And now for something completely different

[Tonxi]

I bow in acknowledgment of a true master Lil...tips taken on board and have booked a number of sequential reminder calls throughout today to celebrate.

Glad to be of service Kim.

I can't wait to see and hear it. One of my mates plays a small one as part of a mostly electronic act. He samples it too.
Beautiful, clear, melodic tones .

[J.F. Custom]

Metal??

BAH - Books Nick, the latest trend...


youtu.be/

Now that looks a fun toy.

Good luck with this one nevertheless - I'll be watching with interest.

I've made a couple of basic Xylophones before without resonators, but my wife wants a full size one, preferably a Marimba, with tuned resonators, a stand... the works...

One day...

Jeremy.

[Nick]

Ok I've finally made a start on this during the week so let the pics commence! I'm not sure exactly what will get posted up here, I do this engineering stuff everyday (and have done for the past 30 years) so while interesting, it isn't new to me nor some of you I suspect. But for the likes of Craig who was keen to see how aluminium goes together I'll start by posting all the pics I think you maybe interested in. You let me know if you want less or more pics/details.
The only pre-requisite the customer had was make them higher than standard, he's a tall guy & the commercial units are all the same height & after playing them for a couple of hours he ends up with back ache! I decided to make them height adjustable so he can go as high as he wants or drop them lower if somebody else wants to play them. Also after hearing other users problems, transporting them seems to be one of the bug bears so I personally wanted to make them easy for him to transport about so designed it to be able to be taken apart so that it can lay flat in the back of his wagon.
First is a model I knocked up in my computer to make sure what I saw in my head all fitted together, albeit in the virtual world! From the model I am also able to print off production drawings. I've deliberately left the resonators & foot pedal off just to make it easy to see the basic design (it looks a little 'off of square' because I took a photo of my printed drawing and the camera wasn't directly over the sheet)

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The main 'lower' frame is the dark coloured bit, the upper frame including the damper bar is the blue piece.
Next the cut up kitset, all the bits needed for the main 'chassis'

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The round tubes are for two main uprights, these telescope inside each other giving it the adjustment in height. As usual, New Zealand companies don't always stock what's available in other countries so the inner tubes had to be turned down so they slid inside the lower tubes. I am also going to get the frame powder coated when it's all finished so I also allowed enough clearance for the paint finish (up to 100 microns- 0.1mm). The company's catalogue listed tubes that would telescope without having to do anything but of course "we no longer stock this size" was the standard answer.

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Next I had to make clamp rings that fit at the top of each tube so that it could all be locked up when evrything is where it should be. I had to make the clamps out of larger round bar

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The bar is mounted in a four jaw chuck so that the bore can be bored "off centre" to give me enough room for the clamping tabs.

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This is the end result.

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A quick trip to the bandsaw to remove most of the excess ready for machining on the mill.

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Then after making a jig to hold them, I mounted it on a rotary table (no CNC luxury in this workshop! everything is done using the ways of the old ones ) to cut the outside radius & tabs.

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Then we end up with an almost completed clamp ring.

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A few holes were then drilled through the tabs for the clamp handles to allow them to do what they are supposed to! I've just placed them on their respective tubes to give you an idea of what I'm prattling on about. The screws you can see down the tube are just temporary & run up and down the slot in the outer tube, the slot acting as a stop.

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I then welded (using our TIG welder) the clamps to the ends of the tubes, cleaned them up in the lathe & then it was back to the mill to cut the slots in the clamps to split them.

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Once the slots were cut I tapped the hole in one of the tabs on each clamp & put a "Recoil" stainless insert in it. These are excellent Australian systems that are easier to install & cheaper than the American "Helicoil" system. The stainless insert makes it damn near impossible to strip a thread where as just tapping directly into the Alumium would've stripped out after several tighten's of the clamp.

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That's about as far as I've got so far, next step will be machining the relevant bushes & holes in the crossbars & machining their ends to match the radius of the tubes they get welded to.
As I say, I'm not sure if this is too much drivel and more than you want to know or not enough, just let me know

[J.F. Custom]

Nick, I'll personally take every detail you have time to share.

That is sensational work.

Perhaps this is "run of the mill" ( pun intended ) stuff for you and fellow engineers, but not me. I'm more or less at a loss when it comes to working metal. I'd love access to that workshop and set of equipment though! I would not have the foggiest what to do with it but I'd have fun trying... and that counts doesn't it? True, I'd potentially break a few things in the process but...

Look forward to further installments.

Thanks,

Jeremy.

