This is a weak post because my father is in the hospital with health issues after having a minor car accident. That, and I spent most of the day working on getting clients back up and running.

So what are “speeds and feeds”? These are the magic numbers to run your machines at to get the “best” results.

Let’s assume you want to make a 3″ diameter hub on a 4″ diameter rod of aluminum.

The starting diameter for your rod is 4.12″.

We look up in a table, the “speed” of Aluminum. We are using 6061 which has a surface speed of 500-800 feet per minute if using high-speed steel (HSS, old school) or 2800 if using carbide.

This means that we want the single point of a lathe cutting tool should be traveling at 500-800 feet per minute over the surface of the aluminum.

With a diameter of 4.12″, the surface speed is:

$$\frac{4.12\mathrm{\pi }}{12}\mathrm{RPM}=<mn>500</mn>$$

$$\frac{4.12\mathrm{}\mathrm{\pi }}{12x<mn>500</mn>}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{RPM}}$$

$$\frac{6000}{4.12\mathrm{\pi }}=\mathrm{RPM}$$

$$\mathrm{RPM}=463.6$$

As we remove material, the diameter gets smaller, so our RPM has to increase to maintain the same surface speed. At 4″ the speed should be 477 RPM. At 3″ it is 637 RPM. At 1″ we need a whopping 1900 RPM.

The speeds required are higher if we use 800 instead of 500 SFM and scary fast if we are looking at 2800 SFM.

My lathe doesn’t spin that fast.

But this is only part of the equation, the next part is “Depth of Cut”. This is how deep you are cutting.

I could zip along at 418 RPM at 4″ taking a 0.010 depth of cut. This means it will take 56 passes before I am at a 3″ diameter.

If I take a 0.050 depth of cut, it is only 12 passes.

Besides the depth of cut, there is also the feed rate. This is the distance the tool advances per revolution.

I have a single tumbler Quick Change gearbox. This means that I have three controls to set the speed of rotation of the lead shaft.

The lead screw is threaded 8 TPI, for every eight revolutions, the carriage will advance 1 inch. By setting the gears correctly, I can choose how much the lead screw rotates per rotation of the spindle.

I normally use a feed rate of 0.007.

So, my depth of cut is picked to be either 0.050 or 0.025, taking 0.100 or 0.050 off the diameter per pass. This means that to make a 3 inch boss from a 4.12 inch rod that is 1 inch long, I have to make 11 0.050 passes, taking off 1.100 from the diameter, then I make two finishing passes of around 0.006.

I normally run at the depth of cut I want, merely listening to the lathe to see if it is straining. If it is not straining, the DoC is good.

Removing metal on a milling machine isn’t as easy. First, the tools are more likely to break, which is expensive.

We start with the same calculations for SFM. Instead of using the size of the workpiece, we use the diameter of the cutter.

With an 1/8″ cutter, we should be spinning that thing at 15,000 RPM in aluminum, and 2500 for a 3/4″ cutter.

I’m cutting soft steel, 1018. The SFM for milling is 100 SFM. Using a 3/4 end mill, I should be running at 500RPM. Since I am using a solid carbide end mill, I push this to 660 RPM.

But what about Depth of Cut and Feed Rate?

Well, that is where it gets interesting. According to my tool dealer, the depth of cut should be Diameter * 0.05 to Diameter * 1.5, or 0.38 to 1.125. I picked 0.200.

The same tables show that my tooth load should be 0.005. This means each tooth should be removing 0.005″ of material.

Running at 400RPM with a four flute end mill, this means that the tool should advance 0.005*4 = 0.020 per rev. of the cutter.

That means we should be advancing 400 * 0.020 = 8 inches per minute.

My old Bridgeport isn’t that stout anymore. I’m running at 5 IPM with a 0.200 DoC @ 400ish RPM.

That is smooth and boy does it hog out the metal. I stopped shop time because it was time to do computer work. Not because I was tired or frustrated.

