46 replies to this topic

[jacobsbaits]

I'm intrigued by the great ideas that have been brought up from this subject.
Who's idea is the best? Who knows, only time will tell.
In my opinion, its only a matter of time before China runs all American bait mold makers out of business.
But for the time being, I'm going to follow my Grandfather's advice "Keep it simple"

[Delw]

Bob La Londe, on 26 June 2010 - 10:45 PM, said:

I might even break down and spend some real money for a trunnion table and 4th axis for my machine so I can pin it accurately.

Bob Save your money a 4th axis and a 5th trunion is not needed for molds and it really wouldnt do you anygood. I have both, not to mention on a small machine like that the rigidity would be terriable,If you can't hold true position with 3 axis you will never hold true position with 4 let alone 5 axis. then you would have to buy Real software( that does FULL 4th and 5th axis work not indexing.and a post proceessor) to run it which cost 10-15K + the post for another 1-5k, you could save that money and buy a real machine and do the same thing.

[Delw]

Bob La Londe, on 18 June 2010 - 05:32 PM, said:

LOL. I think we are not talking about the same thing. Instead of using a solid piece of aluminum stock for the body like you were saying why not use a piece of aluminum angle. You can buy it with one leg one length for whatever length body you want and one leg a different length to accomodate whatever wdith skirt you want. Buy whatever thickness you want to work with. Its a lot less aluminum than doing it out of a solid piece of stock those dimensions. And it will result in a nearly perfect 90 degree skirt depending on your ability to clamp the work piece.

Angled alum will chatter and you wont be able to square it up. by the time you do you could have had 2-3 molds already made.
I am guessing your looking at 2-3" -2-3" that means you would need to have a endmill 2-3" long and a vise and machine that could hold 2-3" wide material. most vices hold about 1"-1.5" in depth IE Kurt and chicks of coarse with making your own jaws you can hold 8" in depth. You could NEVER use a standard vise even if its a good quality one, you would have to make a fixture. once you hold on one edge and cut the other side of the L you have NO support on the side your cutting so now it will chatter and give a rough finish uneven and way out of flatness. if you did make a fixture too hold the angle properly you could have again saved time and lots of money in material by solid stock.

[Bob La Londe]

Delw, on 28 June 2010 - 03:20 AM, said:

Angled alum will chatter and you wont be able to square it up. by the time you do you could have had 2-3 molds already made.
I am guessing your looking at 2-3" -2-3" that means you would need to have a endmill 2-3" long and a vise and machine that could hold 2-3" wide material. most vices hold about 1"-1.5" in depth IE Kurt and chicks of coarse with making your own jaws you can hold 8" in depth. You could NEVER use a standard vise even if its a good quality one, you would have to make a fixture. once you hold on one edge and cut the other side of the L you have NO support on the side your cutting so now it will chatter and give a rough finish uneven and way out of flatness. if you did make a fixture too hold the angle properly you could have again saved time and lots of money in material by solid stock.

I almost never use a standard vise on my mill anymore. I've found clamps and blocks seem to work a lot better. I've got a whole basket of misc mounting stuff I've made hanging on the wall for mounting work pieces.

My thoughts for the trunnion was I could mount the flat I was working with rather than the leg, and then use rotation to get a more accurate 90 degrees to set pins. I realize I could probably get it "good enough" by hand on the drill press, but I keep trying to come up with ways to make it maore machine and less me.

I have no way to measure rigidity, but this little Taig mill is pretty decent. My only real complaint is that I have to adjust the backlash about every 20 hours of machine time. I'm always afraid I'm going to bang or tweak one of the lead screws while I have the table off. I suppose I really should upgrade it to ball screws, but that's a project for another day.

[jacobsbaits]

Bob La Londe, on 28 June 2010 - 08:03 AM, said:

I almost never use a standard vise on my mill anymore. I've found clamps and blocks seem to work a lot better. I've got a whole basket of misc mounting stuff I've made hanging on the wall for mounting work pieces.

My thoughts for the trunnion was I could mount the flat I was working with rather than the leg, and then use rotation to get a more accurate 90 degrees to set pins. I realize I could probably get it "good enough" by hand on the drill press, but I keep trying to come up with ways to make it maore machine and less me.

I have no way to measure rigidity, but this little Taig mill is pretty decent. My only real complaint is that I have to adjust the backlash about every 20 hours of machine time. I'm always afraid I'm going to bang or tweak one of the lead screws while I have the table off. I suppose I really should upgrade it to ball screws, but that's a project for another day.

Check out a HURCO VM1, 8000 rpm spindle speed, 300 I.P.M max feed rate, 750 I.P.M rapid travel. These are great 3 axis high speed machining centers for the price I've been using mine daily for 6 years, and have only had to do routine maintenance on it .
And I don't baby it, these machines are true work horses.

