Taking a Detour at the Mill

I prefer not to post until I have some quantifiable "thing" complete. That's good and bad. It allows the post to document a sub-project in a meaningful way. Unfortunately there are multiple things I've worked on that I haven't written up. I have a disassembled and cleaned Ford T-9 transmission sitting on a table in my basement. "Quasimotor" is a really cool full size engine mock-up I made to test fit the Mazda V6. My son-in-law Ken 3D printed a remote oil filter adapter model that I created in Solid Works. So there is actually a good bit of work that has been done but not documented here because it's "in process". 

The plan for custom parts like the remote oil filter adapter, is to cast them in aluminum. Ken became interested in casting aluminum, purchased the equipment to do so, and has cast a few items. Very cool. But parts cast for use on the Spitfire will quite often need precision mating surfaces, meaning they will need to be machined.

So what does one do when a T9 transmission lies in parts in their workshop, and a few other sub-projects remain partially done? They decide to buy a metal milling machine to make custom parts, and of course convert it to CNC (Computer Numerical Control). :) Yes, it would speed up the Spitfire project to just pay someone to machine custom parts, but I always wanted a CNC machine. The deciding factor was that Ken also wanted one, and agreed to go in on it with me. :) :)

The last few months have been focused solely on setting up and computerizing a Precision Matthews 728-VT mill. I'm not going to document my work on the mill because it is documented here. Remember, the Spitfire resto-mod is a retirement project, and I'm not retired yet.