hahahahaha its not that bad :)
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hahahahaha its not that bad :)
how much lean way do you have when drilling the rails? is it easy enough with just a hand held drill or does it need to be precised? all i have in my tool cabinet is a screw driver hammer and drill lol. im willing to buy tools as i go along with the machine so not too much of an issue if i do need some sort of new tool lol.
cheers
ash
Well as long as you have the hammer you will be fine. Oh and don't let Jonathan fool you he's going for a Phd :applouse:Quote:
Originally Posted by reefy86
A hammer helps, but...
The epoxy drills easily, no problems there. However, assuming M5 cap screws through nominal 6mm holes in the rails, you have a bit of wiggle room if you get the holes accurately placed. One way to do this is to clamp the rail in place as accurately as possible, then "spot" through the holes with, say, a 5.9mm drill just enough to leave a small mark in the epoxy surface. Then swap to the tapping size drill and pick up the mark to centre the drill in the hole. This is an old toolmakers' trick. However, it's quite difficult to hold the drill vertical when doing this, and if the tapping hole is slightly off then you end up with the cap head slightly off as well once fitted, which makes tweaking rail position more limited. You can do it with care, but I chose to turn up a steel guide bush with a spigot to fit the counter-bore in the rail and a central hole to guide the tapping size drill. One hand to hold the guide in place and the other to do the drilling worked OK for me. Saves a lot of drill-swapping as well. I used a similar guide bush for the tap. It's worth getting a couple (you'll need a spare, just in case) of spiral-point taps which will go straight through without the wind in/back off motion you need with hand taps. Stick one in a cordless drill on slow speed, use a touch of tapping compound, and the tapping is easier than the drilling.
As Neale says a steel guide bush is a useful tool if using profiled linear rail similar to this one I made...
Attachment 15945
I've shown how I did it (I used my pillar drill clamped to the machine bed) here...http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/2148-...-Planes/page40 and there's a video on the next page of my build....
Using a pillar drill would make an enormous difference - it's difficult to get the downward pressure using a handheld drill, then you wobble (did I mention the need for a few spare drill bits?).
Knurling the bush is just showing off. I just threw an odd bit of steel in the lathe. Should have done it before I had already drilled one and a half of the long X rails...
I knurled it because I did that one for someone on here, I even chemically blacked it for good measure [emoji6]Quote:
Originally Posted by Neale
I did consider making a single bush with a hole for the tapping size drill at one end and a hole for the tap at the other end...
But then there's not as much of the bush in contact so the chance of wobble is greater?Quote:
Originally Posted by Neale
cheers guys, im going to look for a decent pillar drill as i want this project to be perfect :) any decent ones to recommend ?
cheers
ash