CNC milling and lathe work available with in the next two months

[The Architect]

I have a CNC mill with an envelope of one and a half feet by a little over one foot by 6 inches. I also have a 7x10 lathe which I will be outfitting with a DRO (digital read out) for precise turning and a grinding attachment (think dremel with a grinding stone on it spinning against the part being turned in the lathe or a polishing stone instead for an ultra precise round part that is also ultra smooth)

I have built tools already and even use several to make the goggles found here:

http://www.borgsteamfactory.com/goggles.html

if you are interested in my help let me know.

the soonest I can begin work for anyone else though would be the middle of September to the beginning October.

I have a surplus of neo mags and bearings incase that helps.

[CompuTutor]

Nice goggles !   

Makes me wish I had a rotary biplane,
and a scarf over a leather jacket.   
(Not a dig, my way of saying they are cool...)

I imagine you'll get swamped pretty fast
from making an offer like this on here.

So I'd like to get right in line first.


I'm contacting companies at the moment trying to find
a compound that is available at the average  consumer
or over-the-counter / online in some way for a purpose.

It is to start making custom plasma injector spark plugs
that screw in where the standard issue spark plugs go.

The "Bodies" will be from "Champion" spark plugs
(I was on the phone with them earlier today)
and the bodies are made of stainless steel.

They are for marine use of course...


They cannot sell me the empty barrels sadly,
so I will have to gut them out myself.  .

But thats a small price to pay to get some
rather nice prototype parts to work with.


Having said all that,
I will source the various tubing sizes,
and of course the compound for them.

But a small amount of machining will be needed
to incorporate check valves into the inlets.


Interested?

Thank you in advance !

[CompuTutor]

It occurs to me these parts would be rather small,
is that going to be a problem for your machinery ?

Do you have a standard issue manual
indexing rotary table for your miller
with a self centering three jaw chuck
for offset work on round components ?

Thank you

[The Architect]

the size should not be an issue. my steps are a quarter of a thousandth of an inch (so I can take off just 1/4000th of an inch of material at a time) the repeatability (how close the end mill gets each time it moves away from an area to go back to that point) is .0006 to .0007

I do not have a decent rotary table for the mill yet but I am looking into building one. right now I do have a rotary table that is going to be outfitted onto the lathe so I can rotate the chuck to specific locations down to 1/60th of a degree. (I used to use this rotary table to do work on a 750lbs vertical mill) when I have outfitted that on the lathe, to do work since the lathe will not really be turning at any significant speeds I will be mounting a fordom tool head and the cutting tool then on the lathe will be rotating 15 to 20,000RPM and can be anything from a 1/32nd inch sized tungsten carbide endmill (excellent to cut stainless titanium or plain steel even for making tools) to a grinding stone or a cratex grit impregnated rubber polishing wheel for precision shaping and polishing.

the idea be hind all of this is that I can turn down a party on the lathe to get the turning part right, then I can outfit the bed with the rotary tool and the lathe chuck with the table with out having to let go of the turned part so I can then turn the part to specific positions and lock it down then move the rotary tool in to cut say holes around the circumference at exact positions in relation to them selves and any where along the turned part.

I could also cut specific forms this way too so if I wanted to I could make complex gearing and such as well.

as for the spark plugs if you are going to gut them then you might look into used ones as I see them at various auto repair shops all the time. and those would be free to get you started.

[CompuTutor]

That is enough information for me to blueprint from,
the rotary table on the lathe only changes the order
of operations needed to reproduce what I will need.

I'm not in a hurry, I'm still contacting people
about other needs for this prototype project.

I am pretty excited though, I've been given
some very good data to work from already !   

I prefer new stainless steel plugs for this,
as I will be using a high heat compound
to bind to them after the bore is plated
with the proper metal for bonding to it.

I'm still going to work on Champion plug a little more
to try and get them to send me a few "Samples" of
their pre-production plug cores that are empty still.

I have four genrators laying around here,
I'll try for those four blanks as "Samples".   

I'll bookmark this thread,
and post back in a few months.



I'll let you tell me what part count your comfortable with,
after the "1-off's" to test funtionality, I was hoping on 100.

I'll keep ten, then let others here pay postage
and 1/100th of our costs to get them for themselves
to try their own hand at replicating my prototype.

As a machinist, I perhaps should clarify that
the parts and function for these are simple,
it is the matching electronics that will be the hurdle.

There will be a fuel injector on top,
and a triple electrode chamber too.

So refining the spark start voltage,
the HF current to maintain plasma,
and the timing of the injector pulses.

Will take a few months between all here
to noodle-out in our heads and get right...

Well, that, and the correct material selection needed
to keep injector degradation to a reasonable lifespan.