first CNC gun part

[lar45]

Hi all, I actually made something that looks good. At least I think it does.
My neighbor across the street works at the local gun barn. He got in a 22 pistol with a broken sear surface on the hammer. No replacement parts were to be found. The gun was some guys Grandpa's hand me down, so he wanted it brought back to life.

The one on the left is mine.

Here it is installed on the gun. I took it out to test fire it and it shot great. The trigger pull was really nice also.

[Doughty]

Could you give me some more information on how you made this part? What equipment you used? How you made the program. What your work holding system was. What materials you used and did you harden and temper it. How long did the project take? And anything else you can think of and have the time to write about.

I'm looking at acquiring a CNC mill and would like to get as much information beforehand as I can.

Thanks

[lar45]

I drew it up on autocad and saved as a .dfx file.
I'm useing Mach2 for my machine, it has a program to convert dfx to g code. That got me started, but it wasn't exactly right.

I clamped a piece of wood and did test cuts on it at a higher speed to get the profile right, then set the speed slower to cut the steel.

I'm just learning so it took me about 30 hours to do. Most was learning time. I had the holes in a seperate program so I could index to drill pilot holes, then go up to the different sized holes and drill manually. I only have 2 axis done on my machine, so the depth was set manually.
I had one program for the profile and run it in 4 cuts to cut the full depth.
I had another program for the base. All of the programs returned to a common point so I could change between them as needed.
I cut it out of A500 Structuaral. After it was polished and the sear surfaces cut large, I packed in carbon and baked it over night. In the morning, I heated and quenched in ice water.
I installed in the gun and stoned the sear to fit. I used music wire for the pins.
I just clamped it in my mill vise and left one end hanging out about 1.5"
The checkering on the hammer was done by hand.

Oh, I have a Smithy combo machine that I converted to CNC a couple of months ago.

[Buckshot]

...........That's some pretty neat stuff there! That CNC is pretty amazing in what it can do and what it can produce. Kenjudo is another poster here who works in a big CNC capable shop. It's kinda like magic to me. One of the guys on the Home Shop Machinist website set up one of those fairly inexpensive Asian Mill-Drills with 3 axis CNC and showed some of the small motorcycle accessories he's been making from aluminum.

Me? I'm still twisiting handles and watching dial indicators

...............Buckshot

[Doughty]

Thanks for the info. So much to learn, so little time, I've only got the rest of my life.

[TCLouis]

just amaze what you will be doing next.
What are ya gonna do now that school is over?

[lar45]

I'm makeing some money with bullet lube, but I can only sell so much of it. I'm working on the circuit board layout for a stepper motor driver. I will make and sell these, when that is going good, I'll start on another product to add to the line. Maybe call it Idaho Automation or something?
I have been thinking of doing CNC retrofits for small machine tools. I don't know if I could handle the physical part of the job though. I could probably parter with a Maintenance friend of mine for him to do the physical part and I'll hook up the controls and interface.

[Pop_No_Kick]

That is all Really really COOOL!!!