A few years ago I installed improved lighting in my basement workshop. Recently I’d been noticing that the light switch sometimes made a “pop” or slight sparking noises when I switched it on or off. This seemed to be getting…
Category: Basement Workshop
Making a phone adapter for a tripod
There are a couple of videos I’d like to record. My current camera is 14 years old; it still works fine, but its video quality is poor by modern standards, so until I decide to buy a new camera I…
An Extended Drill Press Table
The table on my drill press is more or less a 12″/30cm square which is fine for drilling smaller objects but once the workpiece is large enough that its center of gravity is more than 6″/15cm from the hole you…
More workshop Tour: The Myford ML7 lathe
In addition to my Sherline mill, the other main machinist’s tool I have is a Myford ML7 7×20″ lathe. The lathe is fitted with the Quick-Change Gearbox to allow selection of longitudinal feeds and thread cutting without having to fool…
Making my mill more rigid
In my shop, I have a Sherline mill. Normally I have it set up like a model 5000 series, with a solid column, for rigidity and to reduce the number of adjustments that can go out of whack. Recently I…
Tramming the Mill
In order to get a good finish when milling the top surface of a part, as I will be doing to prepare matrix blanks, it is necessary that the axis of the mill spindle be perpendicular to the surface of…
A failed repair job
Many years ago I bought an auto-darkening welding helmet. This was back when they cost several hundred dollars and were only sold by serious welding shops. They hadn’t hit the hobby market yet. Nowadays similar helmets (but with much larger…
Monotype Pneumatics: Tubing repair
A previous owner of my Monotype composition caster had done a bit of a butcher job repairing a broken tube under the table. There were two soldered joints (using fittings not designed for solder joints) and two tees with capped…
Mill Column Base Conversion
Someone commented on the conversion I did on my Sherline 2000 mill to allow it to use either the 8-way column base it came with or the rigid rectangular base that comes with the 5000-series mills, so I though I…
My CNC mill
This Sherline 2000 mill is one of the main tools I use for making repair parts for printing machinery. Since I bought it I have retrofitted it with Sherline’s CNC conversion kit, using a home-made stepper driver (the gray box…
Top