Machinist Apprentice | Skateboard Hanger/Axle pt2 | Day 84

Working on the Axle/hanger part again today and worked through the drilling and finishing of the sliding features on it!

Drilling the through-holes was a bit sketchy, and had to take things really slow to ensure I didn't break any drill bits. I had to do it in two stages, first drill one underside hole half-way through the stock, then flip it over and do the same, and finally come in with the final diameter hole size and take one single pass all the way down to the bottom. It worked out quite well, and I had all the parts finished in no time. Unfortunately, the inside bore almost looked like it had a circular interpolation and looked like the tool wobbled as it went down. Testing it with pin gauges confirmed my suspicion, and it wouldn't slide all the way through. My boss was able to fix this problem by turning the spindle on 500 rpm and feed the part by hand to clean up the side walls.  

My boss then took the parts over to the manual lathe and showed me the basics of how it works and turned down the outside face to its final diameter. From there, I was able to program up the final operation, which consisted of some grooves that would fit the skateboard truck pieces I made earlier this week. It has very basic features and just required some parallel toolpaths with a few holes drilled. I held the part in soft jaws by cutting a square groove down to grip the sides of the cylinder, and the bottom of the slot allowed me to set the height.

Because the part is cylindrical, I had to get creative with my work probe and do several cycles to get all the axis dialed. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't get all the parts finished up today due to limited time, but I've got the program proofed out and can load parts in and hit the start button.