Inside Doc's Machine Shop

[DocsMachine]

Buttonz!

Finally got some parts in to get a couple of small tasks done. And it all started with a bag o' buttonz!



The first project was to finally replace the failing collet open and close buttons on the Omniturn. Longtime readers may recall the "close" button failed entirely on me a year or so ago, and I band-aided that with a momentary lever switch. That's been working fine ever since, but it's not really oil or water proof (and I flick it with a chronically oily glove when using the machine) and the "open" button was known to be in similarly poor shape.

So, I cracked open the control pod...



And got ready for the swap. Note how there's a couple of plastic blocks supporting the left (top) button. The retainers on the switch body are cracked, so I'm guessing somebody threw that block in there to band-aid it at some point before I got the machine.



The only hiccup in this process, was the connectors crimped to the wires, were slightly too wide to fit the terminals of the new switches. I bodged that by carefully snipping a little off the outside of each fork. (They're coated soft brass.)



After a few minutes of finagling, everything was back in place.



I did get a new E-stop button, too (the middle, red one) and I'll be replacing that, too- note the red zip tie holding it together, another leftover from a previous owner. I wanted to make sure the collet buttons worked, first.

And, well, buttoned back up!



Quick and easy. I've been working this thing pretty hard, and hope to get a lot more out of it shortly, so best to keep up on this kind of thing.

The other job was my indexer. It's an early Haas digital indexer- the product that started Haas off, at the beginning- consisting of a rotary work head, and a small programmable controller to run it. The controller can be operated by a CNC's own controller- the CNC telling it when to rotate the part- or manually, so you can run it on a Bridgeport or something.

When I first got it, I was jumping into a couple of product runs using the manual mills, so I whipped up a quick and dirty handheld pushbutton dongle thing, just to get through the job.



It did the job, and I've been using it extensively for a couple of years now, but I have more work coming up for it, and... well, it kind of offends my sensibilities.

It's just a chunk of wooden dowel, some old speaker wire, a cheap Radio Shack pushbutton, and all dolled up with some yellow electrical tape.

I've been thinking about it for a while, and as I've had to place orders here and there, I picked up a few extra parts. To get started, I found an ideal leftover hunk of 1" black delrin in the rolling cutoffs bin under the lathe.



That got drilled...



Tapped...



and test-fitted for a strain relief.



For the button, I picked up a stainless steel automotive momentary, often used for horn buttons or engine-start in custom cars. Has a nice "clicky" feel, and is supposedly waterproof.



Unfortunately, it's also a metric thread, a 1.0 pitch, and I have no suitable tap to match it. I technically have metric interpolation gears for the Sheldon, or could set up either of the CNC lathes to cut it, but who has time for that?

According to a pitch gauge, 1.0 is very close to a 24 TPI- so I overbored the hole slightly, and kept cutting the threads 'til the switch more or less fit.





When it came time for final assembly, I connected the cord to the switch, and using a collet block with an old soft collet that by luck had been machined to about the right size, I was able to screw the switch, with it's O-ring, into the handle fairly snugly.





Slide on the strain relief and screw it into place...



And Voilá! One momentary-pushbutton handpiece.



Now, I wanted a fairly heavy cable, to withstand use and abuse, but unfortunately, this won't fit in the Amphenol type connector that fits the control box. I've looked around online, and can't find one that does- they're all like the one I have, which might take a 3/16" cable (5mm or so) and the cable I have is closer to 8mm.

The closest I can find on an image search is this one, which is out of stock, and in Germany.

I ordered one, that looks like it'll work- I have no part numbers to cross reference- but if it doesn't, if anyone could dig up a supplier that has one in stock, will accept a larger cable, and maybe even gives some dimensions I can compare, I'd appreciate it.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Progress! Today's tableful*:



Now, that's not today's production. To be honest, some of these parts have been sitting on my floor half-finished for... well, way too long. Most of it I started dusting back off around Thanksgiving, and I've been cranking handfuls here and there as I've had time. Its one of those cases where the whole task only took a number of hours, but those hours were spread out over months.

Yeah, this one-man-bandery thing ain't all it's cracked up to be.

BUT... irregardless**, they're finally done. I have a few more out in the shop that just need to be buffed, and these puppies will get boxed up and shipped off- finally!

Doc.

(*All the available flat spots in the shop are covered in foot-high piles of crap. Had to use the kitchen table. )

(**Yes, I know. )

[Cal440]

Lot of good stuff there Doc, just wondering what?

