Aluminum Standoffs Machined in the CNC Lathe 

Hey Adam. I like the mix of old school manual work along with the CNC work you do on the channel. You have an extremely strong foundation of knowledge, and you can leverage that to do some of your small-batch work on the CNC machines. Keep up the great work. 👍 Over the years that you've been doing manual machining, you've built up a wealth of skills, expertise, and knowledge, and it's great to see you apply those skills in your videos. At the same time, CNC work is the future of a lot of shop machining, particularly when it comes to small batch jobs like these aluminum standoffs. It's great to watch you develop those CNC skills. Thanks for sharing this aspect of your life with us. 🙂

You are a highly gifted machinist. But your greatest assets are your honesty, precision, and ability to communicate a process to a novice. You communicate the intricacies of the process, even when the errors might not be evident to the viewer. That's why I never get tired of watching your videos. Another fascinating thing I truly appreciate is your cleaning of particles from contact surfaces. You articulate extremely well and would be a perfect narrator for documentaries.

Seeing a small production run like this makes it easy to understand the power of CNC. Thanks.

Congratulations on your small CNC project! Your skills on your new equipment are showing maturity as you adapt to what tools you have, without breaking any.

Thank you Abom for a great video. Appreciate you putting these on RU-vid for all of us

The collet holders you have for your drills are the best way to hold small drills like that. We use basically the same setup except we use ER32 collets for consistency since our live tool holders are ER32 as well. For our larger drills which have 16mm shanks and above we use custom made sleeves which then mount direct in the tool blocks.

Funny story Adam, I had a machine shop teacher in the 1960s that would stand behind you while you were running the lathe and when you removed the part if you took your hand off the chuck key without removing it he would slap you in the back of the head. To this day when I see anyone take their hand off a chuck key I get a twinge , funny part is it’s even on a chuck that doesn’t rotate like yours on the tapping table….😂. Keep up the great videos sir.

Thanks for the great videos. No matter what tool you use, you are still an honest, skilled craftsman.

I can't believe I've been following you all the way back to 2018. I remember you getting a 3d printer which was a good starting point for CNC. Sure I love the shaper, but those CNC machines are great.

Test alcohol for tapping holes in aluminum. Works like charm. Even brakecleaner works well. Stops the taps from galling up from the aluminum. Dont know why it works. But there is a nice bonus of easy cleanup for parts that are to be welded.

RU-vid has been good to you. I remember all manual work

My hat is off to you for you journey into CNC machining. Learning any kind of new way of doing things is really challenging no matter what the field you are in.

You are progressing well in the CNC world your depth of knowledge helps you excel and I enjoy your content

Nothing quite like an Abom79 Video to watch in 4K with Surround Sound!

Nothing like a customer job to push learning ahead. The most compelling and interesting viewing for me is always real money work or other actual practical needs for the shop or life. I'm a completely manual machine guy but I really enjoy following along you learning a new skill. In any case, CNC is inherently interesting as one of the 'new' fundamental manufacturing techniques of modern civilization.

A thread forming tap (roll tap) would have been perfect for that run of parts. I'm enjoying watching your journey into the CNC world.

Setting up a part stop is easy to manually add to your program, just set it like any tool for the X and Z then just program something like G00T0303 G00X.75Z.015M00 Pull the part against it, then G00X10.0Z10.0 G00T0300 M00 not sure how much room you have to move in that little lathe but, it's very handy to get used to doing some manual programming for quick edits or adding stuff like that. That whole part could easily be manually programmed pretty quickly and it's good practice. I understand the fact also of learning the software, I also do that but I like to make sure I stay sharp with quick program edits at the machine for dialing in chamfers for nicely deburred parts, etc. Love the CNC content, Outstanding.

I enjoy how such a small part can have such a large impact on many people- even with the weldors and suppliers. Nice production run! Thanks for sharing the story behind it too.

I'm back. I haven't been here in a while. The film work is still kicking “a” CNC or manual. Thanks. It's actually refreshing getting back to top-notch filming.

Thanks for sharing. As a hobbyist your manual machines are four times bigger and powerful. I love to watch anyway the cnc stuff is a bonus.

When I worked in the production of lathes, it was no mercy, a giant radial drill, an m6 tap and a blind hole. No clutch. In the beginning, I broke things like that on a regular basis and you had to chisel it out and then plug it and drill and thread it again. I got so good at breaking a tap once in a thousand holes. Practice makes perfect.

the great thing about using fusion is that the program will always be there to make more when needed,,,

25:30 The Cadillac of Shop Air Compressors!! :) The Kaeser Air Tower!!! Rotary screw compressors run quiet. take up little space, and have awesome CFM! This one also features, integrated refrigeration dryer. Super Dry air the best for air painting!

