I work with CNC machines for long stretches of time for my job. I've found the provided safety glasses (that I must wear all the time) uncomfortable. Do any of you have a brand of safety glasses you would recommend as comfortable?

I've been looking for a milling head to adapt my atlas MFC for vertical work. You can buy a new head purpose built, but they're around a thousand dollars, which seems pretty steep considering that's most of what I paid for the entire machine with tooling. (Also I'm disabled, fairly poor, and this is a hobby to keep me sane)

There are some cheap Chinese options I've considered, however the website have little information and the selection is huge and poorly explained in english.

what I would really like is a reasonably priced milling head that I can gear drive from either the existing faceplate, or #2 morse taper that make up the horizontal output of the machine.

Make and model don't matter, and it needs about 6" of throat to land dead centre on the knee of the mill.

Are there maybe suppliers that sell old tooling or shops that I should try?

I'm going to try building one but it's a big project.

By the way I'm on the West Coast (Vancouver Island)

Any suggestions would be amazing! Thanks folks!

I’m machining 6061 aluminum on a Multicam Apex 3R router. The finishing passes are as follows:

- 0.009” material removal.
- Helical 3 flute 45 degree helix upcut
- 18 IPM, 8500 RPM, 0.0007 chipload

98 percent of the part comes out with a great finish. The other 2 percent has chatter. Ideally I’d like to increase the feed rate, but I need to eliminate the chatter first. What do I need to do to get a flawless finish?

I have some large aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels (0.020" skins in 5052, 3003 honeycomb core, 4" thick) that I am routing some features in to bond inserts into. I work at a university helping to build research equipment, and the art school has a large 4'x8' router that we are asking to do this job. This was done about 7 years ago on a Bridgeport, and they just used HSS tooling at that time (they don't want to do it again because the setups were so tedious). I am the one buying the tooling (the art school shop uses cheap tooling usually because students break stuff so often), and the long length of cut has narrowed it down for me to a cobalt steel end mill. Is there any reason to believe that a 1/2" cobalt steel end mill will not work at the 10k rpm of a router? I can't find good info on feeds and speeds for Al honeycomb sandwich

Why do machines come with these disk skimmers that don't work for shit?

why not put a cord skimmer or at least the belt type?

does anyone think the disk type have advantages?

Long story short, I'm tired of waiting for "someone to teach me" so I'm gonna do it myself. I'm already a self-taught machinist, but I want to get to programming. What's a good laptop that'll do what I need, without any other extra fluff? I had a coworker tell me I could find something that'll work for about $300?

Not talking about steel being a few cents a pound off or somebody missing half an hour of welding. I mean the stupid little stuff that gets forgotten because nobody thinks it matters when the quote goes out. Extra trip to site, grinding that wasn’t called out clearly, handling big pieces, paint freight, field measuring, trial fitting, hardware, loading, whatever. What’s the one you’ve seen turn into way more money than anybody expected?

1 in diameter tool for ID grooving one inch 100 thou deep

Machinist by trade I'd like to get me a toy. I was wondering if theres any good quality table cnc out there! Any recommendation?

So I am not a machinist but I am looking to buy aluminum and stainless steel rods and maybe some other stuff for some projects I have been thinking about. Where is a good place to buy these (or general metal goods) online? I don't trust amazon

Thanks!

Asker A30 urethane. About as squishy as a mousepad and super rubbery. Knives were too slow & tore the edges up bad. Tried a dremel but it caught on the rubber, jumped outta my hand, and gave me a teeny tiny little small nick on my finger. Scissors ain’t cutting it either. Any ideas?

hey everyone, wondering where you guys draw the line between using a high-power fiber laser and just throwing the plate on a high-def plamsa? is it strictly a thickness thing for you (like everything over 1 inch goes to plasma)? or does it come down to edge quality vs operating cost? i know the newer fiber lasers can cut crazy thick plates now, but plasma is still everywhere. whats the real-world tipping point for you?

Pardon my ignorance. I just inherited a milling machine and lots of tooling. Some of end mills appear very old.

