I need a PRECISION straight-edge, so I made three 

If you were a Patron, you could've told me how silly this project was from the start. www.patreon.com/NotAnEngineer

I am an engineer, and on this one the project went about as well as I expected. The difference is I’d have kept honing until there was nothing left and you stopped at close enough. 😂

you're not a filmmaker either, but those high off angle shots are becoming something of a visual signature for your videos

The micrometer being the tig ground clamp got me rolling on the floor

Finally something straight in that workshop

Always nice to see a non-engineer do stuff much better than an actual engineer. (me)

The bit with the panning back from the glove pushing the workpiece reveal was brilliant! Thoroughly enjoying the comical additions to these great vids.

the fact you actually used the 3 plate method and went through all the way is admirable

The comedy in this is definitely spot on reminds me of younger "that old Tony"

As a woodworker, I periodically reflect on how easily one can produce a straight edge with extraordinary precision using nothing more than a plane and feeler gauge. Simply clamp two boards together and plane their edges as straight as your plane can manange. Then unclamp the boards and put those two edges together, and check the gap between them with the feeler gauge. The gap between them is double the deviation from straight of each board. So with a .001” feeler gauge, one can easily produce a straight edge that is less than .0005” out of straight over its entire length, which is damn good for basic hand tools.

Literly cannot get enough, humour is top notch! Good to see another aussie out there.

Ah, the good old 3 surface method... I expected nothing less... Also, nice seeing Alex mentioned... I hold a small state of him right next to the small statues of Stefan and Robin on my pedestal of machining excellence, supreme pedantry and dedication to precision... Also, are you mad boy? You shoulda drilled some extra say 10mm holes, and you should have put extended wooden handles, something akin to a mushroom shape, to give yourself a place to grip the instrument, which will somewhat insulate the instruments from your body heat... Wood aint the best choice, but it`s cheap, and can be replaced easily for solid cored silicone overmolded handles... When you seek precision, just breathing in a room without hvac to keep it lab grade atmo. cond. is enough to induce errors... Unless the room`s floor is the top of a thick reinforced concrete foundation, just standing near a machine or a surface plate can be enough to induce errors, let alone walking or moving about... There is a reason why true precision is expensive... It`s not all that hard to achieve, but to achieve it with ease, you have to have a remarkably controlled and rigid environment which allows the most minute oscillations to be stifled, allowing you to just have to deal with normal attentive procedures, like not handling instruments without an insulation layer as to not affect the instruments or a workpiece... Otherwise, a very nice project and a good undertaking in general! All the best! Steuss

Dipping hot roll steel in acid does a good job to remove mill scale. Can be as weak as vinegar. Don't let it sit for too long or it starts to rust. I would probably rinse with distilled water after and quickly air/heat dry it after.

Well you got a laugh and a sub out of me. Bravo for sticking with the project. All the best, Tom

i take pride on not running away from tasks that most people would consider tedious and repetitive to achieve a good result, but you sir, are beyond insane even for my standars

I'm watching all youtube machining allstars for over 10 years. I'd like to say that your videos are great and keep them coming. I'm feeling some this old tony vibes and it feels good.

Great job sir! I love seeing people taking on things like this with simple diy methods. One step I would have added would be a stress-relieving bake after welding.

Amazing work dude. Keep it up 😊

I’ve just found your channel and absolutely love these videos. I’ve been a machinist for 10 years or so and you are doing a spectacular job. You’ve definitely got depth of knowledge and creativity. It’s nice to see someone introducing hobbyists to old school techniques like scraping. You should check out a series of small books called “The Tricks and Secrets of Old Time Machinists”, I think you’ll enjoy them. I appreciate your demonstration of welding and fabrication as that is something I cannot do. Thanks for the videos!

Thanks for the educational and maybe more importantly entertaining content! You had my attention from the title to the end. Ground clamp clutch was brilliant.

Fantastically enjoyable! When you used the mill to slide them side to side I laughed so hard, it's brilliant.

Impressive! For future mill scale removal, you can get the bulk gone by making a little trough from plastic and soaking the surface in vinegar, it will eat most of it if it sits overnight. Make sure it’s submerged

Hot damn. You should have asked. I’ve got some could have borrowed in marrickville.

Great project, great job! Those will serve you well and be more stable as they age. I made a 30 inch surface plate and lapped it to .002 and used it to make a small straight edge. I used the long side of a large (24 inch) framing square with no holes or weldments. I lapped the edges to .001 or better and parallel within .0002". It's all I need for um, woodworking.

Thanks to IM's channel for getting us onto yours, this is great content 🤙

there's a reason why it's called whitworth 3 *plates* method and not 3 bars method, you just found out why

As a professional lapidary I found your video very interesting. Glad to hear you used diamond paste, an excellent move. Use it every day in my work. Am having similar issues getting optical flatness along joins in my current work, so you have given me some new insights, thankyou. My material is a mixture of metabasalt/quartz/calcite and native gold.

