Squareness Comparator Build Part #1

[Music] my name is Steve welcome back to my shop today I'm going to start a project that I have been planning for a while and I'm going to be building a squareness comparator I'm gonna start out with this hunk of Steel that I've had for quite a long time I actually started building something else with it if you want a complete description of what that's all about check my sharp bits episode number 14 where I talk extensively about this hunk of Steel I'm going to cut out a section of it that's three inches wide by four inches long and I'll take you over to my whiteboard and show you the general layout for the base on the squareness comparator okay as I mentioned before this piece is going to be nominally three inches wide by four inches long I'm going to cut an angle on each end hey that's cosmetic for the most part but I'm going to think I'm going to make that a thirty degree angle I like the looks of that and then from the height of it this is the the angle and I'm going to be cutting these two sides down to half-inch thick which is represented there and then this section will be a full one inch thick and I will be milling a slot in this which I'll explain a little bit later as to what I'm going to be doing with that and then out of a piece of one inch material I'm going to make cut another four inch long that will sit on the top of that so I'll be able to adjust my dial indicator and we'll go into the details as we get into that but in the words of Harold waters let's go to the bandsaw and the first piece that I'm going to cut is actually the top piece and I'll show you why in a minute [Music] now I'm going to cut this piece and the reason I did the short piece first so I'm going to one inch thick and I'm going to put that in the end of the place just to keep the draw parallel I'm going to cut this just a little bit oversized and then I'm going to mill it to final size not sure how straight this blade is going to cut so I'm going to give myself a little extra here my two major pieces so I'm going to go over to the milling machine and square it up on the edges first before I start to do any major cutting and this piece will map on the top there when we get get to it so let's go over the milling machine and the block is reasonably square other than the edge that I just cut this end here is a little high so I'm going to touch down on it and surface [Music] a reasonably good finish on that I'm just gonna take about another five thousands cut just to give myself a nice finish you'll notice there's a notch in the side of it but that will be milled out it's only about a half inch deep and that will end up being milled out when I cut the step in this piece [Applause] going with a nominal size of three inches on this and I'm measuring three inches in 30 mm right now so I'll take a 25 thousandths cut and then a final finishing pass [Applause] [Applause] [Music] okay I'm about five thousands under three inches which is just fine so it's just a nominal size and the edges are parallel to each other so now I'm going to set up and square it up by cutting the other two sides bring you back when I'm finished setting up you've got my block set up and I use my precision square [Applause] okay got it squared up in the vise I'll take just a light cut off of that and flip it over and do the other side looks good taking flip it over now and do the other edge I'm pretty happy with that let's take it over to the surface plate and lay it out you some layout died on this one it's a larger surface okay I'm going to let that dry for a few minutes we'll go over and put it on the surface plate yeah I want the top piece of this to be one inch wide and when I finish milling this off it ended up being about five thousandths undersized so I set my gauge like so that I'm going to be scribing it at approximately 998 thousandths so that should leave me with a one-inch top landing let's measure that yeah so that gives me a one-inch on the top what I'll be doing I'll so be milling these surfaces down by a half-inch and now what I want to do is to mark off my 30 degree angle so I set up my protractor here to 30 degrees I'm taking the tip of it down to the one inch mark and I'm going to use my Randy Richard scribe and scribe that 30 degree line there I'll try it on this side I'm not sure whether you can see those lines or not but that will be the shape cut those corners off and mill this down go back to the milling machine [Music] I've got the milling machine set up with a three-quarter inch roughing end mill so I'm going to rough this out and then I'll put a finishing end mill in to finish it off then when I take it out yeah that's what I'm going to do I'm getting a very good finish with this and since I'm going to be grinding it anyway I'm going to leave myself a five thousandth grinding allowance so this should be my last nut cut pass on it okay I've got my depth right where I want it and now I'm going to do the other side and I've got my dro set up I can go over and use that to work towards my center line and be Li leaving my the grinding allowance on the width of that also I've got a little roughed out now I'm going to take it out of the place and a deeper it and then set it up to cut my thirty degree angles [Music] so there's the roughed out piece and originally marked my 30 degree angles of course on the top here which i milled away and I decided that I'd rather just cut the 30s on the half inch material than I would on the full one-inch thick material so I think that I'm going to be able to set that up all right this angle is not critical it's really more cosmetic than anything what I did is I took my adjustable parallel and I've got my 30 degree line scribed and I'm just going to tap this so it's perfectly lined up with the parallel okay that's it let's turn it over and do the other side okay I've got the main body all roughed out now this piece is going to sit on top of that and it's going to be drilled I'll have probably four holes in it for the Noga arm that's going to hold the dial indicator and since I don't want to cut the mounting stud off on the dial indicator it's actually longer than the thickness of that material so I'm going to slot this piece here so that regardless of where I run it it will it will go all the way down and then what I'm going to do I'm going to be cutting a slot in the front of this for a piece of hardened steel cut to a radius that will be will be the standard that goes against the item that you're checking the squareness on I've cut a radius on that so that I'll use a piece of hardened tool steel in that and then what I'm going to do I'm going to put a flexure on the front here and put an adjusting screw on the rear I'm stealing this idea from Steve Barton from solid rock machined so I'll be able to raise and lower this to adjust the dial indicator so the next machining operation I'm going to get this machined up I'm going to get it drilled and then I'm going to cut the slot in here [Music] you [Music]

Channel: R. Steven Lang, Shark River Machine

Views: 1,672

Rating: 4.96 out of 5

Keywords: shark river machine, you tube machinists, #whenhellfreezesover, squareness compatator, how to check if your part is square, square checking

Id: zjcf7r-Yr8w

Length: 29min 46sec (1786 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019