Size of a tool (lathe!)

Not really enough. It had one boring, one cutoff and two turning holders with beat-up clamp screws. The tool blocks are bulletproof chrome-moly so the screws took all the incoming. They are 7mm, not too easy to find in the US. I put a carefully adjusted threading bit in the better holder and used the other for everything else.

Oddly the slot is 13/16" high (0.812) instead of an even metric number. I had to mill down most of my bit holders.

Later I bought one more turning holder from Enco for $100 (ouch!) and recently a few Chinese ones Tools4cheap special-ordered for me for $50 each, back when I had a paycheck. I haven't seen another second-hand A size Multifix holder in ~15 years of poking through machinery junk piles. The few times I looked on Ebay they were only offered in Europe.

Their only advantage over an Aloris is that they can be rotated to allow a hand ground HSS bit to both turn and face, without losing squareness for parting. A bent Armstrong holder does the same thing if you grind the bit properly.

Jim Wilkins Multiple posts of this msg possible. Googrou choked on it.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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They don't. I'll give you 10:1 odds they're actually 10mm slots, Mikey.

-- If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. -- Thomas A. Edison

Reply to
Larry Jaques

O.K. I presume that you went to MSC or someone else for the screws and bought a hundred or a gross (whatever they come in) to have plenty of spares.

Hmm ... probably 20 mm plus a little clearance for the burrs raised by the clamp screws in shanks which are a bit too soft. If they were made to a precise fit, it could be difficult to get a burred shank out of the holder. (And the mushrooming of the screw tips comes into play as well. :-)

Yep -- "gainfully unemployed" (retired) doesn't bring in the same money.

A size is for what range of lathe sizes?

Also the squareness for threading.

Actually -- they have another advantage to the manufacturer, they bring in more money than even the genuine Aloris ones. :-)

But you aren't going to fit a bent Armstrong into one of those holders. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

My mind goes to a guy building a model live steam loco, or any model, for that matter, where he may have to produce a fairly substantial number of identical parts. He can screw around with each part, setting up tools and measuring every move, or he can use an indexing or quick change post and make a setup, using a long travel indicator (not having a DRO), marking dials. The difference in time spent is monumental. It helps preserve one's sanity when there are a number of parts to be made.

One need not be in business to benefit from not using a rocker tool post (yeah, rocker. Don't know how I managed to call it a rock tool post. Must have been my exuberance!)

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

I found a small package of them in an auto parts store.

On closer examination the size may be an accident of regrinding the slot cutters. The half-round clearance grooves at the top and bottom of the slot stop short of tangential on their outer edges. The Chinese holders have square-cornered slots 20.8mm high.

Or require anywhere near the same expenditures. I have time to cook meals on the wood stove instead of buying and microwaving prepared ones. As an R&D lab tech or test engineer I was unemployed during every recession so I've known how to live cheaply but adequately for a long time and didn't make expensive commitments like car loans or cable TV during the good times. My father grew up a dirt poor farm boy in the southern mountains and although he became very successful he never forgot the Depression or how to live simply off the land. He could grow okra and peaches in the poor climate and soil of central NH.

Their size designations are roughly similar to Aloris, with a smaller Aa for mini lathes.

That photo shows two turning holders, one boring and one cutoff, so I did buy a complete set. They claim change-precise-ish-ness under 0.01 mm which it really does hold if I brush ALL the chips off the locating splines.

Note "Home", "OK" and "Made in Germany", their language is turning into Denglisch.

Yes, and I don't think they are worth it. The Chinese copy seems OK but it's still quite expensive. I'm not pushing them, just passing on what I know. I have used a Dorian toolpost on a CNC lathe and would be very happy to own one of those instead.

There is an Armstrong series that is 3/4" high and fits fine. I have several bent holders that fit, most by J. H. Williams. The cheap Enco imports aren't too bad. The ones I bought had to be milled on the bottom to adjust the bit height and then on the top to fit the slot. Their dog-point screws haven't mushroomed yet.

Jim Wilkins

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

If you have the old MAP books or other old hobby books on lathe work, you know that square, four-tool toolholders were a common homemade tooling item that was fairly popular for just such jobs. I always figured I'd make one if I ever needed it. But I never did. The largest number of repeat parts I think I ever made was six special screws for a flange, and I didn't feel any hardship in setting them up.

