16mm needs sharpening

Listen to this cutting. Do you think I need a sharper tool? :)
It's a 16mm diameter HSS milling cutter.

milling gears

I can make module 1 gears from acetal on my milling machine, using a 1mm diameter slot drill, for the teeth. I used a 6mm to rough it out and a 3mm slot drill to cut out the 4mm hole.

gears

I made some gears and a casing, as an experiment.
Parts were coming out lozenged, but I fixed that by pushing on the table until something bent, so the axes are more perpendicular to each other. I tested this by checking the nozzle distance from the table at each of the corners of travel.
I was pleased with the gears I made. I ran them in a little with some brasso to get them free running.

 

pp3dp

This is not milling, I know, but...
I bought a 3D printer from here http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=89&products_id=644
It arrived this afternoon and I assembled it and got it to work, kind of.
The parts come unstuck while being made, which cause them to warp a bit.
Apparently I can fix this by sticking some Scotch Blue Painter's Tape to the machine bed, instead of using the green paint, they supply.
I don't know if I can buy any of this tape in Malvern, England.

 I coloured the heart with a permanent marker. You can use solvent based paint for painting ABS, though.
The heart was almost 1mm undersize in both axes.

 

I liked the sound the plastic part makes when I drop it onto the table.

Making for money

I have been doing quite a bit of machining work recently.

Clamping with one screw in the middle

I am fitting a spur gear to a bigger spur gear by cutting an external hexagon, with small radiuses, on the outside of the gear's boss. Most of the work here was in cutting the right shape in the black acetal, including drilling and tapping a hole. The tapping was done by hand, with a tap in a chuck.

Gears

I have started adding gear design to HeeksCAD. I am hoping to design some 3D models of bevel gears, but I have started with spur gears. Bevel gears are a bit complicated.