Radom info Wednesday, 9-3

We finished the new knurling tool this last weekend and this is a post about the new tool. I have been using the Shars knurling tool for a while and was continuing to have problems with it so it was time for a change.

The pivot pins are very loose which causes the tool to move when you don’t want it to and not move when you need it to. It was also hard to apply pressure the knurling heads with out using a pair of pliers. So a total redesign was necessary. This process was not with out a few problems. The first being that the computer crashed just after we did the design and had written the cam program. This caused a problem as we noticed a few items that needed a small dimensional change, but with out the original program that was all but impossible to accomplish. It was also difficult to machine the vise jaws with out the original drawings to match correctly with the parts that we had made.

The was to make these parts would have been to machine the one side then put them in the new vise jaws and machine the other side to the proper shape and face cut the extra material off. Again with out the drawings I could not write a program to do this so we just face milled the other side off instead with out milling the actual shape in first. This lead to an interesting final pass.

By the time we got to the final pass it was like cutting sheet metal that was a good 3/4 of an inch away from the vise. It worked but not a recommended practice.

Now that the two halves were made.

This one is a close up of the ends.

And one more put together.

We needed to make the clamping screw. The first method was to silver braze and pin the screw to the pivoting block. That did not work so well.

Not enough solder and the side walls to thin. So the next attempt was to add a great deal more silver solder.

It also pulled out with the first attempt at using it. So the final method of attaching was tig welding.

It not works like a champ and makes a very nice knurled on the VG1-5 front barrel support. The video on that will be coming up soon. Hope you enjoyed this update. Looking to hear you comments and ideas.