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NC Wayne
06-05-2006 21:03:19
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Re: question for NC Wayne in reply to jksweld, 06-04-2006 22:18:27
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Hey James, if your talking about the type of machine I think you are their great for boring cylinders in an engine block in the field for an in frame rebuild, basically a job where you have a nice flat area to set up on and an unterrupted cut through a single hole. If your planning to get into things like doing the back of a loader bucket, the ends of the arms, etc then you need a setup where you have different length bars, self aligning bearings where you have the ability to setup on a surface that's not quite square with the hole, etc. Then you need to figure out the size holes your gonna need to do. For instance if you plan to do alot of holes 10 inches in diameter then you'd want a large diameter bar, but if your planning to do mostly holes less than 3 inches in diameter then you'd go with a smaller setup. In other words if you had a 2" diameter bar it's be impossible to do any holes less than 2" in diameter and that'd cut you out of alot of work. However you can use a smaller bar and fabricate heads for it and do larger holes. We've got a 1 1/4 bar and the largest holes we've done are in the 12" range. In a case like that though you've got to have the bar extreemely well supported and not get too far between supports or the bar isn't rigid enough to do the job acurately. One thing the "do it easy" line boring adds often overlook is the need to also have a lathe to fabricate tooling, etc. Most of the setups you buy come with cones to center the bar and their good if you have a round hole but a cone is worthless in an egg shaped hole and I can guatantee you that if it need sto be bored 90+% of the time it's not gonna be round anymore. So you need to make bushings, etc to line up with. If you have a machine shop local to you that you can go in ans ask them to drop everything to make you am few bushings for a job the next day your good to go. If not then you'll be lost without at least a lathe in a support role. Then you also need a good welder because often times your gonna have to build up the holes in order to machine them back to standard, as well as using it to set up the bearing blocks, etc for thebar. One secret never let the customer build up the holes for you. First your usually gonna need the bare hole to get a true setup, and second you never know what their gonna use to build it up with or how skilled their welder is. Alot of bumps and sags in the weld can cause you major headachs and break alot of tool bits. Dad went to do one job several years back and they had used hardfacing wire to build up the hole. Needless to say he spent half a day driving and doing a complex setup under a machine all for nothing (although they still got a bill for the time because it was their screwup not ours) -----I haven't priced one lately but the setup we use is from Climax and uses a 1 1/4 bar with an electric driven head. This is a great set because it's compact enough to get in places most other types can't. Therefore we get alot of the odder jobs, which to me are the most enjoyable ones anyway. The best thing is if you know what your doing and do a good job where you have plenty of business you can make money doing it. Going labor rate around here for most of the dealerships is around $130 an hour, ours is around $100. Never price a job at a flat rate. It may look like it's gonna be a two hour job but you never know how hard the material is gonna be. I've seen a hole 3 inches long that was soft going in, hard in the middle and soft out the back side. This is really common with buckets where there is a central plate with bosses welded on the sides. No matter how well you clean or how much you heat the hole before building it up you can be sure there's gonna be some oil pulled out of the crack and into the weld making it hard. I've also seen times where a bearing disentigrated and pieces of the race were imbedded in the walls of the hole and you had to stop and take a grinder with a rock on it and grind the pieces out before you could continue cutting.-----Ok, enough taking up space on the site. This is a very basic overview of things for you to think about. If you have any more questions feel free to email me. I'm Nota55Nomad@AOL.com Wayne
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