Some Recent Projects

Spanner and tool organisers for an efficient workshop.

Lathe tool organiser

Personalised toy box for a nephew using CNC finger joints and birch plywood.

Flattening red gum tree slab for a friend.  Epoxy resin filled knots and cracks.

Computer monitor stand for my personal computer.

BBQ stand for a family member.

New gear stick knob for the 4WD.

Folding aluminium parts for welding.

Engraved panel for a drinking water plumbing system in the 4WD.

Carbon Fibre Wedding Ring

This project was to make a carbon fibre wedding ring for a good mate of mine.

Final Tooling - Ring bore reduced from 19.0mm to 18.5mm ID. Extra length gave more room to manage the fibre on and off the ring mould surface.

Laying the carbon tow in a helical pattern to give an attractive finish on the inside of the ring.

Laminate built up ready to be consolidated

Heatshrink used to compact the laminate and provide an even outside surface finish.

Heatshrink has been shrunk down.

The cured ring was demoulded and setup in a purpose made jig/clamp for holding the ring.

The surface was turned on the lathe to remove excess material and then sanded and hand filed to give the desired outer profile/shape

A layer of epoxy was applied to the outer surface of the ring to be the final finishing surface of most of the ring.

The ring was setup in a rotating axis (4th Axis) on the CNC router to cut the grooves at the appropriate angle.

Cutting to full depth.

Finished groove ready for the gold to be glued in

I bought the gold online in 4.5x4.5mm square wire that gets cut to the length you order. I ordered a 10mm length hoping I could get enough for two rings out of it incase anything went pear shaped

Test fitting the filled down/shaped Rose gold

Test fitting the filled down/shaped white gold.

I used eposy resin to glue the gold in. Once cured I carefully hand shaped the gold with a small file to match the ring shape.

Progressively filing my way down.

Sanding with fine wet and dry sand paper.

All polished up and complete.

All polished up and complete.

I then turned up a pedestal to hold the ring and plaque to glue into the box. 

In hindsight this box was way too big to fit into the best mans pocket, but should work nicely at home.

More experimentation

 Had a play around at drilling PCDs into turned aluminium parts.  I first machined a bore into some timber as a simple fixture then pressed the part into place.  I later on did another part with spot drilling first and counter boring.  was very happy with the results.

 I was also looking for a neat way to store my fasteners, yet still be able to take them places for installs and prevent double handling.  I settled on using Tactix boxes from Bunnings and decided to build a rolling island bench for them.

Part of my workshop improvements was to fabricate a new bench that all my tools and equipment could fit underneath,

I cut slots into the table and designed brackets that allow the bench grinder and bench vice to be pushed back against the wall and out of the way when not in use.  I have always found this to be a pain with bench grinders in small workshops.

A few of the little projects i've undertaken lately

Cutting out MDF letters

Making a new drill bit organiser.  Made from 15mm HDPE plastic, using a spiral surfacing pattern.

 Machined a new gear stick knob for my car.  Was very happy with the quality of the engraving on the brass plate.  Also got to test out my new parting off tool in the lathe for this one and using super glue to hold down small parts while machining them.  Worked a treat.

For the Z-axis upgrade for the CNC router I wanted to cut down on some of the travelling mass of the system.  With these pockets and some other features I should be able to drastically improve the Z-axis stiffness while keeping the same mass as the current system.  Before and after stiffness values to presented once I install it.  Material is 6mm 5000 series alloy plate.  Cutter is 6mm single flute, 15000 RPM, 1200mm/min feed, 0.5mm DOC. 

Was very impressed I was able to machine brass with a 4mm bull nose R1 cutter.

Made a pen holder with a spring loaded Z-axis.  Plan for this is to use it as a plotter for making sails for my sailing dinghy in the future.

Turning some decent sized aluminium parts and testing out my new carbide inserts for aluminium.

Practice piece for making a plywood child's toy box.  Finally starting to play with some digital joinery.

Some more turned parts and my first go at threading on the lathe.  just happened to be in a bore and against a shoulder, certainly know how to make it challenging for myself.

Testing out a new radius tool for the lathe.