[Bob La Londe]

jacobsbaits, on 28 June 2010 - 05:31 PM, said:

Check out a HURCO VM1, 8000 rpm spindle speed, 300 I.P.M max feed rate, 750 I.P.M rapid travel. These are great 3 axis high speed machining centers for the price I've been using mine daily for 6 years, and have only had to do routine maintenance on it .
And I don't baby it, these machines are true work horses.

Yeah, I wish. I just did a quick check and a found a used one on Ebay for only $37,495.00. Its just a wee bit out of my price range.

My little Taig cost $1700. Its just a toy, by comparison, but if I take care of it I get some pretty good final work pieces out of it. Most of the problems I've had have been from poor planning or simple math mistakes in writing code. Until recently I did a lot of the more complex coding by hand. Now I am using Cam Bam for my CAM and its making a lot of stuff easier and faster. My little machine is actually running now instead of waiting for me to generate the code for the next project. I still need to pick a serious 3D CAD program and take the time to learn how to use it, but there is only so much time in a life. The positive of having learned my code files and how the instructions work to write stuff by hand is often when the CAM software does something wonky I see it before I ever transfer it to my controller computer. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I actually look at the first few lines of code and the last few lines of code for each MOP to make sure they are in the right ballpark.

I'm surprised though that you are happy with only 8000 RPM. When I plug in my speed feed calculator I get suggested RPMs of 30-40,000 RPM for the smaller mills for aluminum. My Taig spins at 10,000 RPM and I just leave it there for most things. I only slow it down to use the wiggler (which I don't use now that I have a camera and a laser) or to do certain drilling processes or work with stainless or hardened steel. Mostly I just turn medium size pieces of aluminum into smaller pieces of aluminum at a feed of 20 IPM and a rapid of 20 IPM and a plunge from 0.5 to 10 IPM. LOL.

[jacobsbaits]

Bob La Londe, on 28 June 2010 - 07:49 PM, said:

Yeah, I wish. I just did a quick check and a found a used one on Ebay for only $37,495.00. Its just a wee bit out of my price range.

My little Taig cost $1700. Its just a toy, by comparison, but if I take care of it I get some pretty good final work pieces out of it. Most of the problems I've had have been from poor planning or simple math mistakes in writing code. Until recently I did a lot of the more complex coding by hand. Now I am using Cam Bam for my CAM and its making a lot of stuff easier and faster. My little machine is actually running now instead of waiting for me to generate the code for the next project. I still need to pick a serious 3D CAD program and take the time to learn how to use it, but there is only so much time in a life. The positive of having learned my code files and how the instructions work to write stuff by hand is often when the CAM software does something wonky I see it before I ever transfer it to my controller computer. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I actually look at the first few lines of code and the last few lines of code for each MOP to make sure they are in the right ballpark.

I'm surprised though that you are happy with only 8000 RPM. When I plug in my speed feed calculator I get suggested RPMs of 30-40,000 RPM for the smaller mills for aluminum. My Taig spins at 10,000 RPM and I just leave it there for most things. I only slow it down to use the wiggler (which I don't use now that I have a camera and a laser) or to do certain drilling processes or work with stainless or hardened steel. Mostly I just turn medium size pieces of aluminum into smaller pieces of aluminum at a feed of 20 IPM and a rapid of 20 IPM and a plunge from 0.5 to 10 IPM. LOL.

Throw away your ipm/rpm charts. Just crank your speed and feed up until you snap a cutter, then back-off once you found the limit.

[jacobsbaits]

jacobsbaits, on 28 June 2010 - 08:41 PM, said:

Throw away your ipm/rpm charts. Just crank your speed and feed up until you snap a cutter, then back-off once you found the limit.

Whats wrong with spending $50,000 on a hobby? To me, it's money well spent. To my Wife, well not so much

[Bob La Londe]

jacobsbaits, on 28 June 2010 - 10:46 PM, said:

Whats wrong with spending $50,000 on a hobby? To me, it's money well spent. To my Wife, well not so much

Nothing if you got it.

I have two boats in the shop, and I will hunt you down if you tell my wife what all those rods and reels cost. LOL.

I'll probably never (you never know for sure) spend that much on a CNC machine, but I am looking at a little faster machine with a little more umph. Who knows. I might cvome into a windfall next week and have just enough after paying off the house to buy one. LOL.

[jacobsbaits]

Bob La Londe, on 29 June 2010 - 03:17 AM, said:

Nothing if you got it.

I have two boats in the shop, and I will hunt you down if you tell my wife what all those rods and reels cost. LOL.

I'll probably never (you never know for sure) spend that much on a CNC machine, but I am looking at a little faster machine with a little more umph. Who knows. I might cvome into a windfall next week and have just enough after paying off the house to buy one. LOL.

