Day 1 of useing my big toy! (BIG PICS)

I thought it would be simpler than this...man oh man I was a master @ the ole etch-a-sketch, but you throw in those extra axises and MAN it gets hard. Spoke with JFettig a few min ago and he handed me a few pointers. Thanks m8!

anyways I learned a few things today.

1. 7 hours isn't enough time to setup a mill from scratch, learn to mill, and complete a block in.

2. Antifeeze actually will work for a cheap coolant

3. coolant not only protects your mills it prevents the metal from warping from heat!

4. A dial indicator is worth it wieght in gold.

5. Facing mills are the ticket.

6. Don't forget to square your vise *who knew?*

7. more than 4 hours sleep is required the night before you work your brain in new ways!

OK OK so some of this stuff is elementary, but I recon if most of you went thru this to....atleast I hope so. What I mean to say is I'm a noob, your not. Your smart, I'm stupid. Your good looking, Im ugly

Anywho here are some pics of the big toy finally up and running and chewing on it's first piece of copper!

Image 1 is of the toy in all it's dirty glory ... you should see the rest of the shop...I need more room!

Image 2 is when I realized I had a problem. Now I assumed that the piece was square from the factory and all I was going to do was take this layer of rubber coating off of it. (found this nice fat slab 1.5 foot long by 3/4 thick by 4.5 inches wide @ a salvage wearhouse for 20 bucks) I apparently came out of some whirlpool equipment, cause it said whirlpool on it.
It wasn't cutting flush in fact it looks like something is off kilter!...DOH I never actually used my sweep dial to zero my mill head to the table! Another 2 hours later and the beast is square to withing .01 of an inch!

Image 3 is my second run @ it after squaring the mill head to the table. Ok now what gives? Was getting a visable grove from pass to pass. So I moved my mill head over a bit more for an overlap. Same thing happend...gears in head start grinding...felt of the copper plate and it was HOT HOT!..warpage! time to construct some sort of coolant system.
Best Idea I think I had all day really. It seemed so apt that I was trying to make a water block to cool my pc, that I should try to cool it with water. Wait a minute water rust metal and I don't want a rusty machine..again the ole PC head start working and ANTIFREEZE! yuppers 4 gallons of antifreeze and 1 gallon of water in a 5 gallon bucket. My ehime 1048 pump should do the trick!. *digs thru Milk grate of spare liquid cooling parts. Now thats something!

Image 4 shows my uber leet cooling rig I made for my machine..has a flow control valve and everything! IT WORKS!

Finally 5 hours later we have a smooth finish with hardly any ridges (you can just feel them with your fingertip..lots better than a factory block). Took to long to mill it with a 4 flute 3/4 mill so I am looking into getting a indexable faceing mill....200 USD...maybe later

so thanks for reading about my first day of milling. I got alot accomplished, but not much to show for it, oh and you may be asking about squaring my vise...I actually went to cut the big piece into 2x2 inch squares...it's starts out 2 inches but steadily gets thiner, oh well got lots of copper to get it right.

that is pretty sweet, now you need to make a fully functional water block and give it to me

~Magick_Man~

Congradulations on the new mill. Lol you have definatly made me think twice about using one though. I mean who would have thought it would have been that hard . I can not wait to see what you are going to turn out with this thing. Right now you know just enough to be dangerous. Hehe keep it up and keep us posted on what you make.

you should zip tie that valve just above the spinning head thing so itll drip down onto the metal. How did you aquire that thing, looks great (allbeit used) ?

good luck with your blocks, soon you will be a waterblock master (and sell them in the classifieds for $$$$$$$)

My uncle and Cousin both work for a company called Wager. Wager is a machine shop. The have slowly phased out of manual machine like this one, and went strictly Bridgeport CNC machines..and I mean BIG ones.

