Hey folks- a common question here is why is it necessary to thin down the table? The answer is that die filer files are not very long. A quarter inch extra thickness on the table means the filer wouldn’t have enough reach on the files. That’s why there’s a dimension to hit on table thickness. Also a few folks suggesting I could have simply bolted my spacer blocks to the faceplate and faced them parallel in-situ. Absolutely! That’s a great idea and easier than what I did. Also, everyone can relax about the fuse. It’s a small DC lathe and the fuse is on the low voltage DC driver board. Everyone take a breath on that one. As I said, as long as the sizes are correct (amperage and voltage) then it will be fine. A gentle reminder to please be kind and give each other benefit of the doubt on knowledge. For everyone asking about why I didn’t use the tailstock to help centre the plate, it doesn’t reach over the carriage and the fixturing hardware to get close enough to the faceplate.
Quinn - it's great to see your die filer getting close to completion. As always, I love your articulate way of posing each challenge, running through several possible solutions, and then explaining why you chose the solution you did.
We're Knights of the File Table. We file whene'er we're able. We do 90* and curvy things With layout impeccable. We dine well here in Camelot. We eat brass and iron and swarf a lot.
You are a VERY smart person and use your equipment to its maximum potential. As a retired mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry, I am impressed with your skill. I would have liked having you on my team. Keep up the fine work!
The automotive blade fuse and its holder are only rated for 32 VDC. If that fuse is interrupting the AC line, then you really need a fuse and holder (or circuit breaker) rated for at least 125 VAC. That turned table surface is *so* beautiful! This die filer project is really cool. Oh, BTW, thanks for fixing the Apple IIc Plus beep. I just got my first IIc Plus.
I always learn more from watching a video of someone doing clever work on limited machinery than I do watching someone turn out more complex parts on top of the line machines. Even more so when Quinn leaves the mistakes in.
This series has been so good. I love that you have been bouncing between the A3 switcher and the die filer. Every week you leave me wanting more of the other!
The volume of useful information in this video is amazing! This will definitely be watched again and again. -and thank you for all your in-progress footage showing how to get to a fine surface from casting and in between! Your way of thinking and reasoning goes a long way towards allaying fears, anxiety. Thank you!
A single sheet of printer paper between the part and the face plate greatly increases the driving traction. I use this often when a setup doesn't allow for full clamping force. Great project and video as always.
I have been staring at this kit for years.. LOVE the kit.. wanted one.. glad I didn’t get it.. i would have been in waay over my head. I bought a big ol die filer online.. good enough for me.. thanks for putting these together. Amazing. Clickspring has one, but didn’t do videos about making it.
Hi Quinn, just replace your fuse with the correct size circuit breaker much easier if you pop the breaker just simply push the button, and you are up and running again I have done this on my lathe and it has been really good even though you do not change fuses all that often it is still handy to have the breaker in place, Another great job by the way.👍👍👍👍
Of course, if Quinn really cared about the aesthetics of the table, she'd simply enlarge those scallops to center them on the line she got through the table supports.
A thought for you. Change fuses with circuit breakers. Breakers can be reset, fuses ya need spares. You always need one at 7pm Sunday evening when everything is closed. I've always changed to panel mounted breakers when I see fuse holders.
I've wanted a die filer ever since I saw one on 'this old tony', but finding one seemed unreasonable. Watching you go through this build has been educational and interesting, thanks for putting this series up! In particular, I'm learning that smaller tools can get real work done with some skill, planning, and patience. As far as negative comments go? I've always believed that those who can do, do. Those that can't often stand on the sidelines and criticize.
I think installing an ammeter on the front panel fuse circuit would be a cool upgrade project. That would be the perfect indicator on how hard you're running the lathe and keep you from blowing fuses. Also as has been mentioned in these comments replacing the fuses with circuit breakers would be pretty high on my list.
Awesome video, as always. Looking forward to seeing this finished :) I am curious though, why not take a couple of passes of the OD the first time it was on the lathe? that way you'd have a machined surface to dial in after flipping it around, instead of approximating it on the cast surface again.
