Last Friday Ben finished the roller arms for the steady rest. I helped to clean them up by removing their burrs. I installed the bearings. each part works perfectly
This week I focused on machining the rest of the parts for the steady rest. Adam has been absent most of the week, so the primary body hasn’t been finished. The large Tormach also has some sort of coolant issue, so I don’t know when that part will be finished.
I added the final features to the bed interface part, notably the V-groove and the threaded holes. The V-groove was machined too deep. To remedy this, I re-faced the side with the V-groove to reduce the effective depth from the surface. after I did this and partially polished the surface, it fit nearly perfectly.
I also had to drill the clearance hole for the bolt locking it to the lathe. This was a pain in the but, and required about 6 drill bits and 4 end mills.
Next I modeled the adjustment part, and created drawings for it. Then I cut stock to size and faced it. After taking it to size, Ben thought me how to program the manual mill, which I used to carve slots to adjust the mounting to the bed interface part. I accidentally misread a number, so one of the slots goes too far. this doesn’t really matter as it only reduces strength on a non-load bearing area.
