Building a Mini Pallet Clamp Device for the Milling Machine

hello Keith rock here bench machinery org so I got a project coming up soon that I'm doing mill machine that is going to require some kind of small delicate parts that need some milling done on them and they're just going to be difficult to strap down to my table using regular toe clamps and what-have-you so what I've decided to do is build a little mini pallet system and this isn't anything really new in fact if you watch like the other YouTube channels no doubt you've seen this being used on other channels in fact I guess at least for me the first person I saw do it was Tom Lipton over doc stools and he had a little mini pallet system that he built to do exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking doing and then won't run for a while but now that I got this project coming up I said you know it's just time to go ahead and build one so basically what I'm going to build this out of is I've got a block of aluminum here this is six inches wide it's one inch thick and I think this is about 12 inches long I I ordered this online and from a metal company they had a deal you know you know I was wanting a piece 10 inches long but they said well they'll send you a random length piece between 10 and 12 inches and it was cheaper than the 10 inch piece so I think this is actually about 12 inches long so anyway got this and we're going to do a little machining to it to turn it into a pallet so basically what this will be is this will be something I can put in the vise on my milling machine I don't have my vise here right now but it'll go into there it will create a flat surface this will be a machined flat surface I don't have a bunch of tapped holes in here that we can use to bolt things down to screw things down to and it makes for a very nice little set up piece again mostly for working on smaller more delicate pieces than what I'm usually working alone on a big mill machine so with that let's get started on doing the machining work to build this little mini pallet so first off let's just talk about here about plan of attack what we're going to do here and what we need to do so again this this piece is about six inches wide I know that my vice opens up to about a four inch with just a tad over four so it's a little bit too wide to actually set down in the vise right now so what I'm going to do is just mill out some steps on either side and I'll have a four inch wide strip here I go half the thickness of half inch so basically be a 1 inch wide by half inch deep slot mill on either side this is going to be the bottom of the palette here that I'm working on and once we get this side done we will actually put the vise on the mill machine flip it over but this end device will surface the top of the which would be the other side so we'll put a shell mill or a face mill in here and do that and then we'll come in here and drill and tap the holes that we'll use for clamp down so I've got my vise off the mill table right now we're going to actually bolt this down to the table clamp it down using some toe clamps and getting here mill it out so let's get that done so just a little bit about using a toe clamp in this situation you know I'm going to actually do these a little bit of an angle just so that I have a you know I'm not right over that slot and it's going to be fine for what I'm doing but when you do these on a flat surface like that you really don't want this to tent down flat you want to have just a little bit of an angle but not much so what I'll do is I will usually just bring it in here and once it butts up against that I'll just pick it up to the first notch that it comes to and that'd be the one that I clamp into and we'll drop stud down in there let me grab a nut you and right now I'm just going to Snug it I don't want to tighten it down yet because I want to make sure that this is running square with the table let's get the other side done all right so I've just kind of lined this up on this front edge here and moved a little bit but you know to get it started I'm just going to work off of a known surface and now I'm going to do is get my indicator and will indicate off of once the front of the back here to make sure this is lined up parallel with the table trim this piece in I've got my stare at last word indicator and this seems to be my little go-to indicator for doing a trimming in device or anything like this from the mill machine accurate to half a thousand switch is plenty good enough so you know I just got it up there I'm just going to move the table to zero that out and what we'll do is we just sweep it across the front and see how the it moves so as you see it's dropping off a little bit you know that piece of metal may not be perfectly flat across the front and that's fine so you know we get to the other end here and you know it's about 5,000 South so what we're going to do now is I'm just going to bump this back to zero which is what we started with on the other side and now most sweep back across and I see where we're on the other end you know guys again this is a piece of extruded aluminum it's not machined so this should be fairly flat but you can see there's some irregularities in the surface we're at zero either end you know yet drop down you know half a thousand to a thousand somewhere in the middle no big deal that's good enough I'm going to go ahead and tighten up the clamps on this and it will be ready to start milling for this mill and what I'm going to be using is this high speed steel end mill this is an IRA cutter mill in mill this is one of the ones that Dennis Noland up it up Niagara Seco sent down to me to try out and so this one's high speed steel 3/4 inch in diameter you know moving making a one-inch wide cut I would love to just use a one-inch