The REAL Kryton GB round #3. Taking payments now.

The lathe I used for these is a Mazak Super Quick Turn 10MS.
This video shows all of its features pretty well, the live tooling and rear spindle.



Here is a picture of the machine itself,


Here's a link to the website I made for the place I work, there are pictures of most of our machines here.
Equipment

One of these was probably a couple hundred thousand new, but I would guess that you could get a used one for around 80 or so now. The thing that gets you though is the tooling, 99.9% of the time tooling costs a whole bunch more than the machine. The little bit I used to cut the threads on these heads costs around $140, the boring bars are about 5 times that. And of course that doesn't count tool holders or the collets and spindles.

I bought my little lathe from Senkat, its just a little 7x10 from Harbor Freight. Its pretty out of whack on alignment so as soon as I'm done with these grooves I'll be taking it completely apart and giving it an entire overhaul. (Its really not necessary, but I'm used to working with some pretty serious equipment and this little guy really doesn't compare as it is now but I think I can get it close ) I'll be converting it to CNC soon, it should be incredibly easy since I can make pretty much any part I would need!

I don't want to threadjack Ken's thread any more! I could talk about machining all day! It's my other, more expensive, hobby now!

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Those focus adapters look verry nice and clean:gj:

Got myself a mini lathe to cant wait to "make" something after 5 years, just need to get my hands on some alluminium :evil:

Pontiacg5, Thanks so much for all of your hard work!!! You only have supporters here so the best of luck to you getting all of the machining done.

And thanks again Kenom for getting this GB together and keeping it going!

Ugh, these things just won't go easy...

I'm about out of endmills to cut these grooves and I've only got TWO done so far! Since the endmill is so small you need to turn the it really, really fast otherwise it gets too much pressure against it and it snaps (ask how I know!) I figured the 3000 RPM the SQT10M would suffice, but it's only letting me get around 0.0005" per rev! (that equates to a cutting time of around 30 minutes per barrell!)

There is a light, however, and that is the FJV-25 with the 4th axis. It can do around 12000 RPM so that would cut the cycle times dramatically. The bad part is that machine is always busy! It might not be till this weekend till I can hijack it for a few hours.

I'll keep you all posted on how its going and I'll add some pictures tonight if I ever make it home tonight!

Those are really sexy!!!! so wait!!! it is too late or can i get mine without their groves?

You could if it's ok with Kenom. Send him a PM.

Take your time Pontiac, we have been waiting for these for awhile. A little more time won't hurt anyone.

Great work and thank you again!

2 an hour just for putting the grooves on them... I am sure we all wouldnt mind grooven but 50 hours of it... That other machine sounds like it will be a life saver.

Are the bits that you use meant for the side loads like that and still breaking? Good thing these are not stainless steel . Care to make one out of stainless . The price would probably be crazy expensive like $2000 each host. Lol

Always looking forward to more info and pics on the progress. You make my day every time you post any.

I have further bad news, the milling spindle decided to crap out. It was running 100% for around 3 hours though without rest, but these things are supposed to do that!

It looks like the only hope is the 4th axis machine, the problem is there is a long waiting list of other parts waiting to get on that machine. I can't take apart the mounting system while it's running parts even if it is after hours because it takes a few hours to teach the machine where everything is again. I'll have to catch the machine between parts sometime, but there is really no telling when that would be.

I hate leaving you all out in the air like this! From the looks of things I might be able to get on the machine Thursday evening, but then I'd have to stay up all night running these barrels so I'm hoping for Friday. I'll keep you all posted on whats going on though.

Here are some pics to hold you over a little bit!



These are some of the ones I managed to finish. See the one with the spiral look on the end? That is what happens if you don't have the collet or chuck set tight enough, it will actually twist the metal like that! (that groove is perfectly fine dimension wise, it will never clean up though so I used it as the test piece. Nobody will be getting that one!)



This is the one that got stuck halfway through. This picture does a pretty good job of how I was cutting the barrels. See how tiny that endmill is?



This is a horrible picture of the 4th axis machine, the endmill is behind the spray of blue coolant in this picture. The square thing is a mounting rig that holds some odd variety of oil related parts. You can see the 4th axis on the right, the plunger looking thing in the front is a tool touchoff probe. You can't open the doors on this machine while its going, it will soak you! Otherwise I would have grabbed a better picture!

Sorry for the extra delays guys!!

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Why not use a slitting saw to make the grooves on a mill and just use the small endmill to clean up the ends of the groves?

Shouldn't be that bad if you have an automated dividing head or a 4th axis with indexing control. If the machine has an ATC as well I couldn't see this method taking that long at all.

I did consider that for a while, but a saw throws up a horrible burr on a tube like this and it would be hard to consistently debur that edge.

All of the saws I have that are thin enough have a pretty big diameter too, so I would still have to mill out around half of the pocket as well to get it to full depth. I could order some smaller ones, but I'll probably be finished by the time they get here and I would still have to deal with that burr.

The 2.5 lathe seems to be back to life this morning, I've got some running as I type this but it probably won't be long till it overheats and dies again.

why not use a milling machine?

SMIDSY said:

why not use a milling machine?

Click to expand...

A 2.5 axis lathe is a milling machine

Just combine all those 445 diodes you are selling into an aluminum burning super laser to create those grooves .

Pontiacg5 said:

See the one with the spiral look on the end? That is what happens if you don't have the collet or chuck set tight enough, it will actually twist the metal like that!

Click to expand...

I purchased a polished laser from someone that looked like that on one end. I personally didn't mind it at the time. I thought it actually might look decent if both ends looked the same. It is a weird looking pattern that looks like it would be difficult to create on purpose for the entire surface.