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Tools you waited too long to acquire

PaulL said:
directworkwear.com

Navy Poly/Cotton Shop Coat | Direct Workwear

Navy Poly/Cotton Shop Coat 7.5 oz (255 GSM) poly/cotton, permanent-press, wrinkle-free, sanforized for shrinkage of less than 1%.
directworkwear.com directworkwear.com
I blinged them up with embroidered names ;-)
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I went to Canada Linen and asked for a couple of Shop Teacher Coats because I was tired of being covered in shmutz when I came in.
Those coats are pretty much what I got. A little hot in the summer and the long sleeves could be a problem on some machines but they definitely do the trick.
 
slow-poke said:
FWIW, I would describe my situation was just as you described, I will try to convince you to make the leap. My experience........

I'm trying to squeeze in the largest ballscrews into my new mill. It basically comes down to either 20mm or 16mm. The 20's are tight on the X axis. So tight that I can't tell if they will fit, 1mm this way yes, 1mm the other way no. I don't want to order the 20's to find out they won't fit. So I sketched up the mounting block to replace the nut. The thought of machining this and tweaking in an iterative process feels pretty painful. So I thought this is a perfect situation for a printed mounting block with hole to match the ballscrew mounting, if it's not quite right, tweak it and reprint, when its just right make it.

I noticed 3D printers on Marketplace for as low as $100 supposedly in working order with lots of filament included so what do I have to lose?

Guy has three more or less the same Prusa i3, he says pick one, so I look and I pick. Bring it home refuses to calibrate, I try for about 4 hours and no success so I call the seller and he tells me I'm leaving another one on the step for you, just take it.

Second time a charm after maybe 30 minutes of tweaking it calibrates and I print my first part. I have printed about 5 parts since then and the quality is excellent.

I want to fix the first one, but no luck getting help on every 3D forums I tried, I suspect it's the PINDA sensor but not sure yet.

One of my concerns was generating the required code for the printer. Prusa comes with a slicer program that basically takes your 3D image and slices it up vertically to about a gazilion lines of gcode one for each pass of the extruder. The slicer program is beyond intuitive it will take you about 1-2 minutes first time to generate the gcode for the printer they did a bang up job.

I generated the 3D model in my PCB program (Altium) because I'm very familiar with it. There is one big drawback to that approach and that is I cant easily make holes, I sort of can but the holes get obliterated by the other aspects of the 3D portions that I add to the model. I called my son (architect), with the details of the holes and it took him about a minute to add them as requested. I will need to learn some sort of real CAD program for generating the models, but for now I'm up and running

Am I happy I dropped the $100 bucks? Beyond ecstatic!

One limitation (that I'm aware) for this entry level model is the single extruder instead of a dual extruder. I thought this was for multicolor parts but it has a much more important function, imagine your printing something that part way up juts out, well the printer can't print on air, with a dual extruder it prints a base (with some sort of water dissolvable material) under where the projection is, so when done put it in water and the support just disappears. I don't have this luxury so the slicer program detects this and prints a breakaway base.

View attachment 40718View attachment 40719View attachment 40720View attachment 40721
If anyone has any experience fixing a Prusa I would love to hear from you.
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I took my prusa printer to spool3d for repair. They did a nice job.
 
This is what I use for those times I actually use one. The canvas is tough and I love the pockets.

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But I do love camo because it doesn't show the dirt and grease.

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Maybe I can get the bride to make me something camo and heavy duty canvas too!
 
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After using my shop made R8 collet holder I ordered a set of 5C collets and a pair of collet blocks.
They are from Accusize on Amazon. The quality looks good for the price.
I will need to make a wrench for the nuts.
IMG_3163.JPG


The nut is .040" too big to fit into the chuck so my next project after the wrench is to make a smaller nut.
IMG_3162.JPG
 
In that same vein my John Stevenson er32 collet blocks (square and hex) I bought from arceurotrade years ago before the flood of imports have paid for themselves time and time again. They were reasonably price and well made, but I remember the shipping making me choke at the time :D. IMO you can never have too many options when it comes to holding work, or holding tooling.
 
Thinking further about a bunch of the special tools I've bought over the years, these have been another great time saver. Combined drill/countersinks for flat head screws.

https://www.kbctools.ca/itemdetail/1-0448-100

https://www.kbctools.ca/itemdetail/1-0449-100

You can get them in 82* for inch, and 90* for metric hardware, and for the relatively small price they cost, they sure save a lot of time. Well worth buying if you use flat head screws a lot for building assemblies.

