"Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:34 am

Fun...

Nice acorn table by the way.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:51 am

Yeah, no. But it needs done. Next is fitting the Mark Williams bearing caps. Hopefully that goes faster.

"Acorn Table"?

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 7:36 am

Fixture table. Acorn is a brand name. Looked like one of these to me. This is my old one.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:19 am

Ah, it is and it isn't. It is a fixture table, but it is a solid deck and was built by a master fabricator abut 35 years ago. The top surface is a 4'x12' sheet of 10ga. lightly tacked at the corners. Plan was we would lift a sports-racer or whatever on the hoist and blow off it's suspension. Roll the table under it and make fixturing that was tacked to the table and bolted to the chassis' suspension tabs. Then we could alter the chassis as needed without it moving. The idea was that when the top skin got too scared up from all of the stuff tacked to it and then ground loose that we'd buy a new sheet and turn the old one into tabs, brackets, etc. It only ever got used that way once, to build the world's most over-the-top wannaB street legal Class 5 car. I've only seen pics of it, no idea what became of the car. We had one like yours at CSU, Chico. That table was lusty....

I thought maybe you were seeing things in the pic that I couldn't. It is outside under a ginourmous & messy CA oak tree......

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:28 am

Yeah, not actual acorns. I saw where your mind went.

And I only had one of these tables and honestly I like the newer tables with holes or threaded holes better. The platens only work if you have the tooling for them. They were ok to clamp to but the new style stuff is way better.
My buddy has 6 of them though and can configure them into different shapes or layouts for big projects. He does everything from cars to 2" thick structural stuff that is HUGE.

I like the removable top idea. I lust over steel tables with a blanchard ground aluminum top. They get beat up but they dissipate heat so well.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 12:37 pm

I was given a pair of 4'x4' sheets of 7475 AL, one .250" thick and the other .1875 thick. I laminated them together with the .25 on top and built a fab table out of them. I asked the guy who gave them to me, a Metallurgist who consults with the likes of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. if 7475 was some super-duper can't talk about it aircraft alloy and he said "yes." The alloy may be out there in public (http://www.matweb.com/search/DataSheet. ... 7c75361c19), but who knows what they were using it for.

I had dreams of drilling and tapping a 1/2-13 grid in them, but just drilling and c-sinking the 5 holes that I put in them was huge effort. Mild steel drills easier than that stuff! I'd need a mag base drill and a grid to clamp it down with, to drill those holes!

More on topic, it turns out that Trail Ready makes a version of their 17x8 wheel in 8 lug, with a 3.5" back-space that has no bead-lock features or look. Seriously tempting. Currently about $360/wheel
Some pics that Trail Ready sent me-
17" w/ late model B-S in black:

15" in their normal finish:

A 17" version of the 15" is what I'd be buying, I'm way beyond being over black wheels. Sure wish that I could buy AR-23's in 17"......

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:16 pm

Does alcoa make a 17? I think they discontinued their 5 spoke pattern though. Looks like an AR 23 - just stronger.

I'll inquire on the 7475. Sounds interesting. Same buddy who has the acorn tables used to be a machine specialist for Boeing. He would have to come in and try & figure out why they were burning end mills or whatever and sometimes he couldn't be told what material they were using. He'd just have to look at the destroyed tool and advise on new cutter material & speed, etc. Made for some fun work & funny stories.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 7:50 pm

The Spindle Boring Tool.

Started with some Ø3.00" x 1.25" thick discs of steel, a 12" section of Ø3.00 x .188 wall steel tube, an 18" long piece of Ø1.25" linear bearing shaft, a pair of Ø1.25" ID bushings from McMaster-Carr; a Ø1.5625" Hougen Annular Cutter and a pair of GM 14BFF wheel bearing nuts. Turns out the D60's and 14BFF have the same spindle threads. I wasn't too interested, but I think that I read that Dana 70's and Dana 80's also share this Ø2.00-16 thread.

Bored the slugs to Ø1.25 ID and then tapped them for set screws so that I could use the linear bearing shaft as an arbor to turn their OD's. Set up the tube in the steady rest and bored the ID to something consistent and actually round. To do that I also had to turn some spots along the OD to actually round as well.

Two of the slugs are fitted recessed considerably, so they got 6 radial holes drilled at each location. Turned the spindle nuts to the same OD as the slugs. And drilled a ring of holes for the rear one of those. Fitted and welded all three slugs into place. Set up and bored two of them for the bushings and one of them to clear the OD of the cutter by very little. This slug got faced perpendicular. Then the first nut was pressed into place and rosette welded to the tube thru it's 6 holes.

The second spindle nut was threaded mostly onto the spindle and then the tube assembly was screwed into place. This assured that A) the second nut didn't bottom out on the threads before the faced slug bottomed out on the end of the spindle, and B) that the threads of both nuts were timed together. then it was welded to the end of the tube.

The linear shaft was bored at one end with a Ø.750" hole per the Weldon shank of the annular cutter. 90° flats were cut on that end and holes were drilled and tapped 5/16 NF and flat nose set screws were fitted. The opposite end was turned down to Ø.50" x .75"

The cutter was fitted and tightened into place, ready for it's first cut.

Adding cutting fluid thru the open holes was not practical as they were at the rear of the cutter when fully retracted. A set of 6 holes clocked 30° and between the near pair of rosettes was drilled. Those get the fluid on the tip of the cutter. Turns out that 6.0" of stroke isn't quite enough to go all of the way thru the spindle. I cut the rear slug loose, shortened the tube by .60" and welded the slug back into place. That got the cutter all of the way through the first spindle. I'm not there yet on the second one. Hopefully it was enough.