[liam_fnq]

And I thought your guitars were chock full of quality work but now we can see you've got the skills to pay the bills

keep it coming Nick, I for one am impressed

[charangohabsburg]

Impressive!
Neat clamps. You really master this kind of work - I think I would have made them of MDF

[Kim]

Great tools, great skill, what a winning combination to have in such abundance...Nick is like beer, he makes a man wonder if there is anything he can't do.

Cheers

Kim

[Luke]

Great stuff as always. I reckon you would have some sheet metal machines amongst the other great gear. I can see a flash metal body resophonic guitar coming from your skills at some stage Nick.

[Lillian]

Nick, my father was a tool and die maker. Its been 25 years since I've been out on a shop floor. I'd love to see all of the build process you are willing to share. Thanks!

[Nick]

Thanks everybody, it sounds like I'll just keep snapping & commenting then!
Markus, MDF would certainly be quicker to produce but I'm not sure of their longevity in use Most of my guitar jigs & fixtures are made using MDF however, got to keep wooden things together with wooden things
Luke, I've always fancied making a steel bodied National (minus the fancy engraving!), there was something on that Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" album cover that stirred me so who knows what could be in the pipeline, we have a reasonable range of sheetmetal gear (some of it past it's use by date but with a little coaxing you get there).
Kim, I'm know there's a few things I can't do, one is to recite the value of Pi to 127 decimal places I'll let you know the rest when I discover what they are . I just love working with my hands so anything I do along that line I really enjoy & take pride in. I had a choice when I left school to either carry onto Uni or go work at a bench, the pay's not so good but I've never regretted my decision.
Hey Lillian, it's great to hear you come from such excellent stock! I'm a a tool & diemaker by trade as well You won't get that "machine shop" smell of course with the pics but glad to be able to re aquaint you with the gear!
Jeremy, if you love breaking things then a machine shop is the place for you The potential for major carnage is huge! Just make sure you aren't in the way when it happens though

[duh Padma]

You build the sucker.
When me was a kid, I'd put on my uniform and hammered on a glockenspiel in the marching band so ya
darn right me wanna see you build it.


blessings
duh Padma


Ps: oh...me see you are already building it ...yay!

[Nick]

Ok a few more hours spent on this & I almost have the lower frame completed. Cross bars are the 50X25 rectangular tube, I "fishmouthed" out the ends of them so that they had the same radius on their ends as the downtubes, end result is a bar that sits on the downtube with no gaps, makes for a hell of a lot easier weld! I never took any pics of this process to illustrate what I'm talking about But I have to do it for the upper frame crossbar so will take a pic then (if I remember! )
Another thing or secret with a good weld on aluminium is to make sure the aluminium is clean! Even if it looks clean, it's oxidised so a wire brush with stainless wire brush just before welding just gets rid of that oxidisation.

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You can see our rather antiquated Tig welder in the background, this one for some reason doesn't make such a nice job of aluminum welding as ones I've used in the past. I think it's high frequency system( inteneded to to provide a nice smooth arc) is getting a little tired .
And a shot just showing those who aren't familiar with ally welding, what it ends up like. As I say this isn't the best weld, a combination of man & machine! but I will be just dressing the welds up before powdercoating of the frame so I'm not overly concerned about getting a perfect weld.

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The inside of the tube 'slumped' a little where the weld softens the ally from the otherside so a little judicious tickle from a die grinder should have the inner tubes running up & down them again! All part of the joy of working with aluminium, it takes a shitload of heat to 'melt' it so distortion is always a factor you have to be aware of & prepared to fix.

Red arrows show the two 'ridges' where the ally slumped.

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[Nick]

Next installment! First is a few pics, as promised, on the fishmouthing operation.
A "tube end" before shot, the odd lengths get cleaned up after so it's all square before welding it to the uprights. The odd length 'top' face in the picture (actually ends up being the bottom face when in place!) was all part of the tube but I cut some notches out of the sides to give the ends a smaller shape & then bent the top face down to meet the notched sides & welded up the join.

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I used a boring head (usually used for accurately boring holes or flycutting surfaces) & cut the right radius on the ends of the tube.
So the tube has been fishmouthed & completed.

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And we end up with two mating surfaces like this

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With the ends machined up I couldn't help but sit everything together to see how it will eventually look I haven't sat the two end rails that the bar frames sit on but they are the same as the lower 'wheel' rails seen in the pic.
The damper bar is just sitting on top of the upper bar at the moment, there will eventually be about 100mm between the two. Wheels will be mounted on the ends of the "wheel" rails which will be removable (as will the top bar rails) so the whole frame will end up as a "flat pack"

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Next step I've started on is boring the holes for the guide pillars which get mounted into the damper bar. The main problem these instruments have is that the damper bar comes up to meet the bars unevenly, some bars are dampened while some still ring or sustain, they usually only have a bolt fitting into a rather loose hole to act as guide. So I've applied a little of my toolmaking mentality & am going to have two precision ground pillars mounted in the damper bar & linear bearings in the larger square bar below it.