I should have the next toolholders ready for bluing before the weekend.

Sorry about the site being down for the last few hours.

Our cloud provider had a server stop responding. It was enough “up” that it didn’t show down from the outside.

Our cloud hosting provider is Linode. I hope you can understand just how good they are.

My initial contact was that it looked like the load balancer was failing.

They did a thorough examination and determined that it wasn’t the load balancer, but something related to our configuration.

Given that our configuration is freaking stable, this did not make any sense.

These lead me to determine that the database server was not responding. This is not good.

This in turn led me to discovering that I had pods that were “stuck”. I attempted to manual stop one of the pods, and it just hung there.

The ticket was updated to “I can’t terminate pods.” The update I received was not helpful. It was talking about disks not attaching correctly, suggesting that I was attempting to attach the same drive to multiple machines.

This took me to attempting to log into the node. Something I should never have to do.

The node was borked. I took the reset hammer to it. It rebooted. Things are working again.

Linode did a great job working for me to help resolve the issue.

A couple of YouTube videos went past my feed today. They were talking about the case of Morin v. Lyver, 4:18-cv-40121, (D. Mass. Mar 03, 2023).

After Bruen, some cases were GVR by the Supreme Court, these include Duncan and Bianchi. We saw the Ninth Circuit kick the case back down to the district level. It is now back at the Ninth Circuit, waiting for oral arguments.

We saw Bianchi get oral arguments shortly after it was GVRed. Then, just weeks before the merit’s panel was due to issue their opinion, the Fourth circuit decided to take the case en banc on their own.

Just nasty games in the inferior courts.

Morin v. Lyver is another one. In this case, the game was very different and the results much quicker. Without giving the 2A community a win.

Mr. Morin had jumped through all the hoops in MA to get his LTC back in the 90s. He held that license until 2018, when he went to renew, where he was denied.

It seems that Mr. Morin did a stupid. He traveled with his firearm without knowing all the restrictions. He was in DC, visiting one of the museums, when he noticed that there was a “no guns” sign. Being a law-abiding citizen, he went to the nearest security guard, informed the guard that he was carrying, and asked where the storage was for firearms.

The guard was very helpful in getting Mr. Morin’s firearm to safe storage. He called the police, who arrived and arrested Mr. Morin.

DC does not recognize MA LTCs, and a CCW doesn’t allow you to carry in many places.

Mr. Morin got off with a slap on the wrist of a misdemeanor charge.

When he applied for his renewal, the local authority, in charge of hearing the subject’s pleadings for their rights back, denied the renewals because Mr. Morin had “misdemeanor weapons charges.”

The district court heard the challenge, using intermediate scrutiny, decided the state had ample reason to disarm its subjects whenever it wanted.

The case was appealed to the First Circuit, which agreed with the district court. The state has a reason, that was good enough for them.

The Supreme Court held the case over until Bruen issued, then they GVRed this case.

In March 2023, the parties agreed on a settlement.

Mr. Marin would get his LTC back.

But that is all that happened. It looks like Massachusetts was afraid of what might happen in court. If the district court had followed Bruen faithfully, this would have been another nail in the coffin of gun permitting.

This weekend I thought I had finished all the machining on my toolholders. Yesterday, I had to remake the height adjustment disks. I had made them 1.12 in diameter, this interferes with the screws that hold the tool in place.

The size of the Aloris adjuster disk is 0.980. I remade the disks at 1.0. There is enough clearance now.

I’m waiting for the rest of my chemicals to arrive, then I’ll hot blue the toolholders, at which point they will be done.

There is still another 12 inches of steel for toolholders. When I was putting the three new ones into production, I realized that I did need to make some 5/8 toolholders.

I joyfully started the process. This was tramming the head of the mill. It was off 0.0005 over 8 inches. I didn’t adjust. I then had to dial in the vise. It was out less than 0.0005 over 6 inches.

