Nickel and diming....

This project has been nickeling and diming me for years on my time but now I figured I should just hammer down and build it because I have the tools to do it...

When I started this concept a few years ago with my brother, I knew I could finish it quickly and it would turn out like the Gravity bike and everyone would get stoked but the more I ran with the concept and split off with my brother the more I realized I was becoming a machinist for stuff but I was still missing the CNC part to really make my parts stand out...

I can machine anything by hand to a point but it often requires special attention on things like finish work because its not a perfect smooth finish but cnc offers you a showcase of the machining effort you have put in to it, its why people love aircraft parts and crazy cnc bicycle and motorcycle parts. Theres something about leaving the raw machine marks all over it and not polishing it to a glass like finish that sometime once anodized looks like plastic...

The more I left it sit on the frame table the more it would bug me looking at it but my customers come first and its not to say that I am short on work, what you see on my blog is about 20% of the projects I can show without getting sued or thrown in jail, so it took the back burner... maybe not even the back burner, maybe almost refrigerator with a cover over it...

The day came where after some sweet wheelin and dealin I scored the CNC Bridgeport Boss 10 and did the retro fit to a brand new drive and PLC ready to take on the most complex jobs, then came the teaming up with Autodesk's new company called HSMworks which links to Solidworks and Inventor for CAM ( see the old blog posts for more details) and with those 2 things the door finally opened on making crazy parts a reality... No paying for machining that I can't afford... I would do it myself and let it run all night on crazy parts.

   This is the project my brother and I came up with to build and I have been running with it since it was sketched... Lots still to come but day by day this thing is coming together....

                              

 

So come along with my machining adventure in the next weeks to see this beast come to life...

Machining aluminum softjaws to hold a expanding mandrel

plus it makes a perfect origin 0,0 right away after cutting 

I wouldn't call them softjaws really because it would still hurt if you got them thrown at you, but in the machining world anything made of Aluminum is called SOFT... ha, whatever....

These are the hub blanks Liem made on the Lathe using HSMworks Lathe Cam software

As you can see the one side of the hub was done but the other side needed to be hollowed out, plus I wanted disc rotor mounts and because the Haas Lathe we did the work on didn't have live tooling we were stuck doing it this way.

This is the expanding mandrel in my hand

 

Perfect fit ready for the hub.

Here we go... clearing it out with a pocketing cutting feature.

I didn't use a big end mill because I didn't want a lot of cutting pressure to cause it to possible spin or move on the mandrel...

Don't call me a pussy

 

switched over to a long 12mm ball end mill with relief to do this deep cut

Looks great but it was ringing like crazy so I put this wrist band I got from Autodesk University on it to reduce the chatter, perfect!

VIP status...

check that out!!!

With the mounts for the floating rotor!

On to the next parts

Dropouts on this bike are a wild one too, if you scroll up to the 3d model of the bike you will see the crazy machined dropouts so here we go... making chips.

 

cutting away..

I really like the look of ball endmilling the radius in to things and also the radius on these parts varies so theres no way I could use a normal tool

At the end I did a webbing and the part was held in by a few pieces and then I cut it out with a aviation shear... easy and fast and then I made another side in a mirrored image.

Thinking time... Sometimes its easier to draw and look at a part then using crazy modeling software.

I feel that a lot of newer engineers don't understand how important this is... you don't always need to sit and stare at the computer to make parts, go out in the shop and smell the oil.

Surplus Lockheed 6-4 Titanium

Blocks of it ready to become a king pin steering set up for the cable steering front end.

I really freestyled this part, I hope it works...

Roughing Titanium is a learning experience

If you don't machine it a lot it can be very costly if you mess up...

Called up Tom at Ox Tool to make sure I had everything right, hes rattled off the numbers on the phone by memory....

.375 depth of cut - 8 ipm at about 900 RPM with a .120 step over with a 4+ flute endmill 

He knew it... maybe he has done it before....

Side one getting some ball endmilling

and some clean up in the bearing pockets, you will see in the next weeks how this part works. 

it worked out pretty good, have to debur it and do some finish work on it but I think it will work to get the bike on the ground as a roller, just think this could have been some crazy part at Lockheed... but they were going to scrap it so I put some life back in it by making a mini F22 Raptor style steering link part... Kind of like Lockheed Skunkworks around here...

