McRee Shop #1

Well folks. The Monday (yesterday) following the weekend I got my first machine up and running, a Doc hit with the lovely ole c-word. Chances are good that it will be “curable”, but we will not know until after surgery and future cat scan. Not sure exactly what the future holds, but it will most likely be interesting. … at least I had a good 6 year stretch with limited health issues. Honestly, this has been much easier to deal with than 2 ½ years of uncontrolled epilepsy and a couple failed brain surgeries… or maybe I still have not come face to face with reality. I reckon time will tell.

Practical Machinist is the only place I really feel comfortable expressing the situation. I feel that for the most part, a good number of individuals here are wired in a similar manner, we have similar values. There are not many people that I respect the way I respect those spewing competence all over this site. Gives a man folks to look up to.

For The Record: I did not write this post in order to draw sympathy or attention of that nature, as I absolutely despise it. This is simply a method for me to externalize and analyze my own reactions to life's circumstances... As well as track my own progress as I force my dreams to unfold. hmmmm.... I suppose if worse comes to worst, this thread would be a decent description for the pinnacle of my efforts as a proud self-serving male, hell-bent on making it happen.

Hopefully this thread will also be of use to other productive individuals as they analyze their own unique difficulties, and ultimately come to the conclusion that “it ain’t nothin but a thing” “this is a small price to pay for the ability to keep the dreams moving forward” “how interesting, yet another environment in which to analyze myself and my reactions” “I will capitalize on these difficulties and use my abilities to rectify my internal weaknesses”…. WHEN the difficulty is either resolved and/or you’ve learned to cope with yourself, you will come to the conclusion that you would have your life no other way. If these difficulties had not arisen, you would never have been granted an opportunity to earn the insight and perspective attainable only through overcoming such obstacles.

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cool - now that we've got that action out of the way, let the fun begin. Actual shop related content will be coming soon.



Wagner

Congrats on getting your first piece of equipment up and running. May many more follow.
Hodge

Hey man. I Hope everything health related goes good so you can keep pushing for your dream.

What machine did you buy ?

Pictures please [emoji3]

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twmcree, where are you in Texas

Looking forward to your posts and thanks for taking the time to share.

Charles

Health first...congrats on "making it happen" and getting your equipment up and running. Interested in seeing any photos.

Thanks for sharing

Dave

Thank yall

I am located just south of Austin, near Lockhart actually.

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Here is the scoop: After around a year of researching the manufacturing process, I found that a Fadal would fit the bill nicely.

Right about the time I was ready to pull the trigger, I caught a Craigslist ad for a Fadal 4020 (22hrs since posted) 150 miles down the road.



Picked er up, got er home and unloaded. A bit sketchy as the rental facilities did not have a large enough telehandler availabe.




Pulled covers, found missing way wipes on the bottom end, way wipes on the z were filled with shit.. machine was utterly filthy overall... so eventually convinced myself that I had better at least take a peep while I am still positioning myself for production anyway.



Well... Thanks to guidence on this forum, I was able to get all three axes rebuilt and mated to spec. It was a hell of a learning experience, but well worth the peace of mind that comes with knowing exactly what condition your asset is in.







After a couple months of rebuilding machine.. alongside all the other responsibilities required to fund the endeavour.





Hindsight 20/20, I could have really gotten screwed walking into a situation such as that... I was lucky... far too trusting in some false maintenance documents and folks pretenses... The whole bottom end of the machine could have been scrap metal... Just like the spindle was... fortunately, I still came out a bit ahead financially - infinitely ahead experience wise.

Normally I can spot frauds right off... logic sure can get screwy when you allow emotion to get involved. Lesson learned - excitement coupled with business related decisions will put your dreams to rest, and your bank account. Easy to write, difficult to apply.

Wagner

What a wonderful day.

The pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together - those dry runs sure make for a much more pleasant learning experience. Made it through with only a little love tap on a hard jaw with a used endmill bought as scrap.... a little reminder to keep your head in the game.



a piece of 1018 that was laying around.

3/8" stubby coated (not sure on type, scrap endmill) carbide endmill
.125 axial doc
Approx .002 ipt
3 flute
Approx 4200 rpm
Climb milling
420 sfm
Approx 40% step over
Dry

I think that the step over ridges are caused by tool deflection... I put a test arbor in the spindle to see if it was tilted - it indicated 2 tenths over 12". So obviously it is not that. Going to investigate further tomorrow - run some shallower cuts.


Got distracted with a vibration I noticed on the head. Isolated a slight misalignment with the pully system.



So got to make a gage block to realign the heat shrunk spindle pully... now the vibration is gone.



So this is what true power feels like..

