DIY Die Holders machined from steel using a ball turner
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- Опубликовано: 2 май 2024
- #shopmadetools
I got fed up with a motley selection of button die holders because (a) I didn't have enough of them and (b) they all had mismatched set screw types.
I reasoned that they should be easy enough to make using the lathe but it turned out to be a bit of an adventure trying to find the most appropriate technique that was efficient and accurate. I also wanted the finished die holders to be aesthetically pleasing which meant having a nice balanced profile and blended forms.
This is what I came up with.... 
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You are right Mark, a lot of those cheap tools are made out of rubbish material. Your shop made versions will last for generations. Great job and a good explanation.
Brilliant! I'm absolutely jealous of your collection of die holders 😋. I love the idea of having a bunch of common sizes ready to go on the fly. I'd imagine you've gotten quite proficient at making them after number five 😁.
Great video, Preso! Cheers! 👍😁👍
Thanks. I still have a few to make but they will have the 3D printed centre section. I made one the other day and I have reached the conclusion that 316 stainless steel is the work of the devil. Not for the faint of heart apparently.
Regards,
Mark
Nice one Preso 👍👏. Kudos to you mate for your kind donation to the wildlife conservation society 🎉
there is nothing more satisfying than making your own tools, very nice.
Exactly. My main motivation was to have a full set of die holders for both the lathe and for bench use that only need a single hex key to set the dies.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58what happens when you loose your Allen key, we get to watch you make 20 replacements? He he.
Very nice. No more T handles except for free hand where applicable in my shed. Glad to see someone understands why a die is split., so important when making a new bolt for a worn nut or threaded hole. Perhaps a Chorus of Kookaburras?
Unfortunately, a lot of my taps don't have male or female centres which makes it hard to emulate Joe Pie's method. I tried to grind a male centre on one of my small BA taps but I don't have a 5C collet that fits so I cannot even grind the point in my D Bit grinder. I may have to do them in my 4 Facet drill grinder instead.
Regards,
Mark
Wow, just amazing ingenuity Mark. But I really only watch for the wildlife vignettes ;)
Thanks for taking an interest in the wildlife. I found a tiny bearded dragon (lizard) in the workshop last week. They are sort of like a micro dinosaur!
Regards,
Mark
I always love those ends of video wildlife videos. Sounds like a great charity.
Wilvos is a worthy charity and they don't have any paid charity collection workers.100% of the donations go to the carers and the animals. I was stopped by a couple of charity workers who represented the deaf society and they told me that they were collecting funds to train more Auslan interpreters. I thought it was a worthwhile cause so I got some money out of my wallet but I was told that they only accepted credit card donations. I just wanted to give them the cash and I wasn't interested in the raffle they were promoting. It turned out that you had to agree to sign up to a payment plan and the workers were not volunteers, they were paid employees. At least with the Wilvos, I know that the donations aren't being diverted into someone's income stream.
Regards,
Mark
Great discussion/instruction/builds
Thanks Chuck. I just parkerised all the bits today and they turned out great. I also machined one of the stainless 3D printed versions and man, that stainless is tough stuff to work with.
Regards,
Mark
Good one, Mark!
You are right, these are deceptively simple parts. Good on ya, and the future give away.
I thought I would have 10 of them made in one day! Sadly, not.
Regards,
Mark
Beautiful job Mark, I did a similar build for 1.0" dies. Not near as elegant as your project. Die holder with knurled handles silver brazed in place. Thank you for your animal conservation work.
Thanks Roger. My main motivation was to have all my threading gear with the same size and type of locking screws. I think I may have finally achieved that goal.
Regards,
Mark
As usual, Absolutely brilliant work! Thankyou Mark
Thanks Mark. I enjoyed the ball turning technique.
Great video and to see the tooling required to make the die holders it was great very interesting all together .
Brilliant job Mark ! The die holders look great and are much stronger and better than a pot metal Chinese ones. I'm going to have a go at making a couple of those for a one and a half, and an inch dies. My late brother was apprenticed at L.A.L. Taps and dies ( Lehman, Archer and Lane ) as a precision thread grinder and they not only made taps and dies, but a myriad of other things thread related including tap wrenches and die holders Your income going to the wildlife charity is a really good use of it. Cheers from one old craft teacher to an other!
