[HN Gopher] Watchmaking: Machining a 0.6 mm Screw [video] ___________________________________________________________________ Watchmaking: Machining a 0.6 mm Screw [video] Author : zdw Score : 45 points Date : 2023-02-18 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com) | ezequiel-garzon wrote: | All of a sudden those expensive timepieces feel underpriced. | maxbaines wrote: | Swiss turning is ideal for this, on a Swiss turning lathe the | headstock moves rather than the tool, which improves accuracy. | 752963e64 wrote: | [dead] | convolvatron wrote: | related question - I learned on a long bed Logan toolroom lathe. | cant _really_ cut threads on that guy because of all the slop, | but I often do a prepass to get things started before I use a | die. | | I've really been interested in getting a jewelers lathe with a | goal of making smaller parts and particularly screws. but it | looks very expensive and intimidating. many thousands of dollars | for a few pounds of 100 year old steel with a lot of very fussy | and foreign looking tooling. I really love to fix things up and | learn, but would love some advice about how to start. | | anyone have a suggestion? | skykooler wrote: | If you don't mind having to spend some time on cleaning and | oiling, it can often be worth it to get an old lathe from an | industrial auction; often you can find them for a few hundred | dollars. | KaiserPro wrote: | http://millhillsupplies.co.uk/sherline/sherline-lathes/ | | Sherline lathes are very small, and I think its what | clickspring runs. | Oxidation wrote: | What is the industry standard for a decent, non-antique small | manual lathe? Everything I see is either 50+ years old or | mediocre-looking Siegs or otherwise suspiciously white-label- | ish or it's a super-fancy CNC alien spacecraft that costs | substantially more then a house. | amrb wrote: | From my talks with people who machine parts, precision can be | super interesting, plus a bunch of equipment to measure from | micrometers, calipers to indicators. | barelyauser wrote: | Precision is a marvelous thing. Every detail must be accounted | for. I remember reading a brochure about surface plates (a | reference of flatness), and the body heat of the person | handling it would be accounted for. | WJW wrote: | Some of the highest precision manufacturing in our country is | located in extremely rural areas because nearby highways | introduce too much vibration otherwise. Even relatively | humdrum spindle assembly is typically done in clean rooms to | make sure no dust gets in the bearings. Super high precision | machining is even more extreme. It's a wonderful thing to | dive into but it also makes me happy to be in software | sometimes. (That said, my friends in machining are happy | they're not in software so take that as you will :) | bluenose69 wrote: | What a lovely little video this is, from start to finish. Very | skilful work, indeed! | KaiserPro wrote: | For those who want to learn how to do lathe and machining, there | isn't much better than Blondihacks | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Dnmd3lDzA&list=PLY67-4BrEa... | << this is the lathe one | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyuG-B95PQs&list=PLY67-4BrEa... | is the one for the small vertical mill. | Animats wrote: | That's how to make a single screw as a one-off, using basic | machine tools. That's not a production process. | | Screw making was automated by 1871. Here's an early automatic | screw machine.[1] The video says 60,000 screws a day, but that | must have been the whole shop, not one machine. You can see that | the cycle time is about 10 seconds per screw. Who needs | computers? We program with _cams!_ Complex cam-programmed | industrial machines were what made manufactured parts cheap. | | Here's synchronized thread rolling using a CNC lathe.[2] That's a | more modern one-off approach. Thread rolling squeezes the threads | into the screw, rather than cutting out metal. Rolled small | screws are stronger than cut screws. Needs a specialized tool. | | That's not the full speed modern production process. This is.[3] | A relatively simple machine turns out small screws at about one | every 250ms. Over 100,000 screws per shift. This screw rolling | machine can go down to 0.6mm, so it can do the job in the | original video. | | Here's a larger, slower, bolt rolling machine, so you can see the | process.[4] It's very simple. A round piece of metal is rolled | between two file-grooved die plates, and the threads are pushed | into the metal. | | This is why screws are cheap. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCmnUP5gx78 | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eWghSLN3ng | | [3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HWmu4gxmois | | [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlfq_Pbh6PQ | WJW wrote: | That high speed machine is wild. Some of the most common parts | in the world are crazy accurate but since they are produced in | such huge volumes they can still be cheap. Screws and ball | bearing that you can buy for $10 a pack are order of magnitude | beyond what even a king could buy in the middle ages. I'm not | even going into how you can buy processors/memory with features | on the order of nanometres for single digit dollar amounts | these days. | mensetmanusman wrote: | The iPhone would be over a billion dollars if the world only | built 20. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-18 23:00 UTC)