Making your own race parts

Nice job on the rotor. I made a rear rotor like that for my F3 too.

 

Nice,

The one I did took a long time to machine, granted my speeds and feeds were on the conservative side but still....
I used a .3125" 4fl EM to rough at .060" DOC and a .25" 4fl to finish

 

I'm pretty sure I used a 4fl 1/4" em, and yeah, it took forever too. Memories a bit foggy it was from 2011, but I wanna say around 45 minutes or something.


While digging for those pics, I found a couple more of motorcycle parts I made.
Honda motor mount tool, before I welded a handle on. Wasn't a very good welder back then so I probably didn't take a pic of it lol.

RC51 suberbike tail mounts.

 

Swingarm spools, and the inserts to weld into my F3 swingarm.





Again, no pics of the welding, I don't think I did that bad on them, but I must have been ashamed of it at the time or there would have been a picture. The rearsets and tripple tree, and frame slider in this picture were made by me too. No pics, of those that I can find, as I had just got my first smatphone then. These were some of the first pictures on it. I have about 6 months of cool pics like this, then my son was born, and it's kid pic, kid pic, kid pic, etc lol. No more racing pics lol.

That's the last pic of me on a bike. Crashed 2nd corner of the warm up lap, and parked it lol. Made the lever guard and swingarm shark fin the night before that round as I forgot they were required and wasn't going to buy on for a 1 off round. Had the bike loaded on the trailer, and was having a beer checking straps and thought, oh shit, I need a lever guard and shark fin. Pretty rough, but worked.....

 

Definitely Canadian number plate . I’m heading over there either late tonight or tomorrow, haven’t booked my flight yet nor are the parts I made dry enough to de mold.

 

Well I'm back from my stupid ass ban, what coolant are you using on that rotor? Looks very very oil based. Also, did you use a zcarb to rough it? You can really move with a zcarb, you can rough up to like .075 doc.

 

Can't remember what it was, but it was nasty shit. That machine (now gone) was a particularly bad cesspool. Was always itchy, no matter how much we cleaned the sumps, or how we mixed it. Tried all sorts of bacteria busters, skimmers, distilled or filtered water, and other additives. Even had a company rep in to try and figure it out. He had no idea and couldn't figure it out either so we switched about 5-6 years ago to some stuff that was awesome but expensive, then switched again to some crappy cheap stuff again that we still use. Wish I could remember the names. We're almost out again, so I'm going to try and switch back to the good stuff again if I can remember what it's called. I'm sure we still have an empty drum out back somewhere.

Read about the zcarb before, but never tried them. We don't do a lot of work that would take advantage of them. Mostly aluminum 3d surfacing. o1, and 4140. Nothing production, and the mills sit almost as much they run sometimes so no real need for high dollar tooling. Although I do use some high performance aluminum end mills from seco that are awesome, but with only 7500rpm and 20 haas power there's only so much one can do...

 

Let me get you the name of the coolant we use. Cheap but fantastic.

Also seco is great but expensive. Use accupro from msc. Fantastic. Last a long time. And have .0002 runout most of the time. Use 2 flute for aluminum. Spin them between 45-5500 rpm. Feed at 36ipm. 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2. Works great. As far as ball mill 3d surfing, the step over you use is the finish you get. Want something incredibly smooth, very small step over. I love this stuff. Really really do. We programmed a part the other week, that is completely 3d. Using every single aspect of the 5axis that can be used. I'll try to grab a photo tomorrow.

 

We use a lot of Seco tooling because my boss is good poker buddies with the local rep...... Great tools, but I'm glad I'm not paying for them....

I miss 5 axis machines. Had one at a previous employer about 12 years ago. Can't remember the model # (dmc 125 maybe?) it was a big one. I only programmed it, never ran it. Much easier to do this work with 5 axis, than 3.
This is a recent checking fixture I designed and built, that would have been a cake walk with 5 axis.

