>>3000900
I work for the biggest OEM in Taiwan as a consultant and yesterday I visited our factory lines.. bros it's literally slavery with extra steps. The machines are insane tho, thousands on CNCs, literally.

>>3000900
I hate machinist

i liked the movie the machinist

How do you set up compact machine tools like shapers on uneven ground?
I know you're 'supposed' to pour a slab.
But let's say you dont and you'll use adjusting machine feet to compensate the ground.
I know how to level a lathe and analogous to that you'd probably want to pull the ram out and measure the entire alignment to set up a shaper.
There must be an easier way.
Lets say the machine has either 4 or 6 feet. Wrenching feet until they all end up at the same torque seems wrong to me as this means equal load per foot but ignores actual weight distribution. one could determine the center of gravity first and calculate how great of a share each foot needs to carry but again it's unpractical.
In case of the machine with 4 feet I sort of have the idea of balancing it on 2 diagonal feet and then cranking the opposite ones out until they are at equal load (this assumes the center of gravity is symmetrical in one direction) but the 6 foot machine would again not work like this.
I sort of suspect one wants to just measure the underside of the machine between feet to make sure it's straight.

File: potter johnston 14.jpg (2.8 MB, 2476x3302)

2.8 MB JPG

>>3002034
a shapers about at the far end of the spectrum of wet noodle machine tools. theyre from an era of dirt floors or at best lumpy wood endgrain blocks. plus the nature of the cutting force requires the frame to be inflexible. and a shaper aint exactly a tenths machine gnawing away at some rough blob of cast iron with a hand forged gooseneck tool
i wouldnt bat an eye at shoving a shaper off the truck on the side of grassy knoll and making chips
t. working on a bakers dozen shapers

File: 20230718_191216.jpg (1.17 MB, 2305x2121)

1.17 MB JPG

>>3002061
My situation is like you describe: Got two shapers here, had a plander which is rather set up like a lathe, different story. I just put them anywhere and make chips, move them around once in a while.
But lately I wanted to tidy up and I always had the line from one of the shapers manuals in the back of my mind where it says to pour a slab and make sure it's flat within x, or the manufacturer wont guarantee dimensional accuracy.
Sure it may be a purely academic discussion but still: There has to be an established method and I believe you can run the gib just ever so slightly tighter if it's really dead straight.
On a sidenote: Recently I lifted the shaper on 6 feet somewhere else. I've put it on some blocks. I was surprised to find the blocks in the middle to be loose, i could just slide them through underneath. I left them under the feet, came back lately and found them to be completely stuck.
I think the machine has deformed by at least a mm and back again over the course of lifting it and setting it back down. This sure doesn't translate 1:1 to deformation at the top but I expect it to have some effect up there.
Otherwise it has something to do with the elastomer in the feet doing funny things.
>picrel shows the feet someone else put on
This one is my later addition to my shapers and slightly bigger than the one on 4 feet (flat base really, 4 holes for bolts). The planer was an entirely different beast but wasted way too much space.
It's just 'tism, OCD and curiosity if yiu want.

>>3002068
it would be pretty easy to experiment with flex by putting a mag base at the far outboard end of the table with the indicator zeroed on the vertical ways up near the top. then pry up on the machine base in a few spots and see how much it deviates
the rubber feet seem to me like the wrong choice as they negate the foundation connection. idk just gut feel
a hand poured 3 or 4" monolith pad under the machine footprint would be an improvement if you shop is otherwise lacking then level for setup convenience with hardwood shims
thats a gorgeous shaper in picel

>>3002078
Thanks.
>elastomer feet
I see the same issue. I wouldn't feel safe with full steam on any shaper that isn't bolted down and while it seems to make levelling less of an obvious exercise om the other hand I can see how the rubber might simply negate some roughness.
Shop floor is really nice btw. Like I said, it's an academic exercise mostly.
Not sure about your idea tho, prying in random places with a constant load results in deflection in other parts, depending on the geometry and the distance from center of gravity. But it wont tell you wether the machine is flat and every foot loaded according to the weight above it.
I'm thinking for the rams bed at least one might be able to use the ram, in place, as a straight edge. And some feeler gauge, see if the gaps change with the load on the feet.
Perpendicularity of the table shouldn't be too hard either. Perhaps cut test pieces and test that instead of being square it cuts square.

>>3002085
Have you tried sucking dick?

Not to solve your problem or anything…

I’m just asking because you seem like a fucking fag

You fag

>>3002278
Please go back to africa. You've been shitting up thread with your retarded nonesense and getting nothing done for ages.

