Use of epoxy for levelling

[Jonathan]

clive i got an e in english 13 years ago i need to read a hundred times to your once lol :P

Not much worse than my C, 7 years ago!
Just spotted you're also in Nottingham - next time quicker to explain in person perhaps...

[reefy86]

yes mate bulwell end :)

[Jonathan]

yes mate bulwell end :)

Hmm, on second thoughts...

[reefy86]

hahahahaha its not that bad :)

[reefy86]

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

[Clive S]

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

[Neale]

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.

[njhussey]

As Neale says a steel guide bush is a useful tool if using profiled linear rail similar to this one I made...



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....