Well as you may have noticed I'm not presenting the parts in order of manufacture, but in order of what is needed to make the next part. Now ideally at this point I should be scraping and fitting the ways to the bed, but instead I cast some of the other parts and made patterns for some others still.
Between casting the mounting bases and casting the way's bed I cast the cross slide carage, the the compound swivel base, and the cross slide (not on this role of film). One thing I found in molding the patterns was that the recommended molding techniques did not always produce the best results.
This is the cleaned up cross slide carage casting.
This is as cast......
and this cleaned up, big difference huh?
While I did this casting I also conducted a minor experiment. Oh alright, it was minor is size but major research out comes. The result of this experiment made it possible to continue with the whole project, this is because there are several castings that require a steel core to produce a finished, to size, hole in an exact location. This experiment was to validate my theory that you can use a stainless steel core in bronze casting to great effect.
As you can see the small S.steel core is present in the casting, and in the second photo it has been successfully removed.
Well I am now on my second role of film for this project and I have now cast the cross slide and fitted the ways, I am currently as at the 12 of October, scaping the front ways paralel to the back ways. BTW scraping is one of the most tedious things I have ever done, but the result is astonishingly precise.
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