It's a good idea to regularly tram the mill head with an indicator to make sure it's maintaining a proper alignment with the table. It's more convenient if this operation can be accomplished with the milling vise installed. Having two preset positions and utilizing a Starrett 196, this indicator holder can sweep the mill table with the vise installed to check head tilt and can also sweep a circle in the center of the mill table to check head nod as well.
I have an old USA made General 170 Straight Tap Wrench in a handy 7 inch size that works well for taps 1/4" and under. Even though it has seen a bunch of use, it still works fine except for one major defect: whenever the jaws are opened the moving jaw falls out from the wrench. This can still be a good tool again and it deserves a repair so it can be used for another fifty years.
In this build, the PM Research Number 3 steam engine that was previously machined from a casting kit earlier in the year will be connected to a Jensen 2 1/2" electrically heated boiler. This model engine will then become a live steam engine! A PM Research dynamo, another previous machining project, will be run off a drive belt powering a small light bulb to provide a working load for the engine.
The variable frequency drive (VFD) on the Grizzly G0678 mill is a great feature. It's extremely handy to adjust the speed of the mill from zero to 2250 RPM's by the simple act of turning a knob. Certainly much easier than moving belts around! Being an electronic device, however, the VFD might unexpectedly quit working one day. Rather than wait until after the drive is inoperable, I went through all 100+ VFD settings and documented the factory-shipped values.
A few years ago I made a very handy ER32 collet chuck for my lathe. Made from a single piece of steel, it was a great hobby project that featured internal threading, metric threading and creating a precise internal taper. Unfortunately over the years it's been slowly getting more inaccurate with run-out. It can be corrected with some machining, but I thought it might be interesting to adapt a different style of ER32 collect chuck to this South Bend lathe.
The float lock drill press vise build concludes with this article. In this build I got a chance to experiment with some single point ACME threading on the lathe while turning between centers. After the vise body was completed, the second major part of the build, which was devising a way to fasten the vise onto the drill press table in a clean and usable fashion, took almost as long to complete as the vise itself.
With a drill press, many times you want to drill a hole whose location is marked with a center punch. With the float method, using slight quill pressure with a drill on the punch dimple will allow the work to automatically align under the drill bit. Continuing to hold the work while actually drilling, however, is another matter and this is where the float lock vise really shines. After aligning the work as described above, with a simple tightening of the lock lever the work is held safely and securely in the float lock vise.
The highlights of the PM Research #3 steam engine build continues. First, the work is started on the cylinder which features quite a few machining operations. Next, the machining of the eccentric and showing how that part is setup in the 4 jaw chuck. Lastly, wrapping up construction with the final assembly of the engine. A small video at the end of the article shows the engine running on compressed air.
The PM Research #3 was chosen as my next steam engine project, specifically the kit with the bronze and cast iron castings. This will be a modest step-up in complexity from the last steam engine build, which was the PM Research #2, since this engine uses a valving design more typical of a full-sized engine and has a more full-scale appearance. Also the design of this engine should allow it to work well on steam.
On the popular online auction site, a Rubometric D 3/4" die head was listed for sale with a poorly-worded title. Since these die heads usually sell new in the four figure range, I didn't think my bid at the low initial starting price would be the highest for very long. At the end of the auction, however, I was surprised to find that I had won the die head (and more) for less than the price of a new set of chasers.