Anything Machining

True lol. just seems extra bad lately. We have some customers waking up on top of the usual non stops.

I could really use 25 hours in a day…

 

Thanks! It a Sherpa rack that I couldn’t help but “improve” lol. Yes I think it is 80/20 rack.

 

What kind of work does your shop do?

 

Mainly Military, medical, oil & gas, carpet display racks, communications.
Kinda short/medium production runs all cnc.
Military keeps us pretty busy usually but everyone else is waking up and got us working like crazy right now

 

Got my buddy coming into work with me tomorrow to shoot some videos for our new website. Can’t wait to see how it turns out

 

So, in a totally unexpected move, Haas/Selway warrantee'd my rusty way covers and I now have a set of those and a set of covers/doors for the umbrella tool holder! Gonna spend a couple days inside my machine with my bike helmet, a pile of white scotchbrite pads, and my foulies. Can we say FUN TIMES??!!!

The folks at Qualichem were also super and sent me a pail of the cleaner. So, 250c going in. Anyone running a Nexjen separator or some kind of skimmer? It was suggested I get something to remove oil and aerate on a timer so it runs for a couple hours a day to prevent creatures...

 

We run a couple zebra skimmers, theyre ok. We havent had any skimmers that work perfect on their own. The best thing is to use a shop vac.
Hold it just above the coolant just high enough to get the oil.

 

Well, I took my old crappy shop vac and sacrificed it to the coolant change out gods. 55 gallons of water, and a barrel and five 5 gallon buckets of waste later, I have a sparkly machine with new coolant. I just have to replace the way covers and the tool changer cover and all evidence of that 735 will be gone!

But man, the mini mill is not fun to clean out. It’s sump is integral to the base of the machine and so you have to get down on all fours and reach inside to vacuum, scrape, and wipe all the crap out that’s in there. I’m too old for this lol!

 

We have an annual “coolant day” where the hazardous waste truck comes to collect all our used coolant and all 17 cnc machines are cleaned out over the the whole week prior to that day.
easily my least favourite time of year

 

no doubt. Last night was it’s first night with new coolant on all the bare surfaces. I’m irrationally nervous I’m going to open the machine and find it all flash rusted. Lol

 

@tgelata do you guys chuck coolant after a year? Given how much it costs me to haul it away I might get one of those recyclers so I can filter and reuse.

the 735 was still “fine” after 1.8 years, it just was the wrong coolant.

 

Yeah we find most the coolants are cooked after a year
2 of the biggest reasons is water hardness. since we run our machines 2 shifts 5 days straight. We’re constantly topping up. So when the water evaporates it leaves coolant and the hardness behind and eventually the water in the sump is so hard the coolant separates from the water.

Plus some machines constantly leak various oils into the tank as well and that also kills it since it doesnt all come out with skimming.

 

I have to bring water in. Our well water is so hard it’s not even funny.

 

Not worth it to go with an R/O setup?

 

@dome how's the router???

Made a major upgrade to my mill:


Coolant switch over and corroded part swap almost complete:

At the moment I go through about 50gal a couple times a year, except when switching coolant. lol. That took about 70 and my sump is only 75% full, so I need another delivery next week. I don't even have a tap in my shop. So for the cost of making that happen I can get water delivered for years. Ha ha.

 

Back in business:

 

This thread needs some pics! What have y'all made lately?

I had this silly idea for a thing for the truck (a level-able platform that I can lay my iPhone on to check if my truck is level for camping) and tho this is a totally stupid idea, the part looked fun to machine as I have done very little surfacing with ball end mills and thought this would be good practice. Turns out that part was all easy, I just need to remember to check my z-depth. Sorry, vice jaw...

 

What did you use for the “knurling” on top?

Nothin cool on my end, been busy runnin production lately. Bored out of my mind lol

 

Oof. I am just glad to have my maintenance all done for a while. Fingers crossed. The crosshatch is a 1/4” ball endmill. I left about .010” and did a parallel op across the top with a big step over.

 

Fun with the compound slide and knurler… turns out a little math helps! Still I got lucky with how it lined up edge to edge!