We Gave Students A Mill And Let Them Make These

We're just waiting on the students and what we're going to be doing is we're going to be working on some dice. So you'll see those down here. This is what we start with and this is what we end with. So these are all the tools that we're going to use to make our dice, including the dice, the blank here. They will be machining all six sides but they come out with a blank. We will set up the machines for them and then that way they have all the time on the machines. You'll see our little stop here. So of course you always want to make sure your dice is clean. It is. So I have this as like a template one so I just start with that. I'm going to push up against the stop, tighten the dice. Don't have to go too tight, it's aluminum and we're only plunging so it's not going to go flying out or anything, although it might but it won't. So I'm going to move our x-axis here and then our y-axis and then my z-axis. I'm going to bring it up not too far just so I can retract. I'm going to release and bring my coil down just so it can touch the part. Now next thing we always want to make sure before we actually start the machine is we got to make sure we're not going to smack the motor on top of the machine with the So I'm checking up here. Everything is good. So I'm going to turn it on. We're in high gear. I'm going to turn on the machine and I'm just going to move the tool in until we see our edge finder kick out and then I just go until it touches. You want to see it kick out so I'm just going to tap the axis until I see it kick out and there we go. So that is one hundredth out away from our zero. Now we set up the tool. So we have these two, our collet and our end mill. I'm going to do what the girlies do. So it's a three-eighths shank. It's a three-eighth collet. So from this side here I'm actually going to loosen off our stop here. I'm going to move up and I want to go 30,000 deep. It doesn't matter how much I move this down as long as it's more than 30,000. So we'll tighten that up there, loosen, drop my quill and now I'm going to move my z-axis up or the knee. I'm going to move that up until I just barely touch and we can do this while it's on. When you see me looking inside, it's just to make sure that I'm not, the wrench is not in the drawbar. So don't send it flying or destroy a motor. So anyway, here now I'm going to just barely touch. There's already a hole here, so I'm not going to exactly see what it touches. And again, this is mostly for aesthetics, so it doesn't have to be perfect because these are students. They are very new and it's just to give them kind of a taste of how to machine. So there you go. So that's my zero right there. I'm going to move my quill up and I'm going to set my knee to zero. Okay, so and the spindle is still on here. I'm going to do my best to do this with one hand. I'm slightly off. I'll just accommodate. Okay, there. And notice I will have this so that it is putting a little weight in the direction that I'm going to move the spindle. So up here, like I said, I have raised my quill. You can see that it's not at the stop right there. And so now I'm just going to move this up 30 thou. So we're going to go 10, 20, 30. Okay, put the weight on that side. There we go. 30 thou. And then, like I said, this already has a hole. These blocks are not perfectly square. Like I said, this project is for aesthetics mostly. So I'm going to bring my quill down and just plunge. And it looks good. So that's good. Now, along with all of this, they will be using the guards. We have them on the side of the machine. You'll see one right there. And they just swing around to cover the front, the spindle of the machine so that students can't put their hands on them. We do do this project with like seventh graders and seventh all the way up to like 12th grade and stuff. So we just have to be careful. Make sure again, as always, nobody's hurting themselves. So right now the machine is in low gear. Occasionally you will hear students grinding gears when they move from low to high. So the way that I usually take care of that, I'm just going to put this over here and then twist. That's going to pop in. It's also going to make sure you're in gear. That way you don't grind any gears and your millwrights don't come at you. So that is how we do that. Now, when I go to turn it on, we can ensure that's not going to grind anything. OK, so there are still classes going on, so you're going to hear some sounds here, but we're going to work on this number six side. So there are several locations we're going to go to. Most of them are going to be 0.2, 0.8 and 0.5. For our first one, I'm just going to kind of do this one a little bit sideways. First, put the block in. Best if you pull from this side, but just for room and where the camera is, I'm doing it from the side. So I'm going to tighten up my vise there, just like that. I'm going to move us over to Y.2. That'll be negative 0.2. Like I said, some of these scales are not in the right