Welcome to Westwood Metalworks, What is he building in there?

[Dan Dubeau]

Well, had an adventurous yesterday. Got a lot done. The motor plate, the tracking pivot hinge and tracking axle hinge are all done. All that remains to be machined are the wheel axles. I'm glad I printed out the prints because yesterday afternoon, I dropped my laptop out in the shop and corrupted the hdd. As of now, I lost everything, but I will try and hopefully be able to recover some of it. The grinder model is the least of my concerns at this point.

Anyway, heres some pics.

Tracking hinge assy


Tracking axle hinge


Entire assy


Motor plate

And my superflex tig cable showed up too. Sooooomuch better. Can't wait to use it. Which bring up another point, with the model lost, I'm flying a bit blind on assembly dimensions. Think I have most of it committed to memory, and the rest I'll just have to figure it out on the bench.


Now that I've finally been able to rest my password, I'm typing this from my phone. I hate phones......

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Well, I'm back up and running on my laptop. Still no CAD or CAM loaded yet though. Ironic story....I'd ordered a SSD back in 2023.....because I really wanted to replace the HDD in my laptop and migrate everything over. Never could find the time, or the motivation to do so.....so I basically used it as an external drive, and luckily had the entire backup of my old work computer on it. Obviously didn't have everything, but all my pictures and personal docs prior to last year were there. And on a few other thumb drives around.

Another ironic moment, was on Thusday I didn't have much motivation for shop work, so I spent the better part of the day browsing the web and downloading PDF's of old texts and other interesting stuff. Just under 100gb worth. Taking note of that, the decreasing free space on my HHD, and the hodge podge or organization of files on my laptop I ordered a 1tb M.2 drive and holder so that I could better organize my personal files on that other drive, and get it off my operating system drive so that maybe I could finally swap/clone over to the SSD that I already bought. The kick in the pants came when that drive just showed up today. Procrastination has bit me so many times in life you'd think I'd learn.....

Still working on recovering the old drive. Sometimes it'll load and be visible just fine, but will freeze if I try and do anything. Disc recovery software is unable to clone it. Other times it locks up my laptop when I plug it in. I've stopped for now, partly because I've hit my wall of patience with it, and partly because I know enough to know I might be causing even more irreparable damage to it by continually trying to access it. I did have a glimmer of hope this morning when I was able to reset permissions on the user folder, and start copying files over, but shortly after it started it froze. Unfortunately the files it copied were nothing of value . It spins up just fine, no mechanical noise. I found a matching/compatible drive on ebay I might buy to swap platters as a last ditch effort. It's a $35 hail mary, that I'm willing to take. I've done it successfully in the past with another dead HHD from an old laptop. Hoping this might work here too.

Don't feel like shop work today, don't feel like staring at a screen anymore either. Just feel like going on a very long motorcycle ride with no destination in mind......Thankfully work starts backup tomorrow with what looks like about a month of straight 12's so I'll have something to occupy my mind and time for a while, as well replenish my dwindling bank account.

The grinder project will have to wait.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Oh, I didn't post for sympathy btw, just to vent a little, and maybe brighten somebodies day with a "well at least I'm not that guy" story if you're having a rough go. It's all my own damn fault. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The laptop drop story. I had it perched on my drill press table so I could alter some programs while running. I normally don't like taking it out there with all the dust and dirt, but thought, ah just this one time.....The CNC was running, and I thought, this is a good time to polish up some parts on the scotchbright wheel. The vibration from the grinder running knocked the laptop off the table and straight onto the floor upside down.

 

[Susquatch]

Oh, I didn't post for sympathy btw, just to vent a little, and maybe brighten somebodies day with a "well at least I'm not that guy" story if you're having a rough go. It's all my own damn fault. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

No sympathy from me Dan. Just compassionate understanding. Been there, done that, don't want the T-shirt.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Went out in the garage and puttered for a bit. Cleaned up a bunch of clutter, and then my son poked his head in from out side and came it to hang out for a bit and help me clean and put stuff away. One thing led to another and I got him on the lathe for the first time. Below is one of the best things I've ever made, and he's holding the first thing he ever turned.



Just a simple bearing fit. But he did it all, I just guided and explained. I couldn't have hit the #'s, or nailed the fit any better if I did it. He even had to split the line to hit his #. When we mic'd it and did the math he said "and a half? How do I make a half?" I just looked at him, and nodded towards the dial to let him look and play with it to figure it out, then he looked at me me a said "I gotta put it in the middle?". Yup, you do Pal. "But that's pretty hard?" Ya, that's why Machinist's get paid the medium bucks Pal.