I mentioned in one of the threads about welding that I was working on my
first milling project to learn some basic metal working skills and thought
I'd share it with the group.

I took an introduction to automotive machine shop class this summer at the
same community college (NOVA in Manassas VA) where I took my 6 welding
classes and I've been learning some basic milling machine operations for
the first time in my life.

Though the class had no formal projects, I made up my own project to create
a 3" square dice out of 6 pieces of 3/8" aluminum. Here's the finished
work:

http://www.newsreader.com/red_dice.jpg

Though you can't tell from the picture, all the sides also have rabbet
joints in them to make them interlock with each other. That added yet
another level of complexity to my project.

It's powder coated - which is something else I'm learning how to do this
summer by finding a old used oven on craigslist and running a 50 amp 220
volt circuit to my garage. I picked up the powder coat starter kit from
Eastwood after someone here mentioned it. Running the power to the garage
and adding a sub-panel to allow me to support more 220 power tool outlets
in my shop ended up costing 6 times what the oven itself cost!

The class was mostly an introduction to all the specialized machine tools
used for rebuilding engines, and only spent a few hours on the mill and
lathe but it had lots of lab time where we could play with anything we
wanted. My plan was to spend about half the class working with the mill
and half with the lathe (I've never used either before this class) but this
project I created took a lot more time than I expected and I ended up
spending it all on the mill. I've only got one class left now to start
playing with the lathe!

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited until
so late in life to start learning it!

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited until
so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

"Curt Welch" wrote in message
...
I mentioned in one of the threads about welding that I was working on my
first milling project to learn some basic metal working skills and thought
I'd share it with the group.

I took an introduction to automotive machine shop class this summer at the
same community college (NOVA in Manassas VA) where I took my 6 welding
classes and I've been learning some basic milling machine operations for
the first time in my life.

Though the class had no formal projects, I made up my own project to
create
a 3" square dice out of 6 pieces of 3/8" aluminum. Here's the finished
work:

http://www.newsreader.com/red_dice.jpg

Though you can't tell from the picture, all the sides also have rabbet
joints in them to make them interlock with each other. That added yet
another level of complexity to my project.

It's powder coated - which is something else I'm learning how to do this
summer by finding a old used oven on craigslist and running a 50 amp 220
volt circuit to my garage. I picked up the powder coat starter kit from
Eastwood after someone here mentioned it. Running the power to the garage
and adding a sub-panel to allow me to support more 220 power tool outlets
in my shop ended up costing 6 times what the oven itself cost!

The class was mostly an introduction to all the specialized machine tools
used for rebuilding engines, and only spent a few hours on the mill and
lathe but it had lots of lab time where we could play with anything we
wanted. My plan was to spend about half the class working with the mill
and half with the lathe (I've never used either before this class) but
this
project I created took a lot more time than I expected and I ended up
spending it all on the mill. I've only got one class left now to start
playing with the lathe!

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited until
so late in life to start learning it!

Very nice, very inneresting concept, well excecuted.
I'm sure this would be a hit in Las Vegas/Atlantic city gift shops, etc.
The Gambler's Paperweight.
You may want to get a design patent on this, much cheaper/easier than
utility patents.
Poss. even a utility patent.

You mentioned powder coated, but the picture shows anodized.

Must really screw up the floors, tho, when you throw'em....
--
DT




--
Curt Welch
http://CurtWelch.Com/

http://NewsReader.Com/

Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it into a
cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted not to do
that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel. The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with only
stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreader.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

I also made a 2" cube out of 18 gauge steel with Tig. Don't seem to have a
picture of that online. TIG was by far the easiest for me.

Welding a cube is an interesting project because the errors of alignment
and distortion tend to add up showing off your mistakes. Welding shut a
sealed container is also an interesting task as the hot air tends to want
to expand and blow out your weld pool. Nice little projects for testing
your skills as a welder and you end up with something fun for you desk in
the end.

For the oxy-acetylene class I also made this more complex art-like
project....

http://newsreader.com/rosebee.jpg

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:
Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it into a
cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted not to do
that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel. The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with only
stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreader.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

I also made a 2" cube out of 18 gauge steel with Tig. Don't seem to have a
picture of that online. TIG was by far the easiest for me.

Welding a cube is an interesting project because the errors of alignment
and distortion tend to add up showing off your mistakes. Welding shut a
sealed container is also an interesting task as the hot air tends to want
to expand and blow out your weld pool. Nice little projects for testing
your skills as a welder and you end up with something fun for you desk in
the end.

For the oxy-acetylene class I also made this more complex art-like
project....

http://newsreader.com/rosebee.jpg


Looks very, very cute. I love the handle on that rosebud. Did you have
access to a sandblasting machine?
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

"DrollTroll" wrote:
"Curt Welch" wrote in message
...
I mentioned in one of the threads about welding that I was working on my
first milling project to learn some basic metal working skills and
thought I'd share it with the group.

I took an introduction to automotive machine shop class this summer at
the same community college (NOVA in Manassas VA) where I took my 6
welding classes and I've been learning some basic milling machine
operations for the first time in my life.

Though the class had no formal projects, I made up my own project to
create
a 3" square dice out of 6 pieces of 3/8" aluminum. Here's the finished
work:

http://www.newsreader.com/red_dice.jpg

Though you can't tell from the picture, all the sides also have rabbet
joints in them to make them interlock with each other. That added yet
another level of complexity to my project.

It's powder coated - which is something else I'm learning how to do
this summer by finding a old used oven on craigslist and running a 50
amp 220 volt circuit to my garage. I picked up the powder coat starter
kit from Eastwood after someone here mentioned it. Running the power
to the garage and adding a sub-panel to allow me to support more 220
power tool outlets in my shop ended up costing 6 times what the oven
itself cost!

