collection of my projects

[dallen]

Here is a link to a collection of pictures that I just uploaded to photobucket some of them are stuff that has to do with metal casting, some are machine related and others are related to my coffee roasting hobby, the coffee roasting hobby pics are more towards how I build the roaster this is not all of the roaster build pics just some that happened to be on the camera, and some are ones that I took today. that pretty much show everything about the roaster in a pictural sort of way.

If anyone has a question about one of the pictures, post it and I will try to dig up an answer for the question.

Enjoy

David

http://s1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd484/Superdave257/

[Harry]

Cool stuff David, looks like you are adapting cnc to your mill?

[dallen]

I was in the process of trying to build a table drive, I had a couple people giving instructions/directions then they sorta dried up, anyway the info highway went dead. so I continued for a while getting stuff together but haven't gotten back to it yet. I need to get a couple motors and drivers and a few other things. I would like to build a cnc router for pattern making. but I'm a ways away from doing anything like that.

[Nudge]

Is the control pannel part of the original mill or is it part of the rebuild? It's a nice piece of kit


Did your help run out of ideas? or did it run out of know how

[Harry]

Wish I could be of help but my know how on the electronics is limited. I did not have any trouble following the provided schematics though it did take me a bit to get Mach3 talking to it properly... once all set up and running though it is just a matter of backing up the mach profile in the event of a computer swap and I am back in business.

Where are you stuck? Maybe we can do some combined digging for answers or things to try.

The cnc router is a huge plus for the foundry in both patternmaking and if it is up to task in finishing cast parts. I absolutely love mine. If you get to the point where you are going to start a build I am now a vendor for PBC vRail and I also sell vBearings on my website. Currently I only stock the size 2 30mm wheels but hopefully before too much longer I will also be stocking the size 3 45mm wheels like they use on the MechMate machines. Working on a design now that will use these larger wheels, they are really impressive. Also my prices are lower than anyone else out there that I have seen to date.

vBearing-Comparision-Photo.jpg (96.95 KiB) Viewed 5625 times

Sorry about the tangent...

[dallen]

Tangents are fine, thats where we're talking an all of a sudden we'er talking about something else but more productive.

No the idea is still in my head to do it I just have all this other stuff piled up in front of it, CNC isn't that big a deal for me as I don't try to sell my services or machine time. This is an addiction that replaced an other one that I had. I have all the parts except for the motors and drivers to do it with maybe this coming winter I can get back to it.

Thanks for the compliment on the DRO, I added it about a year after I got the mill, I purchased the unit from Shars. it was a very easy install but I am going to change the head for one that has three axis on it.

I know a little about computers and electronics, so that part doesn't scare me, the math to figure out how large the motors should be is another story, which I'm not going to get into here.

this time of the year I am usually pretty busy working for the company. I do service work on Ashpalt plants all over the US and several differant foregin countries. it happens that this year things are pretty slow.

The one project that I have put lots of time into this year was my coffee roaster, now that its just about finished I have a new member on HRO telling me that I should rebuild it because he thinks differant then I do. I know be nice play gently with others.

any way I got into the casting as an off shoot of I was gonna make a forge and make knoifes like I'm enough of an artist to do that. Heck i still draw stick people, but I give em big sticks to defend theirselves with for all the uppies in the world. I totally enjoy the metal casting, I have and can melt everything upto cast iron. I don't play around and use homemade crucibles which are welded up out of pipe. I have and will continue to buy mine, not that if one of them breaks I can sue the company that made it, they break I know I've broke a couple, had one full of Brass with cracks so big you could see the molten metal in it thru em, don't know how I got it out a poured but belive me it didn't make anouther run thru the flames.

I'm not a carpenter but I have two halves of a flask pattern that I made if I can ever find the other half I belive you have seen the one side that I cast here a while back. I have an idea for how to fix it without having to make another pattern if I can find it.

Anyway times awasting and I was going to fire up the blue pig and feed it some scrapes, so I'll turn you ear loose.

Thanks for looking at the pictures, I'm not a photographer or a machinist just someone that plays with both of em.

David

[Harry]

The way I see it is if you are drinking the coffee and the roast suits you there isnt anything for someone else to say.

I can imagine paving would be kind of slow but then I would also think that would be a good time for those companies to have a shutdown and fix things up.

[dallen]

not really the paving companies that are slow just the business of selling new asphalt plant equipment, when the econemy gets down people don't buy new equipment like they would if the econemy was booming like it did in the 70's 80's and most of the 90's, I been a service tech since 93 and in the 90's early 200's there was years that I didn't think I was every going to get any time at home.

I agree with you on the roaster, new guy joins the forum and he thinks he's king of the roaster builders, I been messing with coffee since back about 2003 when I started, I build this thing one piece at a time, and when I would ask for help from the group on the forum I wasn't good enough for them to help other then to say that won't work. Well I built the damn thing and it works, cost an arm but it will roast coffee. Everyone of em some in new zealand and Austrailia included all said the same thing about how it should work, well my roaster disspell's some of what they said was gospil.

Anyway back to melting metal and pouring it into funny shapes. remember that flask side that I ask questions about a while back, well I re did it tonight. its still messed up but I know how to fix it ( hire a proffesional) no, just kidding, I know where I went wrong tonight.

Here's a picture of the side as it came from the sand. now what looks like a riser on it isn't a riser its a mistake. I had forgotten where the pattern was at and when I pushed the Sprue cutter in I hit the edge. I left it as a vent/Riser. it worked fine on that end even though I had to fill it when the sprue filled up. Where I messed up was not putting one on the other end across the pattern so that end would be vented also.

I didn't have the problem this time that I had before with the melt being too cold the metal was a dull orange when I pulled the crucible from the furnace.

I also didn't do any messing aroung with it, the furnace was running heavy on the reducing side so the melt didn't have a lot of dross to skim, I made one pass with the spoon and poured the stuff cause it was dark and I didn't want to mess around any longer then I had to with the stuff.

So want you think.

[Harry]

I would pour that from one end and riser on the other (could be on the side, just in and out at each end). Thinking about what is going on there by splitting the metal into two ingates you cut the flow in half and it certainly slowed down too much causing the cold shut. It looks like the gate is large enough but I would make the runner much larger and let the gate be the choke.

By gate I mean the contact point where the runner touches the part. I like to make that as small as possible to ease cleanup but just outside of the part (1/8"?) as close as you can comfortably cut the runner without disturbing the gate hog it out. This will create a mass of metal that will help hold heat while it is pouring and while the part is cooling so it can feed off of it. You can add a bob just outside of the part in the cope on this runner to increase feeding of the part.

You got a nice finish on what you have there, you might be able to go even a little hotter. Also thinking about it a little more I wonder if it might have been steam pressure holding back the metal, looking at how the metal was flowing from both directions there is no place for it to go. With petrobond this isnt as much of an issue but with greensand I could see it. A vent on that side might have made the pour work.

[Nudge]

You could probably gt away with a thin wire in all 4 corners and as harry said pour from one end.

Good luck with it