 inch off amazon.

I had to grind down the heads on the bolts a little because they were just a hair thick for the slots on the table.

For those wondering what climbing versus conventional is here is a great explanation