Clamping Fixture and Fly Cutting

I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to my Clamping Fixture post, and those who suggested I not be scared of my Fly cutter. Well here's what I did. I trammed in my mill head this morning. It had about .005" diff between left and right of the spindle and about .001 diff fore and aft of the spindle. This was with my tooling plate on the mill bed. So I pulled the tooling plate off and measured in relation to the mill bed, still had about .0005" for and aft and had about .003" left and right.

So I had to pull the key stock indexer out of the mill head to base slot, and adjusted the head, got it dead on at .000" diff left and right, still have about .0005" fore and aft. I did not have any shimming material, so I'll leave it at that. Then I put the tooling plate back on and checked it with as expected .002" left and right and .001" fore and aft. So the tooling plate is a little off. (I'll have to leave the key stock out now)

Then I put the dreaded fly cutter in the spindle along with a new carbide bit and I fly cut the top of the tooling plate. WHAT a beautiful site, I surfaced the top of the tooling plate and it was and is looking real good. Then I put the dial indicator back on the spindle, and everything checked out great. I even put a straight edge across the plate, no cove.

Next, I am going to make some tooling plate clamps as described by Dave Hylands and possibly add some indexing pins on the plate as described by Tom Hubin. Then I pursue this vacuum plate idea at a later time.

I ante scared of Fly Cutters no more,

Victor A.

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