Week 2
Week 2 was slower than I would have liked. My plan was to square and dimension a ~2”-inch cube of aluminum on the manual mill to see how precise I can get. To do that I need to rough cut small blocks from a larger block of aluminum. The small blocks are too small for the vise on the horizontal bandsaw; I need to tack-weld them to a long square tube, which is big enough for the vise. Unfortunately the TIG welder is offline (needs new argon tank) until next week (hopefully). That means I can’t use the mill or even practice welding.
On the bright side, I got several new toys:
Kennametal shell mill with 1.5” cutting diameter
Also, I made a trip down to Alan Steel to pick up two off-cuts of steel and aluminum tubing.
Show and tell
Photo 1
Last week I had difficulty with my welds, partly because I didn’t properly remove the mill scale from the metal. This week I used a flap disc (instead of a wire cup brush) with my angle grinder to remove the scale. The difference is like night and day. Unfortunately the argon tank on the TIG welder is low, so I couldn’t try welding on the scale-free steel.
In photo 1, the left half of the steel plate shows the original mill scale. On the right half, the scale has been removed.
Photo 2
In order to practice squaring and dimensioning stock, I first had to rough cut a block of 10” x 6” x 4” aluminum on the horizontal bandsaw (photo 2). On my first attempt, the chips started to collect and caused the blade to bind. After tapping the block with a dead blow hammer to release the blade, I made a second, successful attempt by using a spray bottle of coolant to wash away the chips.