The Y Axis on the Grizzly G0678 mill uses a soft plastic way wiper at the front of the mill to keep chips and grime from working it's way between the table and knee dovetail. Over the years this way wiper has hardened and is starting to curl upwards which could allow debris to enter this sensitive area so it's time for a replacement. An upgrade is planned using a stiff felt wiper held in a 3D printed holder.
When using the fixture plate at the mill, it's often necessary to hold small parts with step clamps. The clamp set that is used with the mill only has a few of the small clamps and usually that is the only size needed for the fixture plate. The small clamps machined in this article use an integral bolt design for height adjustment which makes them slightly more compact and also much easier to make versus the serrated design with a separate step block.
Several years ago a Rubometric Die Head was purchased for a really good price at the popular online auction site. At that time an article was posted here about how it works, but I never showed the entire procedure for using the tool to make parts. Since an assortment of threaded studs for the lathe's T-Slot cross slide was needed, now was the perfect time to break-out the die head and document how I use it.
During the last few months I've noticed a slight intermediate noise coming from the mill which has been slowly getting worse. After a bit of troubleshooting, it seems to be coming from the electric motor. While it isn't sounding horribly bad yet, right now I'm in-between projects so it's a good time to perform some maintenance. Better to do this now before this problem becomes much worse and risk damage from spinning a bearing in the motor housing.
The Elmer's Geared Steam Engine build will be completed in this article. The valve rod is constructed with an interesting technique for turning small diameters. The gears are installed and lapped together for smooth running and finally assembly commences with gasket making and switching over from screws to studs. A piece of clear acrylic is crafted to use as the valve cover so the valve action can be observed while the engine is running.
Construction of the Elmer's Geared Steam Engine continues in this article. A major piece of the project is completed which has many machined features: the engine cylinder. With that component completed, work starts on the many smaller parts of the engine like the steam chest and eccentric. The ER11 collet chuck is highlighted which is a very handy piece of kit for tiny end mills and drills. This engine build will be wrapped-up in the next article.
Presented for your reading pleasure is a small series of articles documenting my build of Elmer Verburg's Geared Engine, often called Elmer's Engine #5, the name of which is derived from the chapter number of the compilation book which describes this engine and many other projects. The cycloidal gearing of this engine makes it a fairly unique project and interesting to watch while running. This engine was not built from a kit and is mostly comprised of bar stock.
Machining of the T-Slotted cross slide continues with drilling and tapping the compound mounting screw holes and engraving compound index marks in the top of the cross slide. Some paint was bought that was color-matched to an original South Bend accessory and that was applied to the cross slide. After seeing how well additional oilers worked with the saddle, some new oilers were also added to the cross slide for lubricating the dovetails.
Machining of the T-Slotted cross slide continues with some metrology of the old cross slide and the newer saddle to make sure the dovetails will be cut at the correct location. The dovetails are then machined with the dovetail cutting tool. Machining the gib requires some custom fixture hardware, so that is manufactured and the gib is shaped to size. Holes are then drilled and tapped along the side of the cross slide for the gib mounting screws.
The newer lathe saddle finally spurred me on to start the Model Lathe Accessories (MLA) T-Slotted cross slide casting that I had in storage for quite a few years. This new cross slide will add quite a few capabilities to the lathe that are really nice for model engineering: a nice surface to attach work for line boring, the possibility of using a rear-mounted toolpost and the nicest feature is that it will be brand new.