G-Wizard Customer Fox Engineering Builds Custom Fuel Injection Systems for Hot Rodders

I got a nice note from Josh Bentley recently, talking about how he used G-Wizard and his Industrial Hobbies CNC Mill to do some amazing fuel injection work for his company Fox Engineering. Here are some samples:

502 Cubic Inch Big Block Chevy in a Steel Deuce Hot Rod…

Cross Ram Fuel Injection Setup for a Small Block Chevy…

Custom Injection Setup on a Hemi…

Custom Fox Injection on a Lamborghini V12 in a T-Bucket Roadster:  Gotta Be a Wild Ride!
That Lambo V12 in the T-Bucket roadster is a real kick, isn’t it?… Read the rest

CNC’ing the World’s Ultimate Pizza Cutter

I’ve recently written that there’s always a market for the very best of any product type and this story from Tormach’s blog is a great example.  Imagine what the world’s ultimate pizza cutter would be and you’ve got to come pretty close to Frankie Flood’s art:

I love the idea of the course he describes where each student makes their own 3D printer.  Check the Tormach article for more information or click on Frankie’s Logo above to go to his web site.… Read the rest

CNC Project Ideas: Super Custom CNC Products

Have you ever wanted to own your own CNC Business?
One of the first things you have to figure out is what to sell.  There’s a range of opportunities out there, but typically you want to choose your business strategy so it fits one of three styles:
1.  You’re building the absolute best product of its kind.
2.  You’re building the cheapest product of its kind.
3.  You’re building a product for a particular market niche that #1 and #2 do not serve very well.
I really like going after #1 just because the passion around doing the very best helps drive the marketing and is more fun for me too.  … Read the rest

CNC 4th Axis Basics: How They Work

This is the second installment of a series on 4th Axis Milling.  The first talked about why you’d use a 4th Axis.  In this post, I want to talk a little bit about the mechanics of how they work and what’s inside one.  We have a lot of readers who are interested in the details and even in building their own 4th axis.
To create a 4th Axis basically requires that the axis be well mounted so it can spin, and that there be some means of controlling that spin via g-code program, preferably with as little backlash as possible–backlash is the enemy of CNC.  … Read the rest

Button Cutter, Copy Mill, or Toroidal Cutter: Round Insert Milling Cutters

Have you ever tried a button cutter for milling?
If so, you’ll know that these versatile tools can really do a good job for you.  There’s a lot to recommend round inserts as they have a number of properties that contribute to their success.  If you’ve used one turning, you’ll know that their large radius can yield some very nice surface finishes.  They can leave a good finish when milling too, but they have a number of other advantages.
Machinists know this and so do a lot of our customers:  Button Cutters, also called “Copy Mills” and “Toroidal Cutters”, are the number one most requested new tool type for G-Wizard Calculator on our User Suggestion Portal.… Read the rest

Moedls: An Inexpensive 3D Scanner on Kickstarter

I just signed up for Moedls, which is an inexpensive 3D Scanner project on Kickstarter.  It uses a turntable, a red laser, a green laser, and your phone’s camera to generate a 3D model of whatever you put on the 9″ turntable.  Cost to buy in early is as low as $199.  I went for the Early Backer Advanced Scanner for $249.  They need to raise $40,000 for the project to become a reality, so we’ll see how it goes.  The idea of an inexpensive 3D scanner seems very appealing.  I hope to get a chance to play with it.… Read the rest

Use a Spring-Loaded Engraving Tool to Pick Up the Engraving Pace

Many of you will be familiar with drag engraving, where a tool in a spring-loaded holder is dragged over a surface to engrave it.  There’s another kind of spring-loaded engraver out there that takes a standard v-bit cutter and can be run much faster than a drag engraver.  2Linc and others make these spring-loaded engraving tools.  Here’s a great demo video by 2linc of one in action that has a number of excellent engraving tips:

As you can see, this spring loader engraver is meant to be used with standard v-bit engraving cutters that are spinning.  … Read the rest

Balance Your Boring Head for Higher RPMs and Productivity

I had a customer ask recently why our G-Wizard Calculator doesn’t have a fairly low limit on the rpms it recommends for boring operations on the mill.  He was concerned that the numbers he was getting for aluminum were too high and causing way too much vibration.
He had a point, on the one hand–conventional boring heads are pretty unbalanced beasts to be spinning up to high rpms.  Criterion talks about limiting them to 1000-1500 rpm.  But on the other hand, there are other designs capable of going faster so how could G-Wizard know the limits of your particular boring head?  … Read the rest

