Raynerd.co.uk

It is now late January 2013 and back in November, I purchased the plans and brass for Parslows skeleton clock. After having a son born in December, I expect I can be excused in beginning this build!

I’ve made lots of plans in my head about this build and actually I’m currently insistent on trying to build two of these clocks at the same time. My plan is to stick to the plans on ones clock and try and be a little more flexible on the second clock, possibly CNC frames and a more different look to the original.

I wanted to try the hardest part first, the pinions. I used some 8mm silver steel, turned it down to 5.69mm OD. I put the full cut on of 1.49mm and at low speeds of about 120rpm, started cutting with lots and lots of oil and a slow feed. The steel was not supported by a tail stock and so under the microscope, you can see slight vibration marks. A lot of hard work in polishing these pinions has started to bring any marks out the pinions nice and clean. The end has been centre punched a touch too far, so I’ll need to turn a couple of mm off the end before I drill and ream then part each pinion to size. I’ve turned up 1″ of pinion so have enough to make quite a few of the 8teeth that are called for however will need to make another lot up. It would be nice to try a tail stock but a. I don’t have one for my 4″ vertex and b. the tail stock and centre would get in the way of the cutter without some thought,

Anyway, the fruits of this evenings labour.

After a bin full of scrap recently, I needed something for my confidence! I decided to make a nice rear tool post for my cowells and do a decent job of it. A kind chap on the yahoo group provided dimensions, I purchased a piece of 25mm square steel bar, slotted it and made a start!

Faced all the sides square, mainly to make it look nice! Got a decent finish but my machine vibrates too much and still leaves little hair marks.

Nothing much to it I know, but took my time and it looks nice!
Next thing was a tnut, 1/2inch wide but with something like only a 2 mm height at the sides. Was a little tricky but I seemed to get a decent finish again, rightly or wrongly with the big facemill.

I could have just locked it all down with a nut but I choose to make a handle. It unlocks and locks back on quicker than my qctp on my boxford! I must admit I want a qctp for the cowells and rather than trying to making one, I’m strongly considering just making lots of square tool holders with a similar lock down handle.

Wanted to give it a nice finish so tried to blue it. I’ve blue small pieces of steel before for clock and watch projects but nothing this big (still tiny I know!). Heated it with a blow torch and dunked it in car oil when it looked about right. I think in hindsight I left it a couple of seconds too long so I lost a little of the real deep blue but it still looks a good colour. Hard for my camera to pick out….

Then looking good on my cowells! Just need to buy a standard hss parting tool. I got one of those small ones with a parting blade and it doesn’t sit properly and sticks out the back too far!

There are now a few methods of successful and less successful gear or clock wheel cutting that I’ve attempted and documented on this website. I have never really been happy with any of the methods show. I read about the Eureka tool in Ivan Laws Workshop series book. The device allows you to put relief onto multi tooth gear cutters. Although I do try and make all my tools due to time restrictions, I advertise if anyone had one for sale. I had two replies and went with the cheaper offer, Unfortunately this turned out to be the wrong move as the tool was very poorly made and really not functional. After many hours of re-making various parts and correcting numerous mistakes I finally had a working tool.

This picture shows the parts:

The tool is incredible! A number of eccentrics and a ratchet wheel turn a blank cutter in an eccentric motion, 1/12 of a turn per one revolution of the chuck. This eccentric movement allows the relief to be put on the cutter using a standard “button” type profiling tool.

This is a cutter of 0.6 module of cycloidal clock wheel form for my latest clock. This a 12 tooth wheel cutter and will be cutting brass only. Consequently I have been told from a reliable source that cutting only brass, this tool will be fine made from case hardened steel. My next cutter will have to be made from O1 tool steel to cut steel pinions. Future cutters will all be made from O1 but for this first one, I wanted something a little easier to cut for testing the eureka.

The picture below shows the steel blank mounted on a mandrel with 12 x 4mm holes drilled as near to the edge as possible. The wheel is then turned down in the lathe to expose the holes. These holes become the back relief and gap between teeth.

Finally the finished cutter, with relief!