I really enjoy your videos. Question: At minute 8 you show a great technique to remove the influence of the vice jaws when making parallel surfaces. Brilliant! You then tap the blocks to mount them on the face plate. Why not just mill one face, drill/tap and then bolt the blocks with the machined face against the lathe face plate and then face the blocks in situ? This would remove any error in the blocks AND any lack of truth in the face plate.......I think. Anyway, thank you for making these great videos.
I love watching your process. While I'd be happy if you simply succeeded all the time, watching you come up with a one-off fixture or work around a shortcoming is quite fun.
What an exciting project and video series! You know what would be fun?! Making hand stitched files for the filer (or at least watching someone do it on a video)
Love your content Quinn. I have a small hobby mill and love making projects on it. No lathe yet unfortunately as i don't have much room for a shop. But soon I'm going to upgrade to a larger mill and lathe and a small shop space.
I feel like all of us watching this video should come over and help you clean up all the cast iron chips covering the shop. Thanks for the video, sorry about the mess.
Die filers are nice to have however, Grobet Vallorbe was the last of the file companies to stop making the files for use in these machines. I still have a square cut 00 file cut in reverse with no tang which is a die filing machine file. Very instructive, thank you Quinn.
Look into concentric reamers... I ran into them while working on old cars that have a lot of forks in the front steering that have to be concentric. Start by drilling the two holes slightly undersize but as close to concentric as possible. The reamers use a cone in one hole to align the shaft of the reamer. If you go back and forth you can really get very accurate concentric holes.
In reference to your joy in heat shrink, Watch Wes Work has a specific heat gun for heat shrink. its small and adorable and has cool ends too! Love the videos and I'm al;ways excited to see another one in my feed 😁
Looks really good Quinn, I am sure you will find many uses for it in model engine builds. I am not sure, but I think this will really shine when making a right angle or a measured angle and repeating same. enjoyed, cheers!
I have a question Quin; I know the instructions told you the order of machining, but I don't understand why you didn't initially use the inner flat area of the rough casting with three identical riser blocks to the lathe's face plate? in my inexperienced mind, that would have allowed you to machine down the table's surface in one go, then you could have worked your magic on the underside
THANK YOU for being smart enough to use a heat gun for your shrink tube. I had another youtuber on a much more electronics heavy channel get annoyed with me cuz I kept asking why he used a lighter rather then a heat gun. I will never understand people who have the right tool and still use the wrong one, despite knowing better.
@@Jehty_ Why wouldn't your heat gun be available and easy to reach at your electronics bench? I never said the lighter doesn't work. it's just the wrong tool
Since it's not dimension critical, I think I would have done nice facing cuts on the lathe, and kept the extra table mass...a bit thicker table isnt a bad thing unless you think you'd lose too much stroke on the files.
I saw one of these that had a brass insert where the file comes out for a near zero opening. I think he was using it for large and small files. May be a good mod if you end up with issues. Good series.
Thank you as always for all the time you put into these. How does the idea of something like a tap follower for the spindle sound? Basically a hollow-bore, telescoping dead center; with it you could put a little 60 degree center on the top of the table and use this new tool to center the part. 🤔
Quinn, face it (…) - you need a shaper 😎 Those table-legs (that to me really look more like arms!) are astonishing, almost witchcraft - that sort of multi-jointed crazy never works when I try it with bamboo poles in the garden. Must get a metal workshop one day! Looking forward to the next video already!
The 4 pt coaxially indicated center landed just about at the geometric center of the area described by the "inferior" method of the too small center finder. Happy coincidence? Or the universe reminding us that precision does not always equate to accuracy?
Almost done and ready for use. I was wondering if slotting the opening for the file would have worked better than cutting a cone in the table? So, what the first project for the filer? KOKO!
I like your method of lining up the two lugs on the bottom of the table. I think it would be a bit too expensive to buy a long-series drill to drill both of them in one go
Instead of paralleling the stand off blocks on the mill, why not just face one side, drill, tap and bolt to the lathe face plate. Take an (interrupted) facing cut, and Uncle Bob.
