Dosmans miscellaneious projects
These are photos and descriptions from simple things I've done at Bloominglabs that I wanted to post photos of or document, but a whole page to each item wasn't warranted.
Turned knob for electric wheel chair control
Our electric wheel chair did not come with a satisfying knob on the joystick control so one evening I just turned one for the fun of it. This took about 30 minutes or so to complete. I don't have the skill yet (or the tooling) to turn a sphere/knob on the lathe so I came up with this design just mucking around. I sanded it as well to improve the finish. For the shaft hole, I measured the metal joystick shaft with digital calipers and chose a drill bit slightly smaller than the hole. I then pounded the knob on with a dead-blow hammer.
 |
 |
Mini-chuck key for 4-jaw lathe chuck
In order to get prepared for our first machining workshop I put the 4-jaw chuck on the lathe to improve repeatability of centering work on the lathe. The 3-jaw chuck is easy to use but impossible to re-center beyond .02" if you need to remove your work and re-chuck it at any point before you are done with the part. However the independent 4-jaw chuck is frustrating to use for a beginner (myself included) when it comes to centering work in it, but at least you can recenter your work to within .001" repeatably with enough effort. I had read an article suggesting making a second chuck key to be used simultaneously with your original to make it easier to center work in a 4-jaw. Our chuck uses a 7/16" hex shaft, after finding replacements to be way over priced I opted to make my own. The cost is probably around $10. I turned the body of the new key out of 1" aluminum stock on the lathe, then tapped holes for set screws to hold the hex shaft and T-handle. The T-handle was a valve shaft someone had cut off and left lying on the lathe table (someone cut off a half dozen of these and left them, no idea who). I ground the end free of burrs. The smaller size of this 2nd key also helps when working on the far-side of the chuck, the original key tends to make your hand bang the head stock and motor assembly. I'm very pleased with out this turned out, it easily cut the time it takes to center work in the 4-jaw chuck in half, with practice all of us noobs will be centering our work in a minute or less.
 |
 |
