Making a Rocket Part From Concept to Reality

[@FraserKillip]

My best guess as to why the concentricity was off is that when you faced the long side you may have taken off slightly different amounts on each side. In theory then when you measured the centre between the flats it didn’t match the centre of the cylinder. Source: I have watched at least 3 machining videos on KZbin

[@Barely_Creative]

Yeah, and if he flipped which side was facing +y between the two milling ops, it would have doubled an otherwise difficult to see error. The flip side is that this error can be reduced by just writing +y on one of the faces and making sure it's in the same direction on both ops.

[@cooperised]

You could tell if the flats were equally deep, within a tolerance, by checking they were equally wide 👍

[@jacekskrzeczynski5863]

i like part when the lathe says "WSHSHEHSWW"

[@SomeTechGuy666]

I would not be holding the round stock with my hands while cutting it. Set up a clamping system or install a vice on the saw.

[@scunner3rd]

This is exactly the level of granular detail I want from these videos. I love it!

[@KimAndreOsland]

Is it not possible to angle the compound slide on this lathe? This is normally how you cut a taper on a lathe.

[@joebarnard]

It is! It's kinda a pain to change the compound angle on this lathe and I thought it would turn out more consistent than it did - I'll probably do it that way for the next one of these :)

[@drummeruptheirons]

The best thing I learned here is that you also use Pilot G2 pens. May the gunch be with you

[@joebarnard]

They're SO good

[@ryanohoro3764]

Joey should be locked in a room with only Blondihacks milling videos to watch.

[@joebarnard]

Those videos are great! Just didn't totally finish the series yet :)

[@firestararamov5791]

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend looking into Lakeshore Carbide’s end mills. The 440 is so underpowered that any edge you can get is really important, and you can get away with stupid long stickout with their variable mills. Excellent tooling for tormachs in general, but will especially help on a 440.

[@zenengineer5803]

Does your cross slide turn? I can't tell from the video, but that should've helped turn that cone more easily with good surface finish. Blondihacks has a video on turning tapers on a manual lathe with a couple of different options if I recall. Though what you did here works well enough for your application.

[@cooperised]

I'm interested in why you chose the CNC mill for this part, when it was almost entirely rotationally symmetrical. If this had been my part to make, I'd have done it entirely on the lathe (except for the cross hole) - bore the internal cone and drill the axial hole, then turn it round and fixture it to the faceplace through the axial hole to turn the outer cone. My hunch is that it would have been faster, for a one-off part, and a carbide boring bar could have reached further into the part than a milling cutter so you wouldn't have had to modify your design. But then there may be all sorts of things I haven't considered here. Just curious how your decision-making process went.

[@2testtest2]

Agree, I would have done this on the lathe too. Set the compund slide to the taper angle using a dial indicator and some trig. For roughing the taper I would make a sketch in the CAD model of rectangles to approximate the taper, Because it's a pain to crang the compund back and forth. For the Indside I would do the same with drills, stepping my way up, and out. Also, Get some of the ground inserts for aluminium, they make a big difference.

[@cooperised]

Just realised the cross hole was just for checking wall thickness! Yep so it's a lathe part all the way, for me...

[@haydo8373]

I think if you're not super confident on a lathe you might avoid doing the complete job on the lathe. I know I'd be tempted to use the mill, it would have been perfect if it weren't for that one error. Regardless, it was an awesome video, nice one Joey

[@cooperised]

@@haydo8373 Perhaps, but a test part like this is the perfect opportunity to push those skills. 😁 "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses, but making parts that are circular in cross section everywhere is what lathes are _for_.

[@StormBurnX]

@@cooperised conversely - while every tool has its strengths and weaknesses, every operator has their own as well. Why bother trying to make an important prototype on a tool you're not comfortable with (and can injure yourself on rather easily) when you can instead make it on a tool you're already well familiar with (and have zero-to-little chance of injury, to boot) It wouldn't hurt to make practice parts like this with a cheaper stock that wouldn't be used in the actual rocket, but it'd be a waste of time, material, and injury potential compared to just running it on the CNC :)

[@bennettdiamond9744]

Hey King, great video! Some unsolicited advice: I'd highly recommend making soft jaws for this part. If you set it up correctly, you can have the same WCS for both the soft jaws and the part so when you machine the soft jaws, the alignment is already set for the part so you don't need to touch off. Also, you can machine into soft jaws and machine more of the taper in one go than with steel jaws. Cheers!

