You have to love McMaster Carr. They're kind enough to post CAD files of their hardware. This makes life easier when I need a wingnut in a hurry or if they don't have the size I need. This happened this past week, so I downloaded their file, scaled the model to the size I needed, printed it out on the zcorp 3d printer, made a sand mold of the print, cast it in bronze, cut off the sprue, sandblasted, drilled and tapped on the lathe, polished and then installed. Not quite as simple as placing an order, but they didn't have what I wanted anyway.
Welcome to the future...
3 comments:
Absolutely epic!
I was going to ask how you aligned the two mold halves, but I see that the answer is quite simple - use a Sharpie to make a mark...
Thanks!
I made the flask from a piece of thick walled pipe we had laying around our Metals studio on campus. I turned a recess in one piece, and a lip on the other that corresponds. The indexing mark is just a stamped line that I stamped with my "letter I" text stamp. I could make alignment pins, but the stamp just seemed like a quick and dirty way of keeping things in alignment. I highly recommend the Delft Clay from Rio Grande for the reusable molding sand.
That's just plain brilliant.
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