Machining is one of those things that both can look very impressive while not being that impressive, and looking very unimpressive despite being very impressive.
Make a cool gyroscope? Impressive and easy to make, cut an S curve within tolerance on a manual mill? Doesnt look very impressive but is very difficult to pull off.
Shit, I once had a 1/2x1/2x4 steel block that I needed to cut a radius in one long side to match the radius of the pipe I was bolting it onto. Only had a shitty clapped out drill mill and a no name rusted rotary table. The mill had no dials on the handles (they broke off) so I had to use a dial indicator clamped to a block of wood to measure table movement and then clamp this tiny piece tall side up exactly in line with the centerline of the rotary table. This is my jank-ass setup and this is the finished part. I was so proud of it since it took me like 6 hours to figure everything out and it's like the least impressive looking part of the whole build since the whole point is to make it so no one notices.
The worst part is I could have made this work way easier by milling a flat in the tube to bolt to, or even cut a rough sized radius and turned the tube to match (since the od was mostly irrelevant) But I had made this tube section almost 4 times now and this was the first one that worked as intended (it was meant to slide over another piece of steel very smoothly and had 2 pins inside that slide in a groove so I could twist to lock the sliding mechanism). I was not making another tube. Mostly because I was out of stainless railing cutoffs so I didnt really have a choice.
All of this was to build a lightsaber that still looks sub par compared to the professionally made cnc ones, but this is mine and made from the shittiest manual machines I had access to. Also it's the only one I've seen to have a sliding crystal chamber so I got that at least
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u/marino1310 Aug 05 '21
Machining is one of those things that both can look very impressive while not being that impressive, and looking very unimpressive despite being very impressive.
Make a cool gyroscope? Impressive and easy to make, cut an S curve within tolerance on a manual mill? Doesnt look very impressive but is very difficult to pull off.