Our new toy, and a PCNC Lathe update

Apologies for the fat-finger submission last week. The “publish” and “preview” buttons are really close together in our WordPress blog software:) Anyways, here’s a few things that we’ve been up to in the lately.

PGC (Personal Gantry Crane)
First, our newest toy in the Tormach Shop — a portable 2000 lbs. gantry crane. Perfect for lifting the machine onto the stand, or a rotating 4th axis on to the PCNC table. I think it will fit in most garages as well. We’ve talked about getting one for a while, and it didn’t disappoint. This one is an aluminum frame with large locking casters and a really nice made trolley.

Progress on the Tormach Lathe
Here are the lathe castings for the first prototypes of our slant bed CNC lathe project (you can see some earlier discussion of this project here). These are now being built up at the factory and we expect to see the first prototypes in the fall. Steady progress, albeit somewhat slower than we had initially hoped for.

Farewell to the Stirlings
Finally, we’ve had a lot of fun making these Stirling Engines in our CNC Fundamentals Workshop over that last two years. The class last week had some of the best ones yet, like this one built by Kenny from TN. We Tach’d it at around 200RPM:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As anybody who’s played around with one of these coffee cup engines knows, they can be real finicky to get running, but Kenny had his cranking away the on the very first spin — call us impressed! Alas, this is a swan song for the Stirling project — after having almost 200 students build these during the class, we’ve decided to retire the Stirling project for the moment and will be building a very cool dial indicator holder in the future. This new project has some challenging parts and I think it will be a great teaching tool.

ISCAR Introduces Adjustable Milling Cutters

“A new family of High Speed Milling (HSM) adjustable endmills and facemills from ISCAR improve milling of aluminum, non-metallics, cast iron and hardened steel, especially in automotive and aerospace applications,” said a company spokesperson.

“The dynamically balanced cutters are specifically designed to work with polycrystalline diamond (PCD) or cubic boron nitride (CBN) inserts, protecting their edges and delivering outstanding surface finishes,” the spokesperson said. “They also accommodate standard HSM-rated HELIDO 2000 carbide inserts.

“In both the endmills and facemills, internal coolant holes ensure a cooler cutting face while improving chip evacuation and resistance to built-up edge.

“Insert pockets in the cutters feature a flexible rear stopper, which can be adjusted by a slanted screw, enabling axial positioning of the cutting edge within 0.002 mm (.00008 inches).

“Endmills, designated E90AD, are available with HSK A63 shanks in four diameters from 25 to 50 mm (1 to 2 inches). Facemills, designated F90AD, cover the 50 to 80 mm (2 to 3 inches) diameter range, also in four sizes.

“When used with HELIDO carbide inserts, the adjustable HSM cutters deliver extremely smooth cutting action with low cutting forces. HELIDO inserts’ helical cutting edges gently enter the work a bit at a time, like scissors slicing into paper, to reduce impact loads at the cutting face.”

For more information contact:

ISCAR Metals, Inc.
300 Westway Place
Arlington, TX 76018
817-258-3200
Fax: 817-258-3221
info@iscarmetals.com

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