Nice video to show how you're learning CNC. I have a bone to pick with those who designed baggage handling equipment like that! All I can do is hope that they have learned from their mistakes and that nobody else copies that design to create more unnecessary problems.

Very successful job,Adam.Thank you.

ER collets work great for 99% of jobs. Don't worry about the holding power, they are great and convenient 👍

Great work, a combination of cnc and conventional machining. Thank you for transmit your knowledge

Not an easy thing to do. Good for you for finding a teacher/ mentor. Amazing the progress you've made in such a short time. I like the CNC and manual stuff too, so keep on doing what you are doing!

We often use a rigid one-piece bushing directly in the tool block and grind a flat spot on the drill and engage that through the tool block with your set screw. Obviously having hundreds of of one piece bushings gets expensive. We have about 50 of them for common drill sizes. The ER calling system the way you're using it is a really practical solution that many people use. What's good about the ER solution is you can use all the same tooling in your milling machines and your manual equipment. Lots of shops just have ER 16s and 32 and they do the majority of their tool holding in those two systems across all their equipment. Love your channel Best wishes

Adam I have gotten busy and haven't had the time in the past couple of years but I got a lot of inspiration from your videos and got my great uncles old Bridgeport and monarch lathe it's cool to see how you've been able to progress into CNC and still do manual stuff I like seeing small businesses growing instead of huge businesses putting people out of business

Good program, good plan, good parts.

Thanks for the videos Adam, I'm always learning from them. I've had great luck using form taps especially on aluminum.

Fun job to watch Adam, thanks! Meanwhile, the Navy called, they said if you'll return all their _"Anchor Lube"_ they're willing to let it go! 😂👍

Hi Adam! You're holding your drills in a good manner. The ER Collet holders like you have are the most versatile and effective means of holding drills available. Maritool has a great selection which I've used many times! Unless you need the projection length to be very small, the ER collet is the way to go. It is very sparse that I have been able to push a tool hard enough to spin it inside the collet without the tool failing or pushing the stock back in the chuck. On select instances, many of these ER collet style of holders will have provisions in the back of them to plumb coolant lines into from your tool blocks, which can be very helpful in getting coolant where you need it most for drilling operations. On a few select instances, if I am using an insert drill body or a very long fluted drill, I use strictly a split bushing to eliminate as much hangout as possible. Hope that gives you some piece of mind my friend! Love seeing what you're doing branching out into the CNC world.

Marvelos use of the cnc and great video. Keep up the fine high quality work!

Amazing work showing those who are oblivious to how things operate mechanically and explaining to them how something so simple can LITERALLY shutdown an entire airport luggage system. Hopefully they see this and walk away with a better understanding of why they’re being delayed from getting their Starbucks on time because they were stuck finding luggage.

27:43 I enjoy the CNC videos, reminds of MY days in the machine shop! :) .. Love the idea of using the parting tool to cut the 45° angle too!

Great video, you did a great job! We also make aluminium parts at our work, with sometimes really small threads (from 2-10mm in diameter mostly). In my apprenticeship I learned cutting in aluminium with Petroleum (should be kerosene in american English, sorry I only know the german word), because the Petroleum seperates the aluminium shavings from the tap and prevents microwelding of the aluminum onto the Highspeed Steel-taps, also reducing the amount of material left on the tap, while creating a really great finish on the threads. Coolant also works, we simply use the coolant from our CNC milling machine. About the tapping arm moving on its own: You might create a holder with a magnet in the base, with a pin on the top just like the tap holders you insert into the arm. Then you just fixate the arm on the table without the arm swinging anywhere.

10:51 When i was in the production shop ALL the CNC Lath I used ran 20 foot long feed bar pushers, 90% of the jobs started on full 20 foot long bars. We always feed out on the Parting tool!, ON your new Parting Tool we'd feed out RIGHT where the "Tungaloy" Logo is, on yours!!! :) How I'd do it on this one is after parting, and AFTER the Parting Tool ai back at home position, advance again, to thee length you want to pull out and minus 2 1/2 or 3", Then PAUSE. Then pull out the part against the "Tungaloy" Logo and close jaws ... The return to home position, and PROGRAM END Then check if it's right (It will be very close) , modify the last action before Pause, to correct ... and your DONE!!:)

I'm not a skilled man but I'm learned from your videos thanks 😊😊😊😊

You could also use a VNMG to profile the od with the 45° at the partoff location and save time and your tungaloy.