Thanks. I have always been fascinated by the thread grinding process. It seems counterintuitive to try to achieve accurate thread profiles with something as brittle and porous as a grinding wheel but clearly it's the go to method if you want clean and polished threads.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 yes Mark it certainly is counterintuitive because we think of a " grinding wheel" in terms of those we use for general grinding jobs. But I can remember as a young teenager ( around 12 or 13, I'm 70 now lol ) seeing largish bits of broken one foot diameter 1/8" thick thread grinding wheels ( 300 x 3.2 mm) that my brother brought home from work, of such a hard white ceramic like material that had very fine grit structure and had tapered angled sides to what I now know would have been 55 degree included angles for grinding Whitworth and BSF thread forms. So very different from what we know as an abrasive wheel. It's no wonder they produced such nicely polished threads on taps. My brother said it was very dangerous when one of those wheels exploded even with extensive guarding. When they shattered those bits that got past the guards were almost lethal and quite a few men were injured in that way before plastics like "Lexan" were introduced to reduce the chances of injury while still being able to see the work progressing. Cheers to you Mark, Sam in England.
Great job Preso
You are amazing mate!
This is a great little project, but that roundover top on the original one is sweet.
Great project. Even if the cheap ones you could buy weren't so cheap, making them is fun, at least for me. So why not make them, have some fun, and have a nice tool in the end.
Exactly! There's nothing more satisfying that making something that works. My main motivation was to have one tool for adjusting all my die holders instead of having to find a correct sized screwdriver or rummaging though my hex keys looking for the right one.
Regards,
Mark
Wonderful video Mark. Wonderful problem solving series with a brilliant tool as a prize. Cheers from Canada
Lots of very skilled work, and quite an array of tools, but sure resulted in some very elegant holders. I think you now need an equally elegant, fitted box to hold them.
Sadly, I am one of those "chuck it in a drawer" types. Maybe for the giveaways I will need to try harder.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 At least you should have your name and date on them. I had some tools several generations old that were shop made and would have loved to see the makers name and date, absolute joy to use.
Hi,Mark. I also have a homemade ball turner based on a boring head. On mine I have a grub screw drilled and threaded into the opposite end of the the incremental screw thread that enables me to adjust the diametrical setting from the opposite side to the increment dial. The grub screw needs to be loctited in situ.
I sort of pressed that boring head into service specifically to make the die holder bodies but I didn't spend a lot of time looking into how I could modify it to make it more suited to the task. The MT3 arbor is hardened and part of the body so I couldn't even turn it parallel. I haven't checked to see how hard the other parts are. If I can modify it I will have a go later.
Regards,
Mark
Thank you.
Outstanding machining and outstanding care for wildlife. Thank you Mark for all you do. 👏👏👍😀
Thanks 👍
Regards,
Mark
Mark….. great tool video…. And a very entertaining wildlife epilogue 👏👏👏
We have those green-backed, blue-head-banded insect eaters down here in Sydney.
0400 hrs in summer…
Chee-chee-chee….
Chee-chee-chee
And so on….
Better than any alarm clock
🤣
Anyhoo, thanks for sharing. I’m particularly interested in the various 316L printed bits. Lots of possibilities there eh?
Regards
Robert
They are the blue faced honey eaters. They look a bit creepy close up but they are more desirable than the horrid noisy miners.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58
Yep. Very pretty suite of calls too. Bit shy down here…. but consistent in their pre-dawn calls.
Robert
I think it should be a "Bench" of Kookaburra's ; )
Nice work on those holders, Few people seem to know what those screws are for.
Thanks. I have noticed that a lot of cheaper dies aren't of the split type so they cannot be adjusted.
Regards,
Mark
DIE HOLDERS. Tools that are made to last.
Hello Preso, thanks for putting this together. Recently I set out to try turning a ball for the first time, and was surprised at the number of ways it’s possible to mis-set the equipment. Also, I had to make do without a DRO. But, I like a challenge. 👍
I think that DRO's are great but for many years I had to use the lathes in the school workshops for my personal projects (on weekends) but none of them had DRO's fitted. It does teach you about backlash and how to account for it and if the leadscrews are in good condition you can still do very precise work.