G Code and the 88hs controller are becoming familiar - it does not take near as long to troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Today got a conceptual handle on canned cycles, rigid tapping, and a reliable method for tool & fixture offsets.



Machined a piece of 1/2" 1018 bar scrap to mount a tool assembly fixture to the granite table stand.



Out of practice on the tig.



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Tomorrow will be a facing experiment.

Once completed, it will be time to break out the real consumables in preparation for actual projects...

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the surgery is now to take place on Thursday. I have no idea what recovery is going to be like, or the physical impact of any other treatments the process will require ... I honestly have not thought about the situation in the first person, much - I believe it is due to both a thorough detached logical analysis of reality, and the distraction of something that I find truly fulfilling.

Anyway, here is the takeaway:

It seems that when difficulties arise, one may be able to attain inner peace through the pursuit and perfection of an idea...

beats hittin the bottle (or any other crutch), only thing they ever cured was an annihilation of one's potential to achieve their prior definition of success.

I wish I was that much outta practice with the tig!

Well...

Got to execute the base component for a fixture assembly that will allow light milling and drilling on the ends of some rectangular bar. It'll provide precise mounting locations for some basic clamping block assemblies.



Was able to make use of scrap tubing and plate laying around the shop, which was a determining factor in the fixture design.



It sure is fulfilling when your setup__ to setup__ blends come out correctly, particularly the ones that matter.



Mounting base



Still tinkering with machine cutting parameters to gain an intuition for cause and effect... Decided to see what would happen if I utilized coolant during the final facing process on the mounting base. wondered what a reduced coeficent of friction would introduce... or whatever other properties it introduces to the machining cauldrons 10,000 variables..

It yielded a better finish in A36 than I had been getting under the same cutting parameters (dry)... not sure how it would effect consumable longevity in the long run, though.

Perhaps it (also, maybe) does a better job of clumping and removing the tiny chips (5 tenth axial doc) from the center of the cutter, particularly if cutter rear is dragging. Which makes one wonder what would happen with tsc in this instance. Pure speculation for the hell of it. Anyway..

finishing pass parameters(constant): 1200sfm, .0005 axial, .001 radial, 3.48" 45deg

Image was taken after welding, so there are plenty of scratches from rubbing table... but those would be pretty obvious to y'all anyway.



When all said and done she wound up within a thou over 14.5" vertically on each face (due to movement from welding process)... had er tapped within 2 tenths vertically prior, it took a lot of inching along to keep er within a thou.

Clamping assemblies will be machined whenever things get going again.. Need the actual raw material for the product in order to assign correct dimensions to design, as this fixture is setup_3. Never worked with this particular material, therefore I am not aware of any nuances that I am not aware of.. hmm.. a paradox.

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random/not-so-random thought... because externalization helps form my understanding (theory... hypothosis) of how everything meshes together in life. It also is relevant to the process of learning the industry... then again, one can draw correlations to anything it seems.

Interesting how quickly one becomes aware of their own ignorance through the execution of carefully thought out plans.. the transition from a 'lab' to reality is seldom as simple as it seems.. I suppose the answer is that one must redefine their concept of reality to match the true practical-reality in order to optimize the process of gettin shit done.

Hmm... A parallel can be drawn between that statement and most curiculem taught today. At the end of it all, you will get a piece of paper regarding the specifics of that which you must undo once you get hit by the real world. It is quite perplexing, all of it... Best case scenario, I suppose the driving motivation for the lost individual is a false promise of imminent 'success'... not that there is not anything to be gained, but if one has not entered the real world prior, or at least possess a true understanding of what one wants out of life (know thyself kinda thing)............

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For the record:

Feedback/criticism is welcomed and appreciated, be it positive or negative. (Definitely learn more from the negative variety.)

As well as any tangential thought or speculation.. or non-tangintal for that matter.

Also feel free to post or pm anything that you may be working through, should you feel the urge. It certainly helped me to organize my thoughts with that initial post.

I really don't care where this thread leads, it is all interesting/useful... I know for a fact that my future posts may seem to diverge. This thread is going to be a perfect outlet to keep my posts encapsulated so that they do not detract from other's threads. haha.

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Fucked up pretty good this time...

If the numbers seemed to good to be true for that fixture post, they were. Realized that I was reading my tenths indicator incorrectly yesterday afternoon. (major face-palm kinda moment.)

Now I've got to rescrape my entire machine... No wonder it was so easy the first time. ha.

I suppose we are making progress due to the fact that I've finally got to the point that I can externalize this failure (my ignorance) for all the self-appointed mentors (you are probably one of them) of this forum to read.

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Status timeline:

~30 min to accept circumstance and begin formulation of a plan to move forward.