wide end mill but unfortunately I don't have a 1 inch end mill this that shank down this this makalah so I think when we go up to seven eighths I remember right so I've got 1 inch in Mills but they're all 1 inch shank so they won't really work in this setup without having a different type of adapter so I'm going to use a 3/4 this was a 4 flute on this aluminum a 2 flute would probably be a little bit better option but again I'm going to what I've got so we're going to give this a try of game plan again go take two passes just because I can't do the whole width will probably do a half inch and a half inch and depth I'll probably get do it two passes we're going to total of a half-inch will go quarter-inch deep on each pass and I think in this aluminum that will cut this fine so let's get here and do it first thing I want to do is I want to come in here and do some 0 and then you know these measurements are not super critical we're not going to tight tolerances we just need to create a groove in here really the only that's critical is at the bottom of this groove you the same on both sides and that we have enough room in here to to grip with the vise so what I'm going to do is we're going to mill on I'm running at about 500 rpms and I'm just going to come in here and raise my table up until I see it touched off and we call that section right there it's not all the way around again this is an extruded surface it's not perfectly flat come over here to my visual readout now here are the z-axis and next thing I want to do is come in here the again using my digital readout I'm going to go up 250,000 right there again I'm not really critical on there don't know what about a too tense and I'm going to come in now and cut off again I'm on the y-axis or that roll my cable out to the end here yeah is touching there but again it's not critical guys I won't be a little less than four inches wide the window now I'm going to come in happening and a thousand p.m. rotten the table down using the auto feed now he's going to plow through this nice kids coming off of there I'm gonna go back to the other side here I like cutting in this direction the feed is going into the cut it just works a little bit better that way we're going to make all our testing Network and I'm on site this to a one inch yeah now I want to come back in the happening on my digital readout for now we're going to raise this table up to a half-inch right there and uh eat food again now for the final pass on this side we'll bring it back into a mute pedal after that cut right there got it we've got one side done let's get here and clean this up I'm pretty happy with the way that looks we got a little bit of I might just take a real light pass on that backside because this it looks like they just pulled some chips in there I don't think it's actually a bad surface it's just got some chips kind of pressed on there but we may just skim that back across with a couple thousands to clean it up but then we're going to flip or not flip it around we're just going to go to the other side and do it I'm going to do the other side off-camera exact same process it's going to be on the back side is going to be hard to see but we want to get this exact same setup on the on the back side so we've got our slot milled in the bottom of this now so that it will fit down in device I want it here with a file and deburred all this sharp edges or anything so now this is going just sit down in the in device we'll tighten the vise up I'm up I'll tap that down make sure we didn't flap excuse me and the next thing I want to do here is a surfaces and get a nice good flat surface on here we could leave that like it is but chances are again this is not a machined surface this is a just an extruded piece of aluminum so we want to get that perfectly flat so I'm not willing to take a whole lot off just just kind of fuzz it take a couple of thousands just whatever it takes to clean it up and the nice thing about the setup is that as you use this you know if you milled down into this you know a little bit when you're working or if you scratch it up no problem you just face it off take a few thousandths fuzz it off and you've got a nice good clean surface to go so I've got this face mill in here this is the one that Dakota Hunt sent to me a while back you know this is maybe where you can put inserts all the way up for good side milling I'm really just using it as a face mill you know I really kind of wish I had one a little bit shorter than this but it works great this is an excellent piece of tooling or it has been so we're going to let it go or give it a shot here so running about five hundred rpms come in here and raise my table up until I'm just touching it back it off we'll just power feet across that looks like we've quit cutting here so we're going to go ahead just think it like it is and then we'll come back and fill it in this is why I want to mill this on the part itself so that I can get it running flat on this vise and as you see this it's got a little bit of a taper into probably my vise has a little bit or may have a saddle so yeah it looks like it's thinking back up over here so that piece of aluminum may have a little bit of a dish in it what's looking like now to the point now where we're ready to start putting the holes in here and drilling and tapping our holes and I want to lay this thing out in a grid pattern but instead of my holes being in a square I want to be more in a diamond shape so and I have kind of going back and forth about how I want to do this and I can use my digital readout and it has a function is actually a grid function and what I was really wanting to do was set up my grid on a one inch square rotate it 45 degrees so that I had that diamond shape and then just let it navigate me to every hole