[DocsMachine]

All work and no play, as the saying goes, makes Jack a dull boy. And lemme tell ya, folks, Jack has been a dull boy indeed.

On the plus side, it warmed up this week, getting into the low forties, and one thing I've been champing at the bit to do, is clean up and paint some of these new (to me) lathe parts. That tends to involve stripping paint and pressure-washing them clean, especially if, like these, the parts have multiple layers of paint which are peeling not only off each other but off the base metal as well.

So I got some better stripper (still not as good as the good stuff) and stripped and hosed the first two parts a couple of times. The L-shaped bit is a tool-tray spar that bolts at the tailstock end of the bed, and the other is a threading dial.



The spar played stubborn, I think at least one layer of paint may have been an epoxy, or possibly a lacquer, as the stripper barely touched it. I had to help things along with some manual scraping, as well as the pressure-washing.



Still not 100% stripped, but I ran out of daylight before I was done.

The threading dial came out nicely, though, needing only a few touch-ups with a razor blade scraper. Note that thumbscrew, we'll be coming back to that in a moment.



Now, this is a simple setup, and assembles pretty much the same way most other threading dials do. The gear that engages the leadscrew is simply pinned to the shaft...



And with that removed, the shaft and dial simply slide out.



After that, the shaft housing slides out of the mounting body, and that's it. Some cleaning and painting, and it can go right back together.



The dial, interestingly enough, is cast bronze- an unusual use of the material given the wartime controls on the use of such strategic materials when this lathe was made. Years ago, when rebuilding the lathe itself, I noted a few other pieces were made of bronze, when cast iron would have worked just as well, but speculated that perhaps Springfield already had a large stock of the parts, already cast and machined, from prior to the war. And that said stock was small enough (Springfield was not a huge manufacturer on the level of Monarch or Leblond) that perhaps it was determined the already-made parts were more valuable than the relatively small amount of the metal.



100% speculation, of course, but still an interesting ponderable.

Now, here's a bit of a puzzler: That thumbscrew? When I first picked up these parts, I assumed that thumbscrew, when loosened, allowed one to "clock" the hashmark for the dial, to wherever the operator preferred it. 9 O'clock, 12 O'clock, 3 O'clock, etc. Or possibly adjust it to line up when "picking up" an existing thread.

It's not a feature I've seen before, but I'm hardly an expert on a wide range of lathes.

However... that thumbscrew sockets into this drilled spot on the shaft housing:



And, on the other side, there's this key that fits into a keyway in the mounting casting.



Okay, I can see the castings wanting/needing to be firmly attached... but why the thumbscrew? A normal setscrew would seem more appropriate, or even a short bolt.

Either the setscrew or bolt was lost at some point, and some wag just threw the thumbscrew in there simply because he had it... or the castings were originally intended to rotate, but at some point somebody got annoyed with that, and keyed it.

I was thinking the former was more likely... except note the orientation of the numbers on the dial. They're upright at the top of the disc. Here's a pic of how I found the dial on the parts machine:



That cast-in point? That's the 'hashmark' you line the dial up with, in order to engage the halfnuts. Given the orientation of the numbers on the dial, one would presume the hashmark would go at the top...

Was it originally adjustable, and some operator decades ago maybe got mad that somebody on one of the other shifts kept moving it, and so drilled and keyed it?

The world may never know.

Last, I found my old paint! I knew I had a bit of the 'dark grey' left that I'd used on the big Turret lathe, and managed to find it- and an even older can I'd used on the Springfield itself.

The newest if the two being closing in on five years old at this point.

I had to chisel through a thick dried top layer, and there was some still liquid paint left in each. That I poured through a filter into a spare glass dip jar.



It's probably still good, though I ought to add a touch of thinner to it, and I'm not so picky if the color isn't an exact matching shade, I'd get annoyed. On the other hand, this won't be anywhere near enough to do all the pieces I have, including the big taper attachment and the steady rest. I might be better off just tossing this- or using it on something unrelated- and getting a fresh can. It'll probably be months closer to summer before I get to the taper and steady, but the new can won't go bad that quickly...

Anybody used years-old paint? How'd it work out?

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

And that's one thing- finally- off the To-Do list!




The connectors for the pushbutton handpiece came in today, so after the day's projects were done, I popped one onto the other end of the cable.









I wish the connector had a better strain relief, but it ought to last if I'm careful.




Did it work? Of course it did!









Nice solid handgrip, nice clicky button... looks slightly more professional than a chunk of stick wrapped in electrical tape...




That's one I can mark off the list as 'done'... just a mere 634 or so to go!




Doc.