Fun fact, in Australia the title of "Engineer" is not actually protected under law ☺

great vid as always

good on ya for havin a go, you have a lot more patience than i have. Good stuff keep it up.👍👍👍

Great job! I’ve done some MS weldmets in the past and scraped them. Building a big bonfire and leaving them in there until it’s dead cold makes a big difference, they come out with no ring and reasonably well stress relieved.

Seriously impressive the amount of time and effort you put into this project. You obtained some excellent results. Well done Sir!

"This is my first attempt" is a scary line when it comes to a project like this.

just found your channel and I'm an immediate fan love the tot/ave style

I truly enjoy your non-engineering skills and your humor. Well done sir!

Very good work. I'm not a gynaecologist but I'll take a look anyway. It has worked for me.

Loving the vids dude. Keep um comin

I’m a third year mech engineering student, I had no idea about the three plate method. So cool. I’ve learned more online then from university, I would say the constant assignments and disruptions it’s caused has actually impeded my learning. Don’t ever consider going back shool it’s for children and people that need permission to feel accomplishment, just keep Engineering.

I definitely subscribed right after watching the previous video of your own. Please, do more of that 'not-an-engineer' stuff.

I've heard this over and over, but I've never seen it done. THANK YOU for showing us!

2:00 Boy that looks like an aggressive cut, I wonder if I'm too conserv.. "Luckily, I broke my last one"

If I had a nickel for every time I found a channel with a charming aussie bloke making surrealist jokes about food and nicking stuff in public for projects, claiming not to be an engineer while doing engineer things in their garage or shed.. I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it is strange that it happened twice. Subscribed.

Awesome content, man. Keep it up.

Love the custom mic holder. As long as it will get the job done. Good work.

I've only one of your videos left until I've seen them all, and once I hit that point, who knows what's going to happen. Post more

Great video . This was the first video of yours i watched and certainly not the last. You had me at the precision clamp.😂

Bravo! I thoroughly enjoyed the intended content (making precision straight edges from scratch) and the self-deprecating humor of the perennial "I'm not an engineer" and speaking into random objects (a boring bar and a die-grinding burr is what I recognized) as if they were microphones.

If this RU-vid endeavour does not work out for you, which I do not believe would be the case, I see your bright future in stand-up. This is a first class comedy material. I have a great time watching your videos.

Next time you rig an auto-sliding movement mechanism, try combining two or three pivot points running at different speeds. This will vary the stroke distance...🙂

Nice work, I tried epoxy casting a straight edge on an oiled gradite surface plate and the epoxy ripped holes in the granite. Looking forward to seeing the lathe bed repair, My M300 has about 0.5mm dip and Ive been toying with using a homemade moglice / turcite recipie using epoxy, brass powder and tungsten di-sulphide. Subscribed.

Great content as always!

You need to square out the openings to maintain flatness after thermal expansion/contraction. Also, do your best to maintain material temperature while rubbing. Your idea for mechanizing it was fantastic. Add springs and bumpers and put a few unbalanced weights on the sides freely spinning and getting thrown about by the rubbing motion, and you should have enough random motion to not require any manual rubbing at all.

Its all about how tolerant you are to tolerance. I have equipment from the 50's that has better tolerances than i can get on newer machines (material and the way they made things to last really shows) Enjoyed the video :)

I have no clue what you're doing, but your delivery is delightful!

1:44- 1:50 . I was in stitches. You made my day. Thank you so much

That is some really beautiful train track you made!

Based on the title and subject I was expecting something a little more dry. Then you hit me with the “easy peasy lemon squeezy” 😂 SUBSCRIBED! Love this guy 😂😂😂

I am designing a really beefy cnc router that will probably be closer to a gantry mill. I have been pondering setups to make two sides parallel and flat on my 32" mill bed. Your setup is pretty similar to what I had in mind

great video, I made a straight edge this way, I just machined from solid instead of making a weldment, I also had it stress relieved somewhere in the process, but I did do the three equal pieces principle, yes, it was labor intensive!

Awesome man!

Literally went down this road a couple years ago, very painful nice job! I'm in Sydney as well :)

8:37 LMAO damn man. Keep up with such inventive montage

Hilarious the microphone! Very nice style of documenting your work!

I'm getting in on the ground floor, liked and subscribed, you're hilarious and have all the content I love!

Wow that's actually very impressive

The fly cutting. Beautiful

5 videos and 75100 subscribers! This guys doing something right! This was informative and fun! You now have 75101 subscribers!

i know im 3 months late to this but i sub'd for the zee / zed take. finally a man of culture

At first I had my doubts but then you engaged the racheting micrometer and I was humbled. Carry on.

Is not a school what makes an engineer. Your engineering skillset is determined by what you do with your brain and hands. Of course right mindset and attitude coupled with a good formal education make for much better engineer than mindset alone, but mindset and attitude alone are much more relevant. I am a school engineer myself, and a successful one on my own field. For years I taught at university and I can tell you my classroom was more than half full of people who would get an engineering degree but never be an engineer. After moving to industry I still see the same pattern, many (holding degree) non engineers working as engineers.