Neat Portable EDM Drill and Tap Remover

As soon as I saw this video I thought, “What a cool product.”  It’s a portable EDM sinker that can be used to remove broken taps and drill bits.  EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) can literally disintegrate metal like Marvin the Martian’s Ray Gun.  It’s a fascinating process, and there are parts that are impossible to make any other way.  This little gizmo applies EDM to the problem of removing a broken tap or drill bit from the workpiece.  This is a problem we’ve all had at one time or another that generally leads to some strong language.  … Read the rest

Stop-Loc Collet Stop Setup Tool

Stops are neat for accurate positioning.  I built a really nice Kurt Vise Stop a long time ago, and I use it all the time.  I also use small Kant-Twist clamps as stops on vises, lathe bed, and all sorts of other places.  They hold tight and the ones with the little brass jaws don’t mar the surface.  I will not take a part out of the lathe chuck or mill vise without making sure I have a way to quickly put it right back exactly where it came out.  I learned the hard way by pulling a part too soon and finding it wasn’t quite right or realizing I could do one more step and avoid a new setup.… Read the rest

Press Brake Kit for your Hydraulic Press

I came across this video scanning the fabrication boards and thought it was a neat kit for a basic press brake attachment for a hydraulic press:

Everything is cut and just needs some welding together, so building one would be a fast and it’s a good opportunity to touch-up my Tig welding a bit.  Tig is one of those perishable skill I don’t use often enough.
I have a page devoted to this style brake.  It’d be neat to sauce it up a bit, but truth be told, what I really would like if I’m going to invest the time and energy is a magnetic sheet metal brake, like the Magnabrake:

MagnaBrake Magnetic Sheet Metal Brake
It’s pretty easy to see from the video why one of these brakes would be a lot more useful than a conventional sheet metal brake.… Read the rest

Donek Drag Knife Adds Versatility to CNC Routers and CNC Mills

Came across this unique drag knife from Donek Tools and thought it was very slick:

The video demo shows some pretty amazingly sharp cuts being made at high speeds because the knife orients itself.  It takes ordinary utility knife blades and comes in 2 sizes.

Donek founder Sean Martin invented the Donek Drag Knife to cut graphics for the custom snow boards he was making on his Shopbot CNC Router.… Read the rest

Vacuum Chuck and Vacuum Table How-To Video from NEMI

Vacuum Chucks (vacuum table is another name for this workholding gizmo) are a really neat solution to a lot of workholding problems.  So much so that our first vacuum chuck article quickly became one of our Greatest Hits.
I was recently chatting with Mike Jentges of Nemi (who manufacture a line of the handy tools) about vacuum work holding and their products.  He suggested I run their basic how-to video to give CNCCookbook readers a good introduction and “How-To” guide for vacuum chucks.  After previewing it, I had to agree, lots of good material here:

Lots of great tips such as using the fixture plate to customize the general purpose vacuum table for work holding specific parts.  … Read the rest

Roundup of Engine Turning and Engraving Feedback

As I mentioned recently, engine turning, guilloche, and engraving are very popular topics for our readers.  I got quite a bit of feedback from folks who wrote me directly or used our Customer Portal to contact us.  Thank you very much–that sort of feedback is always a pleasure to receive!
In this email, I will pass along some of the feedback.
First up is a note from Tom about this interesting CNC engraving tool from Dapra called the DMWriter:

This interesting little device contains a cam-activated impact hammer that lays down a dot matrix along the cutting path.  … Read the rest

Drill Bit Sharpener: Great Gift Idea for Machinists

I was thinking I ought to mention a few Holiday Gift Ideas for machinists.  You know, the sort of thing where you can just email the article to your significant other and if you’ve been nice, maybe one will show up.
After thinking about it a bit, I decided a really nice gift for a machinist would be a Drill Bit Sharpener, such as the Drill Doctor.  Between their “Drill Doctor” brand and their industrial brand for more professional machinists, Darex seems to own the Drill Bit Sharpener market.  There are others, but I’ll stick to these for this post in the interests of brevity and of sticking to a model I haved used.… Read the rest