Metalworking wall charts part three

Following the theme of my recent posts, I created two more PDF charts. I’m still working on a milling chart, but I probably won’t finish that until after the new year.

1. Drilling & Reaming Speeds
2. Sheet Metal Gage Conversions

Metalworking wall charts part two

It took a little longer to make, but I finished up a lathe speed chart tonight. I set this chart up as an excel spreadsheet so you can customize it. The spreadsheet accepts two control parameters feed, & doc (see cells K1 & K2). Doc has 5 possible settings 1.0″, 0 .4″, 0 .2″, 0.1″, 0.04″. Feed allows for any value from 0.002″ – 0.038″.

Please note that at the higher feed settings some cells will display  “N/A”.  The data I pulled from the “Machinery’s Handbook” has a small range, thus I decided it was better to provide no speed when a calculated value fell out side the range. I also preformatted the spreadsheet for printing on 3 letter sized sheets of paper.

Please note: I am not responsible for any personal injury to, or damages caused by an individual using the information listed on my website.

If you’re agree to the above disclaimer the speedsheet can be download here: turningspeeds.xls 245kb

Metalworking wall charts

It’s been to cold for me to work in the shop, so I’ve been spending most of my free time on the computer. One of the projects I’ve been working on is wall charts for the shop. When working on projects, I’m forever running back into the house to look up a speed/feed, or the hole size for a given tap. Hopefully having clearly laid out charts will cut down on the number of trips inside.

I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this problem, so in the spirit of Christmas,  I have uploaded some of the finished charts here in PDF format:

1. drill size chart with decimal & mm equivalent
2. Unified tap hole sizes for thread engagement 0f 50% – 80% in 5% steps
3. Metric tap hole sizes for thread engagement 0f 50% – 80% in 5% steps

My new(to me) mill

After two years of  watching my local tool dealers website, A mill finally popped up that meets all my needs. Thus for $525 I picked it up, it’s a U.S. Machine tool Company V2 vertical mill. The mill is about 2/3 the size of a Bridgeport weighing in at 1500lbs, and has a 9-5/8″ x 36″ table. I pulled the following tidbit of info off the net, that some might find interesting.

The United States Machine Tool Co. was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915. It became the US Machine Tool division of Ransohoff Co. in 1947. In 1948, it merged with Burke Machine Tool and became US Burke Machine Tool Co. In the 70s, US Burke became part of Powermatic/Houdaille and the Cincinnati facility closed sometime in the early to mid 80s.

The Dealer initially didn’t have any photos of the mill on his website, but after sending of an email request, I received the following two photos.

Continue Reading…

New shop benches project

It’s been a while since I posted something so I thought I should share what I’m currently working on. Besides, it’s to cold in the garage to work even with the propane heater running full blast. I’m Making 2 utility benches for my workshop. I want them to last “forever”, so I have over engineered everything. My design requirements where:

1. They must be open underneath for role away tool storage.
2. They must be easy to disassemble if/when I move.
3. They must be able to support a high static load, in case I want to mount machine tools to them. I chose 1000 pounds as the target load.

It took me awhile to finalize the design, but what I came up with should be easy to build and not cost to much. The overall dimensions are W 72”, D 30”, H 40”– 44” (adjustable).  I plan to make the top 4″ thick out of laminated hard maple. I might make it thinner depending on how much maple costs per board foot when I go to purchase it. The legs & horizontal cross bracings are 2.5” x .12” square tubing, & the rear diagonal bracing is 1-1/2” x 3/16” flat bar bolted to the legs.

I’ll post some more pics in a day or two.