The damper bar will have no choice but to run exactly in an up & down motion & evenly. I'll post some pics when I've got the bushings done for these.

[matthew]

all that precision shiny stuff

[charangohabsburg]

That's some amazing work you are doing here Nick!

With the ends machined up I couldn't help but sit everything together to see how it will eventually look

I would have done the same at this point.

From what kind of suppliers does one get those nice linear bearings? They would have served well for my saw for helping to keep it's size down.

[Nick]

From what kind of suppliers does one get those nice linear bearings? They would have served well for my saw for helping to keep it's size down.

Thanks Markus (& Matthew!), the linear bearings are available from quite a few outlets on the internet but I ended up going with VXB Bearings, great range of bearings available & at very good pricing! I say that because New Zealand suppliers charge like a wounded bull for even standard ball bearings so something like linear motion & I'd have to gift my first born & left testicle, so the pricing at VXB seems very good to me. For this project I ordered two 12mm shafts, 4 linear bearings to suit, a pack of 20 6mm ball bearings for the two rotating "Butterfly" shafts & other 'sundry' things plus they chucked a cheap pair of digital vernier callipers (for US$7, not best quality but for just around the home workshop they're perfectly adequate) into the order & the whole lot, plus shipping, came to just under a hundred NZ Dollars. I would have paid that for just half a dozen of the 6mm ball bearings locally.

[charangohabsburg]

From what kind of suppliers does one get those nice linear bearings? They would have served well for my saw for helping to keep it's size down.

[...] I ended up going with VXB Bearings, [...]

Dear friend, this calls for "Jointapprentice Hobby a2"
Thanks a lot for this link!

[...] I would have paid that for just half a dozen of the 6mm ball bearings locally.

I don't want to imagine how much I would get for that here in Switzerland

[Nick]

A few more pictures on progress.
The bearings & linear shafting have to be mounted into bushes welded into the ally section, due to the close tolerances these things work to they have to be parallel with each other & square to each bar they are housed in. To get this right I have to fix the two bars together in their 'working' position & bore the holes through both at the same time for the bushings so that they end up parallel & at the exact same centre distance in each bar.
Here I've already bored the holes

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The bush in the lower bar will be bigger as this has to allow for the bigger diameter bearings but at least I have a hole that is positioned exactly the same as the damper bar. When I come to bore the lower bar for the bigger bushes I will "clock up" the hole that's already in it. This is achieved by the use of a DTI, I'll show a picture of that when I get to it for those that aren't familiar (apologies to those that are!), these things are excellent for positioning things when you want them accurately placed or positioned to within a thousandth of an inch (or less).

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The next problem or part I had to look at was the 'stability' of the damper bar. As I said in my previous post, these are apparently traditionally the achilles heel of Vibes with uneven damping. If I was going to the trouble of accurately making the thing go up & down I didn't want the unsupported central section flexing so I decided to incorporate a strong back to act as reinforcement & a point to anchor the actuation cable. I cut a bit of the 12mm plate I got for the bars (I got plenty of this!)

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But as you can see, it would be quite 'weighty' (weighs more than the bar it's supporting ) & the whole plan for these vibes was to make them light & portable so I put the bar onto a weight loss program, turned it into an "I" beam & drilled some lightening holes so it still retains it's strength but is about half the weight it started out at.

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Here it is sitting on the damper to give an idea of it's finished look

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The actuator cable attaches via a clevis pin fixed to the central boss

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Next step is to make the two rod bushes that will be welded into the damper bar then I'll weld all the bits to the bar, will put pictures up in a later post, but that's where I'm at at this stage.

[christian]

Nick what a fantastic build !!! great way to showcase your amazing precision and design skills.
with all that machinery surely you should make some truss rods !!!! shall I put my order in ??

Cheers,

Christian.

[Nick]

with all that machinery surely you should make some truss rods !!!! shall I put my order in ??

Cheers,

Christian.

Cheers Christian, I could indeed make truss rods but by the time I've bought the raw material, machined them & made a corresponding nut, it works out cheaper to import them & let some body else have all the hassle I used to make all my own rods for the leccys until I hit upon the cunning scheme quoted

[charangohabsburg]

[...] so I put the bar onto a weight loss program, [...]

Simply amazing!

But come on Nick, don't make us believe any longer this was going to be a musical instrument. What you're going to do must be a fine copy this:

Nick's project

[DarwinStrings]

Very very pretty Nick.

