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<\/a>Over on one of the forums that I frequent, it was suggested that I might add rifling to the barrel. Well not quite rifling in the barrel but perhaps equally mad. From the photos of the real thing I note … Continue reading
Over on one of the forums that I frequent, it was suggested that I might add rifling to the barrel. Well not quite rifling in the barrel but perhaps equally mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the photos of the real thing I note that the wheels have brass hubs. Nothing unusual there you might think but unlike most hubs etc which have hexagonal collars for tightening with a spanner these have octagonal heads. Now I have a hex collet block and a pin vice which at a pinch cut be brought into service but they would still only have six sides. Again I could have drawn them up and had them 3D printed then painted them with brass paint and job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However on one of my favourite machining YouTube channels the guy who does some amazing things uses a “5C Spin Indexer” For those that are not familiar “5C” is a type of collet. I don’t possess any 5C collets, so although I could make use of the functionality of a spin indexer the likelyhood of my buying one was very slim. Then some time ago I discovered that Arc Euro Trade the machinery omany that I bought my mill from stock a 5C spin indexer that has an ER32 collet adapter. Now I don’t have any ER32 collets either but I could see me getting more use from them as they are much more flexible in use than 5C collets. With 5C collets you pretty much have to have a separate collet for every size whereas ER collets usually have approximately 1mm range so a 10mm ER collet would Hold stock from 10mm diameter down to 9mm diameter so you need less collets to cater for a wide range of stock sizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having said all that the 5C\/ER32 spin indexers were still getting on for \u00a3200 so I couldn’t justify buying one. Then just after Guildex I got a sales email from Arc reducing them to just over \u00a3130 so having not spent up at Stafford I took the plunge. I still didn’t have an ER32 collets but my son bought me a set for my birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To get it to mount on my mill table I had to mill a couple of slots to accommodate the width of the T slots but that done I was able to give it a test run yesterday. – The delay in getting to it was working out how I might hold it to actually cut the slots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That done I gave it a test run on some 3mm brass rod. Unfortunately I hadn’t noticed the hole in the end which precluded me from using it for one of the hubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over on one of the forums that I frequent, it was suggested that I might add rifling to the barrel. Well not quite rifling in the barrel but perhaps equally mad. From the photos of the real thing I note … Continue reading <\/a>