Just a reminder that rail anchors and rail clips (Pandrol clips) are not the same thing. Rail clips hold the rail down onto the ties, and rail anchors keep the rail from sliding back and forth across the ties. Both are generally made from spring steel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re made from the same spring steel. One of my best hot chisels is made from a Pandrol clip. 

4 hours ago, BillyBones said:

The first thing i did was go to our requisitions guy and ask him to see if we could just buy them.

That would be my first thought for a business as well. I've heard of friction welding but know nothing really about the process, I would imagine it may be hard on the tailstock so would not be enthusiastic to try. I concur with a tig weld, though might require some post weld heat treat. Or is your boss thinking that the tool would be used in a press and a friction weld may be more uniform and thus less likely to break?

--Larry

I worked on getting some inventory made for the upcoming garden show that our club will be demonstrating at and have permission to sell as fundraising for the club.

These are hose guides. I thought with as small as the leaves are, that I didn't need to mark in the veins but I've had one person so far tell me I should still put them in. 

 

What are hose guides?  Like, for a garden hose?

Just checked, and the piece I used is defined by suppliers as a rail anchor, more specifically what they call a "Unit V" anchor.

The material it is made from is 60Si2MnA

Chemical composition: C:0.56-0.64, Mn:0.60-0.90, Si:1.60-2.00, Cr:≤0.35, P:≤0.03, S:≤0.03

Source: [rail-fastener(dot)com website]

Edited August 20, 2025Aug 20 by Mod34
Commercial link removed per TOS

Yes, for a garden hose. Although, their design would lend them to also being helpful in propping up long-stemmed plants and such. 

3 hours ago, LarryFahnoe said:

would be used in a press and a friction weld may be more uniform and thus less likely to break?

From what he explained to i think they just get whacked with a hammer. 

I think it would be more cost effective to machine them out of 1 piece of material. To do the friction weld i would have to spend at least a day to learn how to do it. Then a bunch of time designing a fixture for the tail. I would guess that they would have to pay me for at least a week just for that. And let me just say i am far from the lowest paid person in the shop. 

In the day it would take me to learn the weld i could turn a dozen on the lathe, if not more. 

So, the long part is a spike which would be pushed into the ground quite a bit?  If so, is that going to have the pointy end of the leaves up where they might be tread upon?

One of the advantages of friction welding is the ability to join dissimilar metals.

Thanks for merging those unrelated replies automagic forum software.

1 hour ago, BillyBones said:

To do the friction weld i would have to spend at least a day to learn how to do it. Then a bunch of time designing a fixture for the tail.

Judging from the videos I've seen of friction welding, it seems like a critical part of the process is that once the two pieces reach the proper temperature, they have to be instantly brought to a stationary position (at least relative to each other) so that the two parts can fuse without shearing. Forcing that kind of hard stop on a spinning lathe strikes me as challenging at best and dangerous at worst. Still, this is completely outside my own experience, so I'm happy to be educated by those with more practical knowledge.

Friction welding in a machine lathe, CNC or manual? MAYBE once. Machine lathes do NOT have thrust bearings on the spindle (headstock) and can NOT take end loading. Trying to perform even a small friction weld would put severe side loading pressure pushing the bearings right out of their races. An analogy would be expecting a water glass to hold water laying on it's side.

Spindle brakes are common enough if the lathe is equipped and tail stocks can withstand immense forces but in general you'd probably have to build an assembly special for the purpose from the ways up.

I'd say this is a non-starter. If a lathe could be converted it'd probably cost a couple few times as much as the right machine.

You work in a CNC machine shop don't you Billy? Much cheaper to just machine and heat treat them. If that isn't profitable using a lathe is a financial black hole.

Frosty The Lucky.

CNC and manual shop. But in the tool room everything i do is manual. Well we do have a proto-tract on the mill but we rarely use it. 

The tailstock would be held stationary until the joint comes to temp then allowed to rotate with the spindle. That is why i also have to design a fixture for it. If not i would just use a Jacobs chuck. 

I did not even think about end loading on the lathe. Thanks for pointing that out. However i could do them on the mill that can take end loading much better. 

The heat treat is why i am also more inclined to machine them. I am sure that they are wanting a mild or medium carbon steel welded on and i am not sure how they would heat treat the 2 different alloys. 

MAN, that's way backwards of how I'd do it, I'd just stop the spindle, it's been decades since I've run a proper lathe and stomping the brake pedal killed the motor and stopped the spindle dead. I don't even remember what make the lathe was, not the big Regal Leblond. Hitting the spindle brake would make the shop boom if it was moving very fast.

I enjoyed machine shop privileges before the shop machinist retired. Afterwards the new machinist wouldn't even let me use the blue wheel grinder to sharpen carbide bits. <sigh>

I know virtually nothing about end mills, the last one I ran was high school metal shop. Except for one occasion Larry the machinist who allowed me privileges showed me how to tap holes with "his." I tapped one and he just did the rest without charging it to our department, took him less time to do all 5 than it took me to clamp and center the stock. 

