Max Coulter
Clock Project
The MECH200B Clock Project involved the fabrication of 4 different parts using the manual lathe, manual mill, CNC mill, and other manufacturing machines over the course of 7 weeks. The parts include the aluminum base, brass and steel pencil holders, and the acrylic clock face.
Brass Pencil Holder
The brass pencil holder required the use of the vertical bandsaw to cut raw stock, and the manual lathe to face, turn, drill, and cut threads.
What I Learned
Before the clock project, I had never used a manual lathe before. I didn't get in to work on the lathe myself until a few weeks after the demo, and I didn't realize how little I remembered until my classmate and I tried to cut a piece of stock in the reverse direction. This would lead into a series of revelations concerning just about every part of the lathe, so I'll shorten it into a few key points that I might recommend to a future MECH200B student.
-
My Advice For Future Students
-
Look over the controls of the lathe before you begin. Every lever looks similar, and not everything has a label on it.​
-
Always check the speed of the machine when you start a new process (facing, turning, tapping, etc.) If it's your first time on the lathe, you won't have any intuition about what the different speeds should look like for each operation, so always check when starting something new.
-
Give yourself a made-up target number before you get within the actual tolerance of the feature to see if you can hit it. If you can hit your made-up measurement, you can hit the real one too.
-
Steel Pencil Holder
The steel pencil holder required the use of the vertical bandsaw to cut raw stock, and the manual lathe to face, turn, drill, and cut threads.
What I Learned
Once I had finished my first brass piece (foreshadowing), I moved on to the steel pencil holder. This time, I felt like I knew the lathe controls much better and was feeling a lot more confident. The main difference between the steel part and the brass is the threading. The brass piece has an external boss with die-cut threads, and the steel piece has internal threads cut with a tap. Luckily, the steel part went smoothly as I predicted, thanks to some key things I implemented from my struggles with the brass piece.
-
My Advice For Future Students
-
Be extremely cautious when drilling on the lathe. Get extra familiar with the depth gauge on the quill, and the true beginning of the cutting edge on each bit. On the brass piece, I had drilled my hole too deep because of a miscalculation of where the cutting edge actually began.​
-
When cutting threads, know the plan and commit to every step. With both the brass and steel pieces, the timing of the start and stop of the lathe is important to ensure the threads are of proper length and nothing crashes into anything. You can only thread something once, which means the die/tap has to come out the same way it went in.
-
Aluminum Base
The aluminum base required the use of the horizontal bandsaw to cut raw stock, the manual mill to drill a countersink and counterbore, and the CNC mill to cut an angled channel and engrave.
What I Learned
Coming into the clock project, I only had experience working with a large, open-table CNC machine, so I knew what the process of cutting should look like, but I didn't know exactly how to control the mill manually. My experience with the manual lathe beforehand was definitely helpful for things like the DRO and tool changing.
-
My Advice For Future Students
-
Once you've learned your way around one machine, you'll be able to pick up the next one much quicker. The first time I got on a mill was maybe three weeks after my demo, but I still felt much more prepared than my first time on the lathe.​
-
Always be aware of which way the part is going to move relative to the tool when using the power feed. It's easier than you think to catch yourself staring at the setup thinking you're about to move the cutting bit instead of the part itself.
-
Take your time using the edge finder. If you move the part into the edge finder too quickly, it's hard to see at what exact point it jumps to the center.
-