Whether you are doing job shop work or if you are just machining for the fun of it, it's always nice to be able to do quality work quickly. If you are doing this for a living, it means that you will earn more money. As a hobby, you will be able to make more parts or have more time available to do other thing that you enjoy. This month I will talk about a few little tricks that may speed up your machining operation just a bit (it all adds up over time).

Dial in Your Vise. This is one of those little chores that can be very time consuming if your vise is not keyed to the mill table. Try this little trick next time you indicate your machine vise parallel to the table travel. When you set your vise on the mill table, eyeball (line-up) the fastener slots reasonably close to the tee-slot on both sides of the vise (on older style vises, you can use the keyway that is machined on the bottom of the vise for visual reference). Install fasteners and lightly hand tighten both fasteners. Now attach your indicator to the mill, bring the indicator contact tip to the front of either the right side or left side of the stationary hard jaw and zero out the indicator. Loosen the fastener on the opposite side of the vise and snug up (by hand) the fastener closest to the indicator. Move the table the full length of the vise jaw. Now tap the vise by hand until the indicator needle reads zero, then tap the vise in the same direction one thousanth past zero. Re-zero the indicator, snug the fastener closest to the indicator, loosen opposite side and repeat previous movement, only this time when you tap the vise in, do not add the extra "thou". You may have to go back and forth one or two more times, but it should go quick. Use your hands only for tapping in your vise, no more mallets. Use a wrench to tighten down the fastners only when your indicator is reading zero from end to end. With a little practice, this should take less than a minute.

Turn Your Indicator to the Sky On a mill, nothing works better for finding the center of a hole or bore than a coaxial indicator. Problem is, if you want one, you gotta pay for it, and they aint cheap! Coaxial indicators are also somewhat limited to working on round features of a part, they won't work for finding the center of a square part and you certainly can't use them as an edge finder like you can with a dial test indicator (e-mail me if you don't know how to use a dial test indicator to find an edge). So, many of us are stuck using a dial indicator to find the center of a part. I can't count how many times I have watched seasoned machinists using a mirror to read the face of an indicator as the tool turned away from them on it's way around a bore or the o.d. of a round part. I tried this once early in my apprenticeship and gave serious thought to a career at McDonald's. For me, it was very confusing. Over the years, I stumbled across this handy little method (see images below) that made life a lot easier for me. I simply adjusted the indicator so that the dial (face) of the tool pointed up so I could read it as it swung 360º around the part. Try it, you might like it.

Keep Your Cool When machining with high speed steel endmills, it is important to keep the tool lubricated, cool and evacuate chips away from cutting edges entering the cut. Most manual mills don't have flood coolant but an adequate and economical substitute is a spray mist system. The problem with a spray mist system is that there is generally only one cooling nozzle that is in a somewhat stationary position. When the endmill is in a portion of the cut that won't allow the action of the spray mist to do it's job, the cutting tool's life will be dramatically shortened. Therefore, we need to reduce cutting speeds and feeds (something I won't stand for). About a month ago, I decided it might be a good idea to install a second spray mist system. This worked better than I had ever imagined. Chips were cleared regardless of tool position, tools stayed sharp much longer and I was able to keep my speeds and feed up where they should be. Take a look at this set-up. It's a little bit costly and somewhat time consuming to install but well worth it.