The 2 steel net blocks under the clamps sit in pockets on compound angles, and the blocks themselves are 01 that I roughed out, hardened then hardmilled in place. Form tolerance on the body was 0.004", and the steel nets were 0.001". This is a block from a different fixture, but same process. Block is squared up, then a pick up pad is finished milled into it. That allows me to set it up in a double vise and pick up that corner to mill the pocket and pitch the dowel holes in. The setup edges all get milled away when I machine the body. Not quite as nice and easy as rotating a head with gcode


There's 3/8" dowel pins on compound angles for trim feeler gauges inserted around the part edge that are put in with toolmaker buttons. Positional tolerance on those was 0.004". Was a fun job .
Due to timing I had to anodize this one first before putting the holes in for the dowels. Had to put packing tape all over the block to keep it from getting scratched. Not how I usually prefer to do things...lol.


I love this shit too. Playing with Lego, and Mechano as a kid sure helps in this trade sometimes with creative setups..... We're finally getting a 4th axis rotary table for an upcoming intermittent production job, so I'm going to build a trunion table for it for vise work too. I used Mastercam 9 back then for multi axis programming but it's been a loooong time since I've spit out any gcode with an a or b in it, so it will be a bit of a learning curve again. Looking forward to it though.

 

That's straight up ridonculous. Just reminds me how much there is still to learn. I just wish my old brain was as pliable as it once was. I'm gonna blame it on having my head run over at IRP many years ago.

 

I'm using Condat Mecagreen 450hp, I mix 15 oz/gal to get a 6 on the refractometer which is their target number.

 

Just checked and we're using cimpulse 45mp. The good stuff before this was a cimcool product too, but I have no idea which one as I can't find the drum. I worked briefly in a mold shop a couple years ago that used a coolant that was a milky white. That stuff was awesome. It smelled great, worked great, had an awesome sump life and left your hands baby butt smoooooth (which made it easy to tweeze out all the metal slivers from hardmilling core/cavity blocks lol). When I came back to work at the shop I'm at now again, I looked into getting it, and it was more than double the cost of the cimcool stuff. I think it was around $1800 a 55gal drum, vs $7-800. Probably got another 4-5 months left of the current drum, and I'll try and get the previous stuff again. Should be easy to figure out from past invoices.

 

My text fixtures came out awesome. They used one of them in test this morning and performed flawless with 0 modifications. I could do a pre test as I don’t have the equipment they go into to test before I sent them. I put a few layers of carbon around the outseide edges and all surfaces that are exposed after the parts are in there for test, that was my personal showing off touch

 

I’ll get the name of that white stuff. My buddies shop in Windsor uses it.

 

Thanks. Unless the price has gone down in the last 3 years I doubt it will happen though.

Nice. Glad things worked out. I like being able to make things look nice as well as functional and dimensionally accurate. It's a struggle sometimes in the automotive industry when they want everything cheap, and yesterday, but being able to take pride in the stuff you build is key to the whole thing for me. It's a constant challenge for me to make things better, faster and cheaper. I really enjoy that part.

 

This is what we have been using for a few years now .Works good and doesn't leave as much of a wax residue in the machines than the other's we have used

 

Wow, you guys are impressive. How much equipment and time does it take to do something like this? Are you spending $1,000's just learning to do it...and 1,000's more on the equipment.

I'm very impressed you can get this high quality at home!! AWESOME WORK!

 

The only thing you really need to get started making composite parts is a good vacuum pump and materials. It's like anything else though, the more you do and the more you learn, the more money you spend on tools.

 

Just going to quote that again lol.

Thanks. A lot of recommendations for Blaser stuff over at practical machinist over the years. One more to look at. That's my big gripe with the stuff we use now. Come in after the weekend and the vises, tools and holders are all caked with dried coolant. It comes off, but I just spend about 20 minutes cleaning out and re-oiling stiff drill chucks that were all gunked up.

Even though I'm a machinist/toolmaker by day with access to good industrial machines, I'm still always impressed at what people accomplish in their home shops, on what some people in the trade would consider boat anchor grade equipment. It's the attention to detail, and skills of the craftsman that make the difference. Better tools, and tooling help, but it's certainly not a barrier to entry. I know a lot of "Amateur" machinists, who produce much better work than some of the "professionals" I've worked with over the years. Myself included...

You composite guys are making me want to get involved. I've added vaccum pumps to my regular kijiji searches now . I've got nothing cool to build carbon fiber shit for anymore, so I'm going to have to get another bike. lol

 

You can make a carbon broom holder... Carbon can be anything you want it to be...