Bob, I wont tell, As long as you promise not to tell my wife that the three rods I built last winter, "In order to save money" cost me more than 6 high quality store bought rods.
How's your mold going? I'm looking forward to seeing the baits.

[Bob La Londe]

Discount Steel didn't ship my order of metal, and my machine sits idle. I called them today (10 days later) and they didn't even have any good excuses, and of course the people who handle that had gone home for the day. I may have to bite the bullet and pay my 40% convenience tax to buy some from one of the local metal retailers. I actually called one and got the price confirmed today.

Actually I ordered some stuff from Metals to Go, but since they are all the way one the East Coast I won't see any of that until the end of next week.

Heck, I'm at the point of hitting salvage yards and posting a drops wanted ad on Craigs List.

[carolinamike]

Bob, Metal Express is another East Coast supplier. They do custom cuts and have also found them to be very reliable and very fast.

[dlaery]

Hey Bob, whey you say

Quote

(which I don't use now that I have a camera and a laser)

Is this an edge finder? Do you have a link of this?
thanks,

[dlaery]

dlaery, on 03 July 2010 - 08:12 AM, said:

Hey Bob, whey you say

Is this an edge finder? Do you have a link of this?
thanks,

Well it looks like I spoke too soon, after doing a search I found out what it is. It sounds like you like yours.

[Bob La Londe]

dlaery, on 03 July 2010 - 08:26 AM, said:

Well it looks like I spoke too soon, after doing a search I found out what it is. It sounds like you like yours.

In Mach 3 there is a plug in for a USB camera. Some of the inexpensive little board cameras can be focused in at less than an inch. Mount a shaft on the back of the camera with adjusting (leveling) screws and you have a low power video microscope edge finder. Mach 3 super imposes cross hairs on the image. Spin the camera back and forth and adjust the feet until the cross hair stay centered on a super fine cross drawn on a sheet of paper laying on your table and you now have a precision video edge finder. Its also good for inspecting end mills to see how worn out they are. You can make it yourself fairly inexpensively or there is a guy making them up and selling them on the Artsoft / Mach 3 support forums.

For quick roughing I use a laser edge finder now instead of the camera. Its a little faster. Both are faster than using a wiggler.

[jacobsbaits]

Hey Bob, I just wanted to show you my final results. It took a 3 piece mold to get it done.

[Bob La Londe]

jacobsbaits, on 30 July 2010 - 08:54 PM, said:

Hey Bob, I just wanted to show you my final results. It took a 3 piece mold to get it done.

Send me a picture. bob (at) yumabassman (dot) com.

I was going to work on it myself, but I had some buddies talk me into making some flipping craw molds, and while I was at it I made some seperate claw molds... and you know how it goes. Then I decided I liked my Speckled Hog so much (caught an 8.5 on it the other day) that I wanted to make some more molds so I could shoot a bag at a time.

I'm still cogitating on my Mr Potato Head version, and I'll get around to it sooner or later....

Of course my machine has been busy the last couple days modifying itself. I am building adjustable brackets so I can mount and level two spindles on it and cut two mold plates at once. Set two plates the same size. Then I can adjust one spindle up or down so they both zero to the plates together.

And then there is fishing... I caught a 7.03 in the Working Man this evening.

Hardly leaves any time for my day job.

[jacobsbaits]

Yea, those Carp grow to an enormous size.

[Bob La Londe]

jacobsbaits, on 31 July 2010 - 07:51 PM, said:

Yea, those Carp grow to an enormous size.

Didn't think I needed a picture of the 7 last night since I weighed it in a tournament in front of a dozen other anglers. I'll post a pic of the 8.5 if the guy I took fishing that day ever gets around to e-mailing it to me. I saved the actual bait I caught it on. LOL.

The 8.5 LM is not my biggest, but its the biggest I have put on a scale. This year I have caught a couple over five, a 6.5, a 7.78 and now a 7.03 in tournaments. I have not done as much fun fishing this year as in past years so my not tournament count of big fish is only a little more than that, but hey do bite better during the middle of the week.

Oh, yeah. The day I caught the 8.5 (last week in the middle of the week) I had about a 3-4 pound carp roll on a senko, and the next cast the head of what looked to be about a 15-20 pound flathead came out of the water about 2 feet behind the senko as I burned it across the surface. This is a weird year. I caught a 4 pound channel a months or so ago on one too.

As to carp. We get some big ones around here. I think I'll pass on fishing for those. The last thing I want is giant slimy carp thrashing around in my boat. A guy could get hurt.

"So, how did you break your leg Bob?"

"A carp hit me."

Nah, I don't think so.


Here is a picture of the dual spindle mount I have been busy making the last few days in my spare time.

Edited by Bob La Londe, 31 July 2010 - 08:38 PM.

[mark poulson]

Very nice work.