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Assuming you're drilling and tapping in one setup, would be good to mill the edges of the place to everything is square.

Would also be nice to fly mill top and bottom first to keep the planes parallel OTOH depending on material you might end up with it bowing. Tooling/jig plates are sometimes made of cast aluminum, there are other suitable materials. If you're putting down a piece of sheet steel you may find it bows out of flat.
 
Yeah my bad I should have said I am using some plate aluminum, with the tormach my understanding is you need a tapping attachment unless threadmilling and I dont have any threadmills so planning on just drilling all the holes for one plate in one setup and then tap manually. For sure milling the edges, figured it would give a nice reference point when I do eventually get decent enough for small batch projects
 
Plate aluminum is good stuff :) I've never had the stones to tap like the cool guys do with the tap in the drill chuck, letting it slip in the jaws when it bottoms. I scored a tapping head in a basement shop diaspora some years ago, it kinda works but looks like it needs a bit of practice to really be effective. Some kind of cutting lubricant a big plus- Tap Magic in a squirt bottle is good, I've had good luck with Anchorlube on slow ops which won't fling it (eg tapping) The smart money is on spiral taps- lots stronger, better chip evacuation.

Wouldn't mind a tooling plate sometime either... dogging everything down to the Bridgeport table is great but sometimes a different approach would be good.
 
Yeah long term I'll get around to tapping in the machine but for now just simple milling ops is exciting enough, is the cutter going to do what I want or will it plunge through the vice, it gets exciting! :lol3
 
Haha have stopped it before the milling table so far thankfully! My worst one was trying to face some aluminum in the vice and dropping the fly cutter about 1/4" lower than the jaw height. That one hurt to watch and listen to:baldy Thankfully that is a much less common occurrence now!
 
I need help to store all my cutters. Cigar boxes aint cutting it anymore.

Amazon has these $15

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I have the mill so can make something, but where to source a big block of plastic > Im open to ideas, how do you store your cutters?
 
So far I've just ordered stock off ebay whenever I see an ok price, its still defintly not the best if you want something larger though.

You could have some fun with it and pickup a few different color cutting boards and machine each one as a step, would help pick out the size you want based on color then to.
 
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Punkinhead said:
I've never bought a cutter, new or used, that didn't come in a plastic tube. I just store them in the tubes.
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I havn't been so lucky. I pick up lots of used cutters in good shape, and rarely get a paper or plastic tube
 
Daily driver mills flat in an old card catalog drawer, special/unused/fancy mills in another. Other drawers for reamers, collet hardware, measurement stuff.
 
my Cutters ended up like this for the majority, I try and not rattle them around too much. 90% of my stuffs dont have tubes

1666468942713.png
 
MVI said:
I need help to store all my cutters. Cigar boxes aint cutting it anymore.

Amazon has these $15

1666401748494.png
1666401776256.png


I have the mill so can make something, but where to source a big block of plastic > Im open to ideas, how do you store your cutters?
Click to expand...
Block of wood instead? Soaked with oil, it oughta keep things free of rust.
 
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MVI said:
my Cutters ended up like this for the majority, I try and not rattle them around too much. 90% of my stuffs dont have tubes

1666468942713.png
Click to expand...
Wouldn't want to drive cross country with those rattling around in the bed of the truck, but I wouldn't fret over just pulling the box out now and again when you need them. If they were that fragile we wouldn't be able to cut what we do with them.
 
Mahogany will look real nice.

I'm tired of plastic stuff 😁
 
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After working around a few setup issues I finally got a useable fixture plate, if ya squint its even flat :lol3
It actually came out pretty well, I do think I need to tram the spindle in as I was getting just the faintest lip between a pass x- and x+

Time to work on the next project, a set of stunt style clip on risers for the neighbor
 
gonna need a larger photo, or I need better readers
 
I'll get some better pics in the morning for you guys, I thought I had more on the phone. I learned a lot about order of operations with this one and also how small of a work envelope Ive got lol
 
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