Columbus Day

Its Columbus Day (the real date) and its been a busy weekend so far the The Hobbyist’s Machine Shop. (My playroom 🙂

I broke two more of the tiny mill bits on the heat sink milling for the HB2 . I am going to have to stop doing that. It is really a “dumb me” problem. The last one was because I did not have the part I was milling suitably  (meaning rigidly) attached to the bed of the mill. It came loose whilst milling. Poo!

So now I am taking the time out to build the correct clamping system to hold the heat sink blanks. It is a project I wanted and needed to do anyway, but the lesson is I should have done it first. It’s just a reminder that the set-up is everything.

The clamp can and will be used for holding other projects on the mill so it will be a great addition to the tool box. It will be a larger version of the clamping system I used to make the A3 locomotive wheels. That clamp is just a tiny bit too small so I resorted to a less than satisfactory clamping method. It worked… for awhile. 🙁

The new clamp will take advantage of the machined plate (with all the threaded holes) that I made for the Taig. Then I will not have any clamping gadgets sticking up in the way of milling. Of course I will post some pictures in a about a week when I have got it working.

This weekend I also ordered all the nuts and bolts for assembly of the HB2. I went with stainless for most bolts but had to select “oil black” metric sockets heads to mount the linear rails. (Not available in SS) That’s OK because they can’t be seen inside the frame rails. All that stuff screw stuff is close to $100 US. Non-stainless may have been about $20 less, but I did find some sizes cheaper in stainless. I ordered from the Bolt Depot.com. Check them out. They sell as small as single unit quantities.

Least I forget, today is also Gloria and my 40th wedding aniversary. I better do a special post on that!