• Scam Alert. Members are reminded to NOT send money to buy anything. Don't buy things remote and have it shipped - go get it yourself, pay in person, and take your equipment with you. Scammers have burned people on this forum. Urgency, secrecy, excuses, selling for friend, newish members, FUD, are RED FLAGS. A video conference call is not adequate assurance. Face to face interactions are required. Please report suspicions to the forum admins. Stay Safe - anyone can get scammed.
  • Several Regions have held meetups already, but others are being planned or are evaluating the interest. The Ontario GTA West area meetup is planned for Saturday April 26th at Greasemonkeys shop in Aylmer Ontario. If you are interested and haven’t signed up yet, click here! Arbutus has also explored interest in a Fraser Valley meetup but it seems members either missed his thread or had other plans. Let him know if you are interested in a meetup later in the year by posting here! Slowpoke is trying to pull together an Ottawa area meetup later this summer. No date has been selected yet, so let him know if you are interested here! We are not aware of any other meetups being planned this year. If you are interested in doing something in your area, let everyone know and make it happen! Meetups are a great way to make new machining friends and get hands on help in your area. Don’t be shy, sign up and come, or plan your own meetup!

A maybe future project, maybe.

jorogi

Ultra Member
20250519_150950.jpg

This is the heavy steel bench I built a few years back. The top is approximately 3x3 and 1 3/8" thick. The legs are 7x7 tubing and are welded to the bottom. The underside of the top has a large dome with several large 1 1/2" ribs. Needless to say it is a very stiff top. It was made about 115 years ago and must have been quite an item to build, no idea how it would have been made, cast maybe, there are marks that look like they might be from a planer but then there are those two tits (the back one is mostly cut off) sticking up out of the surface. The dome on the underside is also machined.
The right three quarters of the top is quite flat with a few divots and the left hand side is low and pitted.
It would be really nice to have it all nice and smooth, perhaps with some threaded holes for clamping. Is it realistic to think that I could affordably make a temporary track system and home made "blanchard-esque" rolling grinder and take the surface down a 1/4" to achieve perhaps a within 0.050" flatness. I have a skookum 5 hp motor I could use.
Thoughts ?
 
Hmmmmm.....

I dunno about the grinding approach. 1/4" is a lot..... Your shop would look like a coal mine.

How about skinning it? Put a 1/8 or 1/4 sheet on it and level it by jacking the sheet strategically.

Or..... Put a fence all around it, pour epoxy to level it, and then add a 1/4" or 3/8 or 1/2" sheet.
 
A 7/9 inch grinder and a couple of good breakfasts would get you within 0.05". If you map out the error with a straight edge you could take a systematic approach to flattening with a hand grinder. Take the high points down to a lower plane, and then start refining the surface finish. Finishing with a Dual action/ROS.

Define your goals though, are you looking for a pretty flat fab/welding table, or something machining related. If machining related, I'd look at sending out out for Blanchard grinding. If just fab related, you will get it pretty good by hand with some skill and patience. Probably quicker than you could build some kind of gantry grinder system. Unless of course THAT is the goal (building the grinder), then by all means go for it, it would be a fun project to build. I think it would be difficult to achieve better results than by hand without a lot of fuss and mass behind it though.

Any other pics of the underside? Just for curiosity sake, I love seeing old weird stuff like that lol.
 
If you are in southern Ontario , we could mount it on a couple large angle plates and machine it on my boring mill. We could also drill and tap holes.
Martin
Such a nonchalant flex, :D
Ill just load up this plate in my Antonov AN-225 and cruise over to your location, Ill be there in 45 minutes.
:D
 
Such a nonchalant flex, :D
Ill just load up this plate in my Antonov AN-225 and cruise over to your location, Ill be there in 45 minutes.
:D

Don't forget to add a few days for the trip from Pearson Airport to Niagara Falls - maybe more with that wide load....
 
What is it with pics on this site ?

Basically, we don't have enough money to pay for premium hosting so our server guys are constantly squeezing our photo storage. Add that to a system crash a while back where we lost a lot of photos and a partial repair that we think left us with an unstable photo system.
 
Basically, we don't have enough money to pay for premium hosting so our server guys are constantly squeezing our photo storage. Add that to a system crash a while back where we lost a lot of photos and a partial repair that we think left us with an unstable photo system.
This may not be public information but what does it cost? Premium vs what we pay now?
 
Back
Top