Question about the parallelism of your sacrificial aluminum blocks. If you had milled the first side then just immediately drilled the bolt hole and the bolted to your face plate and used the lathe to clean up the second side would that have given you the same (if not better) parallelism? I know there are always different ways to do things in machining and I'm not trying to say that my way would have been any better. I'm just asking for my own edification
@@travisray139 Well, I moderate heavily. You should see some of the stuff that gets deleted. :D But yes, I try to keep a constructive and helpful environment for everyone. I learn a lot from my viewers and don't want to discourage that.
@@Blondihacks Well thanks for the hard work there! From my perspective, it feels like the comments section has become an organic part of the whole Blondihacks journey.
Quinn, when watching you centering the plate on the faceplate for the second time, i had an eureka moment. Instead of centering on the outside of the rough casting, once you had the thread cut in the center. I don't know if i would have thought about it on the spot, if i were making it. But center drilling the threaded rod, in a collet chuck. and using that center with a live or dead center to align again every time, could have made the centering of the table far easier no ? HTH.
Maybe you should drop a 3HP VFD into your lathe just like Artisan Makes just did! I'd love to see your take on that, and then you won't run into power limits on large diameter parts.
Mighty Quinn! Hey, great to see you! A question from the peanut gallery; why didn’t you use a spacer when you mounted it on the faceplate before doing the first cut, then you could have turned the outer diameter without having to change the setup. And a bit of double sided carpet tape (the stuff without the foam sandwich) would have ensured that it wouldn’t move. But then again, perhaps I’m just a nut case😂
Hate to see it finish but love to see you get there. Or something along those lines 😉😂 One question tho: Why did you went through the trouble of dialing in the table in the beginning? You just faced the face. So concentricity shouldn't matter. It just had to be dialed in enough to not cause too many vibrations. Unless I am missing something?
could you turn an oversized round "nut" and screw it onto the end to the 14/20 rod and indicate off that? Then you're concentric with the center hole you made.
Hey folks- a common question here is why is it necessary to thin down the table? The answer is that die filer files are not very long. A quarter inch extra thickness on the table means the filer wouldn’t have enough reach on the files. That’s why there’s a dimension to hit on table thickness.
Also a few folks suggesting I could have simply bolted my spacer blocks to the faceplate and faced them parallel in-situ. Absolutely! That’s a great idea and easier than what I did.
Also, everyone can relax about the fuse. It’s a small DC lathe and the fuse is on the low voltage DC driver board. Everyone take a breath on that one. As I said, as long as the sizes are correct (amperage and voltage) then it will be fine. A gentle reminder to please be kind and give each other benefit of the doubt on knowledge.
For everyone asking about why I didn’t use the tailstock to help centre the plate, it doesn’t reach over the carriage and the fixturing hardware to get close enough to the faceplate.
Quinn - it's great to see your die filer getting close to completion. As always, I love your articulate way of posing each challenge, running through several possible solutions, and then explaining why you chose the solution you did.
We're Knights of the File Table.
We file whene'er we're able.
We do 90* and curvy things
With layout impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat brass and iron and swarf a lot.
‘Tis a silly place.
I don't know how I stumbled on this channel, but it is EXTREMELY interesting... every time. Thanks for all the effort you put into these videos. 💙
It was Ron Covell who introduced me to Quinn... And oh boy am I thankful! The model steam engine is my new obsession.
You are a VERY smart person and use your equipment to its maximum potential. As a retired mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry, I am impressed with your skill. I would have liked having you on my team. Keep up the fine work!
The automotive blade fuse and its holder are only rated for 32 VDC. If that fuse is interrupting the AC line, then you really need a fuse and holder (or circuit breaker) rated for at least 125 VAC. That turned table surface is *so* beautiful! This die filer project is really cool. Oh, BTW, thanks for fixing the Apple IIc Plus beep. I just got my first IIc Plus.
The bigger concern is that automotive fuses are also usually only rated for 32 volts. however it is definitely better than nothing.
This, exactly. There is no guarantee that the 32V automotive fuse will safely interrupt current backed by 120V.
