After a lovely evening out having dinner with my family, I continue with my work on the wheel. I wanted to do up a fixture to hold the wheel blank in place during the machining of the spokes. The fixture will hold a piece of blank for now. Since I've only 4 pieces to work on at this stage, it shouldn't take very long doing one at a time once that part of the job starts.
The fixture. The raised port is slightly lower than the wheel hub and is 5mm in diameter.
 After facing of one end of a piece of aluminum stock, it was flipped over to face the other end. This piece will be held in the vise. |  Turning the wheel hub locator (don't know what I should call this...) |
 Sweet! 4.97mm. The wheel should just slipped on with no side movement. |  Test fit with a blank. Perfect! |
 Drilling 2.5mm hole for M3 tap. |  Light touch with a zero flute countersink bit. |
 M3 tap missing... This is really a show stopper... |  Searched through this pile of taps and dies. Nothing... |
But I found this instead - a self centering drill. 5mm. Didn't know I bought this last time. Terence was talking about this on FaceBook just a while ago...
Looks like I can't carry on tonight. Will have to make a trip down to Chan Man Lee to buy the M3 tap. Problem is, I would be able to get back to the shop till after Tuesday - roadshows on both Monday and Tuesday night.
I'm thinking ahead; if I'm to make many pieces of the same wheel design, I'll make this instead. If I don't have to make very accurate part, I'll do without the locators; just drill, tap, and screw in the blanks.
RSS Feed