Captured allan bolt locking lever

[Metalmuncher]

I have tried slight adjustments to the cutter height. Since making the 6 bolt compound clamp, only 12L14 still gives me grief. Every other material parts beautifully. It's weird. I think it has to just be the nature of 12L14. It is a pretty "soft" metal to machine.

I enjoyed the posts about the abuse of classic old machines by those who know not what they do. Sad, but entertaining.

[Frank S]

For a while I had to have a night crew in the shop. The wife always lowered the table on the radial all the way down and left it cleared of any set up unless she happened to leave in the middle of a run of parts. I had been making a little steel fire safe for a customer out of 1/2" AR 400 all that was left to finishing it was to weld on the hinges and line it with sheet rock to the thickness of 2 inches 2 of my monkeys decided they needed to drill some home project they had instead of working so they grabbed the 18 x 18 x 24 box so their parts would be high enough that the drill bit would reach tack welded some scrap in it for stops then drilled several dozen holes in what ever they were making. The tack welds could have been cleaned off but what to do about the multitude of holes the back of the thing looked like it had been in a war zone as a test target for armor piercing rounds broken drill bits inside all over the place and enough holes that it could have been used as a fishing net 2 monkeys joined the ranks of the un employable when they tried to clock in that evening. because I had called every shop that I knew an called of the rest in the phone book

[Metalmuncher]

Wow. I wonder what they thought that box was? It had to look like someone deliberately was making something. You did those guys a favor by black balling them from your line of work. People that careless and stupid are just serious accidents waiting to happen. They would likely have lost a body part, eventually.

[Frank S]

THe hardest thing for me to do afterwards was to reprimand the guy that I had placed in charge of the night shift. But as I explained to him #1 the persons in his charge were there to work on the project at hand not playing around on some personal project one of which I may have accommodated them in allowing them to work on it during a break or after hours as long as either myself or the wife were present.
#2 he should have been at least attentive enough had this been on their lunch break to insure they knew how to operate the radial drill and not use a customers project as a drilling block.
#3 materials are expensive and when I do these non standard projects I do not order a lot of extra
#4 I felt that it should be his responsibility to repair the project to it's pristine state which meant grinding the back off and a new one welded on then cleaned and sanded not ground.
He didn't like it much but as he admitted it was after all his fault. that brought my night shift to an end from then on if we had an extra heavy work load we worked 12 to 18 or even pulled all nighters to get the stuff out the door.
In his defense though a 13,000 st shop with 20 projects going on does take a vigilant eye to stay on top of things even if only 3 or 4 are being done at the time when they may be spread out through out the shop.

[Okapi]

Just an idea for the ball seat, why not making it with the radius tool on a diameter which can be put in the hollowed part(bronze or steel heattreatable), fixed with Loctite or mechanically inside, the surface quality is better and it can be hardened, it is a solution too if you haven't the right mill diameter ?

[Metalmuncher]

THe hardest thing for me to do afterwards was to reprimand the guy that I had placed in charge of the night shift. But as I explained to him #1 the persons in his charge were there to work on the project at hand not playing around on some personal project one of which I may have accommodated them in allowing them to work on it during a break or after hours as long as either myself or the wife were present.
#2 he should have been at least attentive enough had this been on their lunch break to insure they knew how to operate the radial drill and not use a customers project as a drilling block.
#3 materials are expensive and when I do these non standard projects I do not order a lot of extra
#4 I felt that it should be his responsibility to repair the project to it's pristine state which meant grinding the back off and a new one welded on then cleaned and sanded not ground.
He didn't like it much but as he admitted it was after all his fault. that brought my night shift to an end from then on if we had an extra heavy work load we worked 12 to 18 or even pulled all nighters to get the stuff out the door.
In his defense though a 13,000 st shop with 20 projects going on does take a vigilant eye to stay on top of things even if only 3 or 4 are being done at the time when they may be spread out through out the shop.

Although I never worked in a shop with thousands of employees, I did work in a few (worked sheet metal early in my career) and can attest to seeing "govt. work" in each of them, sometimes for myself. But that never included such irresponsibility toward hardware. I always felt it was best done leaving no traces behind. What you described had to come from people who could not have cared less about their job or work environment, or what they left behind. Sadly, it seems to be the poster child for younger generations now.

[Metalmuncher]

Just an idea for the ball seat, why not making it with the radius tool on a diameter which can be put in the hollowed part(bronze or steel heattreatable), fixed with Loctite or mechanically inside, the surface quality is better and it can be hardened, it is a solution too if you haven't the right mill diameter ?

Seems like a good idea. Or at least maybe use a ball-end mill, if available, to get a smoother finish. I think I would want some grease in there as well.

[Daturat100r]

Nice job!

Parting can be a pain sometimes. I have recently found that even on a fairly rigid setup, the type of material in the chuck presents different problems. I can part off 6061 aluminum, 1018 steel, brass, nylon, and acetal very nicely. But every time I try to do 12L14 "leaded steel" a.k.a. leadalloy, which normally machines very easily, the parting blade likes to go along nicely and then suddenly hog in without any warning. I've broken 2 of the blades (1/2 x 0.060 HSS) in this learning experience. Still haven't found a solution. So for now I bandsaw 12L14 off and face the end to dimension.

Make yourself a rear toolpost.Transformed my myfords ability to part off

[kutzbill]

Isn't it amazing how many similar ignorant thing happen from place to place? 3 things come to mind right away. The guys (read monkeys), that cut some mild steel, with a cutting torch on my Starret pink inspection granite 8'X4' plate.
The second was a guy that used my 0 to 1" Starret mic as a C-clamp to weld 14 GA stainless steel. I came back from lunch and he says, "This works great". I told him I hoped it did since he just bought it. After he found out how much it was he understood why I was ticked off. (Being mice here)
Last but far from least was the guy that did something very similar to your expensive scrap. He was using a hand drill and thought it would work better if he held it on my plastic injection mold that was one cavity away from going to the chrome platers, and was made with Beryllium-Copper, (75kg before machining). My boss was so pissed, and rightly so. I had it locked up in the tool room and covered with canvas. He kept asking me what the hell was he thinking, finally I said I didn't believe he was thinking much. What was so idiotic was he actually put me down as a reference!
I bet some people have to keep a map in their car to find their was home.
Smiles!

[kutzbill]

This is why we can't have nice things.