>>3002034
You're overcomplicating this. There's a million reasons a machine frame can become bent or twisted over its lifetime so it's perfectly normal for its weight to not be distributed equally over the feet. Just do what everyone else does and align it with a precision level. Of course, any rubber feet can and will throw that off both over time and under work load, ideally you want to bolt it tightly to the slab, effectively integrating it into the machine structure.

>>3002597
I know that I am overcomplicating this and like I said, I have ran both shapers and a whole host of other machine tools without paying particular attention to this. Only on 'long bed' types of machines I used the well documented approach amd made sure it's straight.
I would still want to know how, in theory, one sets up a very stiff machine with any number of feet just like it was clamped on the milling machine in la factoria.

>>3002609
>a very stiff machine with any number of feet
Then it doesn't matter and it's more about stopping the machine from crashing through the floor or sinking into the ground by spreading the weight over multiple points. If your floor isn't particularly weak just crank it by feel until it feels about the same

>>3002620
>doesn't matter
As explained above: Negilible perhaps but the effect will be there. And since machines come ona spectrum from noodly toys to stout as frig there will be plenty of edge cases where the machine is not stiff enough to just sit on a pile of bricks but at the same not have a geometry suitable for easily checking alignment. Checking alignment would be dealing with symptom anyways, the root cause is the wonky foundation. As such there ought to be a commonly agreed on procedure that allows you to achieve good alignment with reasonable effort.
As I have explained above the machine, last time when I moved it, must have deformed first from lifting and then again deformed in the opposite manner when sitting on some blocks. Movement at the base of such magnitude certainly translates to some movement in critical places.
>inb4
just put her on 3 blocks and loosen the gib until she runs free
That's how you transform your situation into a thirs world situation.

>>3002620
forgot:
>about the same
but this is arguably stupid and retarded as there is no rational basis for the idea
a machine tool is not a homogenous cube. A lathe for example will be heaviest at the headstock and maybe heavy at the taikstock, lighter in between. Simply not taking measurements along the bed and cranking every foot so it 'feels the same' translatea the torque by means of the screw such that the load on every foot is equal. This will cause feet under the bed to share load from the far ends and uktimately raise the bed in the middle. Hence every normal functioning human ssts their lathe up using a level, test bar and or or other methods like taut wire etc.
Just that checking alignment is a bit overkill in case of a shaper especially if it includes pulling the ram, which in case of one of my shapers requires you to start draining the oil.

>>3002647
It's either rigid enough and you do whatever, or it's not and you use a precision level. If in doubt use the level. It will show deflection long before anything starts to actually jam.

Cast iron frame shouldn't bend any noticeable amount over time just from sitting on the floor unless it's cracked. Rubber feet can and will sag but you shouldn't be using them (or wooden blocks for that matter) anyways on a machine where feet alignment affects geometry (and if the manual says to pour a slab then it most likely does). They're just too spongy compared to both the machine and the slab underneath to provide any adequate support in this case.

Particularly for a shaper like this >>3002068 you don't need anything, it's beefy enough to keep ram and table geometry when not in use without any special feet alignment. But it relies on its front pair of feet to help resist cutting forces after you lock the table down so you want to make sure there's no slop in them, rubber feet included. The forces will also try to lift the middle feet upwards under heavy load so it might be not enough to just have them tight against the floor, you'll need to actually bolt them down using anchors.

>>3000900

> lead came to me asked me why I had scrapped 2 parts

Responded with:

> “This clapped out Bridgeport has more backlash than kunta kinte”


I got walked into HR and I had to sign a document that stated I won’t say that again and I have to sit through a training now

Am I fucked?

>>3002705
>shouldn't be using them
In case I didnt make it clear:
I was 'refurbishing' a little so I stashed several machines away, only for that purpose did I set them on wooden blocks. But you might be righg that it actually was the blocks that gave more than the base.
>jam
There's a wide range between aligned and jamming. Seen enough machines in my life where some doofus just relaxed the gibs whenever something was wrong.
>Rubber feet are spongy
True they allow motion. But it set up right the geo. etry will at least be close to what it should be at all times and what it should be on average.
>Bolt down
I always bolt down both shapers of course and their bolts are still there. Those things will really walk through the shop.
>For a shaper like this its irrelevant
That is not the point and it's quitw surprising I didn't get that across yet. Ignore the shaper if that helps. Imagine I had an undescript machine toolbor any other structure and it needed setting up on feet such that a previous alignment is recreated and it will sit free of ingernal stresses. Imagine it had N feet and accessibility to functional surfaces was poor - unlike the bed of a planer or lathe. This is not a new problem by any means and I bet there is a well documented method to achieve it that doesn't involve disassembly, autocollimators, test bars o algo. Probably some method by which to at least arrive at a close first guess.