That where I aquired this oldie. It was being put to pasture as it is a Tree brand milling machine. it was bought in 1964 I belive from the original recipt (memory is a bit fuzzy).
I got it an unheard of price. Under 1k...800 to be exact.

has taken me some time to convert my 1 phase power into 3 phase power, but we finally got that done and got enough tooling to try to do something with it.

Today was the first day I ever milled anything with a purpose in mind. It's harder than it looks, but don't let that scare you off if your thinking about milling your own blocks. I am a mechanic so my brain works one way and this milling stuff is a whole other ball game. I can read a ruler prety good, but when you have to work with measurements like 25/32 and wierd crap like that it really gets hard...so i use excel to do conversions now

Looks like you are off to a good start. A set of parallels would make things much easier for you. They would get the face of the copper above the edges of your vice. I do some messing on the mills at work and have bought quite a few things from Enco. Be sure and check out their Hot Deals flyer and Enco Outlet flyer, you can catch some really nice prices sometimes.

peace.
unloaded

I'm a machinist by trade, so I have a few questions for you: how much are you taking off per pass? What rpm's are you spinning at? Approximately how fast are you feeding the mill? I say approximately because I don't see any autofeed on there (correct me if I'm wrong ). And I assume you're using a carbide endmill, not high-speed steel? You definitely did the right thing putting some cooling on there. You could definitely use some more fluid pressure, though, to help evacuate those chips (read: metal shavings for you non-machinists ). This will help keep things cooler by increasing coolant flow across the cutting surfaces, and we all know how important flowrate is for cooling. The cooler you keep your cutting surfaces the longer your bit(s) will last, the better your finish will be, and the faster you can make your passes (to a certain extent).

Also, do you happen to know what kind of copper that is? Just as with steel, there are many different grades/alloys of copper, and each has unique characteristics that will influence how it will perform and what the nominal machining speeds, feeds, etc. should be.

Anyway, don't want to throw too much at you at once, but figured I might as well try and get some info and see if there's anything I can do to help

Styyn said:

I'm a machinist by trade, so I have a few questions for you: how much are you taking off per pass?

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Ehh i am eyeballing it...I know it's prety much a powder (the copper chips) when it's making it's pass

Styyn said:

What rpm's are you spinning at?

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LOL the machine is old and the speed indicator don't work. i do know it is in High gear and i got it wound up as fast as the variable drive will take it..so wide freakin open!

Styyn said:

Approximately how fast are you feeding the mill? I say approximately because I don't see any autofeed on there (correct me if I'm wrong ).

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That i can answer! It has feeds X and Y axis. I have it as slow as it can go which on the dial is .5

Styyn said:

And I assume you're using a carbide endmill, not high-speed steel?

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Yes Caarbide

Styyn said:

You definitely did the right thing putting some cooling on there. You could definitely use some more fluid pressure, though, to help evacuate those chips (read: metal shavings for you non-machinists ). This will help keep things cooler by increasing coolant flow across the cutting surfaces, and we all know how important flowrate is for cooling. The cooler you keep your cutting surfaces the longer your bit(s) will last, the better your finish will be, and the faster you can make your passes (to a certain extent).

Click to expand...

I slapped that coolant ssytem up in like 5 min. took an ehime 1048 and some 1/4 inch barbs and tubing. I htink if i changed over to 1/2 inch i might get better feeds. Right now it was barely rolling out. the bucket and pumb were on the floor and the cutting table was a good 4 to 5 feet up in the air. I am working on getting a mister system. Do you perfer mist coolers to stream jobs?

Styyn said:

Also, do you happen to know what kind of copper that is? Just as with steel, there are many different grades/alloys of copper, and each has unique characteristics that will influence how it will perform and what the nominal machining speeds, feeds, etc. should be.

Click to expand...

Not sure of anything @ this point. I know the copper was prety soft I could score it readily with a pick (sharp pointed metal stick with a screwdriver handle )

Styyn said:

Anyway, don't want to throw too much at you at once, but figured I might as well try and get some info and see if there's anything I can do to help

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DUDE! thanks for the help so far keep it coming!