 

I got so excited about aerospace stuff I had to make a cart....

Built this beast in a few hours out of the junk laying in the off cut pile next to the saw

MLS Aerospace division just got a fresh new cart, off to powdercoating.

 

pushing the limits of perfection

I received an email from a younger aged welder ( like myself ) with a bunch of questions. He was asking about different levels of measurement tolerances on welded parts I work on and tips about fixturing projects.

 Its really not a very specific question that I could give an answer to because every project I do is so very different and working with such a huge range of materials causes it to be always changing, especially being a prototype fabricator because its more sometimes about the look and relatively close tolerances for testing with great efforts to keep the cost of time and money down.

A good example is the Top Speed bike I am building. The tubes on that bike are first rolled with a slight curve then some how with my tricky ways, machines, a bit of magic and wacky bending dies, I am able to put tight bends on the long curved tube. This kind of bending is very complex in a lot of ways both in measuring and in manufacturing.
The odds of hitting exact numbers that Solidworks is giving me on the blueprint is next to impossible, I am close but never exact, it then become more visual and getting the look and flow of the frame then getting the exact numbers ( I would have a pile of bad chromoly tubes touching the moon if I tried to get it perfect like the computer model )

Love my Starrett stuff - worth every penny!! 

But when it comes to other projects for clients of the aerospace, medical, and science world, the level of expectations are very high so I then turn the attention to the numbers and getting it near or exactly what the customer expects.

Thats my job, and I think I do a good job at it !

Some projects come in that almost make me cry looking at the blue prints, because they expect near perfect things ( most of the time it seems these are not important things needing perfection and sometime are just errors on blueprints )
Learning from the old dudes over the years has stoked me out and stressed me out ( more on the stressed ) because there is those days where you build for days, weeks and months on a project only to find out things moved while welding, machining or handling and now you gotta fix them.

Some of the ideas we come up with to fix them scare or surprise me, thats when the years of experience come in...
Thats will be a great blog post of another day...

On a normal day to day I find myself holding very tight tolerances of measurements mostly because I make a lot of laboratory stuff where mishaps can throw everything off.  Some times the worst looking weld seems to be the straightest and strongest and other days when you don't drink 15 cups of coffee and 2 cans of Mt. Dew at 5 AM before welding, things look great and are some times straight too.

Either way the lesson is " Metal loves to move " ( people in to having fun in large groups while drinking a lot of beer (  if you read that without the punctuation, it covered 2 lessons in one))

These Titanium Elbows have very tight measurements in all ways so the fixturing is design  to be very restrictive to hold them in to the shape while welding and cooling. That leads to another problem of being able to get the torch in there to weld the parts and preform good quality welds.

 If you seen the fixture that I use to weld these, you would ask how do you even weld it all in there, there is no room for the torch ? I was kinda happy with the welds for how restrictive the fixture was to welding, no show winners but defiantly not leakers and thats what matters to the customer.  The tolerance is .008 +/-

I should have put a penny next to these Titanium parts so you know how small they are!

The Ti tube going in to and the bottom is a bit smaller then a wood pencil.

 the part on the left is boarder line being to short 

the part on the right is board line being to long

They both pass but on the limits

 ( side by side makes it easier to compare for the photo)

The measurement tolerance on these Titanium parts is .003" +/- or about 0.08 mm +/-

For you kids out there - thats the thickness of a piece of paper

 Titanium tubes with 2 - 360 deg. welds holding parts to the blueprint specs while being leak-free

I love these... I do thousands of them in all different sizes and shapes

Skill testers and good time to listen to books on tape!

Well that didn't answer any questions so now that I am done writing I see its kinda a waste of a post.

But its getting posted anyways regardless.

Enjoy 

Espresso Machine build is coming soon!!! 

Get ready

Cutting a Classic

Its so hard to hold a grinder to a Lightspeed Titanium Bicycle and start cutting.

The frame had already been welded after being hit by a vehicle so making the cuts was a bit easier, knowing she would have been headed to the recycling bin.

Check it out

Titanium throws some rad sparks

Check it

The dropouts have a hanger on it just incase you want to throw some gears back on it

And how could we forget the bottle opener on the left side.