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One of the first skills in manual machining that is learned is the practice of squaring a part.
Squaring a part on a mill is a crucial step in machining that involves aligning the workpiece's edges or surfaces perpendicular to each other and to the mill's axes. This process ensures that the part's dimensions, features, and subsequent machining operations are accurate and consistent.
In machining with a mill, there are several ways to achieve the same outcome but the two methods I used were a "wire rod" squaring method and the "CNC" method
The first method I used was the "wire rod" method. It involves the use of a cylindrical wire rod to align the workpiece's edges or surfaces with the mill's axes. This method is particularly useful for squaring irregularly shaped or non-rectangular workpieces as there is only a single point touching the part.
The part is placed in the vice with one face against the immovable master jaw and a rod is placed between the part and the movable jaw.
Once one portion of the workpiece has been machined, that surface can then be used as a reference to square the other features.
A Machinist square is used to aid in the squaring.
While tightening the workpiece in the vice; a dead-blow hammer is used to secure the part against the parallels of the vice.
This method took me 15 minutes to produce a squared cube
The second method that I used to square a cube was the "CNC" method. This method is similar to the processing of how a CNC mill would be programmed to square a feature on a part.
The process entails:
Mounting the workpiece and milling flat the top of the part;
End-milling the sides of the workpiece along the X and Y axis to create a squared top of the part.
Then with these cuts as references the rest of the part is squared.
this method took me about 8 minutes almost half the time of the Rod method.
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