March, '07
Works in progress

March marked a continuation of fun jobs. First up was more stuff for the rifle cleaning kit latches. Here are photos of fixtures I made for subsequent operations after the incorrect holes had been drilled out.

Photo #1: This fixture holds the diminutive latch (hilighted) in a nest comprising a pin that goes thru the now-correct diameter pivot hole and a swinging capture pawl. From this position the latch can be ground down on one edge, correcting the one remaining error in the cnc laser cutting process. To make sure the contact angle is square the baseplate can be adjusted, relative to a slot in the grinder's table.
Photo #2: The contrast sucks here, but to adjust the amount to be ground off I added an operator-adjustable depth setting screw and jam nut on the left.
Photo #3: Being as there were a shitload of parts that needed to be corrected I made two fixtures, one right handed and one left handed, so that two people could correct parts on the same grinder, using the wheels on the opposite sides.

A brief aside: people frequently ask me why I left Santa Barbara and moved to that 'gawdawful dump' in Santa Rosa. Here's the view from my shop, after a storm on a Spring morning...

Photo #: Not too shabby, eh? Balloons are not uncommon and we've even had one land in the meadow. In SB it would have been police helicopters...

Faithful readers will recall I converted my bench-model drillpress to a floor model some time back This was the main reason for doing so..

Photo #1: Here's a nightmare job for ya: tapping both ends of long 1/4" dia stainless steel rods #8-32 and at least 3/8" deep. I added the wooden handle to the collet closer to get extra torque, to keep parts from spinning in the clamp. The bottle of tapping fluid is kept from tumbling off of the drillpress table with a super magnet plunked inside, heh.
Photo #: Good old Cool Whip containers! A typical production run: something like 100 parts gets old in a hurry...

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