Jim

[Dave Olds]

This is fascinating mate,

I am really enjoying following this thread, and I am full of admiration for people who have these kind of skills. It is easy to see why your guitars have such a high level of precision too.

Keep the pictures coming.

Dave

[Nick]

Thanks chaps, as usual I like things to 'look right' but if I don't get the bars & resonators right further down the track, the whole thing will be of scrap value only (hence ordering plenty of plate ). Markus, it won't be on such quite a grand as scale as an airship....well hopefully not! Love that picture by the way.

[Nick]

So I've been busy making the bushes for the top mounted shafts & bottom mounted bearing assembly. The top bush was relatively straight forward, just needed to fit into the hole in the damper bar & have a 12mm hole reamed in it. I deliberately bored the hole small before welding it into the bar then finished the hole to size once I'd mounted it back on the mill, that way if the heat of welding had made it distort in anyway I could bore the holes for the rods all square & parallel with each other.
Bush sitting in it's position all ready for welding.

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I chamfer the area I'm going to weld so that I can dress off the weld that's sitting proud but still have enough weld holding things together! Although I deliberately designed the bushes (all of them) so that the load is taken by the shoulder on the 'top' of the bush & the weld is merely holding things in place.

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I had a small 'technical oversight' to do with the springs which I will come to shortly but here's a picture to explain 'clocking up'.

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(again apologies to anybody that's familiar with clocking up but just to explain it to people that aren't)
You mount a Dial indicator into the chuck on the mill & touch it on the job. You then move the table around in the X & Y planes until the indicator (clock) reads the same all the way around when you rotate the chuck through 360 degrees. This mill, whilst not CNC does have a digital readout mounted on it so you then Zero the X & Y axis on the readout. You then know that the job is exactly on the same centre as the chuck you can then move the mill anywhere you like but can always return to 0,0 & know that you are exactly back at the point where you started.
So,onto my cock up! I bought some springs from the local bunnies thinking that I didn't want them to big a diameter but not too small that the ID touches on the ground rods (I don't want any extrenuous vibrations!) & thought I was being clever & found the perfect size & wire gauge, just a nice diameter e.t.c e.t.c!
Machined a spigot onto the bush so that it positively located the spring & stopped it touching the rod.

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Then realised that while it was all peachy at this end I'd over looked the fact that the bearings were 22mm outside diameter so the 16mm OD spring would be sitting directly on the rubber sheild of the top bearing!
Here's the bush the bearings sit in (there's two in each assembly to provide some 'stability insurance') prior to welding it in, you can sort of see my dillema ( I repeat !)

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And here's the bearing, complete with offending rubber sheild

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So after scratching my head & arse for a bit (not one after the other) I thought of making a cap that went into the recess at the top of the bush, the hole in the cap will be a clearance on the rod & it will have a pocket just slightly bigger than the spring OD machined in which will positively locate the spring at this end!

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Right next problem....I'd machined the bushes and the edge at the top was 3mm wide, gonna need some small screws to hold the cap on so I went with 2mm stainless cap screws we have in stock here. Back to the mill to drill & tap the holes in the bushes & caps. These small taps make my bum twitch, usually when I'm tapping stainless steel but Ally can cause a problem too if you let the swarf build up in the tap's flutes so nice new taps & regular cleaning out of the hole & tap's flutes & plenty of Kerosine (the cutting oil usually used on Ally) usually solves it but as you are turning that tap wrench the pucker factor's still up there!

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A bit of a blurry shot (although the mat in the background is in perfect focus! ), I put a centre into the back of the tap wrench so not only is the hole tapped square bit I also don't 'wobble' with the tap & snap it ( with these small taps it's easy to twitch or sneeze or something only to have half a tap in your hand & the other half firmly still embedded in the hole & no means of easy removal )

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So,anyway I managed to not break a tap Job done

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Just a quick photo showing the bits that make up each bearing unit.

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Once the caps were all done I welded the bushes into the lower bar, a small amount of distortion occured due to the heat of welding which required running a reamer down the bearing bore to skim out a few tho from the end I'd welded then I assembled the bearings into the bushes. The damper bar runs nicely and easily up and down so I couldn't help but 'dummy' the frame up again & grab a picture It looks a little industrial at this stage but should 'refine' itself with some paint on it & the weight isn't a problem, this little lot can easily be lifted in one hand.

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Anyway that's where I'm at currently and I'm away for the weekend so there won't be much getting done on it but I'll put another post up when I have some more to share. I hope there's not too much info for you guys & you are getting bored, as I say, when you do this all the time it's hard to know what others might find interesting. But I will eventually get to "the business end" of the project & actually make some sound producing bits of ally!