File: 493659658_1365b5bdfa_o.jpg (717 KB, 908x676)

717 KB JPG

>>3002726
Just play possum for awhile and you will be fine.

>>3002783
>But it set up right the geo. etry will at least be close to what it should be at all times and what it should be on average.
Naw the moment you move some part of the machine to a different position, or put a heavy part onto the table, or there's some dynamic force, the loads on the feet change and all the alignment goes out of the window. Rubber feet are orders of magnitude softer than the machine itself and will easily give to any twist (remember we're talking dozens of microns of movement or less), so they effectively provide no support as far as geometry is concerned. They can also sag over time under load and swell from oil (even from touching oily chips on the floor), and it all depends on temperature and even humidity, so it will absolutely make trying to align a machine that's sensitive to it a living hell.

>This is not a new problem by any means
There's no such problem because small machines are rigid enough to not care, and you don't move large machines often enough for proper alignment to become a hassle. If you still really really need to, you can add or machine some reference points near the actual bearing surfaces to use for alignment.
Aligning by feet loading doesn't seem very reliable because you can ding or bend the machine slightly during the move, or fail to put it in exact same tool position and configuration (which is also important) and it will throw off your setup so you'll end up having to check the primary surfaces for alignment anyways. There's also the issue of both measuring the loads and recreating them accurately and without throwing the original alignment off in the process.

File: IMG_20260805_232841152.jpg (442 KB, 1700x502)

442 KB JPG

>>3000900
amazon is cock blocking me. the bar stock for my caps was out for delivery and then they decided not today

>>3002726
You work for a faggy shop
Fitting

How feasible would it be to build and use a steam tractor to work a farm without spia bunch of chemicals onto the field?

>>3003179
Enjoy your boiler explosion

File: Untitled.png (37 KB, 283x315)

37 KB PNG

its really gross to me that internal thread dial calipers are so expensive. Ive gotten this idea where I cut the tips off a caliper and then solder or epoxy some flat wire tips on. or maybe some thin plates that screw onto the sides with a little reverse finger to get in deep lol

File: accessory kit.jpg (177 KB, 1080x1398)

177 KB JPG

>>3004197
the real deal kit to do that isnt even expensive
but its impossible to gauge thread fit on an internal thread without a plug gage. a couple tenths if the difference between free running and too tight. and thats not even addressing the issue with correlating the major diameter and truncation flat at the crest
t. spent some time trying to more efficiently gage id threads

File: Untitled.png (146 KB, 1091x441)

146 KB PNG

>>3004199
I didnt even see this or that kit till I was looking at work. Im just going to get this caliper. I have another project im thinking about, a flashlight, so more thread cutting and hopefully no waste if I can measure better.

>>3000900
Dear machinist lords of very nice digitry:
How do I make 1:32 scale slot car gears at home? They're small 27-30 tooth, durable metal to drive the wheels.
Is this a $560 worm gear looking tool thing? Would you lost wax cast it? A cnc that can cut steel is too expensive compared to a cutting machine so far.
Idk, I'm lost and open to advice.

>>3004453
>make at home
>cheap
>low precision
How I do that:
Base circle method. 3D print the dividing plate when teeth numbers that a spindexer cant because I wont be cranking the indexer all day and fuck up once.

>>3004456
oh I forgot the actual cutting part:
Shaper.
But you can use base circle with a slitting saw or endmill really.

>>3004457
sorry for tripple post but since those gears hardly mattwr you can aswell cut profiles more like the clock and watch fags I dont remember what those profiles are called but they are far easier to cut. Also cutters are easy to make with just a round tool on a lathe.

File: 3962712440190810431.jpg (17 KB, 475x247)

17 KB JPG

>>3004457
So I don't need this and a cutting tool?

>>3004458
They're going 30k rpm driving 109 gram frames.

