Arduino Dynamic Balancer
To regrind the Chipmasters bed I will need to balance the wheel and spindle. I was thinking along the lines of using an gyro, accelerometer device like those found in your smartphone or drone, then measure displacement and rotation to identify imbalances. This site hosts some interesting articles drkfs.net, including a balacning technique http://drkfs.net/balancedisk.htm another … Continue reading
Deciding on a new AC/DC Tig Welder
My FP2 repairs, require me to fix the broken aluminum hand wheels or buy new ones, then machine them to fit the existing mountings and fixtures. Welding aluminum with my current TIG welder is not possible. So now the cost benefit question arises, and at what cost? This seems like a simple decision, Option A … Continue reading
Lathe Bed Way Grinder
My Chipmaster Bed shows some serious wear on ways, approximately 0,5mm, 200mm from the headstock side. The tailstock slides are slightly better, but not good enough to use as reference. between the inverted V and flats of each slide there is an unused area, i.e. non bearing surface, I used this for baseline measurements, and … Continue reading
Arduino Powered TIG AC/DC
The idea is not new, but there are very little open source projects on this. The only promising link was https://github.com/freq0ut/Due-Pulse-Welder, but no hardware diagrams. My existing TIG welder is DC only, a look inside reveals a design similar to below, with three transformer stages in parallel. Now convert this output to AC. Easy? Add … Continue reading
Deckel FP2 – Fixing Vertical Ways
In its first lucky life, my FP2 was used as a sturdy drill press. At some point it went in for a refurbish and a new paint job to light olive green, as the previous owner stated more drill press work. Then it switched hands and got a nice pressure washer spring clean which forced … Continue reading
Colchester Chipmaster Continental 1974
Here I am trying to document my experience and lessons learned in restoring a Chippie to hopefully pristine condition again. I bought it from a member of the Rand Society of Model Engineers – http://www.rsme.co.za/index.php. The machine was acquired by Mitco Tool in South Africa in 1976. As can be seen pretty rough on the … Continue reading
3D Edge Finder, Touch probe, Digitizing Probe
Once you start milling you soon realize all work has to be referenced, easily done with a round bar with known diameter, but a lot of calculating with manual dials. Mechanical devices like wiggler are easy to build but only work in 2D and can not interface to the DRO. My mill came with a … Continue reading
Distributed PLC
My interest in programmable controllers and microprocessors dates back to my student life in the 90’s. Recently I started playing with NodeMCU and its eLua based firmware for the ESP8266 WiFi SOC from Espressif. The idea of a distributed plc has been lingering ever since I connected a AT 2313 to a nrf905. This should … Continue reading
My Deckel FP2 Milling Machine 1965
In May 2016, while still trying to figure my affection with old iron, to my surprise, I stumbled on a advertisement for a Deckel Milling Machine. In my mind I was convinced these machines do not exist in Africa. After pondering if a 1.5 Ton Tool is the right choice for the home workshop, I … Continue reading
Treading a Trapezoid Nut for my Deckel FP2 X Axis Spindle
This entry documents part of my journey in restoring a Deckel FP2 Milling Machine, I will share the story on how I got the machine in a separate post, a rare tool in Africa. It does not help that this is my first on making a boring bar for threading, grinding the HSS tool with … Continue reading
Lebenslust 