Rhyolith
Established Member
Some may have noticed I have been fairly inactive recently, this is due to me starting a mechanical engineering traineeship with the FR & WHR back in August. Its been a pretty exciting time and a lot has been happening, so I thought it was about time for a thread about it!
The first job i was given back in september was making pins for the motion of the WHR Garrets. These had to be precise to 1 thou (0.001") so sort of straight into the deep end! Obviously this job was all about lathe work, and these aren't the little myfords I am used to but great bigs lumps with chucks comparable in mass to my entire ML4 :shock:
This is the Colchester 1600 that me and my fellow trainee started out on.
The first steel I was given was just for practice, we had to learn to use the lathe to get the the required accuracy in these first before moving to the stuff suitable for hardening in the final pins that would actual go on the garrets.
There they are, the rough finish is both an indication of my skill with a lather at that point and the steel used for the practice. Took a while to get those right!
Anyway, after that I got access to the material suitable for the garret pins that would actual be used. The results after a few weeks of practicing and different steel were quite astounding! I also got to try out one of the DSG lathes... and blimey it was so much better. I can see why the apprentices fight over it!
In that second one in particular you can tell which ones i did first, the finish gets better with the later ones.
This was probably the best one. Doing those lubrication holes was a pain in the pillar drill, probably should have waited for a milling machine to be free!
Thats only job 1 of many, let me know if you'd like to see more of this.
The first job i was given back in september was making pins for the motion of the WHR Garrets. These had to be precise to 1 thou (0.001") so sort of straight into the deep end! Obviously this job was all about lathe work, and these aren't the little myfords I am used to but great bigs lumps with chucks comparable in mass to my entire ML4 :shock:
This is the Colchester 1600 that me and my fellow trainee started out on.
The first steel I was given was just for practice, we had to learn to use the lathe to get the the required accuracy in these first before moving to the stuff suitable for hardening in the final pins that would actual go on the garrets.
There they are, the rough finish is both an indication of my skill with a lather at that point and the steel used for the practice. Took a while to get those right!
Anyway, after that I got access to the material suitable for the garret pins that would actual be used. The results after a few weeks of practicing and different steel were quite astounding! I also got to try out one of the DSG lathes... and blimey it was so much better. I can see why the apprentices fight over it!
In that second one in particular you can tell which ones i did first, the finish gets better with the later ones.
This was probably the best one. Doing those lubrication holes was a pain in the pillar drill, probably should have waited for a milling machine to be free!
Thats only job 1 of many, let me know if you'd like to see more of this.
