New toys

[NesikaChad]

Wellz, dropped the panties a little last week.

Bought some equipment, should show up to the house in about three weeks.

Getting closer to this shop becoming a reality now. I see light in the tunnel.

CNC 4 axis with CAT40 spindle and Anilam control. (4th axis not in photo obviously, had to purchase separately)

Brown/sharp surface grinder

Wilson hardness tester.

Also got myself (I'm so going to hell for this) TWO Baldor buffers that had been used for one week since they were purchased two years ago for (drum roll please) $399.00 bucks!

They belonged to an elementary school in Boulder, CO. They were used for a week long summer course on making jewelry in 2006. They have enclosures with lights and a vac port for dust collection.

It's a 1200 dollar set up for EACH one and I got em both for 400 bucks.

I'm still giggling.

pretty cool.

Lets hope the lathe shopping goes this well. that's next month!

later gents.

Chad
LongRifles, Inc. (coming soon)

 

[royinidaho]

I wonder what it would be like to know how to use all that stuff

See ya in hell

 

[NesikaChad]

Uh huh. . .

Worth a thousand words right? (in this case, about half a million)

 

[James Jones]

Very cool NC .

Having access to that kind of tooling will spoil you Roy , every time you have to do work on a manual tool making more than one part you think "this would be so much easier with a CNC !"

That is a hell of a deal on the buffers , thats the kind of thing you buy even if ya don't need them.

what kind of lathe are you planning to get Chad?

 

[NesikaChad]

Well, I WANT this which is what I had at Nesika, the Harrison Alpha 1330 U tool room lathe.

Tapered Gamut class 9 spindle bearings, 8 position turret, Fanuc control, and some pretty cool proprietary programming features.

The main reason now is simply familiarity. I had the 1st one of these babies in the US. It was a new product in 2003.

What I'll probably end up getting (at a savings of about 50K) is a Hardinge tool room CNC lathe with 8 position turret. Looking at it from photos it appears like it'll work just fine while still allowing me to produce other parts in volume.

The end game is a turning center devoted exclusively to fitting barrels to actions. I'll get there, just might take a year or two once the doors open.

That Harrison is one bad *** mother though, make no mistake. In 2005 I had an order for 50 of the Dakota Scimitar sniper rifles for the Jordanian Spec Ops command.

I, and my bosses son, built all 50 of those guns in 30 hours. Worked all night. I could thread, chamber, and crown a barrel in less than 30 minutes. Chip to chip. TIR of the chambers was between .0002 and .0005 on every one of em too. Good machines make good parts. The best TIR I ever got was .000175" I had to purchase a higher res indicator just to detect it. Left the barrel in the machine for two days waiting for it from MSC. pretty cool. Its actually the barrel that went on Dan Kinnemans 300RUM later went on to smoke a P. dog at 2552 yards. Made the cover of Small Caliber news! Pretty cool.

The mill we had could run a stock chip to chip in 8 minutes on the primary inlet and the secondary top side was done in 12. Took longer due to the spring passes to get the surface finishes right. **** fiberglass! Abrasive stuff, hard on tooling. The mag box inlet on the 338's are big too and you'd get a lot of tool deflection if you ran it too hard going that deep (all the way through the stock) If you pulled it out like that the floor metal would be all jacked up when going in from the bottom.

Still, 40 minutes of machine time, and another 1.5 hours of hand labor doing the bedding isn't bad on a gun that retails for over 6K. the barrel and stock shop made money on those buggers!

Yeah, lots of coffee and the floor was covered with cigarette butts the next morning. Got my arse chewed for smoking in the shop. (still don't feel bad)

Good times!

 

[eddybo]

I wil give you your money back on the buffers......heck I will give you your money back and you can keep one GREAT BUY

 

[NesikaChad]

Hey, you ever check out Grizzly industrial supply?

Some deals there too. It's all bamboo stuff but for the price, you can't beat it.

I know the knife grinder/buffer they sell kicks ***. Dakota/Nesika has had one for five years now and it runs like a watch. I used the **** out of that thing all the time. Same motor used in their buffers so I think you'd be fine.

Good luck.

 

[vintec]

mill

looks like MC X
I hope you can drip feed. Seems to add a lot of extra code. May just be my post. Have fun.

 

[NesikaChad]

I use MCX to create geometry, but I actually go backwards and post in MC9 or 8. I'm just more fluent with it and like the editor I have there better.

One of the things I'm working on is editing the post processor to change the tool planes in the machine. This'll get rid of just straight XYZpositions and change a majority of them to arc movements. Should work awesome for barrel channels and action inlets when surfacing. Just gotta get it right though so I don't crash the bugger.

All in due time. . .

 

[vintec]

MC9

I use 9. Not sure if this is exactly what you want to do.

under

NC utlis
Filter
Settings.

You can convert the line movements into arc movement, in the toolpath

 

[NesikaChad]

Oh, cool.

That's even better/simpler.

Hadn't seen that before. Thanks.

 

[vintec]

I have about 8 years of MC under my belt. If you ever get stumped send me a PM and I will try and help.

 

[NesikaChad]

I've been fiddling with it since 2001, but am very VERY rusty since coming to Iraq in 06. I've not touched a machine for two years now.

That is thankfully coming to a close here very soon. I need to be making chips again.

 

[NesikaChad]

I've been fiddling with it since 2001, but am very VERY rusty since coming to Iraq in 06. I've not touched a machine for two years now.

That is thankfully coming to a close here very soon. I need to be making chips again.

Thank you, really appreciate the offer to help. Careful though, you may not get rid of me.

thankfully I've got all my old programming saved so this should be an easy transition once everything is up and running. Just load a different post (Originally written for Centurion control)

We'll see!

Chad