The class was mostly an introduction to all the specialized machine
tools used for rebuilding engines, and only spent a few hours on the
mill and lathe but it had lots of lab time where we could play with
anything we wanted. My plan was to spend about half the class working
with the mill and half with the lathe (I've never used either before
this class) but this
project I created took a lot more time than I expected and I ended up
spending it all on the mill. I've only got one class left now to start
playing with the lathe!

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!

Very nice, very inneresting concept, well excecuted.
I'm sure this would be a hit in Las Vegas/Atlantic city gift shops, etc.
The Gambler's Paperweight.
You may want to get a design patent on this, much cheaper/easier than
utility patents.
Poss. even a utility patent.

If you count the tuition for the course, and all the money I spent on
buying various metal working tools (I love having an excuse to buy more
tools) and the powder coating equipment you would have to consider that one
die to cost about $800. Not likely to make much money if I spend that
much for each one I make.

You mentioned powder coated, but the picture shows anodized.



Yeah, I guess that's a bit confusing. It's powder coated but the name of
the powder color is "Anodized Red". It's a color available from Eastwood:

http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...emType=PRODUCT

I put that caption on the picture because I sent it in to Eastwood for
their web site of customer samples of their colors. On their web site in
the section of samples of that color, the caption wouldn't have been so
confusing.

Must really screw up the floors, tho, when you throw'em....



--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:
Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon"
list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I
:waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it
into a cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted
not to do that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel.
The holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and
then filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back
to the nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with
only stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreader.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

I also made a 2" cube out of 18 gauge steel with Tig. Don't seem to
have a picture of that online. TIG was by far the easiest for me.

Welding a cube is an interesting project because the errors of
alignment and distortion tend to add up showing off your mistakes.
Welding shut a sealed container is also an interesting task as the hot
air tends to want to expand and blow out your weld pool. Nice little
projects for testing your skills as a welder and you end up with
something fun for you desk in the end.

For the oxy-acetylene class I also made this more complex art-like
project....

http://newsreader.com/rosebee.jpg


Looks very, very cute. I love the handle on that rosebud. Did you have
access to a sandblasting machine?

The school has one (or two maybe?), but I've never used it. I used a wire
wheel to clean it up and then clear coated it with some type of clear
acrylic spray paint which caused it to turn a darker color in the process.

Getting sand or bead blasting equipment is yet some more stuff on my wish
list.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

On 22 Jul 2008 03:36:56 GMT, (Curt Welch) wrote:


On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with only
stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreader.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

40+ years ago I needed an ejector plug for a 4" soil compaction mold.
The father of one of the engineers in the company was an amateur
machinist he made one for me from 4" OD pipe with end caps welded on
then turned and faced to 3.95" Dia. x 5" long. He did a very nice job
on it with no visible joint. As a joke, I labelled it "Light Weight
Steel" and put it on a shelf in the lab. One day, the company
president walked through and noticed it. For the rest of my time with
that firm, we had many good laughs over that incident, Bob was real
great guy and always got a good laugh out of any practical joke,
particularly if he was the fall guy.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

On 22 Jul 2008 03:36:56 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm,
(Curt Welch) quickly quoth:


Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel. The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

Cute, and the Miller catalog it's resting on in the pic is a nice
photographic touch, Curt.


On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with only
stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreder.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

I reckon so!


I also made a 2" cube out of 18 gauge steel with Tig. Don't seem to have a
picture of that online. TIG was by far the easiest for me.

Welding a cube is an interesting project because the errors of alignment
and distortion tend to add up showing off your mistakes. Welding shut a
sealed container is also an interesting task as the hot air tends to want
to expand and blow out your weld pool. Nice little projects for testing
your skills as a welder and you end up with something fun for you desk in
the end.

That does sound challenging.


For the oxy-acetylene class I also made this more complex art-like
project....

http://newsreader.com/rosebee.jpg

I particularly like the thorns on the stem and the BBBBs (ball-bearing
bee butts.)

Good show. Carry on.

--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
---

"Curt Welch" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it into
a
cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted not to do
that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel. The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

That is not as fancy looking as your milled and powder coated die, but it
has a certain aesthetic pleasantness that is far more satisfying.

"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
"Curt Welch" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it into
a
cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted not to do
that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel.
The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

That is not as fancy looking as your milled and powder coated die, but it
has a certain aesthetic pleasantness that is far more satisfying.

I sort of agree--the welded ditty is a bit subtler, and certainly
*metallurgically* more inneresting.

To give the brass touch even more oomph, I'd consider ball-milling/drilling
the brass spots, to show off some depth to the brass, make them even more
"life-like" as dice.

The machined dice were more "in your face", art-deco-ish.
Curt, you could put a real pair of dice *inside* the machined version, for
those who bother to look inside--or don't get it.

I think Curt's got hisself a possible cottage industry, here! Really great.

In the long run, if you were to try to sell these, the machined version
would be far easier to make, production-wise, than the welded.
--
DT

On 22 Jul 2008 02:41:33 GMT, (Curt Welch) wrote:



Though the class had no formal projects, I made up my own project to create
a 3" square dice out of 6 pieces of 3/8" aluminum. Here's the finished
work:


Just a small niggle:-

One die, two dice



The next step it to make a set of three or four nested dice in the fashion of
the Chinese ball or machinist's cube G

regards
Mark Rand
RTFM

"The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. ..."

Bob Engelhardt wrote:
"The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. ..."

Actually, It's kinda stupid I still have it in my sig because it's been
off-line for two years since I got rid of the T1 to my home. I keep
telling myself I'm going to put it back on line but haven't gotten to
it....

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/