Built a stout (as in really stout) workbench for a customer’s laser business. Build utilized 6 sheets of 18mm x 4’ x 8’ Baltic birch for the torsion box top and for the cabinet pedestals. The drawers are identical on both sides for a total of 16 drawers, all made from 3.5 sheets of 12mm Baltic birch. The drawer bottoms are 2 sided 1/4" melamine. Mobile workbench rides of 8 locking casters. Easy to roll, hard to lift!
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What woods did you use in project?
The larger edge grain board is Black Walnut and Cherry.
The end grain is Katalox and I think it was Hard Maple.
Thanks. You did a great job.
For my milling machine at home, I am rebuilding the pulley for the drive system. The OEM is cast aluminum hard anodized, well the repair on it didn’t go as hoped. SO I picked up a billet piece of 6061 aluminum 10”square by 3” thick. This piece of aluminum was 25 lbs when I started. I cut the corners off to make it fit in the Colchester 4jaw chuck before getting to work turning.
Started machining down the OD, It was an interrupted cut for a while & I had to get creative with the tooling setup. I ran the lathe backwards with a boring bar in to get the job done.
Hollowing out was inter with the tooling setup as well. I didn’t bore the center to allow for the pulley half to be hard anodized with good contact so the pulley face would not be jeopardized.
Used a T handle Allen wrench in the interim as a power feed to allow a smoother finish. It was a challenge
Did a quick video, had a little fun with it too.
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Beautiful job Tim. Amazing craftsmanship.
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Beautiful!!!
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Minor machining project to make an X-axis travel stop for my Sherline mill. I don’t have a DRO and it gets tedious counting all those handwheel turns for repetitive parts.
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So for the MakeMade gift exchange I made some bass dice. I started with .625 brass square stock, I cut the stock to nominal dimension. Then put them into the Bridgeport to square it off. Once I squared them up, to the Pasma milling machine. I setup the work stop on the vice, found the center & started making the pips with a .125” ball nose endmill.
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Were you able to use the DRO to set the “hole pattern”, or did you do all the locations manually?
I didn’t even think of the hole pattern. I did a few test pieces to see what I liked & looked the best.
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A tangential question: are the aluminum shavings ever saved to be used in a smelter for casting?
Take all you want if they are in the trash can. We had someone do it regularly.
Caveats:
- You cannot wash or clean them off at DMS. The coolant makes the waste have to dispose of. at a hazardous waste site (applies to Haas or any coolant feed tool. You’d be saving DMS money)
- Shavings may have other metals, plastics, or composites
- ONLY shavings, no savaging other pieces of metal, even small pieces have value.
No scrap is too small to save …
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Reminds me of a Monty Python song… 
#imanerdandproudofit
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A large soup mug i made with loca mocha clay … black underglaze at bottom, topped with seaweed, oatmeal and one of the iron glazes
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Just finished a 2-week Christmas present speedrun.
This will be a leather bound book and i am no good at tooling leather by hand. So I modeled and printed a very large leather stamp based on the cover of the original book.
And the result of that stamp is honestly not that bad.
End result demo. We have a dyed leather-bound book with marble endpapers and hand-sewn endbands.
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