>>3004461
You won't be freehanding it unless you want to invest copious amounts of time.
Don't get me wrong, hand fitting can be stupidly precise, it's amazing ehat you can do with a file and a piece of stone, sometimes it's required even but ITT (it's a stupid thread where no one ever gets help and everyone is retarded) it's all about machining.
Minimum you'll get away with is a drill press and creativity.
>cutter
like I said it's relatively easy to make for the watch type gears which are okay for your application.
>>3004462
rotational velocity and mass of the thing to be driven are not a basis for any meaningful estimate let alone calculation

>>3004453
cant you buy this shit?
my neighbor and his buddy lawnmower larry (rip) had a insane slotcar track that filled an entire 40x60 pole barn back in the 90s. they had 2 scale model drag strips and a full indy car circuit and were totally into it over the top. and drinking cheap beer
additionally the walls of the building were store racks absolutely loaded with new car parts and track shit etc for other slotcar nerds to come buy so it all existed at one point in time. has it all landed in the garbage dump by now?

>>3004467
It's all being sold dirt cheap by boomer's widows.
That being said custom gear sets are still gold because the mass produced ones are mass production quality.
Any chance you still have photos of this? I would completely nerd out.
Another thing is to be a cool guy, you have to have a niche nobody else is good at, and this fits that for sure.

>>3004471
>Any chance you still have photos of this?
i remember seeing a picture from the late 80s reposted in the throwback section of the local paper but cant find it online now
i remember going there with my pops about 1993 to try to find lawnmower larry because he had our mower for 6 months but hadnt fixed it yet. he liked drink beer and race slotcars way more than fix peoples junk mowers
theres about 5k chicken coop mcmansion houses where the barn used to be so everything is long gone now

>>3004475
yeah man, slot car shops and drive in movies and race what you bring drag strips are GONE

>>3004197
>>3004199
>>3004247
Do you even really need to measure the internal threads? If you're making something from scratch you can just make the external threaded part first and use that as a plug gage, and I'd much rather have a set of telescoping gages than that janky caliper.

That caliper won't work for thread measurements btw since the tips are lined up so it'll either go in crooked or one side will be in a groove while the other is on a peak if you can somehow hold it perfectly aligned, which you probably can't.

Also if you have a decent way of measuring an external thread you can just make your own plug gages.

Also also chances are it'll be cheaper and easier just to get a tap and use that instead of fucking around with internal single point if you're not in a production environment.

File: e-1500.png (431 KB, 2416x1578)

431 KB PNG

Where the hell can I get some deburring blades which aren't made in Israel or China? I give enough of my money to Israel through my taxes and I don't trust bare metal stuff from China. I've been trying to find something comparable to the E-1500 blade from Royal which my workplace orders (Israel), but haven't had any success yet. There's gotta be something available made in USA, Japan, or Germany.

File: 20260816_145714.jpg (1.84 MB, 2933x3553)

1.84 MB JPG

>>3004694
>buying repacked noga blades at 10x markup
1st step would be cut the royal middlekikes out of the process
ive given up buying real kike blades as the chinkshit are just as good for me a $6/pk instead of $4 ea. i cant tell any difference in edge quality under the microscope vs shaviv or vargus genuine and theyre all better than those black oxide shank trash blades noga sells

File: chink shit.png (685 KB, 2429x1360)

685 KB PNG

>>3004704
I bought some chink shit on eBay for ~$0.30/blade which I use for removing skins and rough edges (for context, I'm running a CNC router and mostly cutting stuff out of poly pro, crp-1, and grey pvc) and a RUKO handle and E100 blades (made in China) which I use for cutting out the cut pieces from the sheet. My employer just orders stuff from McMaster-Carr and that's where the Royal blades come from.

The chink shit blades are good for most situations, though I have to replace them more often and they don't seem to work as well on grey PVC right out of the box and need to be broken in a bit to deskin cleanly. I mostly just need to find something I can use to reliably debur drill holes for installing helicoils and small radius contours.

File: drill_impressions.jpg (301 KB, 1920x2560)

301 KB JPG

>>3004713
plastic is so fucking gay to deburr
i mostly reach for a surgeons scapel with a #11 blade and cut the burrs off. but its slow and easy to fuck up parts and/or cut yourself
for holes i take new countersinks and hand sharpen then on the slow speed accu lap with a 3000 grit diamond wheel then run them really slow in the drill press which mostly avoids chatter
anything i can i will run edge breaks with a 45 deg or small radius wood bit on the router table. between the bearing guide and the fence its easy and fast to get nice consistent results
t. no quotes uhmw jobs

File: I measure my benis in mm (...).jpg (590 KB, 2529x2093)

590 KB JPG

I need some cheap calipers to measure in metric what should I get?

>>3005230
Cheap, good, new. Pick two.

Also, Chinesium digital calipers are dogshit.

