holes, collets, counterbores, guitar bridges. More

Blank> First off, you don't want flat bottom holes, you want counterbores.

You can but cheap counter bores with pilots from mst catlalogs, J&L etc. $6.00 is not a lot to m,e for a hole he way want it, also if you know anyone in Seattle ask them to go to Boening Surplus, it is on 68th in Kent, they have bins of counterbores, pilots etc, drils all for about a buck a piece. I use endmills in my drill press all the time, who said you can't. Damn do I have to stop now??
COLLETS
sizing the collet's ID. That's "cheating", since the collet then

> becomes spindle-dependent

I use ER collets, Beall tool compnay sells a nice fixcture that mounts on a 1 1/2 x8 spindle nose (other sizes availbale including an adaptor for sherline. ER collets are reltively cheap, they have about ther same TIR as anyyhing I have seen and the holder can go from machine to machine so the error if specific to colet holder is a non issue if spindle is faily accurate, They also have a variance per collet of like .010 so a few go a long way.. IF you set up with a a true dead center and check run out before you start turning, then remover deadcenter, recheck run out and are good, hey it i sworking for me on all my machines and I have 8 ( Fred is part right, big commercial dedicated CNC part specific companys are in trouble, but home shops are on the rise. to use fred's own evidence, look how much cCNC stuff is bought on austion by guys like us, or other retired machinists who are dpoinf small work clandestinely in their gargages, the home shop shop machinist is the wave of the commercial future, I know three guys who make parts for BOEING in converted wo car garages. So Big shops, BIg machines are struggling but CNC is still viable, has vitality and will be gorwing tremendously in all industry)


On CAD CAM. So far it all sucks. Not one company "imho" has yet to figure out the basic starting point for us beginners, and believe it or not we are the target market cince the bg companie can afford CNC literate 20 year olds who can't turn a lathe on. That first thing for any CADCAM is to define the unworked part and how it is oriented on the work lane, be it lathe or mill. Until CADCAM can let us junkststers sketch in some scrap iron treasure clamped to a milling table, then aproach how we are going to reduce to some wonderful creation the whole concept is lost on me. I have everyoones demo version here and they are chapters of assumptions ahead of me. Slow, down, let me get the "thing" on the table, let me tell the CADCAM what drills I have and how I planned on working it. So many Caned cycles and tool librarys don't consider or make it easy to write some of this approach our own way. So Fred,Mike Miligan, Warren at Surfcam, help us draw a workpiece and define it n the work table before introducing vectors and all kinds of new stuff. All the stuff. I do appreciate the free demos and the email helps and the support. I am not ungrateful, I am frustrated that your assumptions that I might be working with some industry standard mormal stuff isn't adequate for the edge I work on.


Someone mentionedmaking a guitar bridge, I missed the whole post. I have made Ebon and rosewod gitar bridges for restraton work for years. LAst year I sent two out to a gy in New Mexico. He repleied with his check, wow these are so perfect you must use CNC can I order 2 dozen. I make them all with a bandsaw and a cabinet scraper. All by hand and they are all identical. So just for the thought everything does not have to be made on CNC to be great or accurate. In the final analysys it is the human eye and feel that measures it anyway. The old machinists said they could "feel" the difference of .004" with their hands. That is a human hair by the way, and just about everyine on the planet can rll a human hair between their fingers and feel it. let alone one in their food:^) Johnno on a Sunday Rant


. At first I thought that there is no way

> of
> > making my guitar bridge.

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