Regards,
Mark
Or else, how to make what looks like a simple tool is in fact complicated. But they are a very nice give away.
You can of course make a more simplified version of this tool. The goal is to demonstrate different approaches and then the viewer can pick and choose how much detail the tool needs to have to function well.
Regards,
Mark
Those are really excellent die holders. I have some of the purchased ones and they are rubbish. Definitely will try your technique and make some better ones sometime. Cheers.
I am sure there are very good die holders still made commercially. There are probably a lot kicking around in estate sales and flea markets too but the problem is still that they are all different and they all need different types of tools to set the dies.
Regards,
Mark
Wow! Can't believe you're only 40k subscribers! I keep thinking you must be up there with blondihacks with the quality of your content 😂 congrats though that's a real accomplishment! You're one of my favorite machining channels and so pleasant to watch. By the way, I'm sure I'm not the first to comment on this but I looked it up and a group of kookaburras is called a riot (like a laugh) go figure 😂
Thank you for the kind feedback. I do enjoy making the videos and I like the idea that I can continue with my teaching duties, but just not in the classroom. I believe that making things is good for one's mental health. I had not checked with the collective noun for Kookaburras. I didn't think that one would exist! The one that I always got a laugh from was a "smack" of jellyfish. 😁
Regards,
Mark
Nice one .. i have looked at my old P&N die holders . I baught 50 years ago .still at school .with money from my first weekend job . Think how did they do it ... Still have the scriber and rule .from the same time .. thats where it all started .. oh and a wonderful industrial arts teacher .. thankyou toy teachers
P&N are still around and although it's expensive it's still very good quality. I was looking at some P&N dies to go with the holders and they are around $35 each for the 1" diameter dies. I may just buy a few each fortnight and slowly build up my stock. I am glad you had a good Industrial Arts teacher. Sadly, here in Queensland, Griffith Uni scrapped their Industrial Arts course about 15 years ago. Most of the current cohort are poorly trained and or in some cases, untrained but learning on the job so to speak. I am glad I got out when I did.
Regards,
Mark
Good one Mark, another thing for me to add to the list of tools to make. 🙄 Keep up the great work
As you like wildlife you might like to see some in my garden in London. They are completely wild but used to being fed by me. My last video is of one of this years cubs, it being spring here, being extremely tolerant of my intrusion. 😉
There are a few engineeringly interest things further down the list if the wildlife doesn't interest.
I think we are very fortunate to be able to share the environment with native animals. I don't think I could live in an apartment or an inner city area. I had to stay for a few days in inner city Melbourne while the F1 race was on. It was quite depressing with so much concrete and hardly any trees. I have been in London a few times and it's nice that the greenery has been preserved.
Regards,
Mark
Love your channel and learning more, great to see you enjoying and looking after the wildlife 👍🏴
Thanks 👍
Regards,
Preso
Neat! How about a "giggle" of kookaburras?
When tracing in the lathe it is important the stylus has a similar nose radius as the tool. CNC lathes ask for tool nose radius and tip geometry in order to accurately produce the finished part.
Nice collection you got there now. You are absolutely right those alloy die holders are garbage,have sharp edges feel horrible to use.always satisfying using shop made tools
I had to tap the axle spindle on my old dodge truck. The die was HUGE! So I had to sit down when I saw the cost of the die holder. So I made one out of stainless steel and bronze. Yours has more curves.
Curves are good!
Regards,
Mark
They are amazing, and when parkerized they do look like a million dollars :) I actually have a similar die holder shop-made by some unknown craftsman in the USSR, but mine is beefy, 25 cm long, and machined from a single steel bar. I guess converting half the material into chips was not a problem in that age. Still, making it from a solid bar allowed for some thick and beautiful tapered handles.
I wonder if the tool you have was roughly forged first and then finish machined all over. Forging is always going to create a stronger tool because the crystal structure will flow around the form.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 Could be, but I doubt it. It looks too uniform for that. I think whoever made it just grabbed a bar of metal from the factory stockpile.
What a really interesting video Mark many thanks for taking the time to make it.