The notification you look out for, is here \o/
I always learn more from watching a video of someone doing clever work on limited machinery than I do watching someone turn out more complex parts on top of the line machines. Even more so when Quinn leaves the mistakes in.
This series has been so good. I love that you have been bouncing between the A3 switcher and the die filer. Every week you leave me wanting more of the other!
I saw the carriage bolts joke coming ahead of time, which is why I love this channel so much, my kinda humor.
Yay!! It's Blondihacks time!!!
The volume of useful information in this video is amazing! This will definitely be watched again and again. -and thank you for all your in-progress footage showing how to get to a fine surface from casting and in between! Your way of thinking and reasoning goes a long way towards allaying fears, anxiety.
Thank you!
A single sheet of printer paper between the part and the face plate greatly increases the driving traction. I use this often when a setup doesn't allow for full clamping force. Great project and video as always.
I have been staring at this kit for years.. LOVE the kit.. wanted one.. glad I didn’t get it.. i would have been in waay over my head. I bought a big ol die filer online.. good enough for me.. thanks for putting these together. Amazing. Clickspring has one, but didn’t do videos about making it.
Hi Quinn, just replace your fuse with the correct size circuit breaker much easier if you pop the breaker just simply push the button, and you are up and running again I have done this on my lathe and it has been really good even though you do not change fuses all that often it is still handy to have the breaker in place, Another great job by the way.👍👍👍👍
Good to see it almost finished Quinn, the set up problems were always my favourite things in my working life.👍👍
Of course, if Quinn really cared about the aesthetics of the table, she'd simply enlarge those scallops to center them on the line she got through the table supports.
Thanks!
A thought for you. Change fuses with circuit breakers. Breakers can be reset, fuses ya need spares. You always need one at 7pm Sunday evening when everything is closed. I've always changed to panel mounted breakers when I see fuse holders.
Once again my Saturday is complete. Thank you for sharing your passion.
It is looking good.
Again, almost like you know what you're doing!🙄😁
Thanks, and Meow to Sprocket.
What a wonderfully pleasant looking face. Thanks Quinn, helps a lot!
I've wanted a die filer ever since I saw one on 'this old tony', but finding one seemed unreasonable. Watching you go through this build has been educational and interesting, thanks for putting this series up! In particular, I'm learning that smaller tools can get real work done with some skill, planning, and patience. As far as negative comments go? I've always believed that those who can do, do. Those that can't often stand on the sidelines and criticize.
Hi QuInn. Your video releases are always a highlight of the day.
Another great episode! My brothers and I love this channel and it's helped us a lot in our own shop!
I think installing an ammeter on the front panel fuse circuit would be a cool upgrade project.
That would be the perfect indicator on how hard you're running the lathe and keep you from blowing fuses.
Also as has been mentioned in these comments replacing the fuses with circuit breakers would be pretty high on my list.
I was amazed when you said western union splice. I haven't heard that since the 60s when I was a child and even then in an old book.
All this time I thought having an agreed upon side of the hallway to walk on is what separated us from the animals.
I’ve tried discussing chamfers with my dog a few times and he’s totally clueless.
Another great video , I look forward to Saturday , thanks Quinn
Dogs are not certain that chamfers separate us from the animals, but cats seem to agree.
Loving your series on this! Always well narrated and a wealth of information! Thank you for sharing 😁
Awesome video, as always. Looking forward to seeing this finished :) I am curious though, why not take a couple of passes of the OD the first time it was on the lathe? that way you'd have a machined surface to dial in after flipping it around, instead of approximating it on the cast surface again.
I half expected "Eyecrometer: Terrifying" during that spin up.
That's great, very educational for me, I always learn something new 😁 I appreciate all your time making these videos.
That's nice.
"Impossible" is a word we almost never use in machining :)
very cool.. love it when a project comes together
Eyecrometers are surprisingly accurate when you're not loking for accuracy.
Reach - you can also use a large LH boring bar
Blocks - after bolting down - you could machine in place
Awesome as always.
Another awesome job in this series.