To piggy back on that, buying proper 90* spot drills in a few sizes for spotting holes instead of using center drills, saves time picking out broken tips too :D.
 
Dan Dubeau said:
To piggy back on that, buying proper 90* spot drills in a few sizes for spotting holes instead of using center drills, saves time picking out broken tips too :D.
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You probably meant the 118 spot drills? At least that's what I've bought before and the work well......120's might even be better, compensates if the dill is slightly more than 118 ..... anything that stops the initial messy drill's gone wild thing ...... you know, the dig into the edge of the countersunk hole routine.
 
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Mcgyver said:
You probably meant the 118 spot drills? At least that's what I've bought before and the work well......120's might even be better, compensates if the dill is slightly more than 118 ..... anything that stops the initial messy drill's gone wild the dig into the edge of the countersunk hole routine.
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Here we go.....:D There are a few theories about best practice here regarding tip angle vs spot angle. Tool manufacturers have a fair bit of literature on this (here's a short one from Harvey tool). My personal view and experience is that they're all better than a lathe center drill, simply due to being more stout. But at some point in certain materials tip angle becomes critical. For most general purpose use a 90* spot of an appropriate size is more than adequate for a wide variety of materials and situations. Personally I have a couple 90* spot drills in different sizes and I spot to about 2/3's hole diameter, before drilling. I know lots of guys will spot to the countersink dia, and get two birds stoned at once, but I don't like the edges of the lips contacting first. I do notice a difference in tool life doing that. Especially in tool steels. I'll do it in aluminum if I'm running production though.

I get it though, the merit behind the spot being greater than the tip angle is sound. In practice I've never noticed much difference.
 
Dan Dubeau said:
Here we go.....:D
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didn't know it was contentious (although there was the one scene in Drills Gone Wild Daytona Beach but we won't talk about that ). The other common thing I do is use a large CD but only the tip and stop before the straight section. Provides a 118 divot for the drill to start in.
 
Mcgyver said:
didn't know it was contentious (although there was the one scene in Drills Gone Wild Daytona Beach but we won't talk about that ). The other common thing I do is use a large CD but only the tip and stop before the straight section. Provides a 118 divot for the drill to start in.
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The "Proper" way to spot holes has long caused internet, and shop floor disputes. In my experience there is no right answer, but a lot of viable ones. I admittedly do the same with small drills sometimes. Just depends what I'm working on. Under about 0.05-0.06 I'll use the tip of a centerdrill, but anything above that up to an inch and beyond I have 90* spots. Biggest one being 5/8", smallest 3/16". Due to the chisel tip they don't work the best on tiny drills as they leave a flat bottom, hence the switch at smaller drill diameters.

For a lot of my tap drills 5/16 down to #8, I usually spot with one of my 1/4" (or other sizes) carbide dowel drills (dormer ADX). They have a 130* point, and it saves me a toolchange because I've always got one in the machine. Anything bigger I used 90's. Rarely do any manual mill work anymore.
 
I'm going to add a Downdraft Table for sanding. Primarily I sand Aluminium to get a swirl finish which leaves a lot of ultra fine dust which is not healthy for you, time to control it better.
 
Degen said:
I'm going to add a Downdraft Table for sanding. Primarily I sand Aluminium to get a swirl finish which leaves a lot of ultra fine dust which is not healthy for you, time to control it better.
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When I redo the little patio out behind my garage, one of the things I want to put there is a downdraft table, and a plasma/torch table combo for all the grinding dirty work etc. I've watched enough videos of guys that have built them now, and their utility is instantly clear to me. Right now it's just a crappy wooden workbench where I try to do all my dirty work, but a built in downdraft table is going to be a priority.

I used to have one for wood sanding when I was big into woodworking, but while it worked it wasn't the most effective and it ended up on the burn pile a long time ago when we moved. Handy things though.

This is a good video for some ideas
 
Down draft table is a great addition to any work area. Video was full of good ideas/info that could have been explained in 1/3 the time. Typical YouTube.
 
CWret said:
Down draft table is a great addition to any work area. Video was full of good ideas/info that could have been explained in 1/3 the time. Typical YouTube.
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Yeah, I've got really good at either watching them at 1.5-2x, or scrolling through the bottom progress bar for visually interesting parts. I don't fault anybody for using youtube for trying to make a living. I just like being efficient with my viewing :D.
 
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