Thanks. I want to be more like Stefan G.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 I think you there with you own style
Thanks Mark. Wish I'd seen this a while ago as I wanted a custom handle for a 22mm die. Don't remember what the outside dimension is at the moment. About 2". I turned the round "ring" bit in the middle from round stock, unfortunately, and there it sat with me trying to work out how to get the "spigots" for the handles onto the ring. The ring itself isn't thick enough to take a suitable thread, so some form of extension would need to be welded on. Alternatively, I adopt your method and start again from flat stock. I have a rudimentary ball turner, made in Rhodesia, to fit a Myford SL 7 lathe cross slide and, fortunately, it'll fit my ML 7 too. So, back to the drawing board. Thanks for the video and ideas from "up over" in Canada's banana belt.
🤞 🇨🇦🍌🥋🕊🇺🇦🕊🇦🇺🪃👍
P.s. Mark, do you have a video on the ball turner using a boring head? I've looked through your listed ones but don't seem to be able to find one. If there is one can you point me at it, please? Thanks.
I did see a video by Artisan Makes where he welded the handles onto a machined ring for use as a die holder. He actually released that video while I was making mine. ruclips.net/video/fOPxtAM8VyQ/видео.html
I didn't make a video on the ball turner using the boring head. There are lots of those out there already. I think a fairly acceptable version of the die holder could be made from flat bar stock and the centre section could be made octagonal with the arm sockets turned like I made mine.
Regards,
Mark
👍👍😎👍👍
Great method Mark. I'm amazed you're not already well over 40k subs, you are a great teacher even in retirement. Good on ya for supporting the wildlife mate. Whata lovely man.
Thank you for the kind feedback. Unfortunately, we haven't always done a great job of looking after our native species and they are so unique that they need all the help they can get.
Regards,
Mark
"Good on ya" for donating to and supporting wildlife in your area! This is a great project--very nicely done! I took note of both Max Grant's and your tracing attachment in my good ideas file. I think with the tracer, you need to have tool tip match the stylus fairly closely in radius etc. to get consistent results. For the roughing cuts, I have read about and tried a few times the "kellering machining" approach where you use CAD or your own drawings to figure out X and Z points that you can drive to with (typically) a parting tool so that it roughs out the shape you are making, leaving a stair-step result. You generally move over in Z less than the width of the parting tool for each step. In my case, I have roughed out using that and then just filed on the lathe to get the result I wanted. You can be surprisingly accurate since you are at the net shape when you hit the bottom of the stair-steps.
I have one of Eccentric Engineering's freehand turning systems. It has a very good tracing arm and the stylus is exactly the same profile as the pre-ground tool but it was never going to be suitable for this job. I have used the step turning method before and I can generate the co-ordinates using CorelDraw or Autodesk Inventor. I first used it when I had to make the compressor inlet for a model jet engine. The co-ordinates were published with the build article and the profile had to be parabolic and then it had to follow the profile of the compressor wheel with about 0.1mm clearance so it was somewhat "stressful".
Regards,
Mark
Hey Mark , thanks for taking care of our wildlife , I also have bird baths and they are a hoot . Cheers
Thanks. We have two bird baths but they seem to prefer the one with the perch over the top. I think with wildlife it's a case of "if you build it, they will come".
Regards,
Mark
Really nice work. Thanks for sharing it. I couldn’t help notice the die holder for the tail stock. Did you make it? Do you happen to have a video of it? Thanks!
I did make the die holder for the tailstock. It was based on one that I saw being made on a channel called Matty's Workshop. ruclips.net/video/sZ0zSltatoA/видео.html
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58
Thanks.
Great Video Mark. I made a similar ball turner with a circular carbide tip. Works ok. Any pet Crocs up your way?
There was a rumoured croc sighting in the Noosa River a few years ago but it was never confirmed and the original source of the rumour might have been on the "sauce" 😁
I did make a tool holder for the new ball turner that had a round 6mm HSS tool but on the interrupted cut it produced a lot of chatter. I tried it out on some round aluminium stock and it worked great. I will eventually get some button inserts for it though.
Regards,
Mark
I have a bunch of hex style dies but I don't have any die holders and I am not fond of the cheap crap die holders that are available. Would really like to make my own die holders but I am not a highly skilled machinist, lets just say that I am newbie…greener than grass. Perhaps I should purchase some button dies.
