Do alignment pins ever swell during use?

[JSnover]

I gave up on separate pins when making my own molds. They always seem to come lose at some point, or causing the mold halves to bind when opening.
Instead, I CNC mill the blanks with tapered pins/holes as an integrated part of the mold. It takes a small bit of fiddling to hit the point where the halves will close perfectly without any play, but then it's smooth sailing for the rest of the batch.

That's pretty slick!

[tnlonghunter]

That almost looks too good to be real. SOLID GOLD. I like it.

Dang, man. That's cool.

I've tried resetting pins with very careful taps with a small hammer and drift. Nothing much happened, but I may try again. I've had enough bad experiences with hammers on finished projects that I'm pretty leery of using them on anything but rough carpentry.

[Scrounge]

That almost looks too good to be real. SOLID GOLD. I like it.

Dang, man. That's cool.

I've tried resetting pins with very careful taps with a small hammer and drift. Nothing much happened, but I may try again. I've had enough bad experiences with hammers on finished projects that I'm pretty leery of using them on anything but rough carpentry.

Arbor press, man. Or a drill press in a pinch.

[tnlonghunter]

Arbor press, man. Or a drill press in a pinch.

Ok, that'll work. Got both.

[Scrounge]

Ok, that'll work. Got both.

Arbor press is probably better, but especially a larger drill press will work. Improvise, adapt, and overcome! Who said that!?

I've been ruminating on how to push out the spindle from a bearing for a lathe my brother bought me for a couple of weeks. While thinking about your problem, figured out how to do it with my monster drill press and a tool I made to pull the bearings from a ball bearing center I got with my old Atlas lathe. This instead of buying my own hydraulic press, or begging time on theirs from my former employer.

Putting it back together, after I get it out, cleaned, and re-lubricated, the arbor press I have will probably work better. It's a half-ton press, IIRC. The drill press is a 900lb monster from the 1920's or earlier. And still sweet as heck to have!


Bill