Since looking for my first lathe back when I purchased a unimat 3, I always wanted a cowells but funds didn’t allow. I’ve finally managed to pick one up at a great price and I’m more than pleased with it. Rigid, well made and a true precision machine; I hope this will be with me for many years to come.

This actually is a very early cowells. In fact, after a couple of brief chats with the director over at cowells, he is pretty sure that this is one of the first cowells just after the transfer from Perris lathes. The big give away is the absence of the cowells casting “stamp” on the bed. In actual fact, my lathe is likely to be a Perris made bed sold under the new name of Cowells. All fairly immaterial since the design has not changed.

The lathe came with very little in the way of tooling and accessories but for the price I could afford, I’ll have to add these as I go. Cowells is still going strong and so all parts are readily available, but sadly at a price! – check out their website for more details.

The lathe came with a 3 jaw chuck but no key and I’m really really struggling sourcing a key!

I have also added an ER16 collet chuck since it is a good scale size for this lathe and I already have a set of collets.

The standard ME lathe came with the change wheel set for the auto traverse gearing but not with the suitable gear cutting change wheels so obtaining these was first on my “to do” list. I now have a full set of gears including some teeth count that should give me imperial BA threads on this metric lathe.

The tail stock is a zero morse taper. I was lucky enough to pick this threaded original cowells arbour and original cowells sold chuck off eBay very reasonably priced.

Just a couple more things I want to do now. Firstly I’d like an independent 4 jaw as soon as I can afford one. Secondly and perhaps less urgent would be a quick change tool post but I am considering making this. For completeness, I’d like a fixed and travelling steady at some point.

From what I’ve done on it so far, I wouldn’t be without it!

It seems that as these machines are getting harder to find, they are often in need of repair! This post hopes to give details on the Kennedy Saw. If you have any info or pictures of the saw please email me!

I don`t often post with none project related information but since I get an awful lot of questions regarding my Kennedy Power Hacksaw, I have posted the manual and other info related to this saw.

These manuals are often sold on ebay or similar websites, so if you wish to make a small (£2-£5) donation to the site, it would be greatly appreciated: chris@raynerd.co.uk

Kennedy1

Kennedy2

kennedy3

Kennedy4

Information & Pictures from “Russell”:
The rod in the centre of the piston goes through the hole in the casting . The spring then hooks on the end and down to a peg on the casting to provide pressure on the blade. The other rod screws into the piston and opens the valve which is simply a thin disc of metal which you can see in the picture. There are half a dozen holes in the piston for the oil to flow through

I`ve recently been trying to sort out the house and have had very little time to do any projects over the last 6 months which is why it has been quiet on here. So in the interest of at least showing that I haven`t been idle, here my latest “home” project, a parquet floor which I think may interest some of you.

I was intending doing some inlay designs in the oak blocks on my cnc machine:
I just wanted something simple to try so I choose a star/compass with a N letter. It could be much more intricate but for now I wanted to just go with a single wood inlay. The parquet block is oak and the inlay is in maple.

Using VCarve, which I must say in my opinion is probably the best piece of software to match its quite complex function, that I`ve ever used! I created a vcarve path in the oak block. I then inverted the image and created a v carve path between my image vector and a rectangle I`d purposly added and drawn outside of the material boarder. This then cuts the material in the inverse and you get the image above the main timber level. This takes a lot longer as it has to remove all the extra.

Push the male into the female and glue.

Machine away the excess material and sand level:

OK, only a simple inlay but I couldn`t have even dreamed of doing this by hand. To get the “N” so well pronounced as well. I bet it would take a little more sanding and I would hope that would make the edges even sharper.

That all done, I was concerned that it might look a bit cheesy and so I didn`t bother with the inlays! The floor is reclaimed oak parquet blocks, about 90 year old blocks and probably 150 year old wood! I layed a boarder of maple around the edge of the floor.
Top images show the dark and dirty old parquet going down with differences of up to 3-4mm in some areas! The bottom left shows the floor sanded and the bottom right the floor oiled and waxed.

Chris

I did my usual and rushed in places. I just can`t help it as I was dying to see some plastic being extruded. Now I have a running machine, I spent time calibrating all the axis properly. Now it is calibrated, the bed is level and everything nice and square, here are my results:

If anyone makes one, learn to tune the E step on the fly with M92 E …. with G-code!!!!!!! Two night work sorted in 5 minutes.