If you were able to model a die holder with a hex in the centre you could have it 3D printed in metal with a fair degree of accuracy. I deliberately modelled the parts for the 3D printed version slightly undersize so I could finish machine the bores for the button dies but for a hex die you don't really need that degree of accuracy. If it were me, I would 3D print one in plastic first just to confirm the sizes and then send it off to a company like Shapeways to have it printed in brass perhaps?
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58I’m currently learning FreeCad for 3D. I don't have a 3D printer but I am in the process of building one from scratch. It will be just a matter of time, a little bit of trial and error, before I can order a metal 3D print from a reputable company. Thank you for your suggestion.
Why did you put the rectangular stock in the 4-jaw in that weird way instead of just turning the stock 45° and clamping it on the flats like you did when you turned the round ends?
Mainly because the boring tool would not be able to pass right through the stock. Two of the jaws would be in the path of the boring tool. The other reason is that it's much quicker and easier to align the centre of the bore without needing a dial indicator if you press the part up against the face of the chuck body.
Regards,
Mark
Mark, nice work & solutions for the build process of those pieces.
Maybe the collective for Kookaburra's should be a "comedy" due to the laughter...
Keep the awesome content coming, Preso!
I think the Ling Hunt logo is a stylized SCUBA flag with the spearfishing spear through the fish skeleton representing the diagonal bar.
That little detail would have gone right over my head. I am definitely not a fishing guy. My father was. He had the whole 9 yards. Boat, multiple outboard motors and endless amounts of tackle and fishing rods. In my younger years you could actually catch fish easily and we would sometimes come home with 20 or 30 nice sized fish but the river where I live was fished out 20 years ago and most of the mangroves have been removed for "water front land". Now the boats have to be able to go offshore and it's no longer a case of just launching a small dinghy and putting about the sandbanks.
Regards,
Mark
But its drowning bait while drinking beer.
That's true. However, my last ever fishing trip was an offshore charter with a work group. I came home with no fish, bruised knees from banging up against the gunwhales in the 1.5 metre swell and to cap it off I lost my breakfast when I lost sight of the horizon for 30 seconds! But we did have a few beers when we got back on solid ground.
Regards,
Mark
Preso, another good vid mate. But damn I have enough on the to do list. Cheers mate. FYI The collective for kookaburras is ' A Riot' cheers Tom R
Thanks. I shall have to remember what to call our resident group of kookaburras.
Regards,
Mark
Thank you again Mark Great Job, A collective of Kookaburras are called a flock or a riot. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
There’s a reason it’s called “fishing” and not “catching”.
I think I would prefer to pay a professional to catch my fish for me! 😁
Regards,
Mark
well Mark i am sorry no one else seed any thing to you but the way you have got the workpiece held in the 4 jaw chuck is very doggie and could come out at any time you know this and so do i i for the life of me can not work out why you would do this and not mount it in the jaws properly other than to generate comments
nice tool in the end Cheers
Respectfully, I would have to disagree. The method I used to hold the stock is unconventional but it works. The key is to keep the clamping force low so as to not put any sideways stress on the slots where the jaws slide. I did machine the first version of the tool holding the stock in the conventional way but it took nearly twice as long to centre the workpiece and it's hard to ensure that the front face of the stock is perpendicular to the axis of the spindle.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 well Mark and thanks for the reply I still disagree with you also you even say you can't grip it with any force as such cantering as an excuse but when push comes to shove its not right cantering and parallel can be achieved quite quickly using similar methods
Centre punch stock hold in chuck with a centre in tail stock tightly jaws and indercate in I have done this and it works for me tap face in the chuck E C T you have done this also and as you have seed on many times practice makes pirfict Cheers
A "nuisance" of kookaburras??
Apparently they are a "riot". They can be a nuisance when they start up at 4am in the summer.
Regards,
Mark
Why all that trouble? What is wrong with square shape ?
Square is practical and easy and I don't blame anyone for making a quick and simple version of this type of tool. Sadly, I am one of those sad individuals that need to overcomplicate a project. As always though, you can pick and choose how much or how little of the process you want to include in your own version.
Regards,
Mark