Material Differences

So far, I have machined white acetal, black acetal, and 6061 aluminum with the mill.  White (or natural) acetal comes off in little tiny chips and looks pretty good.  Black acetal produces long strings, like a very bad reggae style and seems to want a higher spindle speed to remove .030" at a time.  But aluminum tends to clog the lead screw, so it requires oil.  Acetal is self-lubricating, as it evaporates as it cuts.

Islam's Twisted Code

This news account from one of the Middle Eastern news organizations just floors me:http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dad-lets-daughter-die-rather-than-be-touched-by-strange-rescuer-2015-08-09-1.599613

The father prevented life guards from rescuing his drowning daughter out of fear that a strange man touching his daughter would dishonor her.  ISIS is auctioning off little girls ad sees nothing wrong with it.  Bizarre.

Approaching Operational

I am now reaching production by approximation.  I took a piece of acetal that was roughed to the shape I need, put it in the mill, zeroed the axes, and started it running.  Here you can see it milling air.

And here it is down to cutting .01" of acetal on each pass. Yes, I can mill a lot deeper than that, but this is for when I put aluminum in the vise.

The advantage of acetal for testing is that I have vast quantities of acetal scrap for testing, and it doesn't wear out the cutting tools.

UPDATE: Got tired of waiting, so I revised the program to cut 0.03" per pass and increased the feed rate.

Gun Control As A Projection Problem

I have long thought enthusiasm for gun control can best be explained as a projection problem.  People weak on self-control assume that everyone else is as weak as they are.  Like this August 10, 2015 Fox News story that Shall Not Be Questioned linked to:
 

A White House staffer was arrested late Friday after allegedly shooting a gun at her boyfriend, an officer with the U.S. Capitol Police, during a heated argument, authorities said.

Barvetta Singletary, 37, who is a special assistant to President Obama and also holds the title of house legislative liaison, was charged with domestic violence in the incident, which police say occurred at her home in Upper Marlboro, Md.

Police say she summoned her boyfriend, who was not identified, by text message, and the two had sex. Afterward, according to the criminal complaint, Singletary went to the man’s car with him and accused him of dating other women. Inside the car, Singletary allegedly took the man’s cellphones and his service weapon, demanding passwords to unlock messages stored on the phones.

The Melting Arctic

From June 1818 Edinburgh Review:

Time For other Republicans To Move Right

Trump got a lot of bad press for his remarks to Megyn Kelly during the debate.  But his poll numbers are rising.  And much of the establishment Republican opposition to Trump's emphasis on illegals is the belief that Republicans need to be down on their knees worshipping not just Corporate America (who would be happy to see wages fall from increased immigration) but minority voters.  What to make of this Trump defense video?


These gals are probably not typical of black voters.  Most will doubtless do what their Democratic masters tell them to do, ignoring that illegal immigration is why young black men can't find decent paying jobs.

Maybe if Republicans don't like Trump being the voice of the party, they should steal his issue.

Fun With Chop Saws

These are commonly called chop saws but more accurately double bevel miter saws (because you change the angle of the cut in two different axes).  The new one has some nice features such as being a compound saw, which slides across a substantial distance, so you can cut pieces much wider than the diameter of the saw blade, and a laser that projects a line onto the workpiece.  There is one annoying downside.  The old Ryobi had a clamp for locking the workpiece against the back fence:

This actually worked well not only when cutting a piece of wood or aluminum in two, but also when I needed to take off a slice of tube or rod.  I constructed a number of fixtures from square aluminum tubes with 3/8"-16 bolts to hold round objects firmly, while the clamps locked the square tubes against the back fence.

 

This makes it possible to lock down round workpieces quite strongly.  When cutting 1" sections of acetal, all I had to do was loosen the bolts with a wrench, advance the material, tighten down the bolts, and make another cut--all while keeping fingers well back from the blade.

Of course, as the round workpiece neared the end it became more difficult to cut short sections without the blade hitting the end of the holder.  So early on, in fact before the square holders, I started using these steel L-brackets with a 3/8"-16 bolt to hold the rods in place.  The back of the bracket would be clamped to the back fence.

The 3 is the diameter of rod this is for cutting.  Each cut, I loosen the clamp and move the workpiece further into the saw blade.  Of course this requires drilling and tapping a 3/8"-16 hole in the center of the rod.

The new Ryobi does not use the same workpiece clamps.

These clamp from the top and it is more a hint than a constraint.  For my purposes, useless.  Also the right side clamp blocks bringing down the blade at 30 degrees, one of my very necessary angles.  The good news is that unlike the old Ryobi, the new one's fence is flat on the back, so C-clamps can be used just fine.

These are not quite as elegant as the old Ryobi's clamps, but they work and they are general purpose tools.

Finally, you will notice the back fence on the right has a ruler, somethiong I had to add to the old Ryobi.

This is not quite as accurate as what I had created on the old Ryobi.  It tends to cut stuff about 1/16" too long, but I can compensate for that.