Tips For Basic Machining On A Drill Press

November 19, 2017 by Tom Nardi 76 Comments

It’s safe to say most Hackaday readers would love to have a mill at home, or a nice lathe, but such equipment isn’t always practical for the hobbyist. The expense and amount of room they take up is a hard sell unless you’re building things on them regularly, so we’re often forced to improvise. In his latest video, [Eric Strebel] gives some practical advice on using a standard drill press to perform tasks you would normally need a mill or lathe for; and while his tips probably won’t come as a surprise to the old-hands out there, they might just help some of the newer players get the most out of what they have access to.

[Eric] explains the concept of the cross slide vice, which is the piece of equipment that makes machining on a drill press possible. Essentially it’s a standard vice, but with screws that allow you to move the clamped piece in the X and Y dimensions under the drill which can already move in the Z dimension. For those counting along at home, that puts us up to the full three dimensions; in other words, you can not only make cuts of varying depths, but move the cut along the surface of the work piece in any direction.

You can even turn down a (small) piece of round stock by placing it in the chuck of the drill press, and putting a good chisel in the cross slide vice. The chisel can then be moved up against the spinning piece to make your cuts. We don’t suggest doing anything too heavy, but if you need to turn down something soft like a piece of plastic or wood to a certain diameter, it can do in a pinch.

[Eric Strebel] is quickly becoming a favorite around these parts. His well-produced videos show viewers the practical side of product design and in-house manufacturing. We recently covered his video on doing small-scale production, and there’s plenty more invaluable info to be had browsing back through his older videos.

The quest to do machining without actually having a machine shop is certainly not new to Hackaday. There have been many different approaches to solving the issue, but picking up a decent drill press and cross slide is a first step down the rabbit hole for most people.

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DIY Injection Mold Design For The Home Shop

November 11, 2017 by Dan Maloney 30 Comments

3D printing is great for prototyping, and not bad for limited runs of parts. Unfortunately though it really doesn’t scale well beyond a few pieces, so when you’re ready for the mass market you will need to think about injection molding your parts. But something like that has to be farmed out, right? Maybe not, if you know a thing or two about designing your own injection molds.

The video below comes from [Dave Hakkens] by way of his Precious Plastic project, whose mission it is to put the means of plastic recycling into the hands of individuals, rather than relying on municipal programs. We’ve covered their work before, and it looks like they’ve come quite a way to realizing that dream. This tutorial by [Dave]’s colleague [Jerry] covers the basic elements of injection mold design, starting with 3D modeling in Solidworks. [Jerry] points out the limitations of a DIY injection molding effort, including how the thickness of parts relates to injection pressure. Also important are features like gentle curves to reduce machining effort, leaving proper draft angles on sprues, and designing the part to ease release from the mold. [Jerry] and [Dave] farmed out the machining of this mold, but there’s no reason a fairly complex mold couldn’t be produced by the home gamer.

When you’re done learning about mold design, you’ll be itching to build your own injection mold machine. Precious Plastic’s tutorial looks dead simple, but this machine looks a little more capable. And why CNC your molds when you can just 3D print them?

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Celebrating A Subscriber Milestone With A Copper YouTube Play Button

June 14, 2017 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

YouTube channels unboxing their latest “Play Button Award,” a replica of the famous logo in silver, gold, or faux-diamond depending on the popularity of the channel, are getting passé. But a metalworking channel that makes its own copper Play Button award to celebrate 25,000 subs is something worth watching.

[Chris DePrisco] is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, working in various materials but with a strong focus on metalwork. He recently completed a beefy home-brew vertical milling center; we covered his attempt to leverage that platform by adding an extruder and turning it into a large bed 3D printer. For the Play Button build, [Chris] turned to the VMC to mill a mold from what appears to be a block of graphite; good luck cleaning that mess up. He melted copper scrap in a homemade electric furnace and poured it into the preheated mold — a solid tip for [The King of Random]’s next copper casting attempt. The rough blank was CNC machined and polished into the Play Button, and finally mounted behind glass neatly inked with paint pens in the versatile VMC. The final result is far nicer than any of the other Button awards, at least in our opinion.

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X-Ray Imaging Camera Lens Persuaded To Join Micro Four Thirds Camera

April 22, 2017 by Inderpreet Singh 16 Comments

Anyone who is into photography knows that the lenses are the most expensive part in the bag. The larger the aperture or f-stop of the lens, the more light is coming in which is better for dimly lit scenes. Consequently, the price of the larger glass can burn a hole in one’s pocket. [Anthony Kouttron] decided that he could use a Rodenstock TV-Heligon lens he found online and adapt it for his micro four-third’s camera.

