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Can You Really Trust a Blake Coaxial Indicator?
What is a Co-Ax Indicator? It’s a common problem for a machinist to need to find the center of a circular feature–either a boss or a hole. There are a lot of ways to do this ranging from using a probe on a CNC to using one of the many tried-and-true...
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Unleash Power: Best Thermal Expansion Calculator!
Unleash Power: Best Thermal Expansion Calculator! Quick Answers Thermal Expansion is a property affection all materials that causes them to change their dimensions as temperature changes. As the temperature goes up, they get longer, for example. Machinists care about...
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Ball Screws for CNC: Easy Guide [Bearing Blocks, and Anti Backlash Nuts]
Ball Screws for CNC: Easy Guide [Bearing Blocks, and Anti Backlash Nuts] Anti Backlash Ball Screwws… While the use of ball screws for cnc is primarily about eliminating backlash, there are other reasons why they’re the premier way of driving motion in CNC...
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Ball Nose End Mill [Easy Guide to Ball Cutters]
What are Ball Nose End Mills? A Ball Nose End Mill, also called a “Ball Cutter”, “Ball End Mill”, or a “Ball Nose Mill” is an End Mill whose tip is ground in the shape of a half sphere. Ball End Mills are always center cutting, so...
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Cnc Rack and Pinion [vs Belt Drive or Ballscrew]
How a rack and pinion drive system works A rack and pinion is a type of linear actuator that comprises a circular gear (the pinion) engaging a linear gear (the gear rack), which operate to translate rotational motion into linear motion. A Rack and Pinion Drive…...
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Bolt Grades Decoded: Essential Chart for Builders!
US Bolt Grades Chart with Strength Chart The most common SAE bolt grades are Grade 2, Grade 5, and Grade 8. Metric Bolt Grades Chart with Strength Chart The most common bolt grades are 8.8, 10.9, and 12.9. What Are These Numbers? Bolts are made at different...
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Tramming a Milling Machine: Tools, Indicators, & Tips
Tram is the squareness of your milling machine head to the table and Tramming is the act of adjusting the mill head to be square. There is tram parallel to the x-axis, and tram parallel to the y-axis (sometimes called “nod”). Depending on your machine, you...
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How much does a CNC Machine Cost? [Complete Guide]
There are literally thousands of CNC machines available in the world’s markets, and they’re aimed at a huge variety of different audiences. These audiences range from Hobbyists through large scale Aerospace Manufacturers that demand the very best CNC...
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A Gallery of Orrery and Astronomical Clocks
A gallery of orreries for inspiration on my own orrery project. Rens Heeren’s Amazing 3D Model of a Modern Antykthera Mechanism Clock: PJ Bambrick’s Orrery Mounting the Orrery in the “sky” above is a stroke of genius for...
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32 Killer Ideas: Organize Your Workshop & Garage Storage Now
Workshop and Garage storage, shelving, organization, cabinets–there are never enough ideas to go around. If your shop is like mine, you’ve managed to fill it with so much stuff (your treasures) that it’s a mess. You’d like to up your...
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Master CNC with the Ultimate NC Viewer Guide!
What is an NC Viewer? An NC Viewer is a software tool that helps you work with your cnc machine’s nc files. NC files, also called g-code files, are the files that tell your cnc machine how to make parts, so this is pretty important. NC Viewers go by many names...
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