Rings & Repairs (Week of 9/8)

Hello! This second week back in shop was spent repairing the horizontal Band-saw and finishing up the rings I modeled last week.

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Starting off the week picking up where I left off, Mr.L gave me a quick run-down on how we make rings within the shop. We basically take a piece of metal(preferentially cylinder) and place it within the Lathe Mill. Hollowing out the metal until it's a width that will fit the person's finger, and cutting the metal a length of the ring. Boom! you have a ring. The aluminum piece I chose to make my rings out of was a bit too long to fit into the Lathe, so we had to cut it on the horizontal Band-saw. Before starting, we checked the coolant liquid. The liquid itself was very dirty as well as the filter. We had to clean the filter and replace the liquid before continuing; both to use the Band-saw correctly and to clean it now so we didn't have to do it later. Taking the filter off was a bit of a struggle as the screws were in really tightly. I had a shorten time in shop due to Gym so I wasn't able to fully clean the liquid container nor replace the coolant itself.

The Filter before being cleaned_

The liquid container being hosed down_

The following day, Mr.L finished cleaning the liquid container but he wanted me to clean the filter itself. That's basically what I spent the whole day doing. Slowly taking apart the filter and spending 30 minutes cleaning each part, making sure to get as much gunk out as I could. After I was done cleaning, I started to put it back together. Having to take it apart again a few times due to some parts needing to be inside the box where the electronics and wires are. Not much to talk about on Tuesday.

The Main Filter part cleaned_

The Filter cover cleaned_

After spending an entire day just repairing and cleaning, everything was finally ready for me to start making my rings. Mr.L guide me on how to use the Lathe Mill and got me set up to Mill the rings. He assisted two sophomores helped me mill out the rings due to them just finishing make rings themselves. They were very helpful, and now I know to use the mill pretty well. After milling the rings, I test-fitted them but they were a bit too small. I had to file them down and smooth out the inside edges to make them fit. That took the rest Wednesday and basically all of Thursday. Very fun stuff. After getting them filed down and fitted, I spray-painted them. The paint got a little messed up while cooling but I just fixed them up at home.

Finished filing one of the rings_

The rings with the messed up paint job_