Fellas,
I\'m new here and wanted to introduce myself. My
name is Jess and I\'m 63 years old. I am a
journeyman machinist by trade but no longer cut
any metal at work but program our CNC equipment
using Unigraphics NX8. The company I work for is
mainly a subcontractor for defense work although
we do most anything that comes in the door. I
served my apprenticeship from 1967 until 1971.
Presently I have a decent home shop that allows
me to make a little money on the side as well as
work on my own projects one of which is the D&E
Gatling gun. My shop consists of three knee mills, a
lathe, surface grinder and most any other tooling I
need. One mill is an old Cinncinati Toolmaster
(1956), a VS Bridgeport in excellent condition, and
an old CNC Bridgeport (R2E3) with an almost new
Centriod control. The lathe is a 13-1/2 x 40 Grizzly
that I bought new. The manual mills and the lathe all
have DROs on them. The surface grinder is a 6 x 18
Millport and is in good shape. I also have a
horizontal/vertical Grizzly bandsaw and a Delta
vertical bandsaw along with the other necessary
things like a beltsander, buffer, pedestal grinders,
sandblaster, measuring tools, etc. Once I got serious
about my shop it has still taken me over 20 years to
put it together. My wonderful and supportative wife
and I live in central Maryland.
As for the Gatling gun(s...I\'m making 2)...that has
been an on and off project for well over 10 years.
I\'m sorry to admit that but we all know how life gets
in the way of projects that aren\'t vital. I have lots of
parts done but have done very little assembly yet.
As part of my introduction and participation I do
have something I\'d be happy to contribute to
anyone who might be interested. I mentioned
before that I was working on the D&E gun and if
you are doing the same you know how difficult the
wheel spokes can be. When I first started the
project I swore to myself that I was not going to use
any CNC equipment for the build. Of course that
was before I did the retrofit on the old Bridgeport.
Now that I have it I have used it to make the spokes.
I\'d be happy to share the program, etc. with
anyone who\'d be interested in using it. I\'d also
provide pictures of the setup, a cad/cam model in
most any format you\'d want, instructions and any
other help I could offer. I don\'t know if the spokes
are the same for the RGG gun plans or not.
Some shoulder surgery has temporarily slowed
me down a bit so I figured this was a good time to
make an introduction. I\'ve already done some
reading on here and realize the expertise available.
I only hope I can be a helpful participant in some
way like others have.
Jess
