Thread: Casting about for cast iron casting ideas

pattern making is where a 3d printer would shine.

Having just seen Bob's http://www.woodworkforums.com/f65/th...5/#post1466940, I wouldn't mind having one myself (as I suspect would a few others). How about doing a run of the cast part that attaches to the pillar?
It's just a small casting but you could probably make a few dollars out of a batch of them.

Michael

Originally Posted by .RC.

pattern making is where a 3d printer would shine.

Definitely would be handy to have, once you start making complex curves that have to be accurately made, life is made a lot easier with CNC patternmaking such as the 3D printer or a CNC router. I was checking out the Rapid Replicator project for such a machine, a bit of scaling up and you'd be in business.

http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap

Hi Michael, it's a neat little device but I suspect it's more for small production runs as it looks like it takes a bit of adjustment up and down the post as well as the table height as the cam locking would need to be changed every time you drilled a different item or changed a drill bit. I don't know that I could cast stuff for an acceptable price for everyone compared with buying the real item. An example would be casting bronze, I think the price for raw material alone is around $20 a kilo. I understand one foundry is charging $28 per kilo for cast iron castings to give an idea of costs.

Edit: Bronze ingot is about $12 a kilo of you buy more than a few hundred kilos.

I think it would be easy enough to fabricate a version of the hold down. I will post more photos.

BT

I have used a nice but more complicated holder which has a small pneumatic cylinder operating a lever with a forked end. The whole thing clamps to the drill press table and has about a 20mm clamping range with adjustable pressure via an air regulator. A foot pedal valve toggles it off and on, if you have a hundred items to drill and ream it's really fast. as it attaches to the table there are no downward bending forces to snap the table casting where it attaches to the column.

Though they are hard to find, there are guys down South who make a very good living (or used to, now manufacturing is almost dead) by contracting to drill 5 million holes in a bracket for a hardware manufacturer. They'd set up a gang of drill presses, each with a pneumatic clamp and jig to accurately hold the thingo in position for drilling.