10-9-24

Today I did the Manual Mill challenge, me and Logan went down onto the floor to work with Kong, he showed us how to load the different tools into the machine, unload tools, basic operations of the machine, and he taught us how to cut a block down to the correct size.

We used tools such as a face mill, end mill, caliper, hammer and a deburr tool, dial indicator and chuck. 

I used these tools to cut the block and make sure it was smooth and at most 1thou off of what it needed to be. It was an easy process to cut the block but before we cut the block we did some preparations. 

First we learned how to make sure everything was even, we inserted the dial indicator into the mill with the chuck and squared the vice to make sure we could cut the part correctly.

Second we changed the tool from the dial indicator to the face mill to make our first cuts on the block, after making a couple cuts we unloaded it, deburred it, and measured it with calipers to see how much more we needed to cut off. After making that assessment we put it back in the vice and made our cuts, we took it out a couple more times to assess it and then if needed we put it back and repeated the process until it was done.

Third we changed the tool to an end mill to do the sides of the block. We made sure to set the x-axis to 0 before getting started, we started cutting and did the same process as with the face mill.

Kong also taught us a trick for making sure the vices are super tight, he told us to hammer the handle a bit to make sure it doesn't move.

We also made sure to blow the chips off the vices before reinserting the part to be sure it wasn't getting lifted up at all by them.