First step, cut the bar to length, 6 and 6.25. With the new apron, my scale was where I needed it. Quick and easy.

The saw is cutting well, I’m using my spray bottle of water-soluble oil to keep everything nice and cool. The blade stops.

The pulley belt seems not to be working. Groaning, adjusting, realizing that some idiot had mounted the motor wrong.

I get everything “fixed” and put back, the belt rides up and off the pulley, yanking the motor around on its tensioning post.

I fight this thing for an hour in the heat. Give up.

Later, I went back for try number two. This time, as I’m watching the thing not work, I see brass shavings showing up on the face of the motor housing.

Everything is rattle loose. I’ve killed the damn motor. Frustrated, back into the house.

A replacement motor is going to run me $250. I do not have $250 for the shop. We talk about it at the dinner table.

The decision is to hold off until after graduation of the kids (high school), and I was going to beg you guys for a motor.

After dinner and a show with my lady, it is out to the shop to read the motor plate.

As I take the motor out of the saw, the step pulley is loose and comes off the motor shaft.

The set screw that locks the step pulley to the shaft has backed out. The damn thing was just spinning. There are things that still need to be fixed, but the panic is over.

Done.

The case was distributed for conference on 2024-06-06. This is the fourth time it has been distributed for Conference. I still consider this to be good news.

Yesterday, the wife took me to the Write Museum. It was a bit of a drive, but it was worth it.

Having grown up visiting museums with my parents, I have expectations of what a museum is.

This did not have that feel to it.

According to the front desk, the museum came into existence because Mr. Wright needed a place to store is “collection” so he built the museum and opened it to the public.

What Mr. Write had was a small collection of WWII vehicles. Those include a Sherman and a Pershing tank, along with a jeep, half-track, WWII motorcycles and a bit more. And those are absolutely stunning.

There are tracks in the parking lot from where they drove the Pershing into the building last week.

Besides the Military Gallery, they have a “Home Front” and “Time Tunnel.” The home front is a collection of artifacts from 1939-1944 showing a bit about what was available at the time. There were a few recreations of scenes as well.

The time tunnel was the best museum piece. It was broken into a series of rooms, each room representing a particular year. The rooms gave context to what was happening.

For example, there was a display of about Joe Louis defending his title for the 17th time. In the next room, Joe Louis is Private Louis, charging at you on a war poster. This helped to show how everybody was participating in winning the war.

There are many artifacts showing how the famous were donating and giving, all to get the people to give as well.

I think the most poignant display was a poster from the 1940s of a boy, wearing a Medal of Honor, a tear in his eye.

I had a few questions regarding some labels on the small arms. I do need to do a little research into the Japanese small arms of WWII, I missed almost every one of them.

It is worth a visit, if you have the time and are near enough. Not a great museum, but for $30 for two, not bad.

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Things appear to be getting more and more spicy out there.

When I leave the house for any extended period of time, I change into my jeans with a 1911 carried IWB.

I had tried carrying with a WWII reproduction load bearing suspenders, belt, and holster. I found that comfortable.

Unfortunately, when I sit the strain on the eyelets in that reproduction belt ripped out. I need to get a better belt.

All I need to do is lose another 6 inches from around my waist.

The reason I was wearing the belt and suspenders was that I could wear that with anything I wanted to wear. Including my sweatpants.

Which takes us to a recent gift. A Sticky pocket holster.

I have a pocket holster for my SIG P938, but it is a generic sort of thing. Not a great holster, just good enough.

The Sticky? An order of magnitude better.

It fits the SIG nicely. They go into the pockets of my pants or sweatpants. It stays in place and when I want to take the pistol out, that is all that comes out.

I added a pair of clip on suspenders. Everything just works.

I have been carrying non-stop since I got the holster. That includes working in the shop or eating dinner or sitting on the sofa with my wife, watching a show.

I do not notice it.