I enjoy watching your shows.

Great video and appreciate your dedication to keeping it a mixture of old and new school. I expect maintenance on baggage handling equipment is zero, so money to be made replacing parts until they start maintenance or buying decent equipment. Thanks for your ongoing work posting these great videos. Al U.K.

Love this content, Adam. Look forward to it every week. Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Ok, that was cool! Love the new machine! Keep these videos coming

We use our own made bushings as drillholders. OD matching the ID of the block and a sholder for contact on the Blockface ID for yor drillbit. The drillbit is hold with setscrews. Simple and easy to make and it works.

Thank you Kevin

Thanks for the show Adam 🍻 🇦🇺

It wasn't an issue in this situation, but something to keep in mind on a CNC lathe turret...when you have two or more drills next to each other and you need to drill a deep hole with one of them, there's a chance the adjacent drill in the turret can hit the chuck jaws. You might want to make it a habit of putting drills, center drills, etc., on every other turret station to keep them from hitting the chuck. Always enjoy your vids, keep up the great work.

Thanks Adam, looken good.

hi nice tool john

Happy Easter to you and your family.

Man that lathe definitely speeds things up!

You could mount a “CLEAR VIEW SCREEN” on the window of the sliding guard for perfect viewing especially for videoing operations for your channel.👍

Aww, was hoping for some old school cool....but wonderful modern machine tooling and techniques none the less.

Adam you are doing fine. When I first went to CNC I thought I would never go back to manual. I recently picked up a 1943 Kearney and Treacker horizontal mill for quick roufging and other unusual setups. Point is manual or CNC they are all good tools to be used.

Great content. Glad you are continuing to find jobs to get more comfortable with the CNC lathe. Hey, you should put an Abom sticker on the inside of the CnC enclosure so the camera can see it while making chips. 8)

I'm new to lathe operations, too. I will try that tool position trick next week. I can see how a few short lines of code at the end of the program would work.

That's how you hold spot drills, drills, taps, reamers. I use ER16 and ER32 collets. If you have thru coolant available, pump it right thru. Might have to take set crew out of center of holder. The bushings are better suited for boring bars. The set screws align with the flat to put on correct centerline level.

Adam, for a clear picture in the housing with coolend you probably could take a air nozzle and put an air stream on the camera lens. Only the sound is then unusable (contant his).

Good one. Suggestion. Mount a battery terminal cleaning brush in one of the holes in your table...when your through tapping, stick it down on that brush and figure out which way to turn it to clear the chips..leave it there...brush will hold the tap...easy peasey....😊

very cool job! love the "learning" content that you put out.

I use ER collets in solid bushings for all kinds of drilling and taping. The odd time they can slip, but for years they have worked well for me in mostly stainless too. Dorian tools makes solid bushings. Also you can probably already have a groove/parting tool that will take all kinds of side load and is really the best of both worlds for grooving and parting off. 1 in tooling can let you part off 1.25 in bar with no hole going thru.

I jumped back on fusion 360 after about a 6 month break. Because I needed to use my router. Anyway once I remembered everything I managed it.

Keep on keeping on!

Good show👍

Nice work - interesting to see your process.

I hope that as you keep doing these, you start making a parts catalogue for you to reference files so you can get these up and going for batch processing easier.

Thank you for another great video. Cheers

For setting a pullout stop for your stock, make a sub program you can drop into any program using your rough turning block as the stop and give it a tool offset that your unlikely to commonly use, like T0132. Make it .02 past you G54. As you change your G54 for pullout length, your pullout stop always moves with and leaves .020 to face away. Hope this helps.

Hey Adam, i used to make videos of some optical lens turning in a wet environment. What I found helped keep lens clean while filming was building a locline manifold with 3 air blades. One on each side of the GoPro and one blade pointing down at an angle from the top. Use a mag base. Maybe it’ll work for you as well. It doesn’t take a lot of air, just good angles. Noise shouldn’t be too bad. Just a thought.

A series of plunge cuts to debulk the chamfer with a single diagonal pass to take the tips off isn't unusual with that tool.

Editorial note: At 5:01 you have a typo in the text overlay for the Fusion 360 training discount code. Just in case you re-use the text for another CNC video. I very much enjoy your content and it has motivated me to get my own small lathe and mill just for the satisfaction of learning new skills. Thanks for sharing your work.

