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Home Metal Casting
and Machining
Page 2
WARNING! Activities on these pages about foundry work are very dangerous. The chances of having a fire, causing injuries, or even dying are very good if you are not careful. I am not a professional foundryman, and will not attempt to disclose all hazards. If you choose to try this hobby, every precaution must be taken to be safe.
Book #6 has a bunch of tooling and accessories for the lathe and mill. I
made this 2 jaw chuck that bolts right on to the lathe faceplate. Also in
book #6 are a 4 jaw chuck, several improvised chucks, lathe steady rest,
dividing head for gear cutting and once that is made a set of change gears for
threading on the lathe.
I decided to skip the Metal Shaper which was book #3 in the series and
started the Gingery Milling Machine which is book #4. Here it is, well under
way. All the major castings have been poured and everything needs cleaned
up and fitted.
I got in the mood for a quick project
one week and decided to build the Gingery Sheetmetal Brake in book #7 with some
scrap steel I had.
Part
of all the Gingery Machine projects is making the tooling for the
machines. Anyone who has ever shopped for a lathe or a mill knows that the
tooling can cost as much as the machine. To the left is the two jaw chuck
for the lathe, in the back is a boring bar and lower right is the tool for
precision adjustment of the boring bar. It is used with a feeler gauge set
to adjust the boring bar cut to the thousandth of an inch.
Other things for the Gingery projects
Those interested in melting and casting
aluminum or any other metals should do it over DRY sand. NEVER OVER
CONCRETE.
Lots of wood working happens during the
Gingery projects. The wood boxes are molding flasks. The upper half
is called the "cope" and the bottom is called the drag. These
are where the cavity is that you pour the metal into. This photo is from
my "early days" of metal casting, see the new brick colored petrobond
sand and the char mark? Now that sand is almost black.
The lathe bed is long and requires a special flask just for it. I ended up
using it for the milling machine bed as well. That is the lathe bed
wooden mold pattern below the box.
Here is the Gingery Mill base casting next to it's wooden
pattern. The wooden mold pattern all have a taper to them so they can be extracted
from the molding sand and leave a clean cavity. The part sticking up on
the right side of the casting is called the "sprue". That is
where the molten aluminum was poured into the cavity in the sand. It is
removed with a hack saw when the casting cools.
Here is a bunch of mold
patterns and castings from the Gingery
Mill. Kind of a "before and after".
Home Metal Casting and Machining Page 3
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