I love how much the indicator is moving around when you're just lightly touching the xy table at the beginning, after measuring it, as those tiny point contacts creep about under mild pressure.
@@occasionalmachinist As someone who scrapes a little, I think there's value to putting a whole bunch of time into a cheap wreck and cranking up your skills. I'd be scared to touch a valuable but worn machine tool. But an import table? Fantastic, and a great demonstration of how much you can improve it.
And that boys and girls is a good example of how to get your hands on a set of rough castings and learn to hand scrape to a finished product and fix any underlying problems that you may encounter along the way. The video makes it look easy but its long/hard work. Scraping is indeed a good skill to learn as in the future we are going to come across more and more machines in the "kit of parts" form in this world of competitive (aka cut-throat) pricing.
This bit was the easy part - in the next installment I then do the angled surfaces and square the axis up to each other while preserving the necessary geometric relationships. Scraping really is a skill that you need to be shown though. The difference between doing it effectively and just faffing about on the surface of the CI is pronounced.
As he says, at this price the table is a kit. If you have the time and patience, you can make a usable table. If you want it to work out of the box buy the Taiwanese Vertex. Yes, you will squeal a little at the price, but after 6 months you won't remember what exactly you paid and the quality will remain for years. An aside about mainland Chinese tooling. Check carefully as to all up price, especially the shipping. I discovered that I could buy a Vertex 4-inch Kurt style milling machine vice and an 8-inch rotary table for less than the mainland mystery equivalent. If you are not familiar with Vertex, they make industrial grade CNC tooling and vices as well other shop equipment. Their stuff comes with a parts list, a phone number, email address, and street address where they may be contacted. Cheers from NC/USA
Vertex stuff is good gear, widely used in Australia both in home workshops and industrial situations. Unfortunately, a lot of what you can get in the US is not available in Australia, so while there is a Vertex table of a similar size, I don't think anyone stocks it. Due to the low volume, I'm guessing that it would be punishingly expensive. This video was partly a check on the quality available in these budget products and partly because it was an opportunity to develop a bit of kit that I would like to try using at a later date - and I could practice my scraping skills too.
Good educational video, and I'd agree with you on the "kit of parts", especially after seeing the tolerances or rather lack thereof. But, I've got a question though about the 4mm pitch on the dial, by any chance do you have a dual thread/double start thread consisting of two 4mm pitch threads spaced 2 mm apart? I know it looks like a 2mm thread and your thread gauge will fit it perfectly, but if you wound a piece of string around the one thread does it skip a "thread", very much like it would if you did the same to a normal twist drill with 2 flutes? ( I hope I've described that adequately)
I did wonder that at first, but the website said 2mm pitch and I put a dial indicator against the table and wound a revolution and got 2mm. I did not think of the string check (no string in the shed) but that would have worked as well. My best guess is that the factory was running short of parts and rather than stop production, they just got a similar sized part used on a assembly somewhere else. There was another part substituted in on the same basis I think. Both have been corrected.
@@occasionalmachinist 👌I look forward to the next installment. BTW Do you know what a dual/double start thread is called in Aus, I haven't found any good reference to one on this side of the pacific?
@@Bobs-Wrigles5555 From memory, there is not a specific name for them, but if you talk about multi start, two start or dual start thread, most machinists will know what you are talking about. Just as a tease, I once did a 7 start thread...
I love how much the indicator is moving around when you're just lightly touching the xy table at the beginning, after measuring it, as those tiny point contacts creep about under mild pressure.
I mentioned this project to the guy who taught me to scrape, and after watching the video, be commented that I have far more patience than he does...
@@occasionalmachinist As someone who scrapes a little, I think there's value to putting a whole bunch of time into a cheap wreck and cranking up your skills. I'd be scared to touch a valuable but worn machine tool. But an import table? Fantastic, and a great demonstration of how much you can improve it.
@@smellsofbikes Thanks! It's actually a good size for turning into a silk purse.
And that boys and girls is a good example of how to get your hands on a set of rough castings and learn to hand scrape to a finished product and fix any underlying problems that you may encounter along the way. The video makes it look easy but its long/hard work. Scraping is indeed a good skill to learn as in the future we are going to come across more and more machines in the "kit of parts" form in this world of competitive (aka cut-throat) pricing.
This bit was the easy part - in the next installment I then do the angled surfaces and square the axis up to each other while preserving the necessary geometric relationships. Scraping really is a skill that you need to be shown though. The difference between doing it effectively and just faffing about on the surface of the CI is pronounced.
Thx for the vid.
As he says, at this price the table is a kit. If you have the time and patience, you can make a usable table. If you want it to work out of the box buy the Taiwanese Vertex. Yes, you will squeal a little at the price, but after 6 months you won't remember what exactly you paid and the quality will remain for years.
An aside about mainland Chinese tooling. Check carefully as to all up price, especially the shipping. I discovered that I could buy a Vertex 4-inch Kurt style milling machine vice and an 8-inch rotary table for less than the mainland mystery equivalent. If you are not familiar with Vertex, they make industrial grade CNC tooling and vices as well other shop equipment. Their stuff comes with a parts list, a phone number, email address, and street address where they may be contacted.
Cheers from NC/USA
Vertex stuff is good gear, widely used in Australia both in home workshops and industrial situations. Unfortunately, a lot of what you can get in the US is not available in Australia, so while there is a Vertex table of a similar size, I don't think anyone stocks it. Due to the low volume, I'm guessing that it would be punishingly expensive.
This video was partly a check on the quality available in these budget products and partly because it was an opportunity to develop a bit of kit that I would like to try using at a later date - and I could practice my scraping skills too.
I have a sensitive drill press on which the table has been hand scraped, scraping a black art
I was lucky to be instructed by Phil. Once you have the knack it is not hard, but getting that skill in the first place...
Good educational video, and I'd agree with you on the "kit of parts", especially after seeing the tolerances or rather lack thereof.
But, I've got a question though about the 4mm pitch on the dial, by any chance do you have a dual thread/double start thread consisting of two 4mm pitch threads spaced 2 mm apart?
I know it looks like a 2mm thread and your thread gauge will fit it perfectly, but if you wound a piece of string around the one thread does it skip a "thread", very much like it would if you did the same to a normal twist drill with 2 flutes?
( I hope I've described that adequately)
I did wonder that at first, but the website said 2mm pitch and I put a dial indicator against the table and wound a revolution and got 2mm. I did not think of the string check (no string in the shed) but that would have worked as well. My best guess is that the factory was running short of parts and rather than stop production, they just got a similar sized part used on a assembly somewhere else. There was another part substituted in on the same basis I think. Both have been corrected.
@@occasionalmachinist 👌I look forward to the next installment.
BTW Do you know what a dual/double start thread is called in Aus, I haven't found any good reference to one on this side of the pacific?
@@Bobs-Wrigles5555 From memory, there is not a specific name for them, but if you talk about multi start, two start or dual start thread, most machinists will know what you are talking about. Just as a tease, I once did a 7 start thread...
@@occasionalmachinist 😂😂