I really enjoy your videos. Question: At minute 8 you show a great technique to remove the influence of the vice jaws when making parallel surfaces. Brilliant! You then tap the blocks to mount them on the face plate. Why not just mill one face, drill/tap and then bolt the blocks with the machined face against the lathe face plate and then face the blocks in situ? This would remove any error in the blocks AND any lack of truth in the face plate.......I think. Anyway, thank you for making these great videos.
I love watching your process. While I'd be happy if you simply succeeded all the time, watching you come up with a one-off fixture or work around a shortcoming is quite fun.
What an exciting project and video series!
You know what would be fun?! Making hand stitched files for the filer (or at least watching someone do it on a video)
Great setups on the table Quinn. You're getting there. Cheers Nobby
Nice milled Geneva striping!😊
Rock on!
Nicely done
Love your content Quinn. I have a small hobby mill and love making projects on it. No lathe yet unfortunately as i don't have much room for a shop.
But soon I'm going to upgrade to a larger mill and lathe and a small shop space.
16:06 "chamfers separate us from the animals" too funny.
I feel like all of us watching this video should come over and help you clean up all the cast iron chips covering the shop. Thanks for the video, sorry about the mess.
Great video. Nice Gatlin Brothers reference on the heat shrink although it is a terribly sad song.
Nice job it's coming along nicely 👍👍👍
Die filers are nice to have however, Grobet Vallorbe was the last of the file companies to stop making the files for use in these machines. I still have a square cut 00 file cut in reverse with no tang which is a die filing machine file.
Very instructive, thank you Quinn.
Look into concentric reamers... I ran into them while working on old cars that have a lot of forks in the front steering that have to be concentric. Start by drilling the two holes slightly undersize but as close to concentric as possible. The reamers use a cone in one hole to align the shaft of the reamer. If you go back and forth you can really get very accurate concentric holes.
Thanks
I don't machine, but I love the videos. Thanks.
In reference to your joy in heat shrink, Watch Wes Work has a specific heat gun for heat shrink. its small and adorable and has cool ends too! Love the videos and I'm al;ways excited to see another one in my feed 😁
Good ol' weller 6966, use mine damn near every day.
Thank you!
Looks really good Quinn, I am sure you will find many uses for it in model engine builds. I am not sure, but I think this will really shine when making a right angle or a measured angle and repeating same. enjoyed, cheers!
You are underrated
I have a question Quin; I know the instructions told you the order of machining, but I don't understand why you didn't initially use the inner flat area of the rough casting with three identical riser blocks to the lathe's face plate? in my inexperienced mind, that would have allowed you to machine down the table's surface in one go, then you could have worked your magic on the underside
THANK YOU for being smart enough to use a heat gun for your shrink tube. I had another youtuber on a much more electronics heavy channel get annoyed with me cuz I kept asking why he used a lighter rather then a heat gun. I will never understand people who have the right tool and still use the wrong one, despite knowing better.
Getting out a lighter is faster than getting the heat gun and plugging it in.
And it works just fine.
So why do more work than necessary?
Soldering irons will do the job too if you can keep them moving to prevent meltage.
@@Jehty_ Why wouldn't your heat gun be available and easy to reach at your electronics bench? I never said the lighter doesn't work. it's just the wrong tool
@@beeman1885 using the wrong tool is still the wrong tool
Quinn beating the shit out of given constraints
oh hell yeah
Ha ha. I called it. As soon as I saw that fuse holder problem I figured we would see an automotive fuse holder.
Since it's not dimension critical, I think I would have done nice facing cuts on the lathe, and kept the extra table mass...a bit thicker table isnt a bad thing unless you think you'd lose too much stroke on the files.
thanks
The Paul Brodie eyecrometer is strong in this one
thank you for sharing your skills....
I saw one of these that had a brass insert where the file comes out for a near zero opening. I think he was using it for large and small files. May be a good mod if you end up with issues. Good series.
Nice project looks good
Looks amazing!
I hear you about the markings on those fuses being hard to read. I've had to use a magnifying glass on those for *ages*...
that file is to die for... :). groovy video, as always!