>>3005230
I've heard the iGaging ones are decent for the money. Look at the absolute ones they make, they shouldn't rape batteries like other cheap calipers do.

>>3005230
get one with a vernier scale. It's impossible to fuck up the manufacturing, it will be accurate to at least what it states.

>>3005257
>get one with a vernier scale. It's impossible to fuck up the manufacturing

I have two vernier calipers that are so badly made that the start and end of the vernier scale are off by almost a full half a mark. Never underestimate the power of bottom-dollar production.

>>3005257
>>3005260
I was going to get the mitutoyo one but my dad is going to use it too and his eyes aren't as good anymore

>>3005364
I feel him there, I just turned 40 and trying to read a vernier caliper makes my head ache too.

File: Screenshot_20260821_18300(...).jpg (1.65 MB, 1440x3120)

1.65 MB JPG

I have talked myself out of buying this. i love that it can be used as a manual machine and it looks cool. I cannot in good faith deal with 70s german computers. I hate troubleshooting modern stuff. If i had to diagnose and repair an issue using a manual in a language i dont understand i would burn my shop down.

You can get them "new" from german with a siemens controller but at that point i might as well just get a haas and actually have support in america.

>>3005499
so put linuxcnc or uccnc on it and make chips
haas will dryhole you repeatedly on anything older than 5 years and are the worst about doing everything they can to make user end repair in the control impossible

>>3005500
bknus if he keeps the kino controls and CRT and hacks it in

>>3005260
double the precission! I guess

so i know we call .0001 a "tenth"
whats the shorthand for .00001
saying something like "five one hundred thousandths" is a mouthful and i dont think thats even correct nomenclaturally

>>3000900
test

File: 1691635595776379.jpg (109 KB, 640x748)

109 KB JPG

>>3005673
.00005 = half tenth or 50 millionths
.000039 = micron = 40 millionths
hundred-thousandths arent really ever said like how commie units skip decimeters

File: TooManyPrefixes.png (656 KB, 754x870)

656 KB PNG

>>3005684
>commie units skip decimeters
They skip more than that. Last I checked they had 20 prefixes. Scratch that, I looked again and they added 4 more in 2022. So, 24 prefixes now. How many did they have in the beginning? 6. How many of those did everyday people use? 4. Now that we have 24, how many do everyday people use? 4. The same 4 from 1795? Yes.

Insanity.

>But they are in powers of 10 so they are easy to remember!
Yeah, except all the ones they added after the original 6 aren't. Once you hit mega/micro it changes to powers of a thousand. You'd be surprised how many people that grew up with the metric system don't know that a megameter is not 10,000 meters (kilometer times 10, 10^4) but 1,000,000 meters (10^6). Or that a gigameter is a billion meters (10^9). Of course, they never use those prefixes so why would they? Overall, I like the original system. Hell, I even think 'ares' are cute. What I hate is all the changes. Even when the changes made sense, its like, why didn't you do that originally if it was so important? It is not like we're new to the whole 'making measurements' thing. How did you miss that? Meanwhile we still use hectares even though they were dropped in 1960 and we will probably be using them until the end of fucking time. Like how the cubit is still in use in some places. Assholes.

One thing I absolutely will not cotton to is Celsius/Centigrade. The freezing point of water is zero? Really? That is not even that cold. And 100 is fucking boiling? Fuck. Fahrenheit had it right. 180 degrees between the two. For everyday people Fahrenheit is perfect. That way zero is fucking cold, 100 is fucking hot, and who gives a shit about anything else. Oh, you don't like that boiling is 212°? What the fuck do you care? When was the last time you had to get something to 212/100? Is is the boiling you want, not the fucking number.

For science? Rankine or Kelvin. Zero is zero and negative numbers can fuck off so there is no confusion. Fuck Celsius.

>>3000900
You vile cocksuckers... why can't I buy a multiple punch and die set in a half dozen sizes in the same shape? They're all individual and simple shapes in steel NEED to be $80 each? It's for a shitbag arbor 1 ton making 1/8th inch sheet metal shapes in small batches.

It got worse. I was given a 6 ton press for free. It ended up costing me $200 because I wanted some shaping, cutting and pressing bits for that.

I...is this going to be more expensive than crack? Am I better off just doing crack?

>>3006386
>I...is this going to be more expensive than crack? Am I better off just doing crack?
Yes. Also yes. Probably be overall happier too...

>>3006387
I do find myself getting really mad a lot now. And measuring things in Normal and Communist.