location, so we're going to have to accommodate, but this is correct. This is negative Y.2, Y negative 0.2. Then we're going to move our X to plus 0.2. So this one's good. It's okay if the students are not exactly on. We're not worried about a few ten thousandths. So like I said, always make sure your wrench is not in the way. Make sure it's put away. Put that one back up, and then here we go. Now, there are several ways we could do this, which is going to involve rotating the dice. We can do that. I don't tend to do that. I don't tend to show the students that, because it requires them kind of putting their hand in where the spindle is, which is okay. I would probably do that more if they're college students, though. Each time they move anything around, I would be asking them to make sure the spindle's off, pull the dice out from this side, and then place it in, tighten up your vise, and then turn the spindle back on, and they would also be using guards. So just for the younger guys. The older guys, you know, they understand the safety of it. All right, and then the next thing we're going to need, we have our chamfer tool here, so we're going to add little chamfers to our dice by the end of it. And next thing I need, three-quarter collet. Three-quarter collet. R8 collet, just put into the spindle. So let's see our speed. A little faster than that. This is carbide and aluminum, so I'm going to set the depth here. I'm just going to put a chamfer on the dice. Make sure my vise is tight. Always double check that. And I'm going to go somewhere near the middle, and I'm just going to go until I hear it lightly cutting. You do not want to make these too deep. And so I move in with my Y, and then I also come back and forth with my X, so I can hear it better. So we're cutting there. I'm going to go in ever so slightly, so I'm going to move in about 10 thou. I just want to see what it looks like. I'm going to cut into part. So my 30 thou chamfer, and I'm just setting up this machine using my block as a sacrificial block, so that when the students come over, the Y-axis is locked, and all they'll have to do is this. We'll shut off our machine. Okay, so now that that side's done, I'm going to rotate, tighten up the vise again, power on, and then Y-axis stays the same. I'm just going to machine using the back jaw as a stop. So we're going to slowly feed in, and I could be going a lot faster with this, but I'm not going to. Just have to make sure the block is on the parallels flat, and this will be a consistent chamfer the whole way through. Come back. Okay, turn it off, rotate, and we just keep doing that until the entire block is chamfered. So right here, I usually start with a mill stop. You'll see right here. So this one, it just fits in. There's a set screw, and on this back end, as you unscrew it, it's going to open up that little angle there, wedge itself into the vise. So I'm not going to fully put it in, just because this is only for demonstration purposes. I have two parallels, one of my shorter parallels, just because of the type of constant that I will be using. It's a 45 degree constant. I'm just going to fit that into the vise there. Make sure it's sitting properly. This is hard to do with a camera in your hands. Okay, and just push it up against the stop. Make sure the parallels are directly under it. Okay, then we take our block. We're just going to sit that in like that. So it sits on the 45 degree angle. This is what it looks like, and then I'm going to close up the vise. Okay, from there, we're going to get our end mill. I usually use a one-eighth end mill for this. It's only for the keychain hole. All of this part is going to be eyeballed. I'm not going off of very specific locations or anything. All the blocks are the same size, so they should come out at least relatively in the same location. Okay, so next tool we've got to set up is our one-eighth end mill. You can see that here. There we go, one-eighth end mill. We're using all high-speed steel for this project. We do not need carbide because our machines can only go up to a certain RPM. You might even see me running it relatively slow for aluminum. And then to give an example of what it looks like in the long run, we're actually going to use sandpaper and Scotch Brite to kind of give it a little bit nicer of a finish. So it will start out like this, and yes, we are using raw stock sides. There's no real reason for us to have to machine those down, and then we will bring it to more of a brushed finish like that. So we've finished another day of our workshops. So we had a group of about nine students. Yes, nine students. So we made a few dice, and they had fun. They had about two dice each. We taught them how to chamfer, taught them how to plunge a tool into a part physically, and you'll see a few of them did a few different designs as well. So that was awesome to see, and you know, it's great to see the creativity that these guys will put in their parts. So I'm happy they had fun. Yeah. See you later, guys.