Using the Workshop

Evening all

I thought it might be of interest to show how the Workshop is operating. Today, on a particularly wet morning during the maintenance Friday morning, I have brought to the site the rear wheel castings for the 1″ Minnie traction engine. Some of you will remember that I spent most of the last exhibition machining some of the castings. Well I thought that I should perhaps get the large rear wheels to the same ‘roughed out’ standard. Now I know most of you will have the necessary machinery to do this at home, but I don’t, having only a 2.1/2″ lathe.

2015-11-06 10.05.21This is our machine, a ML7, refitted back in the workshop. If you come up to the site, please be aware that there must be two people in the workshop. Just basic safety as it is not like being at home. You must also remember to bring any tooling required although for this machine there is a fairly extensive selection available. Measuring tools are also needed.

2015-11-06 10.06.27This photo shows what I brought up with me.

2015-11-06 10.10.41Now, not wanting to teach all you engineers how to suck eggs, I’ll just run through what the procedure was I used. Tool inserted into post. Casting mounted via the inside jaws. The hammer is there to knock the casting into a reasonably circular orbit and the chuck tightened.

2015-11-06 10.33.24Now, I only intend to rough machine these castings rather than do all the cutting in a single stage. Time consuming maybe, but a lot safer for those of self taught machinist! Unfortunately the topslide would not let me reduce the diameter across the complete face so another set was required.

2015-11-06 11.23.53This picture shows a boring bar mounted upside down and with the lathe running in reverse. Much to small a boring bar but nothing else was found on site and you guessed it, I didn’t bring one with me. It did it, though there is a lot of chatter marks.

I did have two more photos, but the site seems not to let me add them to this post. No doubt I’m doing something wrong – again. They where to show that the front face was cleaned back and lastly, because I had to leave early to return the car to ‘her indoors’, I did clean up the lathe. I do not want to be on the wrong side of the Workshop Manager!

I will continue this should anyone be interested.

Alan Hooper. Secretary

 

 

2 thoughts on “Using the Workshop

  1. Excellent progress Alan. I have no doubt many members will be interested and will be encouraged to make use of the facilities. I think there is quite a lot of tooling and measuring equipment on site I look forward to a further progress report.

    Bob

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