Work holding

I next needed some way to position and hold work while machining. I wanted to have the left hand side fixed, and the right hand side floating, with both parts having a sacrificial piece that can be replaced if it were damaged.

Fixed holder

Using some left over pieces of aluminium, I machined some pockets and drilled some holes. Holes were drilled and tapped into the bed as well.

I machined an undercut to allow me to subsequently machine the side in alignment to the machine so in theory any work pressed against this would be square.

And with the side machined...

In situ:

Sacrificial pieces

After making the simpler right hand side, I then machined 4mm holes with alternating 5mm tapped holes to allow the sacrificial pieces to be bolted in place.

Note that they don't have to be aligned!

A bit of a mistake

I did a lot of random machining after then, learning how feed rates, spindle speeds, number of flutes and cutting direction all interrelate. Oh, and what bits were good where.

However, I did come a bit of a cropper: I learnt the hard way that if you cut too much, with a spindle speed too high, the feed rate too slow, and in the wrong direction, then you can end up welding your milling bit to the block:

I also learnt that when it does this, it gets very hot.

I took a break from the machine for a few months after this...