Again, as we've discussed many times, the issue is why you're involved in machining, and what you like about it. Having spent decades visiting shops and covering the most advanced machining and other metalworking technologies, I developed a real sense of separation between what was possible and what I liked doing in my basement. I have no interest at all in running my basement shop like a half-assed version of a modern commercial shop. No matter how many machines I stuffed into it, I'd always fall short of the 25,000-rpm Roku-Roku that I used to market, which would mill H13 heat-treated to maximum hardness, or the 25 hp that powered the demonstration lathes Sandvik used to show off their wiper inserts. My lathe would stall dead if I put a wiper insert in it.

So long ago I decided that chasing new technology would be very expensive madness, a madness that would never be satisfied, and that if I was going to enjoy metalworking as a hobby it would be in developing the skills that were used, say, 70 years ago to make amazing things with simple machines and basic tools. I love my toolmaker's buttons. I enjoy making expanding laps. Learning to file well, and making a filing guide for filing the heads of capscews on my lathe, was a pleasure. I acquired a small bunch of digital measuring instruments when Mitutoyo was my client, but I hardly use them. I prefer keeping up my skills with spring calipers and manual mikes. Never shall CNC cross my threshold.

And I'll keep my rocker toolpost. d8-) I have about a dozen Armstrong toolholders and five lifetimes' supply of tool bits, and I enjoy using them. An Aloris would be nice, but it would remind me of dreary hours spent making batches of parts in the job shop of which I was once part owner. This is a hobby to me, and the fun is in the doing. And for years, if I needed, say, a perfectly square block of hardened steel, I could take it to work and run it on our $500,000 Wasino Wing Ace. Two-millionths accuracy in minutes is a different world from what I do for relaxation and fun.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Something like this wouldn't be too hard to make on a milling machine:

It doesn't need the rocker if you make it for a specific lathe and tool bit. You could use an X-Y table for the slides and fit the block to the tee slot, aligning it with a stop or the end of the slot to swap tools with some reasonable repeatability.

Jim Wilkins

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

O.K. Generally, if I need more than about two or three, I find it worthwhile to order the standard box size from MSC -- for perhaps double what Home Despot would ask for the three. :-)

O.K. Hmm ... a half-round at the *top*? What for? Normally round tools are held against the bottom groove by the screws, and the top does not matter -- unless this is allowing a slightly larger round shank to fit.

Hmm ... looking at the web site photos, I see that the current ones for round shanks are full V bottom, with the top at an angle matching the corresponding slope of the bottom V.

Okra? In N.H.? The Velcro of the vegetable world? I remember my grandparents growing it in South Texas, but nothing even up here. And I usually associate it with Cajun cooking.

O.K. Große (Grosse is I believe a valid alternate spelling), so that would certainly map to "size".

Always the problem. The Aloris style can be pretty self-wiping as long as you have the wedge style, and hold the front edge in contact as you slide it on. Chips on the wedge side don't affect the indexing, though it certainly would with the piston style. :-)

Also note "System MultiFix" and "MultiFix-Systems"

I also wonder about the "Preis:" and "Netto:" entries on the individual size's pages. Hmm ... and "Secure Protocol", and an "OK" button when you have filled out a search term.

For that matter -- the name of the vendor "top-maschinen.de"

O.K. That means that the Aloris should be as good. And I know that I simply have extra tool holders with inserts at different angles, instead of rotating the toolpost to get a specific angle. (That makes parting and threading easier, because I *know* that the toolpost is square.

What size bits does it use? 3/16"? 1/8"?

O.K.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Worth a 1000 words. Very nice. Maybe down the road. Right now it is outside the realm of the superglue-and-doublesided-sticky-tape technology in operation here.

I was thinking bits of washers cut into three pie wedges.

This is the plan for the face-plate and the holding plug. I found that unless you actually finish them on some sort of lathe they never turn concentrically, however nice the work appears to be when you cut them with a router.

In my case I let the piece overlap the face-plate by a little. That way (at least in the improvised conditions) I was able to do the face and OD without changing clamping arrangement.

That is the current arrangement with a slight modification: The centre wooden block is slightly tapered and is screwed down onto the shaft by a screw and a big washer. with everything tight there has been no slippage so far. I hope for even better result when a) the face plate is running true b) the centre block is turned more accurately c) The whole assembly will be held on the 1"-8 tpi spindle with a single nut

I hope I can get the taper right so I can sneak right up to the central block when facing (it seems possible even with rather awkward "tools". The finish the ID on my mill using the boring bar sideways. That is the theory, anyway.

Either way, this is going all in my library for future reference. Thanks.

I nearly did. But Gott sei dank, so far so good. Dreimal Hoch!

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Preis is price including Mehrwetsteuer (Value-added tax). Netto is the price without. Pretty sure I interpret it right.

