Life at the shop has changed a bit since our last shop up date. We now have a wire EDM as well as a sinker EDM. I priced out wire EDM work and for the cost of a few pieces I could buy an older unit. It was working on the shop floor prior to them disassembling it and moving it to the warehouse for storage. Now the problem is to get it back together again. I am currently looking for manuals to do this and get it running in my shop. It is not a large EDM but the right size for the space I have . In addition I also obtained a second spot welder. We have modified the first one for certain projects on the VG1-5 and with the second one I can set up for the second op on the rifle.
Now all this new equipment means that changes have to be made to the shops. Room being as scarce as it is in the shop means moving tools.
The first thing was to make room for the new tools that were coming in. This meant moving the manual vertical mill and pantograph out to the fab shop. With the backhoe still down, due to diesel fuel in the oil system, we now had to move everything the good old fashion hard way. No pictures of this fun period were taken as I did not want proof of how stupid I can be.
They are in the fab shop and will be moved into place this weekend.
A path needed to be made through the shop. However the space between the punch press and the vise was not large enough.
So I cleared out on the other side of the posts.
Jacketed up the milling machine and put my small set of skates under it to start the move.
A close up of the skates.
It did not take long before I changed out to the larger skates.
At the 1/2 way point and at the turn. 2 hours into the move.
Finally at it’s new home. I will be starting on the new concrete slab in a couple of weeks.
Another view, the grinder will be moving when the slab gets in.
The easy part was moving the pantograph.
Now came the real fun. Trying to move 25 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound bag and getting it set up.
The first step is to turn the EDM around 180 degrees and position it in the shop to allow access to all the panels and hook up points while not taking all the room in the shop up.
In this photo the EDM is in the wrong direction and as always there is stuff in the way.
I needed to move it into the shop but still more stuff in the way.
Finally the EDM was in place and all the support equipment was set next to it.
Now it was time to move the two spot welders
They are in there new home.
With the majority of the moving completed I needed one other small project to end the day with. So Insulation was glued to the steel door. Ran out of material and will finish next weekend.
Enough for Saturday. I will fill you in on Sundays progress tomorrow.
Looks like you need to sweet talk Shirley into a bigger shop…
Not going to happen and you know what kind of trouble I can get into for bring that up.
Wire EDM machines are one of the neatest thing ever invented for the fabrication of gun parts and of course motorcycle parts too! When I was a tool and die maker at GE I was trained on the Mitsubishi Wire EDM machine. The neat thing about them is their accuracy and repeatability. Also you can heat treat the parts before the cut and warpage then is usually not much of a problem. When you machine annealed 4140 and other gun alloys quite often especially on long pieces warpage can be a serious problem in heat treat. Good luck on your move.