The lens came attached to a Fischer Imaging TV camera which was supposedly part of the Fluorotron line of systems used for X-ray imaging. We find [Anthony’s] exploration of the equipment, and discovery of previous hacks by unknown owners, to be entertaining. Even before he begins machining the parts for his own purposes, this is an epic teardown he’s published.

Since the lens was originally mounted on a brass part, [Anthony Kouttron] knew that it would be rather easy to machine the custom part to fit standardized lens adapters. He describes in detail the process for cleaning out the original mount by sanding, machining and threading it. Along the way you’ll enjoy his tips on dealing with a part that, instead of being a perfect circle on the outside, had a formidable mounting tab (which he no longer needed) protruding from one side.

The video after the break shows the result of shooting with a very shallow depth of field. For those who already have a manual lens but lack the autofocus motor, a conversion hack works like a charm as well.

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EDM For The Cheap And Adventurous

April 4, 2017 by Dan Maloney 24 Comments

Laser cutters, waterjets, plasma cutters, CNC routers – most hackerspaces and even many dedicated home-gamers seem to have some kind of fancy tool for cutting sheet goods into intricate shapes. But with no access to a CNC machine and a need to cut a complex shape from sheet metal, [AlchemistDagger] cooked up this bare-bones and somewhat dangerous EDM rig to get the job done.

Electric discharge machining has been around for decades and is used a lot for harder metals like titanium and tool steel. The process makes sense to anyone who has seen contacts pitted and corroded by repeated arcing – an electric arc is used to remove metal from the workpiece, with a dielectric fluid used to cool the workpiece and flush away debris. For [AlchemistDagger]’s purposes, a lot of the complicated refinements, like high-frequency power supplies and precise tool positioning, were ignored. He built a simple linear slide to manually control the tool position, and the power supply was just a bridge rectifier connected to the 120-volt mains with some filter capacitors and a big light bulb as a ballast resistor. While the video below shows electrical conduit being notched, [AlchemistDagger] also made a brass cookie-cutter style tool to cut the Instructables logo from steel.

Obviously, mixing water and electricity is a recipe for disaster is you’re not careful, but this low-end EDM technique is a good one to file away for a rainy day. And if you’re looking for a little more sophistication in your homebrew EDM rig, we’ve got you covered there too. Continue reading “EDM For The Cheap And Adventurous” →

Video Series Shows Custom Machined Fly Reel

February 17, 2017 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

For those of us who can’t get enough vicarious machining, YouTube is becoming a gold mine. Intricate timepieces, gigantic pump shafts, and more and better machine tools are all projects that seem to pop up in our feed regularly.

With all that to choose from, can a series on building a fly fishing reel actually prove interesting? We think so, and if you enjoyed [Clickspring]’s recently completed pedestal clock, you might just get a kick out of what’s cooking in [JH Reels]’ shop. Comparing any machining videos to [Clickspring]’s probably isn’t very fair, but even with a high bar to hurdle, [JH Reels] comes out looking pretty good. The challenge here is that this is a saltwater fly reel, so extra care with material selection and machining methods ought to make for some interesting viewing. Also of interest is the range of tooling needed to produce the reel. From lathe to mill to waterjet cutter, a lot goes into these parts, and watching them come together is fascinating.

You wouldn’t think a seemingly simple mechanism like a fly reel would be so complicated to build. But there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, and with a reel that’s clearly destined to be an heirloom piece, [JH Reels]’ attention to detail is impressive. The series currently stands at 10 videos, and we’re keen to see how it turns out.

The first video is posted below to whet your appetite. But if machining and fishing don’t do it for you, maybe you can try drones and fishing instead.

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Tiny LED Earrings Are A Miniaturization Tour De Force

February 12, 2017 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

Light up jewelry is nothing new – we see wearables all the time here. But home brew, self-contained, programmable LED earrings that are barely larger than the watch batteries which power them? That’s something worth looking into.

Settle back and watch [mitxela]’s miniature wizardry in the video below, but be forewarned: it runs 36 minutes. Most of the video is necessarily shot through a microscope where giant fingers come perilously close to soldering iron and razor blade.

The heart of the project is an ATtiny9, a six-legged flea of a chip. The flexible PCB is fabricated from Pyralux, which is essentially copper-clad Kapton tape. [Mitxela] etched the board after removing spray-paint resist with a laser engraver – an interesting process in its own right.

After some ridiculously tedious soldering, the whole circuit wraps around a CR927 battery and goes into a custom aluminum and polypropylene case, which required some delicate turning. Hung from off-the-shelf ear hooks, the 12 multiplexed LEDs flash fetchingly and are sure to attract attention, especially of those who know Morse.

This isn’t exactly [mitxela]’s first tiny rodeo, of course. We’ve featured his work many times, including a Morse code USB keyboard, the world’s smallest MIDI synthesizer, and the world’s smallest MIDI synthesizer again.

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