BDKW1 · Post by **BDKW1** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:02 pm

So, you have a mill, why didn't you just bore it out with the mill?

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 7:38 am

Put the whole housing in the mill? I considered it and it might be possible, but it sure would be awkward. Even if it would fit onto the mill, which at nearly 80 inches long it wouldn't easily fit in any orientation, the fixturing that I'd have had to make just to rigidly hold the housing would have been more complicated than making the tool. And now I have a tool that MISF can use to bore his D60 spindles in situ as well as any future such needs.

BDKW1 · Post by **BDKW1** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:03 am

Kick the head over, 2 V blocks on the table and go to town. Easy money. But that just might be the machinist in me talking.

Or if you had a 90* head, that would be useful too.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 12:15 pm

It is not that simple. Quill doesn't fit down the spindle bore or have enough stroke, so it needs about a 7" extension to reach the bottom of the bore and would still require a table shift each time to clear the chips. That pushes the whole housing further off of center. Right through the garage wall.

No 90° head. Can't turn the ram on the base to get, say, further to the left because now the laid over head isn't perp/parallel to either table travel axis. So now I'm twisting and tilting the head to get there. And I still need that extension to reach the bottom of the bore. Even though it's not side-loaded I'm not terribly inclined to run that much length out of the mill spindle without some kind of support or guide. So I still need to build something similar to what I built.

Keep in mind this is just a clearance bore, it is not a precision fit with something nor does it guide anything. It doesn't need to have .005" TIR, it doesn't need to have .005" cylindricality with the OD. It just needs to be a decently centered hole with some clearance for a Ø1.500" shaft with, to my own thinking, a 125 or better surface finish.

Were my lathe big enough I'd have chucked it up with the steady-rest and used my big boring bar. The lathe could swing it, but the bed is far too short. Wish that the 15"x 80" Monarch at Chico wasn't 450 miles away......

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Tue Apr 20, 2021 8:22 am

ChaseTruck754 wrote: ↑
Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:16 pm
Does alcoa make a 17? I think they discontinued their 5 spoke pattern though. Looks like an AR 23 - just stronger.

I'll inquire on the 7475. Sounds interesting. Same buddy who has the acorn tables used to be a machine specialist for Boeing. He would have to come in and try & figure out why they were burning end mills or whatever and sometimes he couldn't be told what material they were using. He'd just have to look at the destroyed tool and advise on new cutter material & speed, etc. Made for some fun work & funny stories.

I've never seen an Alcoa, that I knew to be one, that looked like an AR-23. I've only ever seen their OEM Ford wheels that look vaguely like an AR Outlaw II less the row of 'rivet heads.'
All that I'm finding from Alcoa now is dually wheels. They may be others, I admit not looking very deep when the search wasn't turning up even hints of wheels that I'd be interested in.

I looked into 7475 a little when those pieces first came my way 20-ish years ago. What I found then was that I needed a Lockheed-Martin budget and a need for a lot of it!

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Tue Apr 20, 2021 9:43 am

These are a set of 5, 15x7's I had for a while. They seem super rare. I still have a 16x7 in 5x5.5 of these up in the rafters. I LOVE the look of these but finally sold my 5 I'd been hoarding when I decided to take all trucks to 8 lug. Now I wish I had um back.

This 5 star pattern also came in an 8 lug but I think those were recalled.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:06 am

Now that I see a pic of them I recall seeing those wheels a long time ago, but I had no idea who made them. You won't have any trouble convincing me of the rarity of them.

BDKW1 · Post by **BDKW1** » Tue Apr 20, 2021 6:25 pm

I need to get another stocker and see if there's enough material to make them 5 spoke. Not sure if the holes will clean up without it looking funny.

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 11:28 am

BDKW1 wrote: ↑
Tue Apr 20, 2021 6:25 pm
I need to get another stocker and see if there's enough material to make them 5 spoke. Not sure if the holes will clean up without it looking funny.

Your starburst copies on the DGAF toy look good. I'd be interested to see what you could do in a star pattern.

Let's see if this linking in a photo works... These were the recalled 8 lug wheels and the area of trouble.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 11:56 am

Hindsight being 20/20 it is easy to see why they might crack there. Shallow angle and a small radius at their intersection.

ntsqd · Post by **ntsqd** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 12:17 pm

Only new Alcoas that I'm finding now are either 16' or 17.5", only in 8x6.5 (which is fine), with a 4.29" Back-space (which is not fine).
https://www.southwestwheel.com/p-5242-167041.aspx
https://buytruckwheels.com/collections/ ... 3082977316

Current wheels are 3.5 B-S. Rear axle WMS to WMS dim will be essentially unchanged (something like a 1/16" difference). No idea yet about the front, but I'm expecting that it won't change significantly. I *like* how tight this trucks turns now, and the tires don't rub the radius arms. A deeper B-S dim would hurt that.

Oh, and I finished boring the second spindle late last night. Have been just pecking at them and haven't been in a hurry to finish them. I'd estimate an hour of actual work for each spindle with a +0.25/-0.0 hrs tolerance.

ChaseTruck754 · Post by **ChaseTruck754** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:39 pm

I had forgotten what the alcoa backspacing was. Now that you point it out I remember measuring a looong while back and thinking it was 4.25. Guess those are a no-go.

As for the spindle boring - sounds about the way to go with just giving them a bit more progress at a time. I've had stuff like that where I'd just stand there and run the drill for 5 min. then when things got too warm or whatever I'd go on with life until I happened to walk by the project again & think "oh, I should drill some more" and I'd give it 5 more min again. Eventually it would get done without too much time wasted waiting for parts/tools to cool down.

"Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction

Re: "Blanc-Oh!", my distraction