Deflection Kills an Endmill

I enjoy watching John Grimsmo’s knifemaking videos, so I was recently catching up to see what I’d missed. I will show a couple of the good ones in a second post, but first I wanted to touch on a case where deflection broke an endmill. John’s video captured it perfectly at about 9:22:

You can tell by the waves on what should have been smoothly flowing walls in the slot that this endmill was deflecting quite a lot. Too much as it turns out, because it broke…

He’s pointing at the path where he was profiling the edge of a knife blade with a full slot cut, 1/8″ endmill, 1/8″ deep. I don’t have all the data to tell how to set this cut up in G-Wizard to see recommended feeds and speeds, but you can see by the waves in the slot that the tool was deflecting quite a lot. If I just run some sample parameters for a carbide endmill, and assume a stickout of 1/2″ for the tool, I get a recommended rpm of 4600. If I then plug in the 4.5 IPM he said he was running, I notice a couple of things.… Read the rest

Creating a Blood Spatter Effect When Anodizing

In this video, John Grimsmo creates a blood spatter on black anodizing effect. In the process, he goes through a lot of useful information about how to do anodizing in a home shop setting. It’s very cool stuff, and the result of his work is a stunning set of knife scales to be given as a gift.

Anodizing for a blood spatter effect…

The blood spatter techniques could be used to create a variety of effects that would look good on knife scales or pistol grips. In a lot of ways these irregular patterns are not unlike some of the markings one sees on reptiles.… Read the rest

Manufacturing Knife Handles

I liked this John Grimsmo video too as it shows the potential of small manufacturing runs for hobbyists who want to run a small business. There’s room for suggestions by a professional machinist on improvements, but John gets the job done. He’s even using a probe to zero his fixture at this stage:

Time lapse of making knife handles (scales)…

It always bothers me to see John putting cutters in that drill chuck, but if you watched his “Knifemaking Tuesdays” videos, you’ll have seen he is in the process of moving to ER collet chucks.… Read the rest

Anodizing Titanium in the Home Shop

Okay, last John Grimsmo video for know. He sure had a bumper crop of interesting ones since last time I checked!

In this one, he walks through anodizing titanium. Ti is an interesting material. I looked at making a largish part with it once and was shocked by how much it costs–you want to be sure you want Titanium! In any event, some things I learned from the video is that titanium is easy to anodize, it happens fast, and the color can be varied by changing the voltage.

Titanium anodizing for Nukotools…… Read the rest

The Amazing Astronomical Clocks of Pieter Merckx

I love astronomical clocks and have been working on a design for my own clock. Someday I hope to perfect enough skills to build it. Netherlands machinist Pieter Merckx has already built a number of similar clocks that are shown on his wonderful site, Astroclocks.nl.

Check out some of his art (much more on his site):

Pieter’s first clock was a doozy!

His second…

A CAD drawing for that second clock…

The third astronomical clock…

The third clock being assembled…

The builder in his shop. The machines are small but the inspiration is great!

And, if you like gear work, be sure to also check out Georotic Gear Design Software.… Read the rest

How Does Germany Stimulate Its Manufacturing Economy?

While the US and many other parts of the world has suffered high unemployment in the present difficult economic conditions, Germany’s unemployment rate has steadily declined. It stood at 8.6% in 2007 and today is down to 6.9%. At the same time, they’re creating many of these jobs through rising exports of products, which make them doubly healthy to the German economy. German exports surged 18.5% in 2010.

Germany’s manufacturing economy has been strong during this recession…

Many attribute this to their strong manufacturing economy, which is largely focused on the automotive and industrial (heavy machinery) sectors. I was curious to read about how this has come to be: what does Germany do to stimulate its manufacturing economy? Perhaps there are some ideas we should borrow for the US.

There are some great articles out there about the German manufacturing economy. Time Magazine calls them the China of Europe, and a related article in the Time Business section goes into considerable detail on the jobs side of their economy. The Guardian has another good article on the subject, as does BDO from the UK.… Read the rest

Every Business Needs a Polite Soup Nazi

Have you ever seen the Seinfeld skit about the Soup Nazi? It seems there’s a little deli that has the most amazing soup. There’s just one little problem: the owner is the Soup Nazi. If he doesn’t like the way you’re trying to do business, he immediately refunds your money and announces loudly, “No soup for you!”

Every business needs a Polite Soup Nazi…

The Soup Nazi is clearly a comedic spoof, but in the end of the day, every business really does need to have a Polite Soup Nazi. If you don’t have one, how else can you fire a customer? I can already hear the cries of protest:

What?!?? Why would you ever fire a customer?

We’re brought up hearing that the customer is always right and generally that we should do anything, no matter how unreasonable to make customers happy. But, it turns out, this is actually bad advice. What’s really needed is to be unreasonably helpful to good customers, and to be quick, polite, and effective at helping bad customers to realize they probably want someone else’s product.… Read the rest

Honey, Who Took My CNCCookbook Articles?

Periodically, we hive off the articles on the www.cnccookbook.com home page to our Blog Archives to keep the page from growing indefinitely. We usually wait far too long (sorry!), until our home page has grown unwieldy. When that happens, we simply copy the articles off the the Blog Archive and start in again. Just go check out the Blog Archives to find those missing articles.

Postscript:  We’ll be taking away the Blog archives now that we’ve switched full time to WordPress.  All of the articles will still be available, it’s just that they’ll be found by searching or navigating within this WordPress blog.… Read the rest

G-Wizard Picks Up Dovetail Cutter Feeds and Speeds

The latest release of G-Wizard, 1.610, has added support for Dovetail Cutters. It’s simply to use, just pick the nearest angle to your dovetail (a lot of angles are available) from the dropdown Geometry Menu:

To calculate feeds and speeds for a Dovetail, use the Geometry menu (circled in red) and select the closest angle to your dovetail’s…

For diameter, be sure to use the diameter of the dovetail, not the shank. You might also consider dialing the “Tortoise/Hare” slide all the way left if you’re not in a great hurry. These cutters are delicate, and that will further minimize the stress on the cutter.

If you’re a registered G-Wizard user, the install page for version 1.610 is here. If you haven’t tried G-Wizard, sign up for the free 30-day trial, plus there’s a Holiday Sale underway that has some of the best deals we’ve ever offered.

More Tips When Cutting Dovetails

I came across a great thread on PM while researching Dovetail Cutter Feeds and Speeds. Some tips:

- Be sure to open a slot as wide as you can with a regular endmill that is also slightly deeper than the dovetail.… Read the rest