When you go to clean the inside of the M T Lathe if you connect a pc of air hose to coolant pump or some where you can hookup to cooliant and use that to help clean inside of machine. I use to use a air nozzle and add a 8’’ pc of tubing to nozzle it makes for a easy cleanup use a lever operated valve to turn coolant on and off

Hey Adam, long time fan, I know your just learning cad- cam but a plunge roughing cycle might be good for that tool, I've been machining for 40 years, mostly turning and still love it, my advice to you is learn G code along with the cad cam, it helps to know what the program is really doing. I will be ordering a new t shirt from you soon, the 1st one is wore out, lasted a long time. keep up the good work!

Yes, collet chucks work best for drill bits on a cnc lathe.

I use similar Er collet holders for solid carbide drills and reduction sleeves with a slot (no split bushings) for the er collet holder. For exchangeable tip drills and indexable drills only reduction sleeves. Through coolant in every tool.

Thanks for sharing

regarding material positioning for machining, program an extra step for your parting tool to stop at required distance then you can pull bar out and restart process

Nice work Adam!

11:14 After cutting, move the bedame away at z (as far as it touches the material) and x-20, x-30 (see how the material touches the back of the bedame) and then M00 (temporary stop of the program), touch the material, and then in the program move x and z to a safe exchange point and M99 to restart the program. That's what I do at my job

If there's room in the turret, use a tension/compression tapping head and a roll tap for the blind hole so you can get it all done in 1 op. in the CNC. Accupro makes a good one for about $250 from MSC. The 1" shank version can fit 4-40 up to 7/16" taps.

I happened to stop today and look at a baggage belt going up after it went behind the wall. It's a wonder how many belts baggage must travel before it winds up in a carrier locked in place under the aircraft. And the thousands of parts it takes for all of it to run smoothly. Here; Adam demonsrates creating the repeatedly needed solution to small high use parts wear. The extra care is what makes these parts win!

A fusion grooving routine with some constants is much faster to program and will put much less side load on part off tool And the stop is a pass through is easy Both can be saved as templates so you don’t have to rewrite everytime The retract at feed is a drop down in passes tab Click three dots to save as rapid evertime

Most CNC machinist I know have a piece of threaded rod with two nuts on it that we use for stick out on certain parts. Simple to the point.

Adam, Great work on Fusion 360. I had a small home project using some 2040 channel extrusion. Instructions said to use self-taping sheet metal screws to hold a part on the end. I thought.. how would Abom do this? The right way, only! So, I ordered some M5 spiral taps, the correct drill for them, small jar of Anchor Lube, and the correct machine screws. I'm much happier with the result - especially since I needed to take those joints apart about a dozen times as I fiddled with it. Something the sheet metal screws would never had let me do. Continue to show us N00Bs the difference between GitErDone and a better way to do it.

HAPPY EASTER TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ADAM

you could probably build a camera case for wet environs, clear pc tube, rotates with a small motor and belt, little squeegee under the lens, should be easy for you.

Interesting and instructive, thanks

Your footage was good...pretty hard to get closeups with everything that's going on...and shields probably don't help all that much (shield gets full of coolant and blurs the view). Great video and project. Thanks

I followed your lead and purchased one gallon of the Starrett M1 water dispersing and the original Sure Shot dispenser made in Wisconsin. Not the cheap China knock off. Both you display in your videos.

For deep blind holes like that, try a thread former. No risk of chip buildup at all.

What's the point of the cnc not tapping it ?

that was one weird drill cycle... never seen it hesitate at several points for a second on the way down... pulsing yes, but not full on stopping over and over through the cycle.

That parting blade didn't sound too happy with that cutting

Actually, it's nice to see some flood coolant for a change 😆 , it's a reminder of how that stuff gets absolutely everywhere... - one thought - if you wanted to stuff a go-pro right up near the business end , could you fix up an air line around a go-pro lens to blow OUTWARDS from the lens and so prevent flood coolant from splashing onto the lens? - just a crazy idea.. I'm sure somebody must have done it before.. great video,

Collis makes bushings and drill drivers in a large variety of sizes. MSC has them and i believe KBC does as well. Also, I agree with your tool supplier about side loads on parting tools. I'd cut that taper with a VNMG insert and a slight negative feed angle. It is good to know, however, that you can get away with it on s pinch if you're careful. I'm a bit surprised you didn't have a small can of solvent and a toothbrush for those taps. I would be using A9 on aluminum, not Anchorlube, just because it's easier to clean off chips between holes. More personal preference than anything else, though.

To everyone who prefers to watch manual machining only. Check out Josh Topper LLC in Spooner, Wisconsin. Very interesting innovative heavy machining and not a CNC in sight.

Thanks Adam 👏👏👏👏👏👍🍺🍺

Nice CNC machine❤