Unfortunately the 3 plate method refers to 3 "plates" & does not work on 3 edges because they can't be rotated 90 degrees to each other. I would also consider the beam support points - Airy or Bessel points that give minimum deflection. Support the bottom beam on these points when rubbing together. Normalising after finish machining has to be done before final hand finishing.

New sub. Love the accent and the content. Thanks IM !!!

Genius vids bro 🤙🏻

Nice work, I’ve been preparing to do something similar for my own cnc build, Robin Renzetti would be proud. Have you tried using optical flats? I have a few and they are very humbling if you wanted to further go down the precision rabbit hole.

A Datum simulator for GD&T flatness as per the standard requires the assemblies (parts, functional gauges, CMM, etc.) be at an equalized temperature of 20 Degrees C. For grey cast iron precision lapping and polishing for flatness the final steps are done in a temperature and humidity controller work room after the part has equalized. The rough fine precision milling for flatness can be milled or honed (high precision grinding), which is done on the shop floor but with constant cooling flow to keep the work piece at a low constant temperature. This is why the feed speed is so low. So, to achieve a flatness functional gauge (a straight edge), the process is done in stages, all the time trying to stabilize part temperature. Flatness is an interesting requirement on a part per GD&T because it does not have to be a datum, but most of the time area flatness of a face is a critical feature (or is referenced by critical features) so it is established as a datum. Often you will see flatness as a requirement for a weldment, although it is usually very generous, so the weldment has to be at least tack welded on an index welding table, and then moved to a flat final welding bench (which is also flat but without the need for indexing). If the weldment by design will create heat zone distortion which distorts the part out of spec, then steps have to be taken to achieve flatness after the metal cools. This may require back bending the weldment tube while it is final welded (shimmed and then clamped to create a prestressed bend). When the part is unbolted from the table it will distort which offsets the back bend, making the weldment flat. To get the shim size there is some experimentation of the weld sequence and actual distortion.

I forgot I was subscribed to this channel, so this video was a very pleasant surprise!

I'm glad I'm not alone. There's more of us out here the garage builders ...- making awesome

Find someone with a big ol' honkering grinding setup...and have em grind em... But your method seemed to work pretty well Keep em coming!!!!

Any bloke with a boring bar mic deserves a sub

I love the quote "The final step is to repeat untill you dont feel insecure about posting the results on the internet", Spoken like a true content creator

Suggestion from someone that work in the precision industry, u don't put the straight edge on the ends, but on the 2/9 on each side, doing so gravity will have no affect on straightness, and if u want to be extra precise u should have left the parts in a temp controlled place for kinda of a long time if u don't want to thermal treat them, so u will not have any stress relief after lapping. Its can happen that stress due to milling or welding will appear quite some times after, talking about weeks/months

i am amazed you are still alive. most don't live too long after talking about that animal which shall not be named. also, thank you. i think the mating call is as pleasing as you described.

That's one way to do it. The long term test will show if you were successful. I am always amazed by the ingenuity of youtubers. nice job young man. i would normalize that material by leaving it out side for a season or stress relieve it in a well... a home made oven...

You're a better engineer than most that I know

I rally like you hand held mic with very sharp and durable sound quality.

Worth a follow

Hits the spot. Reminds me of thisoldtony.

My guy, this is the first video of yours I've seen. And I got to say I was enjoying it but when you broke out the "precision work clamp" I had to stop and sub LOL! Can't wait to check out some more of your videos but for now I gotta get back and finish watching this one. Merry Christmas!

As a toolmaker, one up from a " engineer" boom yes I said it 🤭 the use of the mic for the ground made me sub 😂👍

Wow .... that chain magig you invented to rub the 2 surfaces was genius!

30% vinegar works great for removing heat scale. I would recommend doing it before any machining. Submerge your part or wrap it in wet paper towels then wrap with plastic to keep the vinegar from evaporating. Depends how warm it is and thickness of heat scale but it should take a few hours to overnight. A little agitation helps. Follow up with a good water rinse and wipe with a moisture displacing oil.

I love the fact he's using a tool holder, replete with carbide cutter for a microphone the whole time.

9:50. Learning about this blew my mind.

The three plate method only works with square or round workpieces. You need to be able to turn one of the planes 90° to the other.

Support!

Just found this channel, Love the stubbies 😆

Keep going man. The stuff is campy without getting schlocky about it. If u know what I mean. 😊

Good stuff

9:41 my boy being an absolute Chef

Muriatic acid and some stainless steel scrubbing pads with appropriate PPE works wonders on mill scale. Picked some up from a local store and fully cleaned one side of a sheet of steel (4ft x 8ft or 120cm x 240cm) in about 30 minutes. It does produce a nasty gas so good ventilation in a shop or outside while standing up wind is a must.