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A good day. Dave Hammer stopped by and brought me some 2" base plate material. As usual we had to jaw for a while. Dave is a really good friend. Then a bit later I had a steel sales person from my old supplier stop by--he brought me lunch! He told me there had been a top management change and that prices had been lowered--mostly by market forces. And they took the cell phones away from the delivery truck drivers. I may well go back for at least my next order. Then I had a small welding job walk in the door. Finished some blanking out of the dies material. And worked on the Octagon 50 guides. I decided to re-cut the v-guides. A while back I had done a thinning session on the mill, turning the v-guides upside down and milling the flat backs. This was a mistake. I should have thinnned them by returning to the auxilliary angle table and cutting each side of the v just as they were originally made. My expedient approach seems to have caused some angularity change. This is what I was correcting. A LESSON LEARNED. The hard way. And this may be the second time I've mentioned it. Sorry about the redundancy.
LESSONS LEARNED is an exercise I do periodically when I've done something that is out of the ordinary and learned in the process. I talk about it in my daily journal over my first cup of coffee. Writing this stuff down is my way of making sure I've thought things through. A couple of months ago I was reviewing my 2009 journal and reviewed the year's LESSONS LEARNED. Most had to do with production processes.
I was using the Octagon 50 today as a study basis for changes I intend to make on the next one. My method of designing by sketching does not capture a lot of details that a full scale 3-D Real McCoy does. In particular I was examining how much taller I could make the tup and the V-guides relative to the cylinder's top cap dimensions. 2", but I had expected a bit more than that. Longer tup length and V-guides give better control of the tup during off-center pounding, and I've increased this length several times over the years. My new method of clamping the connector ball by using bolts from below allows me to maximize tup length. This one innovation--bolting from below--has had some really good consequences.
LESSONS LEARNED is an exercise I do periodically when I've done something that is out of the ordinary and learned in the process. I talk about it in my daily journal over my first cup of coffee. Writing this stuff down is my way of making sure I've thought things through. A couple of months ago I was reviewing my 2009 journal and reviewed the year's LESSONS LEARNED. Most had to do with production processes.
I was using the Octagon 50 today as a study basis for changes I intend to make on the next one. My method of designing by sketching does not capture a lot of details that a full scale 3-D Real McCoy does. In particular I was examining how much taller I could make the tup and the V-guides relative to the cylinder's top cap dimensions. 2", but I had expected a bit more than that. Longer tup length and V-guides give better control of the tup during off-center pounding, and I've increased this length several times over the years. My new method of clamping the connector ball by using bolts from below allows me to maximize tup length. This one innovation--bolting from below--has had some really good consequences.