~1.5hrs to remove traces of negative emotion and stabilize the immature thoughts... sometimes just gotta get away from the shop for a second... Accept that you screwed up and move forward with the knowledge.

~5hrs to begin executing plan.

~18hrs till pm post.

It is all down hill coasting from here. Just a matter of gettin-er-done.

Funny how such a simple mistake can propagate in that manner.... Lucky to find it now, rather than later.

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Note to self:

Innitially accepting the failure whose essence is that which I take pride in was more difficult than accepting current medical conditions...

At this point, it seems rediculous that I damned myself for my own ignorance those first 1 1/2 hours.

Thus, perhaps I have been well compensated with perspective in exchange for the error with regards to the simple act of correctly reading a tenths indicator.



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You seem to ramble a bit, so I am not sure I get it but you have to adjust your previous work on the machining center? If so I am sorry but please let us know what went wrong, might save one of us from the same fate.

Charles

CBlair said:

You seem to ramble a bit, so I am not sure I get it but you have to adjust your previous work on the machining center? If so I am sorry but please let us know what went wrong, might save one of us from the same fate.

Charles

Click to expand...

I really appreciate the input Charles.

I am still trying to find the most effective method to communicate my thoughts... it is difficult, though that may sound absurd.

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The nature of the error was simply misreading the gradients on a tenth indicator... .0001 = .001

It is pretty hillarious at this point actually.



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Well I for one don't find much humor in rework.
You must be a sick puppy!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Ox said:

Well I for one don't find much humor in rework.
You must be a sick puppy!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Click to expand...

Ha. Oh I was there for about 30 minutes. Talk about kickin yourself in the ass for overlooking something that would take a mere moment to double check.

Kinda like an expensive satellite they tried to launch years ago... one contributor used metric, the other customary. Haha... didn't go so well.

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So, the machine is out of whack one or more ways by 5 thouh instead of 5 tenths ? I assume you have enough turcite or similar to scrape on to get it back in alignment ? Which axes are out and how much ?

Panza said:

So, the machine is out of whack one or more ways by 5 thouh instead of 5 tenths ? I assume you have enough turcite or similar to scrape on to get it back in alignment ? Which axes are out and how much ?

Click to expand...

I do. I've got over a tenth... I was moving in the right direction to begin with anyway, so it is no big deal. Just added an extra step...

saddle was up 5.5 thou on one corner relative to the lowest corner. So the entire plane was tilted, but touching on all pads.

table should also be ~5 thou off in the rear. Based off machine measurements prior to disassembly.

head is 2 thou tilt and 1 thou nod over a 12" test arbor.. so it will be scraped in as well. Particularly that tilt action, which is a bit of a pain.

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Employed a new tactic to get er within a thou prior to mating (hopefully)...



Having a lot more fun with it this time around actually.

though I am still using a scraper off a wood lathe. Not much feel in 3/8" thick hss... but she keeps a better edge than the end of a file... one of these days it'll be time to make a real one so that I can actually scrape on something other than al and rulon. Need to setup a means to sharpen carbide.



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Alright.

Turns out holding a thou with granite table and surface indicator is working well. My peaks were within a couple tenths of eachother on each extremity relative to granite plane.

Got the saddle within 5 tenths alignment mated to machine.. even used the correct indicator reading strategy. Hell yeah. Improved by an order of 10 right off the plate.

Took ~4 hrs of scraping to fix the saddle alignment and 3 checks against the ways to mate.

The table is coming together. Have one more corner pad to scrape down. She was off ~7 thou initially.

It is amazing how quickly things move along with the surface plate method... instant gratification is quite fulfilling.

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I suppose each credo for the accumulation of knowledge & experience has it's drawbacks... prescribed curriculum vs that which is created by the student as their knowledge evolves.

Prescribed curriculum:
Created by individuals who understand the ins and outs to complete a specific task utilizing a specific strategy. Insure little in terms of unforeseen difficulties. Typically offer limited opportunity for the student to utilize their imagination and develop their own troubleshooting processes. Limited by the prescriber's imagination.

The student will likely become reliant on the security these curriculum seem to offer.. the mind of the prescriber... then the ambiguous nature of the real world washes away the major points the curriculum taught... but the student will know how to read an indicator properly ... ideally without having to rebuild a machine twice for the lesson to stick.

User created curriculum:
Due to the fact that the student is not completely aware of their ignorance when choosing the routes to take in order to achieve a desired outcome, curriculum is transient & freeform in nature. Tuition dues are calculated based off of the costs to remedy mistakes made.

Ultimately the student will develop skills that can be applied to any field in order to advance whatever dreams may come to drive their life.

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The post above is McRee's last post, and has not logged on since July.

I know that he was battling health issues.

Any of y'all down in Austin know what happened to him?


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox