ADA: Ask Doc Anything!

[DocsMachine]

Sorry X, if I had that kind of thing happening to my machines, I'd move. Or set up a better shop.

What's the chances of putting up something like a garden shed, that can be closed, insulated and set up with a small heater or dehumidifier?

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

I got your earlier messages Smiley, and I've been meaning to get back to you. I'd love to give that a try, but right at the moment, I'm not really the guy to ask about complex CAD work.

Generally speaking, if you can fully model it in something like F360 or Solidworks, any decent CNC shop should be able to quote on that. BUT... you'll probably also have a hard time finding a shop that'll even talk to you for less than about 5,000 units.

I've got a lot on my plates right now, hit me up in a month or so, if you haven't found other options, and maybe I can take another crack at it.

Doc.

[XEMON]

The recent cold wave brought temperature changes, and the fellow's shop wasn't well insulated. The cold machines condensed the humidity, and he had open water literally running off of them.

[...]

Doc.

that's how much condensation I had on my lathe chuck yesterday 😣

[infamoussmiley]

3357 cylinders in aluminum


Hello Doc

I am a long time fan... Like 20+ for years.

I have some rough cad files for 3357 cylinders. The pawls are correct. We've done 3D printing with the cylinders and with a little tweaking by dremel, they work but do not last long. I do have a prototype cylinder in aluminum. Where it sits on the spindle, it needs work. I do not have any CAD skills and would need to outsource the work. To finalize the drawings so that I can take the files to a CNC machinist, what do I need to do?

Best,

Smiley

[XEMON]

Thanks for the help (and link, I need to spend more time there 😅)
My "shop" is not indoor ... It's an over-hand from the side of the house (I don't have room for anything better) so climate control is not possible ... So oil it is 😋

PS" I say "shop" loosely because in a 9x10ft I have all my machines and workbench and storage 🤪

[DocsMachine]

The guys over on HSM were just taking about this. The recent cold wave brought temperature changes, and the fellow's shop wasn't well insulated. The cold machines condensed the humidity, and he had open water literally running off of them.

The "quick fix" is to, as you note, use copious oil. Not WD-40, by the way. That's great for getting rid of existing moisture, but it evaporates too quickly for long-term protection.

Any oil will do. A jug of cheap box-store motor oil will be fine. There's also spray products like LPS3, which leaves behind more of a waxy substance that lasts longer.

The not-so-quick fix is to have a dehumidifier running- maybe not 24-7, but when conditions are right for condensation. A fairly tightly sealed shop area is almost a must, though. I've also heard of people draping sheets of plastic over the machines, and leaving a 60-watt incandescent light burning somewhere inside. That provides just enough heat to stave off the condensation.

The correct fix, I'm afraid, is to insulate the shop (or improve the insulation, anyway) and heat or cool it as necessary.

I understand the issue with cost- if I didn't heat my shop six or seven months out of the year, it'd be uninhabitable. And I also understand that cost not being easy to justify if you just do a little weekend tinkering out there. But, as you add machines (assuming doing so is in the plans) you just get more and more value tied up in machines and tooling, so the little extra on the utility bills pays off in reduced wear and damage to the equipment.

Doc.

[The Great Equalizer]

DocsMachine would you be willing to share the o-ring lists you have? I'm trying to rehab a bunch of Spyders, Piranhas, Pro-Lites, M98s and hoping to get bulk rings instead of kits. I'm also working on a replacement parts guide for a few markers that my local group have.

[XEMON]

Any advice dealing with flash rust on machines?
my mill is getting condensation from the cold and some top layer flash rust are appearing on the table/vice ...
I oil all my machines with way oil and tools with ATF for the corrosion additives, thinking about mixing the 2 for the table and vice (keeping way for the actual ways ...)

Thanks,

[DocsMachine]

Have you ever used the “Like” button on this forum?

-Probably, but not often. I'm really not a "social media" kind of guy- if I want to provide feedback for a post, I'll actually type it out. I'm old fashioned that way.

I’m learning why machinists aren’t eager to do paintball work. My friend has a CNC mill in his garage and has done great work for me. But his availability for my little jobs is becoming sparse, as more lucrative automotive supplier jobs he has picked up have pushed me aside. Which I don’t blame him one bit, I would likely do the same.

-Yep, yep, yep. That's why there's almost no full time airsmiths, and not many more garage shop manufacturers. There's basically no money in it.

And when I say "no money", I don't mean "it doesn't pay as well as a midlevel CEO", I mean, "it barely pays as well as a part time fry cook in a run-down midwest diner".

Anyone with the machinist skills to make paintball parts, can easily get a job at a "real" machine shop, make six times as much money, your work day actually ends at 5:00 (or whenever your shift ends) you get weekends off, usually have actual benefits, you don't personally have to deal with customers, or buying tools and materials...

The guy I used to contract out to do some my early CNC work, eventually started basically blowing me off for the same reason- I was ordering 200-250 parts, his other customers were ordering 5,000 and 10,000.

Our market just isn't all that big, and what players we have don't buy much anymore simply because the guns you can get today are so good, there's no real reason to mod or upgrade. Sure, people still do to customize, and there's still a fair number of us old-school nutballs that want to piece together a nice 007 or right-feed 'Cocker, but nowhere near the level they used to before the '08 "bubble" popped.

Doc.

[Roger7pball]

Have you ever used the “Like” button on this forum?

Side note… I’m learning why machinists aren’t eager to do paintball work. My friend has a CNC mill in his garage and has done great work for me. But his availability for my little jobs is becoming sparse, as more lucrative automotive supplier jobs he has picked up have pushed me aside. Which I don’t blame him one bit, I would likely do the same.

[superman]

theoringstore is great btw. They allow low quantities of orings especially in larger more expensive sizes.

[DocsMachine]

Thing is, there's no "universal selection", so to speak.

Years ago, I paid a bunch of money (okay, hundreds, but airsmiths are not known for their wealth ) for a selection of stainless allen-head screws. I couldn't afford to get a whole catalogful, so I had to come up with a "best guess" selection. Some were easy- 3/4" and 1" countersunk 10-32, which you use by the thousands for bottomlines, drops (back when those were a thing) stocks and rails. Some were not so easy- I bought a boxful of 8-32 buttonhead, mainly because at the time, I'd be using a bunch of those on PGPs and other Sheridans.

I still have two thirds of that box- I might use two a year- because those are basically only used on Sheridans, and I just don't do all that much brasswork these days.

O-rings are the same thing. There'll be a time when you need a few of a certain size, you'll have to buy a bag of fifty or so, and the rest of them will sit in the drawer for the next decade.

Best advice: Get a basic starter set, even if you have to just hit up Captain O-ring on eBay for one of those cheap selection boxes. That should get you started, and after that, find the best local supplier you can. You might not have many options, depending on where you are, but there might be a nearby Fastenal, a hydraulics shop or some hardware store that has at least some basics. After that, get friendly with The O-Ring Store (dot com) and be willing to order a small pack of whatever you need.

Doc.

[Trbo323]

-Depends on what you work on.

The answer is yes.

Probably going to stick with buna 70 for now but both 1mm and 2mm CS. I'm just trying to figure out if I should get stuff like 1x2mm or is that going to stay in my bin for 3 years before I use it? 1x20mm? Same thing

If I have to do a special order for something that's fine, I'm just trying to get a stock to get started so I don't have to special order for everything that has 1 or 2 metric rings

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[DocsMachine]

Did Kingman ever manufacture a direct "Left" feed bodied Hammer pump marker? The Hammer Plus was a power feed left direct feed. But, was there ever a factory left direct feed non-power feed bodied Hammer, Hammer A or Hammer B?

-Well, I'm hardly any kind of an expert on Kingman, but I can say I certainly don't recall seeing one, or reading about one in an ad or magazine.

In general, left-hand-feed was pretty rare, even for makers like WGP and Line SI.

Hey doc, I'm looking to stock metric o rings, any guidance on what sizes I should carry?

-Depends on what you work on. I've bought a little of everything over the years, from bags of specific sizes, to generic "assortment" boxes, to specific "rebuild kits" where I only wound up using one or two. These days I've usually got at least one of just about any size and hardness, and in many cases, material (nitrile, polyurethane, Viton, floropolymer, etc) and if I don't, or need more, I have local suppliers like Fastenal.

I have a few lists of the specific O-rings used for certain common guns, and I try to keep some of those on hand, but there's also a lot of "that looks about right" on some of the older and more obscure markers.

Doc.

[Carp]

Did Kingman ever manufacture a direct "Left" feed bodied Hammer pump marker? The Hammer Plus was a power feed left direct feed. But, was there ever a factory left direct feed non-power feed bodied Hammer, Hammer A or Hammer B?