[@Barely_Creative]

I've done some cnc work in school and professionally, and I think that a good way to prevent the concentricity error small in the future would be to machine all your reference surfaces for the next setup in the current one. Obviously this falls apart if there are a bunch of setups in series, but in that case you should just try to do a really good job on making references that you can use in multiple setups. Thanks for the videos and for reading my unsolicited advice :)

[@snitkofb]

I think both Quinn and Joe are both in the LA area now. Can we please get like a Quinn Eye for the Rocket Guy, and get Joe some crash corses in machining?

[@JacobPranger]

Keep up the work. I love these videos! Not sure how easy it is to change chucks on that lathe, but a 4-jaw-chuck would allow you to position the part to being mostly concentric. Won't really help the difference in concentricity between the external and internal cones.

[@snitkofb]

Yeah. I was wondering why he wasn't using a 4-jaw to get it concentric, or mostly concentric.

[@2testtest2]

It's usually just 3 nuts on the back of the spindle nose flange for these mini lathes. I'm guessing he doesn't have a 4-jaw?

[@DavidDellsperger]

I'm gonna Tap Dat Hole (that's what I heard, though I know it was tap that hole). What a great learning process video for other people to learn from the process that you went through!

[@PiranOfficial]

That sounds like good plan for the "real" part - rough out on mill and finish on lathe. I'd do It like that If I had acess to mill - compound on minilathe is painful, but It won't be so bad for taking final few mm off od :P

[@DJ_Dett]

If you were to reach out to This Old Tony about some techniques for remaking this part entirely on the lathe for the Meat Rocket, I bet he would be pretty interested. I'm guessing the reason you used the mill was due to the angle of the cut for the cone, but I would hazard a guess that your manual flats (and then finding the center from there) may have been what caused you to be off-center in the end.

[@purpleicu_840]

Wow you have like a whole machine shop. Keep it up

[@hightechhippie]

You should use a band saw for cutting stock that big, it will produce a better edge and be straighter, just my 2 cents

[@sawer]

Is that rc plane in the background based on the FT Guina Pig from Peter Scripol?

[@joebarnard]

It IS the FT Guina Pig - if you look back like 2 years on this channel I flew a few tests dropping payloads from it. Wanted to try an air-launched rocket but the project got scrapped

[@austinp3666]

For metal cutting, I would suggest looking into a evolution chop saw. They work great for metal and are fairly priced

[@amessman]

I love drawing something up before turning to CAD.

[@ronihaddad6953]

Love this! Keep it up

[@MrZmm95]

love this! Have you considered mounting a lathe chuck on your mill table? super reliable OD&ID clamping for round parts like this :) Also try ordering the stock pre-cut to length from onlinemetals or industrial metal supply! cutting large aluminum stock on the chopsaw is the worst! the chips burn!

[@deltav7711]

I really want to ask what made this man want to cook a piece of meat with superheated air created by extreme compression by a rocket

[@Damicske]

Why did you use a manual tap if you have a center on your machine? Just put the tap in the machine holder and manual turn your late chuck ;)

[@HM-Projects]

mate, you need to invest in an ELS controller like ELSv4 Pro from Rocketronics. You could've done most of it on the lathe. Good work regardless.

[@csenno24]

Its crazy how you can take stock material and just turn it into a rocket part in a day.

[@yaseen.m.t]

Cool Work! How much does the part weight?

[@mgreb]

The part probably moved on you when milling the part.

[@mgreb]

Take that back, what is off is flat to flat.

[@baja221]

Watching this while I frantically finish my rocket for RocStock

[@joebarnard]

Good news it is cancelled! 🙃 Too much rain over the last few days, gonna try to fly this at FAR next weekend

[@baja221]

@@joebarnard ah well that solves the majority of issues I was working on!

[@joshk7461]

Me when the stock material has a label of "precision" but is in fact not concentric or parallel 🙃

[@ooo_Kim_Chi_ooo]

Why does Joe look like NileRed in disguise?

[@turkotv6815]

6:51 why tf you look like Elon Musk

[@c4sualcycl0ps48]

And you are machining this piece… to cook meat? I mean it’s better than aiming something like a rocket motor at a raw steak and hoping for the best.