Making a Set of Mini Pallet Toe Clamps for the Milling Machine

hello Keith rocky revenge machinery orders so in the last episode of this series we started working on a mini pallet system for my mental machine to be able to clamp down small parts up for a little small delicate milling and I got some jobs coming up that I need this and we've already got our actual pallet made and if you're interesting you go back and watch that previous video on how I made this if you're interested in making one for your mill but once this part is made the next thing that you need are actually some little clamps that you can clamp on here and what I'm using as a model is that your typical tote clamp strap clamps whether you want to call them that you would use on a milling machine or this is a normal size this is actually a small one but I want some that are much smaller but I'm going to use this as a general guideline on how I'm going to do it and to do it I'm actually going to use some of these little small pieces of stock here I've got some cold rolled steel this is a quarter inch thick by half inch wide and we're going to make some these clamps I'm going to make for each of two different sizes I've got some that are an inch and a half long and some that are two inches long and we'll get in here and show you how we're going to do it so again this is your typical size of toe clamp and this is the stock we're going to make these out obviously going to be much smaller more much more in line with the size and scale of this mini pallet so you know a typical clamp here you got this little ramp in the back and they have little blocks of those lock into to get you your different heights on these you know we're not going to clear as much fresh or hold down pressure as you would with a you know a half inch bolt so we don't really need as much in the back and basically all we're going to do there is a we're going to use the same 1024 hardware that we've been using already or we're going to use but I'm just going to drill and tap a hole in the back and we can put this in here and you can put one little Jack screws in here Jack it up and down to get your height where you want it so this will be our height adjustment instead of putting this in and of course you can use different length screws to get that clamp at different heights and then the other part you know we need to put a slide in here so that you can put that that'll be where the the screw will go down through here and engage into the table here into the mini pallet that's 1024 tapped holes in here and then on the front I also want to kind of mill in some slope here or whatever so that we have you know it's not quite as bulky in the front so you can get in there and also get into some tighter corners so basically three operations drilling tap this hole in the back mill a slide in and then mill the the profile on the nose and to start with I think I'm gonna start in the back we're going to do the holes tapped holes first and I will set the mill up to do that for these real quick so we're going to be putting these in device I've got some parallels up underneath my stock I won't have them sticking out will be sticking out a little bit for this first operation I'm not quite that far but I need to get the the center of this part basically centered up on the mill and to do that I got an edge finder in here and we're just going to find the edges the two edges here use the half functional dro and that should navigate us to the very center so let's get that done real quick so we thought we'll come in with the edge finder going to find this outside edge right there I'm going to zero my axis on the Dro and the visual readout I'll come up and I'll go to the other side we do the same thing on dead and then use the half function with Dro over on the Dro I'll hit the half button and say select which axis will go there it's going to automatically divide that measurement in half and I just want to go to zero now on the Dro right there now back over here we are right in the center of this piece of metal which is right where we want to put those holes I'm setting this up over here so I can basically just take apart in and out and my setup be the same from one part to the other so again I have my parallels up underneath there what I've got here this is actually a Noga indicator arm it's the big boy indicator arm I usually use this to hold a camera and this is actually my camera mount on the end but it's a very rigid setup so right now I'm actually just using it as a stop they make a several companies make a really nice stop for doing this but I don't have one of those but I'm just using what I got but I did come in here off camera measured off the end of this went in a quarter of an inch that I'm drilling right there in the center of that set my arm up on there so that I can do repetitive work here pretty quickly and I will go ahead and start drilling and tapping these holes so we're going to start by just hitting this with a center drill put it back in high gear I just want to put a little pulling on there just a little touch for it to get started on then we'll drill this for the number 25 drill bit a little up it's just some cat magic lubricate it next won't touch it real quick with the countersink and put our 1024 tap in here put it back that in low range this is a machine tap so this is made for power tapping it's different than a hand taps you have to back out on and we'll just people ask about this all I do is I put enough pressure on there for to get started let it tap through then our reversing that to come back at them once it gets started I'm not putting any pressure on the quill so let it just go down on this own it's through and let it back back out all right with that take that one out for the next one the end go up against my stop and I'm ready to do it again and I won't bore you with this we'll go ahead and not rest on them out and I come back for the next step so the next part I want to mill is this thirty degree angle and to do that what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually tilt the head thirty degrees so that I can just come in here side to side and to tilt the head on this machine they got to loosen up four bolts around loose some not tighten here we go got loosen these four bolts around here you know you want these to be loose but still have just a least a little bit of tension on there so the head doesn't go flopping around you get the ones on the back and with that done there's a little worm gear in here and I can turn that right here wrong way and I'm just going to dial it in on the scale here this angle is not by any means critical I want it to be around 30 degrees so this scale is going to be close enough for what I'm doing you know this was a critical measurement we'd have to get out here and verify these angles once we got it on there with some ways to check that but not necessary for what we're doing and they're the mill of machine head is set up on 30 degrees it's kind of funny that way it doesn't it that's what we want that's the nice thing about these milling machines is you can do all kinds of crazy setups like this so again I want my heart to stick out the end but this time instead of using that's stop it's going to be in the way for the milling so what I've done is I've just made a little gauge and again this is not critical these measurements you know they need to be closed that they're off a few from one to the other no big deep but no big deal but what I have done is I have just made a little gauge here out of the bolts where I've got this thing sticking