But is it not better calling it "Schnellwechsel-Stahlhalter "? Quick-change toolpost is so...umstandlich! :-)

Reply to
Michael Koblic

I would not take your bet because you are right, of course. However, should one choose to be ornery and demand an independent judgement it would be difficult to prove by simple measurmement: The T-slots on my drill press table were milled by a small child using a specially trained gerbil. It is a matter of not-so-joyful anticipation to see where the t-nut will stick in the slot. A 10-mm nut!

Reply to
Michael Koblic

I've cleaned up so many labs and tossed the used hardware in a box rather than the trash that I rarely need to buy any.

the bins so that no damaged screws would ship in the product. I have far too much to sort completely and I've found that binning by thread size and material is enough. There's one drawer for 1/4-20, another for 1/4-28 and a third for stainless + brass + aluminum. When I need some I dump the drawer in a tray to spread them out, pick out one with a ruler and the rest by matching the first.

Those small half-round grooves are in the vertical wall of the Swiss turning holder slot for inside corner clearance, like the groove at the bottom of a vee block. The flat sides of the cutters formed the top and bottom of the slot. The truncated shape of the half-round suggests that the sides of the cutters were resharpened, making the slot smaller.

He coated sliced okra with corn meal and fried it, and it was delicious. I can't make the corn meal stay on, and know enough about benzpyrenes that I don't fry as hot as he did. Mine's edible, maybe.

MultiFix is Swiss, another confederation of several languages. They speak their own versions of French, German and something resembling Italian.

The Daimler HighTechReport I subscribe to in German is a great example of English creeping in.

Minton's Playhouse in 1940s Harlem.

The Saxons in "Anglo-Saxon" were north Germans whom the Britons stupidly hired as mercenaries to fight off the Picts (Scots) after Rome pulled out to concentrate on the Goths and Huns. The Saxons viewed the Brits as sheeple and soon they and their allies were a bigger problem than the Picts. King Arthur apparently made his name by defeating them at Badon Hill, but eventually the Saxons forced the Britons/Celts to retreat into Wales and Ireland and became the English (Anglisch). Farmer and peasant Olde English developed partly from Saxon German and the educated words came from French with the Norman Conquest. Legal phrases may still use both, as in Last Will and Testament. So similar words could have passed either way, or entered both languages from French, Latin or Greek. Many of the words for farm animals etc are still very close in sound if not spelling, like kuh =3D cow, hund =3D hound, katz =3D cat, maus =3D mouse, fuchs =3D fox.

I have one 3/16" Armstrong and three 1/4" J. H. Williams No.0, right, straight and left. The 1/4" bits will survive a cut deep enough to stall the lathe as long as they don't extend any more than necessary from the holder.

Jim Wilkins

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:13:03 -0800, the infamous "Michael Koblic" scrawled the following:

...even though I don't own a mill, let alone a metrical one.

What? Technology has improved. I thought the Indians had kids using twigs and sand to precision grind those nice t-slots.

Braze a pair of nuts together (flat to flat) to keep 'em from canting in the slot, whydoncha? You'll have happy-happy joy-joy after that!

-- I'm still waiting for another sublime, transcendent flash of adequacy. --Winnie of RCM

Reply to
Larry Jaques
[ ... ]

Very good practice. Unfortunately, when I was at Melpar, we had to toss them in the trash. We weren't allowed to "rescue" them for home use.

Sure -- that makes sense. The ones which I have bought full boxes of each get their own plastic drawer, of course, because there are enough to make it worthwhile.

O.K. That is not obvious from the photos on the web site.

O.K. My own experience with cooked okra was slimy, and it never got past that rejection as a kid. :-)

[ ... ]

What about the "System" part? That sounds like plain English.

Hmm ... not *closely* resembling Italian -- like perhaps me trying to speak to an Italian from my base of Spanish? :-)

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For the third block down, the magazine explains "jam" with a piece on

:-)

Lots of examples there all right.

Isn't that always the problem with hiring mercenaries? :-)

Agreed.

O.K. A friend has a set of 3/16" holders and the rocker toolpost, and refuses to learn how to grind toolbits, refuses to consider a quick-change toolpost, or even a block or a simple turret toolpost, and wants to get brazed carbide tooling (which he can find in

1/4" shanks, but not 3/16"), and grind them down to 3/16" on my surface grinder. I'm going to leave *him* cranking it, not me. :-)

The lathe is an old Atlas 6x18" one. I've got one of those too, but well retired. If I were still using it, I would be after some quick-change system for it. Perhaps even one of the little aluminum based styles would be sufficient given its rigidity. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

They were very popular where I grew up. We kids called them "snot pods." d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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