Metal Machining
The Hack.rva hackerspace has a mini milling machine and mini lathe for milling and turning metal, plastic, and wood. These tools require training to operate.
Dress appropriately
- Safety glasses.
- Closed toed shoes or boots.
- Long hair must be tied back, tucked in, or otherwise wrangled so that it will not be wrapped or snagged by the machine.
- No loose clothes such as ties, draw strings, bolos, skirts, sleeves, hoods, or capes. Roll long sleeves to the elbow or wear short sleeves.
- Do not wear heavy gloves while operating machines. Thick nitrile gloves are appropriate, but leather or work gloves are a snagging hazard.
Little Machine Shop 3960 HiTorque Mini Mill
Our milling machine is manufactured by Sieg Industrial Group. It was sold in the United States by LittleMachineShop.com. The User's Guide is available here.
The dials on our milling machine are in metric. One rotation of the hand wheels moves the appropriate axis 1.5 mm. With 75 dial divisions this means each dial division is 0.02 mm.
Our milling machine has an R8 taper. A flat-faced 3/4" collet is available, allowing the use of the Tormach TTS tool system. We strongly suggest you purchase your own TTS chucks and maintain your own tools. ER32 collet chucks cover a relatively large range, are nearly universal and can be had on Ebay inexpensively. ER16 collet chucks more closely match the power capability of the machine. They can similarly be found on Ebay inexpensively. While the chucks themselves aren't much less expensive, ER16 collets are less expensive than ER32.
Learning Resources
- Essential Machining Skills: Operating a Lathe -- excellent 3-part series of videos on how to use a lathe
- More Open Source Machine Tools videos on YouTube