[jdelaney44]

Got it done! Had one more "paper weight event" and a near miss but got it done. The process was about the same.

1. Cut the block and face all the sides to make it square
2. Drill the bolt hole (I bored it last time, drilling is close enough)
3. Notch the block
4. Bore the bearing journal

The boring was the hardest as it has the real tolerances. I ended up with a pretty good press fit. I needs to be pressed in but it's not too hard.

The bearings are 1.850. The hole ended up being between 1.849 and 1.851 depending on where you measure it. I was shooting for 1.849. I've seen this on about eight attempts to bore things to fit bearings. The lathe is more accurate by nature I have determined. On the mill +/- .002 is fantastic.

What I am doing is stopping at about 10 thou and then going a thou (.001) at a pass from there. On the boring head and the lathe that means half a thou. Of course the graduations are .001 so the .005 is a bit of a guess.

The tooling marks are often about .003 deep from what I have observed too. A .002 cut will get most of the previous pass. .003 will get all of them. Again on the lathe or boring head that's .006 net.

I got my hands on some tooling for free. A guy I worl with who used to be a machinist full time before he got into computers gave me a box-o-stuff. One of the tools was a freshly sharpenned 3/4 inch roughing end mill. I have been using 1/2 in finish end mills. This 3/4 inch roughing tool can really remove some stock. I was able to take out about 0.40 at once and I think I could do more. Note, make sure the collet is really tight. It pulled itself into the work about 1/16 inch during the cut.

I'm going to get a 3/4 inch smooth end mill. I think this will help the stiffness of the rig and make for better cuts where I can use a 3/4 in. tool. Anyway, it was a really enlightenning experience.

Along the way I fixed up some splash shields for the coolant. This is working pretty well now. I ran across some pieces of plex that I got for free. It's actually too thick at 1/4 inch. 1/8 inch would be better. It doesn't need to be bullet proof.

I then used my $20.00 heat gun from Kragen to warm the pieces up and bend them into "L" shapes. Now they stand up and can be clamped together in any number of configurations.

I also leveled the machine. It was just sitting on the garage floor. The coolant was running to one end and the back. This caused overflows on the coolant channels on the Kurt vice. With it level the coolant is running off the vice much more evenly now. Big difference. Still getting some on the floor, but a lot less.

The KURT is one of the best investments I have made in the past two years.

To go with is I just got some 0.5 thick parallels. These and the vice have cut down my set up time by probably hours a day. That's a lot when you only have weekends.

It was pretty easy. Just used a 24" crow bar to pry up the front or back and put some aluminum shims under the corners to make it level.

I was looking at a Tree Journeyman mill on e-Bay. This was the first time I noticed some channels cut into the edge of the table on a CNC mill. That would be nice. The new Bridgeports have the same thing I think.


Pictures:
Some pictures of the bearing block

The KURT with the parallels holding up the block before tightening

Milling the notch in the block with a 3/4 in. roughing mill.