I Can Machine Stuff

The excitement around here never stops. Yesterday I got my milling machine connected to my phase converter, and today I mounted my milling vise and trammed the vise and mill head.

I thought hooking the mill to the phase converter would be a 45-minute job. I don’t know why I make prognostications like that. It’s like begging to be disappointed.

The job consisted of drilling a hole in the phase converter cabinet, running a power cord through it, connecting the wires inside the cabinet, and putting a plug and receptacle in the cords between the phase converter and mill. It should have been a snap. Of course, something amazing happened and caused a ridiculous delay. The receptacle I bought turned out to be defective. What are the odds of that happening?

Modern receptacles are pressed together when they’re made, so you can’t get inside them to fix them. To attach wires, you run them through holes in the receptacles, and they slide into little clamps consisting of screws and rectangular nuts. The screws are supposed to have upset metal at the ends so you can’t unscrew them completely. I think you can see where I’m going with this. I loosened a screw to make room for a wire, and the nut fell completely off the screw, inside the receptacle. Game over. The screw was defective, so it came right out of the nut.

Right away, I was looking at almost an hour of additional time. I had to go to Lowe’s, return the defective receptacle, buy a new one, and drive home.

I got the mill hooked up, and even though it was not aligned and ready to use, I fired it up just to hear it and know it was alive.

Today I used my precision angle plate to tram the head of the mill. It was a pleasure. Slap it on the mill table, push it against the quill, rotate the quill until it’s flush against the plate, and tighten. Literally a 5-minute job. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it this way. I can’t find anything wrong with this method.

I stuck the vise on the table and used an Indicol holder to hold a test indicator against it. I decided to use an indicator from CDCO, which is a company that sells cheap Chinese machine accessories. Big mistake.

CDCO is great for things like tool holders, and when I saw their price on test indicators, I decided to give them a try. I have used cheap dial indicators (less precise than test indicators), and they have never given me a problem, so I figured a test indicator was a safe bet.

Tonight, I found that I could not get the numbers on the indicator to settle down. It was as though the indicator was losing its zero. Very strange. I got out an old European Tesatest indicator and used it instead, and I was done in a few minutes. It worked perfectly. So much for cheap test indicators.

It could me that I banged the CDCO indicator on something in the past and messed it up. I don’t know. I can’t be sure it was useless straight from the factory. But I’ve beaten the Tesatest up pretty good, and it works perfectly.

The upshot, tribulations and hindrances aside, is that I now have a functioning machine shop again. I need to level my lathe, but that’s a minor thing. It doesn’t have to be adjusted properly for small work. I should also install a switch on my phase converter so I don’t have to plug it in every time I use the machines. That’s a half-hour job, though.

I mean, it SHOULD be a half-hour job.

I’m learning.

Now I have no excuse not to go to the shop and arrange everything so it’s orderly. It’s obvious what I need to do. I need to come up with another excuse.

I think my first machining project should be to chase the threads on a turnbuckle that holds a fork on my tractor’s bucket. I think someone made the rookie error of putting a Vise Grip on it, tightening the threads on the turnbuckle’s tube. It’s impossible to tighten past a certain point. I would have to find a way to hold the part in a 4-jaw chuck, and I’d need to create an internal threading tool big enough for the work. I also have to figure out what size thread I’m dealing with. The screw part of the turnbuckle looks like it’s over an inch thick.

I guess I could measure the thread and try to find a used tap that will fit. That would save me time. A new one would probably cost somewhere around a hundred dollars.

Anyway, my workshop, though disorderly, is finally stocked with adequate machinery. I feel as though life has resumed.