Heat treating welded pieces would be interesting. Bearing balls are typically really high carbon steel so you'd probably need expensive rod or tig wire to stick it to lesser steel and heat treatment would be . . . ?

It's be simple enough to make a jig to hold bearing ball and rod centered for welding but again you run into HAZ differences and heat treat issues. Arc welding in a lathe is out of the question unless it's been designed for it. Nimrods striking an arc on stock in a lathe tend to cause the replacement of the gears, bearings and such. Though there is a trick I'm not boing to discuss on the open forum or someone without knowledge or experience will try their own version and either fry the lathe or just degrade it's precision to salvage value.

A perfect example was discussed here recently by someone who tried welding on a piece of equipment without isolating the ground to THE pieces being welded. Grounding through the frame caused all sorts of spot welding in the works. I am slightly curious how many haven't been found yet.

Frosty The Lucky.

I sometimes use my drill press as a jig for TIG welding, with careful thought to ground path. I always unplug it first; the one thing that really scares me is somehow completing the ground path through the house wiring. 

5 hours ago, LeeJustice said:

So, the long part is a spike which would be pushed into the ground quite a bit?  If so, is that going to have the pointy end of the leaves up where they might be tread upon?

Correct - but not likely to be tread upon. Not impossible - but whenever I've seen them in use, they've been along garden borders and with a few inches below the curl showing above ground. So even if they were running a hose across the lawn, the hose would be elevated from the grass enough that you would notice and step over it. 

Now that you've pointed it out though, I think I'll reheat & turn that a bit further so it points down instead of up. Just in case someone trips or something

All done!

Put it in a fenced-in backyard.  Please!  Too beautiful to let some loathsome individual steal it off the front lawn.  Or at least connect it to a non-pulsed high amperage electric fence controller if in the front.  Set up a camera, too. 

Shaina, all you need do is roll the pointy tips of the leaves over and even stepping on them won't make people leak. 

I like it John, I'm sure the commissioner will be pleased at the appalled wailing and shrieking of the hoity toity neighbors. <evil grin>

Frosty The Lucky.

That's wonderful, John!

Frosty, not sure if you can tell from the pic but those leaves are about the size of my fingernail. Pretty small. I think rolling only the tips of the leaves would make it hard to tell they were even leaves anymore, lol
For these, I think I'll just bend the "stems" of the leaves so they kind of fold back toward the parent stock. 
My next batch will start from larger stock to get a larger leaf. Another alternative is to fold-over forge weld the 1/4" stock to get more mass.

Then just file the points off, I doubt anybody is going to poke a hole in themselves on a pinky nail sized element. 

Of course folding or just laying them down on the stem or ring will look well.

Frosty The Lucky.

Love the flamingo. Really well done

 

So i got to see a print of the part today. It is basically a valve with a check ball inside. There needs to be a dimple in the bottom just enough so a 9/16" ball will find a home. There is not even a dimension for depth or width from the customer.   The whole part is ~2" long. 

Back a few years ago i bought a doming block set from harbor freight and i use the punches in that as ball punches. They are short and have held up quite nicely. Back to this in a second.

I drew up some ideas to machine ball punches and suggested material, S-7 i am thinking. 

I am discussing the drawing and machining of the punch with my GM and he is seeming delighted. Especially after i said what a waste of time and money it would be to figure out the friction welding and fixture. Also thanks to all here i talked about the wear and tear on machinery. 

Before i came into work i went into my shop and grabbed randomly one of those ball punches. As we were talking i reached into my pocket and pulled out the punch and asked "Is this something like what you want?". His eyes about bugged out of his head and asked where i got it. I said harbor freight. He had no idea that you could buy these punches already made. 

Gotta love those moments!

Great job on the flamingo John! Now, how about a collaboration with your wife perhaps on a "wooly mammoth" variant for the yarn shop? ;-}

Billy, nice to be able to have a productive conversation with your boss and arrive at the low-tech simple solution rather than too complex and costly! I can recall manager-types that were dead set on their vision for something and thus completely unable to grasp that there were other alternatives that might work better.

--Larry

Thank YOU Billy, that put a big fat smile on my face first thing! It's like a triple win, problem solved, you look like the hero and I got to play along. 

I love the wooly mammoth idea Larry. Well John? You know when these catch on you could rename your operation, John's Wooly Flamingo factory.

Frosty The Lucky.

Fun fact: mammoths had a double coat, with a ~3" thick soft undercoat for warmth combined with a coarse outer coat for external protection. Evidence from mammoths frozen in the Arctic permafrost shows that the guard hairs of the outer coat could be up to three feet long.