Thank you as always for all the time you put into these. How does the idea of something like a tap follower for the spindle sound? Basically a hollow-bore, telescoping dead center; with it you could put a little 60 degree center on the top of the table and use this new tool to center the part. 🤔
Thankyou 👍
Quinn, Ever thought of using an aircraft style breaker to replace the fuses?
Quinn, face it (…) - you need a shaper 😎
Those table-legs (that to me really look more like arms!) are astonishing, almost witchcraft - that sort of multi-jointed crazy never works when I try it with bamboo poles in the garden. Must get a metal workshop one day!
Looking forward to the next video already!
Easy enough to recut the clearance eybrows on center.
Cheers from Brazil! 😊
The 4 pt coaxially indicated center landed just about at the geometric center of the area described by the "inferior" method of the too small center finder. Happy coincidence? Or the universe reminding us that precision does not always equate to accuracy?
Almost done and ready for use. I was wondering if slotting the opening for the file would have worked better than cutting a cone in the table? So, what the first project for the filer? KOKO!
I like your method of lining up the two lugs on the bottom of the table. I think it would be a bit too expensive to buy a long-series drill to drill both of them in one go
Most excellent.
Instead of paralleling the stand off blocks on the mill, why not just face one side, drill, tap and bolt to the lathe face plate. Take an (interrupted) facing cut, and Uncle Bob.
Might be interesting to run abrasive stones in it. Could be great for honing hss tools
I have absolute no use for a die filer, but this one is already pretty enough, to put in my house.
Top job Quinn 👍
Question about the parallelism of your sacrificial aluminum blocks. If you had milled the first side then just immediately drilled the bolt hole and the bolted to your face plate and used the lathe to clean up the second side would that have given you the same (if not better) parallelism? I know there are always different ways to do things in machining and I'm not trying to say that my way would have been any better. I'm just asking for my own edification
Great idea! That would definitely be better than what I did.
@@Blondihacks Comments section here is pretty constructive, which is nice for a change.
@@travisray139 Well, I moderate heavily. You should see some of the stuff that gets deleted. :D But yes, I try to keep a constructive and helpful environment for everyone. I learn a lot from my viewers and don't want to discourage that.
@@Blondihacks Well thanks for the hard work there! From my perspective, it feels like the comments section has become an organic part of the whole Blondihacks journey.
Quinn, when watching you centering the plate on the faceplate for the second time, i had an eureka moment. Instead of centering on the outside of the rough casting, once you had the thread cut in the center. I don't know if i would have thought about it on the spot, if i were making it. But center drilling the threaded rod, in a collet chuck. and using that center with a live or dead center to align again every time, could have made the centering of the table far easier no ? HTH.
Eyecrometer. Quinn, NAILED IT!
steve
If you want to shrink a lot of heatshrink tubing, may I reccomend becoming a boat electrician :P? I think I’ve shrunk miles at this point, lol.
Nice video...thanks
Maybe you should drop a 3HP VFD into your lathe just like Artisan Makes just did! I'd love to see your take on that, and then you won't run into power limits on large diameter parts.
Mighty Quinn! Hey, great to see you! A question from the peanut gallery; why didn’t you use a spacer when you mounted it on the faceplate before doing the first cut, then you could have turned the outer diameter without having to change the setup. And a bit of double sided carpet tape (the stuff without the foam sandwich) would have ensured that it wouldn’t move. But then again, perhaps I’m just a nut case😂
Every machinist youtuber i watch makes me want a bag of metal chips to use in resin castings... Love the detail and jokes!
Love the content
Hello from the UK Quinn, I wish I had your patience, tell me where I can get some please!.
Hate to see it finish but love to see you get there. Or something along those lines 😉😂
One question tho: Why did you went through the trouble of dialing in the table in the beginning? You just faced the face. So concentricity shouldn't matter. It just had to be dialed in enough to not cause too many vibrations.
Unless I am missing something?
At the core of all engineering is the need to take hours or even days to avoid doing anything boring 😂
could you turn an oversized round "nut" and screw it onto the end to the 14/20 rod and indicate off that? Then you're concentric with the center hole you made.