Also, I`d got a wierd copy of Marlin. I`ve moved over to Sprinter now.

Z axis was out by a mile… now it is square my prints look v good!

Here is a case for my new Raspberry Pi!!

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I also printed a spool holder/reel for the filament:

The plastic PLA filament that I ordered didn`t come on a reel. I didn`t think this would be such an issue but actually it is really important that the extruder can just nice and gently pull filament off the real when it needs it. Consequently, you need some sort of dispencer. If you get a real with your filament, there are quite a few designs with bearings that just allow the reel to unwind but I needed a reel as well.
Here is the prusa buildings itself a filament dispencer and reel!!

Confidence has grown and so I`m now printing fuller plates. This does mean more that can go wrong if it does fail but of course less time and messing around changing prints.

All parts printed and assembly started. Used just over a meter of M8 rod as well:

I also wanted a way to mount the reel. My workshop has joists exposed above head and so I made these two little clamps. Sadly I`ve no pictures of them in use but the part with all the holes gets screwed to the joist. M8 rod going downwards (clearance from the ceiling), nut is included in the design. The only little brackets then allow you to mount an 8mm bar horizontal which the reel then sits on. It works well..

The reel assembled and on the floor. You can see it freely rotates on skate bearings.

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A video of Yoda`s head being printed as a test piece:

I am now at a stage where I can extrude plastic!!

Here is the extruder built up:

the extruder has some gearing which ultimately turns a hobbed bolt which grips the filament and forces it down through the nozzle:

All the electronics are wired up. I`m using RAMPS 1.4 with polulu drivers. The wiring is a mess and is the next step – getting it all tidy!!

So I didn`t do any calibrating and managed to get the motors moving. I didn`t realise that pronterface software had an extrude button and so I printed a test cube which didn`t turn out great but I was chuffed to bits!

…so what do you print when you`ve just built a 3D printer…. ?

A Ring Mustache of course!!!

My daughter likes the mustache!!!

So then onto something a little more tricky! Which first required me to calibrate the system. It wasn`t far off which is why it allowed me to get something half decent in the mustache and the square.

I decided to give this a go: It isn`t anything functional but it has a massive overhang and imagined it would be pretty tricky!

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:15364

Here is a video of it doing an overhang:

Next to calibrate properly!

Well in the little bits of time I pinch in the workshop, I`ve made more progress.

I`ve put the 6mm ply table on 225x225mm with the belt and motor in place for the Y motion:

I`ve gone for a double bearing rather than using the printed bearing holders… tough one as lots in the IRC said there bearing guides worked fine but a few said this method is better:

Bearings in position and belt grips shown:

The the x axis built and clipped into place:

Carriage running on linear bearings on the X axis

Lead screws for the z axis along with nuts and springs:

Turned down some little couplings for my lead screws as the printed ones wouldn`t hold. They are M8 one end and grub screw 5mm bore the other:

and currently as it stands:

Next job is to add the belt to the carriage and mount the motor and then I think I`ll be looking at assembling the extruder!

After finishing my CNC machine, I`d quite like to have a go at a 3D printer as the concept amazes me. The guys on the IRC channel are really helpful but I am pestering quite a bit as there seems to be quite a few differences with the Prusa2 over the older versions. I do intend to come back in here and add more pictures and comments once it is working and I know it is being done correctly, For now, it is maninly just an update on progress.

I received my parts a few days back, really chuffed with them… cheers ParCan!

M8 threaded rod and 100 nuts and washers, along with a mix of other fasteners came to about £12

Started on the triangular sides:

Next step is to connect the sides together.

So got all the cross members on to link the two sides together and then jigged it out. Now I must admit, I spent about 1 1/2 hours getting it square as it kept twisting!

8mm linear bearings clipped into printed bearing holders

Then mounted the ply bottom table onto the silver steel using the bearings.

At this point I realised I`d mounted the bars on the wrong side of the frame. On the Prusa2 the clips should hold the bars at the top of the threaded rod and not hanging as it is in the photo.

So I`m now running an evening behind as I`ve now flipped the bars around and mounted the motor and timing pulleys… update tomorrow!