and it has the ability to rotate a grid 90 degrees the problem is is that when it does that it works off on one corner and it rotates off so you know it will lay a grid at an angle but it's not going to give you all the holes that you need in fact let me zoom in here and I'll show you I'm talking about on the picture here so here's my manual a digital readout and this is the grid function and again you can set a grid up you can set up whatever this doesn't have to be a perfect square and we rectangles into B whatever as long as you're the same increment on your x and y axis and then you can rotate that grid but when you do it rotates off of a single point and in my case you know I want to put more holes you know down here and it's just not going to be practical to do it yeah I can make my grid bigger than I wanted to and start it on imaginary area and cover my table but the problem is is that it's going to navigate me teach one of those holes and I have to drill them in order so I'd be basically having to navigate to a bunch of points of it that there wouldn't be a whole app so to get around it what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to well let me get my drawing I'll show you so this is a sketch of what I'm after and this is not to scale this is just something I drew up to try to figure out my placements and all that but again you know I'm more in a diamond shape here so I've rotated that grid and these should be perfect squares like this is not the scale but it illustrates the point so to get around this one we'll do is we're actually going to use the grid function letting it go flat but I'm going to actually make two different grids so if you look you know we got one square pattern here then there's another square pattern here so we'll start on this point here we'll drill out the you know the ones that are in a square pattern will go through drill all those holes and then basically I'm going to come back start me with another beginning point which will be this hole and I will lay another grid out that will have the same XY coordinates but we'll just start in the center and we'll go through the whole process twice that's the plan I think it will be fairly straightforward I've never used this grid function before I have played around with it but I've used some similar functions on my dro and I think it'll it'll work just fine so with that let's get the Dro the digital readout set up for the grid function and I will go through those processes and then you guys can see us navigate the here and start drilling and tapping some holes so the first step in sitting this grid function up on my dro is I need to get over my first point zero zero I want my zero zero my digital readout to be over the first hole and I did this off-camera but I just kind of show you what do we went in with our edge found finder found the edges on the these two corners you know made zero zero this edge right here and then I'm a vagator to my measurements that I had already calculated I want that first hole to be which was this was a point five seven five and this is a point five twenty five in this direction and I did that again that was part of what I did when I sketched everything out as I figured out trying to get my whole pattern I won't say perfectly centered on here but basically where my holes will be in useful places and you know I just had to get on piece of paper and figure that out but anyway that's where I'm going to start and so what that's right here and we're on zero zero on our digital readout let me switch over to the digital readout and show you the process of setting this up so again I've already zeroed my X&Y to that starting point and what I want to do is on this is a visual readout made by Pro pros DRO pros had this for several years love this Dro highly recommend them if you're looking for a dro for a órale but i'm going to use the grid function which is this button right here and it tells me in my instructions here exactly what i want to do so it's telling me to enter the center zero which is basically my X&Y coordinates I'm at now I'm at my zero so I'm just going to hit enter enter Center 1 enter so I've got my zero zero I'm telling okay the zero zero I'm at is where I want to start now it's asking me for my pitch in my x and y direction this is the X and the pitch is the distance between the holes and let me grab my cheat sheet here the distance between my holes is going to be 1.41 for and what that is is I basically I want them to be on a 1 inch grid so I calculated on a 1 inch if you take a right triangle isosceles triangle with 1-inch legs what's the distance of the hypotenuse to cross that and this one point 4 1 4 so I'm gonna get ENTER for that it's going to ask me my pitch for my log and it doesn't have to be a square it can be a rectangle but I want that same number in there again so 1 point 4 1 1 4 there we go enter and it's going to ask you for the angle and again I showed you you could rotate that but we want to leave it at 0 so I'm just going to hit enter and it's going to ask you the number of holes and the x and y direction that you want to do and let's see we want to go in the x-axis here we want to have eight holes at eight and in the y-axis we want to have four homes all right so now basically this thing jumps to a different mode and we're at the zero zero that's the location for our first hole so where we will drill that one and then we will basically step to the next one and it will navigate us to the next hole we don't have to do any math and we'll show you that process here in a minute all right so first off let me just make a comment here I'm using this new keyless drill Chuck this is a Jacob's Chuck got it from a lot of tool and die maker tools that I got from Lu cousin so anyway I'm excited to give this a try first