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This is a cube within a cube within a cube made from solid brass. It had a couple of brothers, one that actually consisted of FOUR cubes, but they've been lost over the years. I use this one as a keychain, that's probably why it didn't get lost with the others. Surprisingly as it may sound, it was made on a lathe with a fixture to hold the cube and cutters that looked like ID grooving tools.
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Here's a two headed quarter that was fun. I first tried splitting two quarters in half and supergluing them together, that didn't work very well as the serrations on the perimeter didn't line up and the split was very visible. I then bored half the thickness of one quarter away, right up to the lip (about .030 from OD) and took the lip AND half the thickness off another quarter, fitted and superglueded them together. It took a few tries but it finally worked quite well since you can't see a separation line anywhere.
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Here's a couple of links of chain I made out of a solid block and then had anodized. The cube, quarter and chain serve no useful purpose, but were attempted just to see if I could do them. Hey, if you don't try weird stuff now and then, how are you going to know where your limits are, eh?
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This is an indicator sweeper made from seeing a picture of a "Zero-it" in a catalog. I use this sweeper more often than any other indicator holder I have (It's normally semi permanently installed in a 40 taper holder). I later bought a real "Zero-it" and it was total junk. So I would suggest if you want a good sweeper, that you make your own.
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This is my Triceratops, an invention for measuring the diameter of bored soft jaws on a manual lathe. It's hard to see but there is a .250 pin in the middle as well as the outer .250 pins that rotate outward or inward when you turn the knob. You put the tool against the soft jaws and turn the knob until the pins contact the bored surface of the jaws then you take it off and measure across the center pin and one of the outer pins. Subtract 1/2 the center pin dia. and double the result to get the ID (or OD if that's what you're machining) of the bored jaws.
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Here's another little tool I thought up as a result of a post on the CNC newsgroup. It's a manual mill tramming tool. First you set both indicators to zero out at the same height by holding it in a V-block on a surface plate and using a height gage. Put it in the mill and bring the quill down so the indicator stems contact the table. Then just adjust the head until both indicators read the same. It's mainly for the off center forward to back adjustment but it works for side to side setting as well.
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These are some parts I've done for a hard drive manufacturer customer of ours. Their parts always have very close tolerances. Like the hole in the stainless circular part above had a perpendicularity callout of .0002 with the bottom face. The larger aluminum part had the center hogged out with a large keyseat type cutter and then was surface ground top and bottom to bring the tolerance in.
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This is a miniscule form tool (to form .003 thick 100% pure iron sheet) done with a .031 ball end mill. The size can be estimated from the diameter of the pins which are 1/2 inch. This part was made with Gibbs' Solid Surfacer.
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This is the front and back view of a titanium flow control device for Rocketdyne that was supposedly going on some orbiting piece of hardware. These puppies made me sweat blood and tears right up till they were finished. I started out with 4 units but lost this one (one of the spikes was too short), they only needed three so I was Ok.
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This is another Rocketdyne part (actually for the Space Station). Juan Islas did the OD and ID work on a manual lathe +.0000 -.0005 on the OD. I did the flange on the CNC and did all the holes and relief around the three tapped bosses on a manual Bridgeport with an upright rotary table (we didn't have a fourth axis at the time).
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This is a cover for a housing that a satellite consortium of Australia, New Zealand, and another country had us do. It's probably obiting overhead as you read this. It's about 13" X 11", we made the housing as well, but I personally was only involved in the cover.
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Here is an example of some larger things we do, it's some landing gear tooling we did in two weeks at the end of last year. It was a team effort but I did program and machine all the clamshell clamps visible. You can get a sense of the size of it by the fork lift forks visible at the right of the picture.
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This is one of four circuit board fixtures I did recently. It's 22 inches X 15 inches X 1 inch. The standoffs are .200 X .200 and they all have 2-56 tapped holes that were rigid tapped with a form tap at 2000 RPM. It was a pretty open tolerance part (+ - .005), except for some dowel holes and the location of the 2-56 and 4-40 tapped holes, plus flatness within .005.
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I made the trapezoidal (no two sides parallel) center section of this assembly for pressure testing the jet engine air inlet for a fighter plane. The travel of the Fadal could only do slightly over half the part in one setup. I had to do 4 set-ups for each part and there were two parts, a righthand and lefthand part. The center oblong plate was removable for someone to crawl through for access.
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These are some small parts I've done. Normally the small turned parts are done by Juan Islas or Robert Strauss but these particular ones are my babies. The hex on the little nut was done by screwing it to a small threaded boss and then using a reverse (left hand cutting) fluted end mill to do the hex - a patented Miguel Martinez process that I copied. :)
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This is my rollaway, although rollaway is a misnomer in this case. This box is more like a Mobile home that you wheel up then park it, virtually never to be moved again! I'm just a tool junkie and tend to buy every trick tool of the week. This picture seems to be plagued with jaggies, try right mouse clicking and viewing it in a larger size to fix that.
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