Spyke
feddit.org

What are we looking at? Are you polishing the top face to be usable again?

8
domdanialreply
reddthat.com

Yep, just decking the top to make it smooth and flat. Had been forgotten in a barn for 30 years.

10
lemmy.nz

It's looks like it's in remarkably good condition for 30 years in a barn!

What comes next after machining the top?

3
Nomecksreply
lemmy.ca

Anvils last a long time even in the shittiest conditions. They're blocks of iron or steel and it's hard for rust to really penetrate deep

8
domdanialreply
reddthat.com

Also I'd already attacked it with a flap disk to get most of the surface rust off, it was pretty fuzzy when I started.

3
domdanialreply
reddthat.com

I flipped it over actually, try to get the bottom parallel but I gave up after a few passes, it would have taken more than I was willing to cut.

3

Should put some nice chamfers and radii on the edges, you use the edge of an anvil a fair but, and being able to select a radius, chamfer, or square edge is nice.

3

Well this was a personal project at a shop I work at, so I don't have any pricing knowledge really. I did burn up several sides to the inserts I used, so that's like $60 in tools, took about an hour of messing around with it. I bet a shop with more experience with hard metal and big stuff would charge you $100-200 to face it, depends on shop rate and stuff.

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Atroposreply
lemmy.world

If it's hardened, you'll want carbide tooling, which can be spendy if you break it. A shell/face mill like was used here works great.

Personally, I probably would have tried to fly cut this with a carbide tool for that extra fancy surface finish!

I would charge $75 or so to do this if I like you. But I only machine as a hobby, and have no idea of going rates for walk-ins.

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lemmy.world

I wonder what someone with wire EDM would charge. That seems like an ideal and cheap use. I've been dreaming of EDM lately... in a Linsey Publications type of context.

3

That'd be a long depth of cut! Would also leave a rougher surface, if you care about that.

1
sh.itjust.works

Carbide is acceptable and will get the job done, but youre going to burn up a lot of inserts getting it dialed in.

Ceramic, on the other hand, is purpose designed for cutting hardened materials.

I was tearing my hair out trying to turn a hardened 4140 piece in my lathe even running carbide. Then I picked up some ceramic inserts and it was like night and day. Immediate and dramatic improvement in surface finish and tool life.

We have a face mill that takes the same style carbide (although smaller size) that my lathe tool does and I'm very interested to see how that runs with ceramic.

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socsareply
piefed.social

Tungsten and boron carbide should be much harder than any ceramic, though I have had similar experiences with carbide drill bits. I wonder what exactly "carbide" actually means sometimes.

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sh.itjust.works

Most carbide I've run into is usually around 65HRC. The ceramic is have in my lathe right now is 95HRC. Its a significant difference. Its brittle, so it doesn't like interrupted cuts, but it loves heat and speed that would cook carbide in seconds.

1

65 seems really low to me for something called carbide, but I'll need to do some research into this!

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Definitely hard, 50s era anvil | Spyke