time I've really been on the mill here so we'll be using that throughout but I've got a number 25 drill bit in here that's the drill size for tapping a 1024 hole so we're going to be using this tooth out and I will go ahead drill a countersink and then tap these holes as we go along so we're on our first hole so I'll swap this out put a countersink in here swap it out again put in a tap slow that down tapping a little luma tap in here that magic looming them and all right first hold on so now get over here to this readout and what we'll do is we will navigate to the second hole so basically I'm on the first hole go the next might just hit the six but might go forward a hole and back the hole just using these two arrow buttons here so basically it's telling me there again I need to move over one point four one inches so I come in here and we will just take that to zero on the digital readout a little bit too far poke them out of your way I'm trying to it's real ticky to get it right on zero zero there we go and I like my table down and we are in position now to drill the second hole put my drill bit back in like before we'll get our next hole right there so over here now I've got a couple of holes that my tap is going to be right over the the vise and I don't want to go too deep so what I'm doing is I'm just going to take a piece of tape and wrap around this tap they welcome me up making a piece of tape smaller do that again so I'm looking at my debt I put my finger right there and I'm just going to put this on here as a marker showing the depth I can go before I hit so I look there I go down when I hit the tape I'm basically not through but I'm right there at the bottom and I come back out so and what I'll do is after I get through we'll go back and hand tap those so they go all the way through but we want at least go ahead and getting started so let's go ahead I must probably slow that down to solve it to just to make sure can react in plenty of time beer alright there's that whoops tighten that back up all right like so we'll go back and do those later you see the process here I'm not going to bore you guys to death going through every one of these we'll go through and finish this grid and bring you back and start the next one we've got all of our first set of holes drilled on the first grid drilled and tapped everything looks good and I'm back over my zero zero you see on my digital readout we're out of the drill of the grid mode now and it's back in regular coordinates so basically what I need to do now is repeat this whole process but I need to position my new grid kind of in the center of this one so I know from my measurements that to get there I need to move over seven hundred seven thousandths in both the X and Y axis so I'll just come in here to the digital readout now and we'll dial that in 7:07 right there and come in on the act or the why and do the same thing my table down right there okay so now I'm going to reaso both of those on that axis and we will go in here and do the grid function again so C will hit grid we want these their own zero zeros enter enter that's just telling me again that I have my zero zero there my pitch again is going to be one point four one four go to the one point four one four enter one point four one four enter my angle is going to be zero again number of holes just like before in the Y RCP the X we got eight and then Y we have four and telling me I'm right on my first coordinates there to drill this one and go through this process again you so I flip this thing over I realize I got a bunch of rough holes here in the bottom with a drill punched through someone take a few minutes and just go through here and we're going to deburr all these I'm going to take them probably a little bit D just to make sure get those birds out of there here we are with the finished pallet part of this project so we've got all of our holes drilled and tapped again these are on a 1-inch grid at a 45 degree angle and that's exactly what I wanted that should give me good selection of holes that I can tap into to clamp things down with and we got the bottom Aldi bird now need to blow it out it looks like there's a few chips up until but this part is done next step is we need to work on making some of the hold down clamps and those are basically miniature versions of you know this type of a hold down clamp I could use on the mill but it will be scaled down to use on something small like this and we'll do that in another video at another time well that'll be a wrap guys on this part we'll come back like I said and do a follow-up video making the rest of the hold-down pieces at another time but this is a going to be good for today always fun 64 holes to drill countersink and tap and maneuver to each one precision ly it took a couple hours to to do all that but we got it done and this will be a nice little addition to the top that will come in handy for lots of things and like I said I've got a project coming up pretty quick that we're going to use this on so that's the reason for getting this done right now thanks for watching and as always appreciate your comments appreciate your thumbs up or your likes on the on the on the channel here or on the video if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel I always have new stuff coming down the line that hopefully you'll enjoy watching and we'll talk to you guys next time thanks you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 94,851

Rating: 4.9606247 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Lathe, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Georgia Museum of Agriculture, Woodworking, Metalworking, How to run a lathe, how to run a mill, restoration

Id: OQ76RUm-egI

Length: 39min 19sec (2359 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016