Regarding that elusive milling cutter which is allegedly on its way to me... it turns out that SpeedPak*, the carrier service used to ship my cutter, hands off their shipments to... the United States Postal Service.
Now, it really wasn't all that long ago when this would have been happy news indeed because for my entire life, since I was a child in the 1960s until just about two weeks ago, I knew I could rely upon the USPS to do a good job.
But of course, thanks to our Fearless (Brainless) Leader, the speed and reliability of the US Postal Service is out the window.
So naturally I doubled down instead of being cautious -- just like our president would!
Yesterday I ordered, via eBay, a Noga style (Shars, in this case) dial indicator holder, like this one:
This is the second indicator holder I've ever owned, and I bought the first one - even cheaper, a HF PoS, at Charlie's Second-Hand tools for nearly nothing. Before this month, I've gone without, or rather, I've made my own ways and means on the spot as needed. And it's been a pain in the ass, too.
What makes this style of holder pleasant to use is that the one knob in the middle locks up all three joints. So you have fastened the magnetic base to something, you can hold the indicator where you want it, use the knob to move the arms to a reasonable position, and then with a twist of that same knob, lock everything up. It's like having a third hand. Another convenience is a fine-adjustment built into the indicator holder, making setup a little easier.
The other item I picked up is a simple bracket assembly...
which lets me mount a cheap DRO, or Digital ReadOut, like this one...
to the spindle feed of my Bridgeport mill, like this:
...sorta, except the above photos show a method which requires drilling a bunch of holes in the mill, whereas the Shars bracket mounts using the scale screws on the left, and tracks the movement of the quill by picking up that great big round hole in the front of the quill stop. Gotta love this guy's quill feed wheel tho...
EDIT: I'd quite forgotten, but both these items came from the same seller, who shipped them via FedEx, and they are guaranteed to be delivered by the 20th. Huzzah!
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* a partnership between eBay.cn and OCL and the default shipping option for sellers in China
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1 comment:
I bought an indicator holder similar to that and turned it into a "third hand" for soldering, using a 3D printed shim and parts from an old third hand that came with my old soldering iron. That single knob to any position thing is fantastic. I still need to get around to getting a small piece of steel to lock it to though.
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