Carry everywhere. This might be a suitable option for you.

Sticky, 5/5 would purchase again.

For decades, the left has been winning in judicial appointments and, from that, in the courts.

Our republic was set up to encourage political experiments within each state. Each state could pass laws as their citizens wished, if those laws were bad, people would vote them down or leave.

Roe v. Wade was the Supreme Court cutting that experiment off. The states were passing laws as their citizens deemed best for them regarding abortion.

With Roe all that stopped. Instead, we moved into a period of lawfare. In the end, the Supreme Court corrected itself, returning the debate on abortion to the states, where it has always belonged.

When the people of California, a leftist utopia, were asked if they wanted “gay marriage”, they voted “no.” They enshrined that decision in the California constitution.

The losers whined and then went to court. In the end, the California supreme court issued an opinion that the state’s constitutional amendment was unconstitutional.

The people of California literally changed their constitution to refute gay marriage, and the courts said that the amendment wasn’t constitutional.

While we, The People, have been fighting for our Second Amendment protected rights, there has been a quiet fight going on in the background.

The Federalist Society has been making recommendations on judicial nominations for years. You can tell they are doing a good job by the amount of hate they have generated from the left.

Which takes us to today’s topic, false flags.

There is the term “borked”. This comes from the Democrat lead attack on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. The attack in the Senate was so horrible. The Senate rejected his nomination 42-58.

This was a win for the left and damaged the Supreme Court.

Since that time, every Supreme Court nominee presented to the Senate by a Republican president has been met with the same vulgar, nasty, attacks. The attacks on Judge Thomas were so bad that he described them as a “modern-day lynching”.

President Trump managed to get three originalists onto the court. The Federalist Society recommended all three.

This has resulted in the left losing its mind, again, what little it had to begin with.

They went after the Supreme Court as being “illegitimate”. The (pseudo)rational is that the republicans stole a nomination from Obama (Garland) and then didn’t let the democrats have the last nomination of Trumps first term.

When they were unable to sink the nominations of those three, they went to the media and started the drumbeat of “Thomas is corrupt!”

Justice Thomas has a wealthy friend. When he visits that friend, he stays at the friend’s house. They go out boating. They enjoy their time together. And it is likely they get to talk, like friends.

I assume most of us have done things like stay at a friend’s house. If you have, I am sure you don’t report that as a financial donation. Nor if you go out on their bass boat, do you report that as a “gift”?

What Thomas was accused of doing was not reporting those visits and those stays. When the rules changed and those types of things needed to be reported, he did report them.

Thomas was also attacked because his wife has a mind of her own and acts on her own. For some reason, when the wife of a Republican acts like a conservative and doesn’t kowtow to the liberal hive mind, that is actually her acting as her husband’s sock puppet.

It didn’t work. Thomas has stood strong. Roberts stood weak kneed, but he didn’t fall.

Since that didn’t work, they are now attacking Justice Alito. The great crime is that his wife was so upset at a TDS suffering neighbor, who was harassing her, that she flew the American flag upside down, as an indication of duress.

Not only that, but at their vacation home, she flew a revolutionary war flag, commissioned by George Washington.

All of this is supposed to force Alito and Thomas to the sidelines, and maybe Kavanaugh or Barrett as well, when Trump’s case reaches the Supreme Court.

The left are children. When they do not get their way, they throw tantrums. They throw things, they break things, they change the rules.

As soon as they are out of power, they want the rules changed back.

It doesn’t work that way.

What the left has done to my country sickens me. I pray that my grand-children have a country in 30 years.

It is that time of year, it is time to beg for your support.  Visit the store, there are a couple of support options there

There are many cases that seem to be in limbo, waiting for something to come out of the Supreme Court.

I expect something in Rahimi soon. I’m hoping Thomas writes the opinion.

Welcome to the new readers and commenters.  It is nice to see you here.

What is it that you look for from GFZ?

The comments are open, have at it.