In 20 minutes time

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Casting Machine

Just finished this machine for a local jeweler, Now it just needs a name. Any suggestions?

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New Mill

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Jewelry Castings

Been doing some bronze castings of wax carvings I have made. These are the first of the batch, made so I can mold them and make more. It's a really fun process, a bit stressful at times but also very rewarding. I'll be making some different things from these carvings coming soon, plus working on rings and other such things.

Sissy Bar

Johns new Bar, thought long and hard how to design a simple sissy bar that hadn't been done before. Not really an easy assignment considering these things are basic by nature serving only two real functions and they have been created since the birth of Choppers. So, I had better post this thing before someone else designs and builds one just like it then I look like the copy-cat.

Production

I made 112 (total) of these bushings in around 10hrs once I was set up and in a rythm. Without the new machine I would have hung myself. Run time for one piece was around 1min 10sec. The handling time killed me, drilling and cutting, then getting set back up to run another. I started making a parting tool for this lathe but time wasn't on my side and I couldn't finish it before these needed to be delivered. 

The "real deal"

Standard BPT r8 vs. NMBT50...pictures of the mill that accepts this tooling to come

Very Cool

Velocity stack pt.2

 

Thank God for the collet chuck! With out it I would have never been able to get the cross slide close enough to the spindle as I needed to. This chuck by nature moves the work out about 3" past standard scroll type chucks. I made the "boring bar" insert holder today and finished up the rest of the stack. The inside was much more difficult to get a smooth finish on because the bar has flex by nature and causes chatter, so I braced it up some with my hand and got a decent finish. Ill take the small inconsistencies out with some emery tomorrow. 

velocity stack

Got Garys stack pretty much finished today, really stoked on how it turned out. Messed around with the knurl, wanted to make it super shallow but really crisp. I need to take care of the inner diameter tomorrow. Makes a good beer holder for after work too.

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"The Tool"

I have been working on this tool for a while now off and on, but I have some stuff in my head that requires the tool so it was time to finish it up. It gets bolted to the cross slide of my lathe and is manually operated. The first picture it the bearing assembly I came up with so that it would be sturdy and smooth, too smooth I could use some more friction...oh well. This is an example of what I can make with it. It looks too much like Saturn but for a mess around test of performance it works.

XS650 Re-Phase

When re phasing XS you need to rotate crank 3 splines but when you do there is no opening for the key to index itself. Being hardened there was no way to make the slot, so I rigged up a grinding stone in the slitting saw arbiter and made the cut. It worked very well and only took about 5 minutes

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Shoulder Bolt

I needed a shoulder bolt with a certain size shoulder today for a tool I'm making, so I decided to manufacture it rather than open the McMaster catalog, spend a half hour searching through the thousands of different sizes, calling them up and then waiting a day with nothing to do and no tool to make new parts with. Here it is from raw form to finished bolt. 

1940's Love

The shaper. A mezmerizing symphony of mechanical sex. Does it get any better?

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Another new toy

The Hardinge HC turret lathe. I have been dreaming of having two lathes and fantasizing that it could be a Hardinge. Well, a ton of work in my off time calling and driving around I finally found it. Of corse I had some help from my friend Brian. I pulled this beauty out of a 40ft storage container tucked away from sight. It's amazing what people have stashed away! I will definitely be making a video of the machine in use.

My new toy...

Picked this gorgeous Brown & Sharpe universal dividing head today from a local machine shop! I'm finding it difficult to explain how well built this unit is...impossible to beat old U.S. mfg. Especially B&S. Can't wait to make some parts with it!

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Motor mount fixture

It might not look like it but there is about 8hrs + in this piece and it's not because I don't know what I'm doing, or that I'm working slow. The amount of measuring, checking, measuring, machining, measuring, grinding, measuring, etc. was to put it lightly, extreme. Unlike the axle mounting fixture where all I really needed was the centerline, the CL of the motor on a big twin is NOT on the CL of the frame. To make matters more difficult the factory blueprint I'm using does not note the offset so with Joe's help we were able to figure that distance off another frame we have. Once we had that measurement and figured the distance from the CL of the frame tube things went right together. If you look closely at the photos you can see the offset from the top plate which locates the motor mounts and the bottom plate that locates the center of the frame. The trans. mount is next, then swingarm pivot and the neck fixture with the small bits being filled in as I go.

What I Have so far