Friday, May 7, 2010

Boring Bars Have Arrived

I came in this morning and saw a nice package by the door with a UK return address- the boring bars!


These tools are used for finish machining the many accurate bores needed in the crankcases- transmission bearings, crankshaft journals, and cylinder bores. Because many of the bores are deeply recessed in the casting I felt a normal extended boring bar would not be able to achieve the required accuracy and surface finish.

The tools are from Microbore, a custom tooling house in the United Kingdom. I wanted to use domestic US suppliers for as much of this project as possible but all of the US tooling vendors I sent a RFQ to declined to quote the project. Microbore has done similar products in the past and their high quality, experience and reasonable pricing easily convinced me to choose them.
The boring bars are of the Devlieg adjustable insert style with an integral CAT40 shank. This will maximize accuracy and rigidity versus a boring bar held in a collet or end mill style holder.



Each bar has an angled machined pocket at the extreme end that receives a Devlieg Micro-Adjust carbide insert holder.


These Devlieg insert holders allow fine diameter cutting adjustment using the latest carbide insert cutting edges. We will use a test part to dial the cutting diameter to size for each bore then lock them in place.


In the next week or so we'll be machining the first castings and post some video and images of the results.

That's all for now.

Chris

Monday, May 3, 2010

Lee Klancher Article in MPN

Thanks yet again to Lee Klancher I am getting some press exposure in this month's print and online issue of Motorcycle Product News. The online edition is here.

Lee got in touch with me about a couple of years ago and asked to take some pictures of our shop for his upcoming book, 'Motorcycle Dream Garages' It's a great collection of real world spaces with grit under their fingernails. Little did I expect to get an entire chapter to myself and one for my neighbors at Spannerland! The book is quality, from the large pictures and great text to the print quality and binding.

Like most people, Lee was interested in the upcoming V4 project when he heard and saw what we are up to. Unlike most people, Lee is a journalist and saw the chance to help get a good story out. We've been in continued contact and articles such as this are the result. As the project progresses we can expect to see more.

I'll be getting to machining some castings this week and will post some images and video once it is sorted.

That's all for now.