I often fall down the rabbit hole that is YouTube and find myself watching videos of manufacturing and remanufacturing processes in other countries. Places like Asia and the Middle East often have manufacturing facilities that use incredibly crude techniques and show just how advanced US manufacturing is not only with regards to technology but also safety and working conditions. It’s interesting to see how things are done when there aren’t the “right” tools for the job. We get spoiled by the right tools and never even think about what else you’d do if you didn’t have them.
With that said, and without further ado, I’m going to share a video of a cylinder head being mounted to a lathe and then spun so that the deck of it can be surfaced. Normally this head would be mounted to a table on a milling machine and then the table would slide slowly along while a fly cutter took off a few thousandths of an inch at a time until the entire surface was clean and flat. This might take a few passes, but it is a fairly slow and simple operation.
When you take a cylinder head and spin it around there is nothing slow and simple feeling about it!
Watch, and let us know what you think. And if you have a sketchy video you think we should see, email me a link at [email protected]
Thats nothing, Pakastani Truck knows how to get it done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxOEWbBrzMs
Neat way to surface a head
One job I machined was forged billet ‘ Carpenter electrical iron ,
rough forged surface to start had to turn and face an end just so we
could hold it
we roughed it down to 1/4″ from finish dim’s – then got heat treated .
Final machining was to .0004 flatness and .0008 parallel specs
on turned surfaces – this was for magnetic and stacking purposes.
The heat treated steel was like machining peanut butter
another gem was facing a flange that was offset and at an angle
to the another flange ….it would make you want to puke as the
offset side wobbled around on the fixture we made to hold it .