out where I want I can put that up against the jaw push that out flush and then just tighten my vise up and that should get me where I can repeat these pretty well from one part to the other without any major problems so that's how we're going to do it let's get in here we're going to mill those flats we're using a little four flute Niagara cutter here three-quarter inch diameters is another one the ones that Denis Nolan was kind enough to fire for from a donation from Niagara cutter but we're going to do now is we've got that angle on there I'm just going to raise this up until it just touches off we pull that out put the end a little bit now what I want to do is raise my table up in eighth of an inch and that should make the cut go down that deep so we need zero my 0z on the dish will read out raise it up 125 all right there I'm I'm balling down through there and that looks about right all right let's see now we want to stop the cutter you pull this one out he's my little gage here again and let's do another one rinse and repeat guys let's knock all these out alright next step here is I want to do the same angle on both sides and for this I've got them ganged together I've got four of them in there at one time and we're going to do the same thing we come in with touch off raise up 125 thousandths and skim across them so let's do it once that's then I'll flip them over I'll probably do it off camera same process on the other four as well we touched off their zero my z-axis come up 125 includes about right there the rule on there come on across I'm gonna flip those over and we'll do it again so there you go with the finished noses on the front of these and again that kind of mimics the larger clamp set we're ready to go ahead and put the slots in these clamps now I've got a little for flute carbide end mill this is a 7/32 diameter which is a just big enough for that number ten screw to come in and out without having too much slop in there so what I've done is I've come over here and I've got where I want to start the hole right now and I've zeroed out my digital readout on 0 there and I've already come in here and kind of calculated I want I want the slot I want to move the table 290 thousandths and that'll basically make the end of the slot about a half-inch from this end about a half inch from the other end and you know these these measurements are not critical it's just a slot for putting uh screw in but we want to get them as close as we can so put a little dab of all on here just to help things go and I've got this in here with I got my parallels up under here and when the cutter goes to the bottom the parallel is going to be the way I'm going to leave the parallels in right now for probably the first C passage which would be about a hundred thousand seach then I'll take the parallels out and that last 50 thousandths will plow through without any support underneath them so that I just don't tear my parallel something so with that let's get in here we're gonna come up and touch off right there and zero mozzie and I'm going to go down 100,000 which is a sinner drilling email so no problem plowing down like that and I'm not too worried the depth doesn't have to be exactly that and we're going to go 290,000 right there I'm gonna go 200 thousands on my DAP go back to zero we're not my parallels out and we'll do the last 50,000 corner entry terms in 2000 I should be through the bottom now I'm just going to go down a little bit more and we'll go back to t9 he actually I want to probably just go a little bit clean that edge up to this all the way through and there we go that should be everything come back it up little squirt air clean that up and we have our slot so there's our finished clamp just go ahead knock the other ones off I do the others off-camera so there you go guys I got my all my little toe clamps made now everything's been slotted after I after I cut the slots I just took a little deburring tool and went through here and just kind of deferred inside of those just to make sure they were nice and free and clear and here's how you use them you just take a set screw turned upside down the back that becomes your adjustable part in the back to clamp things down you drop another 'land down into a hole here I got a little washer up underneath there and tighten it down with an allen wrench and you know it will nicely secure something to the pallet you know this is for light melon this is not for super heavy-duty Miller's that's doing little small parts but it's a very effective and sure gets the job done so I've got a nice set now and I'm real happy with the way this turned out again after I started making these I found you can actually buy these online I think a little machine shop has them and some viewers sent me some other links but they're fairly easy to make and they're fairly inexpensive to make and if you got a few minutes you can knock some of these out and I save yourself a little bit of money and have a fun little project on the mill at the same time so there you go we're about done with this and then finally guys just to keep everything nicely organized you know I got me a little plastic bin this is actually one that I bought the other day that was full of an assortment of set screws socket set screws I was needing a few sizes and I went into the Fastenal store and they had a little assortment set they're on sale and I just bought the whole set and and took them out of this and put them in my small farce organizer metal drawers and I had an extra plastic case but you can pick these up it you know about anywhere Walmart or whatever but nicely organized there I've got me an assortment of different lengths of 10:24 set screws here's some washers to go on there got places for my two different sized tote clamps and just I put an allen wrench in here just so that I wouldn't have to go searching for one so now I've got everything I need whenever I get ready to use this I just go pulled the kit the set this little plastic bin will stay with the actual mini pallet and a drawer in my cabinet and I'm ready to go well there you go guys another little project knocked out and with this project complete now I can actually move on and I have a project that we're going to use this mini pallet set for so there you go quick easy project that everybody can do you got a milling machine you can you can make your mini pallet set I highly recommend it again if you're particularly if you're doing small stuff need some something to be able to clamp down things to do little small delicate pieces this is nice little trick and once again I want to give a big thanks to Tom Lipton over Doc's tools I check out his YouTube channel if you haven't already but this was actually a project that at least I saw first on Tom's website I don't know if he came up with the idea himself or whether he borrowed it from someone else but regardless just a brilliant idea and this is going to be a very value-added piece to my shop so thank you Tom for bringing along a good idea and everybody can go make one thanks a lot guys if you like this share it with your friends on social media give me a thumbs up on on YouTube leave me some comments and subscribe if you haven't already we'll talk to you later

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 101,553

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Georgia Museum of Agriculture, Woodworking, Metalworking, how to run a mill, restoration, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org

Id: eegJX0AkCTM

Length: 21min 34sec (1294 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2016