After building a bending break and spot welder, Alan Millar decided he needed a toolbox. So, starting with recycled materials such as old bed frames and computer cases, he set out to building himself this toolbox:
Dial Indicator Mount for the Atlas 618 lathe
Dean over at Dean’s Photographica is a photography enthuastiast who has some excellent machining skills. His site has several projects made with his TAIG mill and lathe. Dean also has an Atlas 8×18 lathe, which has some very nice improvements that are documented here. The project shown here is a nice addition to any lathe, which is a dial indicator mount for the lathe bed. This allows for precision movements of the lathe carriage during the machining process.
Here is a look at the finished product:
Bandsaw Stand
Back in 1997 a newsletter published by Home Metal Shop Club contained an article by George Carlson on making a new stand for the 4×6 bandsaw. The article also displays a coolant system that was added to the saw as well.
Home-Brew Spot Welder
The builder of this fine Spot Welder made it out of necessity because of a much larger project he was working on: a homemade gas turbine. By the looks of the figures given on his website, the welder as shown – can be built for around $175. The result is a high quality spot welder that produces excellent results.
CNC Milling Machine
Here is a Harbor Freight 47158 Micro-Mill that has been converted into a CNC controlled mill. Several parts for this conversion were made on another (manual) mill. Other parts needed were sourced from McMaster-Carr. This setup is sporting a homemade coolant system and a low-cost Home/Limit switch system using Hall-Effect sensors (Digikey part # DN6848-ND).
Travelling CNC Medicine Show
This is one of the immaculately constructed mini-routers that Widgitmaster from CNCZone has been selling on eBay. The first thing done with this router was to convert it to CNC and then make it portable.
This little router has 8″ of X travel, 4″ of Y travel, and just under 2″ of Z travel.
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Sheet Metal Brake
Mike sketched out some plans of a sheet metal brake and then built a great looking tool.
Many times we skip right over the sketching step and a mighty important step at that. This goes to show, you don’t have to make a set of cad drawings in order to record an idea in your head.
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Stretcher Shrinker Plans
These plans were drawn up by Ben’s custom art out of the Netherlands. I found them on a car building website, which the person who posted it found them on a metalworking site, which has lost much of it’s previous content due to server failure with no data backup. So, in the interest of keeping this together – here is a complete posting of the plans to build your own Stretcher and/or Shrinker. Enjoy!
Building a lathe from scratch
This lathe is another Gingery based creation. The framework is made of 1″ x 1″ square tubing and the bed is 3″ x 3″ x 1/4″ steel tubing.
Tilt Furnace
Anyone that does metalworking will sooner or later benefit from having their own foundry. Melt down old metal and start casting your new creations. This is a very rewarding project, most people with a home foundry build it themselves. This particular build is one of the nicer ones in that it is 1.) Built out of stainless steel and 2.) It tilts for pouring molten metal into a mold.
