I need some change from working soooo much in timber, so here is a different project. I bought a 1:16 kit of a 40mm Bofors gun on eBay - part CNC turned and etched brass, part white plastic (I assume 3D print, but they might be just simple molds). The idea is to make it all brass, so I am re-building the plastic parts from brass and going to use the originally brass parts too. For turning I am using my Unimat 3 lathe, the mill is a Proxxon Mf70 (I can't find it listed now, so it might have been discontinued), for cutting I use my Proxxon band saw, and the disk sander is also Proxxon - and obviously different hand tools too. The photos show an intermittent phase, some parts are already done, they just need to be assembled, some are still to be made. Some parts are made of solid brass (flat, rod, plate), turned, milled and filed, some just as sheet metal parts. For assembly I tried and failed hard soldering (either the paste I recently bought was off or the heating was not right) so, strangely enough, I am using superglue and/or epoxy. Turning was fun as the material I had was partially H59 quality, which has good machinability, but partially something else which was quite difficult to turn. At milling I managed to brake a few 1mm bits so at the end I also used a 15mm dia 1mm thick saw blade in my Proxxon hand drill.
The situation is as shown on the pictures - the first one shows the original parts, the second the brass pieces already made, but not assembled yet. In some cases I managed to achieve nice tight tolerances, in others there are nasty patches.
So far so good (the hours aren't counted). Some problems are successfully solved (with some errors which I will not show of course ):= ), but there are still some challenging parts ahead, ie. the chairs for which I have ideas, but not proven yet.
Some more pictures will come later as I am proceeding.
Janos
The situation is as shown on the pictures - the first one shows the original parts, the second the brass pieces already made, but not assembled yet. In some cases I managed to achieve nice tight tolerances, in others there are nasty patches.
So far so good (the hours aren't counted). Some problems are successfully solved (with some errors which I will not show of course ):= ), but there are still some challenging parts ahead, ie. the chairs for which I have ideas, but not proven yet.
Some more pictures will come later as I am proceeding.
Janos