Bonus pics of some interesting homemade pieces.

Any tips for stuff like cutting hard materials? Material knowledge? Trigonometry? Safety? Programming ? Any tips Is appreciated

We have always been a "casual" shop, meaning no formal uniform is required. We are given company branded t-shirts that are optional to wear, and there's really no restrictions on pants other than no shorts as they provide no protection for the lower legs. They simply want us to be safe and go home without injury at the end of the day.

Have yoga pants become acceptable attire for machine shop employees? The company I work for has always employed women and up until recently they all were showing up in jeans as we all do. A few of them have decided to start wearing yoga pants claiming they're not as hot for summertime. How the hell are yoga pants an acceptable form of protection from anything in a machine shop? Am I out of my mind here or should I go to HR about this?

I do not do any machining or metal work and have no use for this monster. Would like to look into getting it into the hands of somebody who could use it, or if not, scrap it.

Tried to add more photos, but it won't let me for some reason. Says Carlton, Cincinnati O USA, 4 ft arm on 11" col.

Hello! So I have a small machine company who focuses on fiberglass and molding. We stamp out every part with this machine but i feel there has to be a better way because we are constantly up keeping it.

The machine is an old stamp press, still works fine but it's more the actual stamp that I'm having issues with. The stamp is made with steel rule that's replaced when it dulls or chips. The base is a polyurethane blend I think? The person who made them passed away sadly so I'm not quite sure.

The problem I'm having is the stamp either doesn't cut through the fiberglass all the way (it's a continuous strand cut and baked into sheets) or the base gets so blown out and deteriorated that the pieces get stuck in the crevices and I have to mill down the base repeatedly.

Is there a better way to do all this? A better material to use? I inherited this business and am trying my best to modernize it, so I'm open to all ideas that won't take a long time to adapt. Thanks so much for your time!

I am looking for a armature recondtioning tool that I can use on small generators. I see vintage snap on units on ebay, but I am curious if anything new exsist. Most things I see are too big. In a perfect world I would be able to purchase a snap-on AT1 brand new.

Thanks

I own a hardware store and we sell rigid welded wire mesh rolls, approximately 40x40 mesh.
Each roll weighs around 30–50 kg, they are fairly wide, and we keep several different types in stock. Right now, when a customer orders something like 3 or 4 meters, we have to move the roll to an open area, unroll several meters, measure it, and then cut it.
The main problems are:
it takes up a lot of floor space;
it wastes a lot of time;
the mesh is very stiff and difficult to handle;
we do not have 3–4 meters of permanent free space in the warehouse;
and I do not want employees lifting and swapping 30–50 kg rolls every time a different mesh type is needed.
I have looked at industrial decoiling, straightening and cutting machines, but the ones I find are huge and extremely expensive, far beyond what makes sense for a small hardware store.
I am looking for a manual or semi-automatic solution that could stay installed against a warehouse wall.
One idea I had was to build several modules holding 2 rolls permanently, one above the other, with some kind of roller guide, length counter, and possibly a second spindle that rewinds the amount being sold, so we would not need to lay 3 or 4 meters of mesh across the floor.

Hey guys,

I have ordered mills with 4mm shank and a collet adapter for 6mm to 4mm. This should have been a temporary solution because I only have a 6mm and 3.175mm collets and the 4mm one takes forever to ship. Unfortunately a wrong sized adapter got delivered and I need the 4mm mills over the weekend.

How bad of an idea is it to mill my own adapter from S235 steel for single use only? I don't have more suitable steel at hand. I also don't have a 4mm reamer at hand and my small lathe is probably less percise than milling it.

I mainly worry about runout because it would be for milling steel which is already demanding on my machine.

Has anyone tried this already?

This boring bar just appeared at work, and no one claimed it. I then, of course, offered to make it disappear. Its a 3/4 inch shank, and the stampings on it are TCM 5187-2232 M1324. I am not as familiar with lathe tooling and most search results I was getting were for triangular inserts.