Originally Posted by
catahoula
Machinist started today. This is the 34" gantry on the massive old Hydrotel milling machine. This will be one of the last jobs he does before closing the shop and moving the machine to his home shop, so I was glad to be able to sneak the work in.
After much deliberation on whether to machine shoulders for rails or not, the machinist thought the base would still have a few thou of warpage with the extra material removal required for shoulders, despite the thorough welding sequence and thermal stress relief. He's an old salt, and I was inclined to listen to his experience, so going back to pippin88's advice, I deleted the shoulders and will have him face mill the rail mounts with as little material removal as possible, then machine the edge so I can indicate from that. This also opens the opportunity to surface grind the gantry, so he'll do that too. If I'd built the base without the integrated lateral column support areas, he could have surface ground that, too, but that's OK.
I guess it's about time to order the controller!