johnsmachines

I was on call over the weekend, so I had today off, and spent it in the workshop. It was cold. Jumper plus oilskin cold.
I crow-barred the space for the new mill, levelled the mill with a machinists level. One foot was missing so I turned up a new one… 75mm dia, 16mm thick, with a 20mm dia recess to accept the levelling bolt.
Then I started to tidy up the awful paint job, scraping paint off the machined parts, and using my Dremel to wire brush it off plastic parts. Starting to look more respectable.
Then I found a hand wheel control lever stop made from a rolled tube which had broken off at surface level. It was hardened, as I discovered when I tried to drill it out… changed the drill bit to mush. So I used the Dremel with a carbide bit to grind it out. That worked, but it took a lot of time, and I ended up with an irregular hole which I then drilled out to 5mm and tapped 6mm. I have inserted a temporary 6mm cap screw as the stop, and it works but looks a bit gross. Needs a tidy up.
The 3 phase lead does not reach my converter, so I have to replace it with a longer one. The plug is new, so I will re-use that. I have some 20 amp 4 wire lead, so I will use that. Maybe next weekend I will get to fire it up. Saturday is out though. Geelong – Hawthorn AFL game takes precendence.
I need to make some T nuts to suit the 18mm T slots. They are bigger than any machine I have previously owned. I will tap them to accept 12mm studs, rather than the recommended 16mm studs. I already have the 12mm studs, and I cannot see that I will need the bigger ones. If i was to use the table capacity of 900kg the big ones would be useful.