Milling Cutter - DIY shop tooling

[49-1183904562]

Thought I would share, I was stuck looking for a milling head large enough to swing a Harley head in one pass either side (Rocker box side is bigger than deck). I looked in Enco and J&L etc but all the indexable cutters were big money close to a grand. When surfing Bill Jones web site I saw he made his own so in the spirit of DIY I set out for the low budget solution. I had a chuck backing plate that came on a 3 jaw chuck I bought off eBay it was 8 inches in diameter with a 2.375 X 11 threaded bore. All I needed was an R8 adapter and a 2.375 X 11 threaded shaft. I bought the R8 fixed end mill holder of eBay for 8 buck and ordered a piece of 2.5 inch stock from the metal supplier and some other stock for tool holders and shop stock 50 bucks. So I machined up the threaded adapter trued the R8 mill holder then Tig welded the two together. Then again chucked the R8 in the mill and trued the seating flange on the threaded adapter, Red lock tight in place and true the face surface of the plate. I then made 4 tool holders out of bar stock to hold 3/8 carbide cutters, then milled out pockets for the tool holder to seat in and tap holes for mounting. Once done with the tool holders I tumbled and assembled using grade 8 stainless allens, and grade 8 set screws. All in all after indexing the cutters it works better than I expected surface finish is awesome and I can now mill heads four times faster than the old set up with better finish and can now swing 8.5 inches in a single pass. All for under a hundred bucks .

Rick

[106-1194218389]

[color=#000000]Bill is a friend of mine and his shop is fun. He has a ton of stuff and a lot of the really "neat" stuff is stuff that he has thought out and built. He is my idol for keeping money out of racing. One guy can take $100 and Bill will beat him with 50

[49-1183904562]

[color=#000000]Dean,

The R8 was pressed into then welded to the threaded adapter I made. Sorry the pics are poor but I did not even think of posting until after I had gone past partial assembly. The threaded adapter was not bad to make, since I had the internal threads to go from I inched/.001 up on the fit when cutting the threads. The R8 end mill holder was for a 3/4 end mill but that really did not matter I just wanted a new clean true R8 side. The real trick was using the mill as a lathe to true the critical points through the build, but that

[49-1183904562]

Update,

I was having so m trouble with the surface finish on all aluminum heads with the carbide tipped bits, so I decided to grind a set of radius HSS bits just for aluminum. A mist of WD40 and the finish is like glass. Very happy with how the whole project turned out.

Rick

[106-1194218389]

[color=#000000]Rick,
I assume you dial the cutters in so they have the same depth? I remember setting our overhead broach. We sharpened our cutters on a special diamond wheel. We did them flat but only like .040" wide with a back relief angle also of about 30

[49-1183904562]

[color=#000000]John, yes that is how I used to do the cutters in my old shop on the Van Norman Blockmaster it had 12 bits and we would sharpen them on the CBN wheel then finish on the Boring bar lap. The problem after some research is the carbide I had on this setup was cheep C5 from Enco. They did not like aluminum as it would stick to the carbide and build up causing a scuffed finish no matter what lubricant I used. PS in my old shop I used lemon pledge as it used to contain carnauba wax and that

[106-1194218389]

What I also found was if the head had not been over heated it still retained it's heat treat. If the Aluminum head had been over heated then the middle section of the head would have lost it's heat treat and then the aluminum in the middle would stick and pull like you are talking about. You would end up with a dull spot in the middle of a shiny surface job. I like the Lemon Pledge idea. It would smell good also.

John