Copyright (C) 1986-2009 by Daniel H. Hudgins, All Rights Reserved.

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This Web site is dedicated to the thousands of "users" of my programs, those who have helped test my programs over the last 23 or so years, and especially those who shared their experiences with me.

You must read this notice: This is a licensed Web site (HTML document and associated files). You must read and agree to be legally bound in contract by the Terms of Use and conditions given in the End User License Agreement ("EULA"), Legal Notices, Instructions, Warnings, Disclaimers, and all other text in "SECTION: 0" of "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) before reading or using any of the information, software programs, and or files, contained in, linked to, and or associated with, "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files). Any use or "Beta Testing" of "This Web Site" constitutes your acknowledgment of your full agreement with the current End User License Agreement ("EULA") and your decision to have this current license supersede all prior and contemporaneous agreements and understandings. Information and files in "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) have been placed here so that long time users of "The Author's" programs DANCAD3D.COM (tm) , DANCAD87.EXE (tm), DANCINEL.EXE (tm), DANCINES.EXE (tm) , DANCAM.EXE (tm) , or DANPLOT.EXE (tm) could help proofread the text of the documentation files or screens displayed, and also help test data files, example files, and or any software programs that might be made available from time to time, to aid "The Author" in finding mistakes, bugs, and other errors, omissions, defects, mistakes, and faults. Everything in "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) is "Beta Test", "Beta Code", Experimental, Preliminary, requires proofreading, or is being evaluated for possible revision, and is NOT warranted to be free of defect. To help "The Author" report any bugs, foul-ups, defects, or mistakes that you find, see "SECTION: 8" for instructions. "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) and all other files and programs by Daniel H. Hudgins are made available "AS IS" without warranty of any kind express, expressed, or implied. All offers and specifications are subject to change or discontinuation without notice of any kind. Please look over "SECTION: 8" of "This Web Site" before contacting "The Author."

SECTION: 7.20 is for some "general" discussion about Metalworking, see also the program files in the current distribution of my programs, the other parts of this HTML documentation, and the current On-Line version of this Web site for information more specifically about my programs. Any comparisons of my programs or methods to some others is only given as a vague generality of my opinion and is not intended as a recommendation or reference to any particular products, or methods, always make your own evaluations and comparisons before taking any action.

The illustrations in the sections and sub-sections of SECTION: 7.20 are not intended to be examples of recommended or proper practice, and in some cases may illustrate methods that you yourself would not apply as shown. The variety of illustrations, showing both practical and discouraged practices, has been included to provide illumination of the general metalworking principles discussed in these sections, and other parts of the documentation, in order to help the reader understand some of the many issues relating to the practical matter of producing parts of usable quality by manual, semi-manual, semi-automated, or fully automated machine operation, and how CAD and CAM software, such as my programs that are described in this Web site, might be of assistance to that end.

A couple of the photos in subsections of SECTION: 7.20 where taken using a Sears (tm) Craftsman (tm) Atlas (tm) type lathe, the others were taken while using a ShopTask (tm) model 17-20 type 3-in-1 multi-purpose combination mill, drill, and lathe. When a manual machine tool is retrofit for computer control you need to consider how safety shields should be added, and where the emergency power cutoff switches should be placed.

Be sure to watch all of the video clips linked to in SECTION: 4, in order to see my CAM program DANCAM.EXE (tm) being used to automatically make a part under a form of Computer Numerical Control a.k.a. CNC, and to also see other narrated lessons on how to use my CAD program DANCAD3D.COM (tm) for related tasks.

When making parts, whether by manual or automated means it is frequently necessary to make layout marks on a part so that you can locate the part for setup in the machine or to position the tool for cutting.

When two parts need to mate exactly it is generally better to layout the first part, drill the holes, then use Transfer Punches to transfer the drill points to the second part. If you try to layout two parts separately you will probably get more error in the alignment than if you layout one part and transfer the points to the second part, because each time you do the layout the points marked will be off of the desired position, and when two parts are laid out separately the errors probably go in different directions.

Transfer Punches come is sets that correspond to the drill sets available, e.g. Gauge numbered drill sizes and Fractional drill sizes. You use the Transfer Punch of the same size as the drill that made the hole being transferred.

Because the skinny transfer punches may be prone to bend or break if hammered on too hard, you can use the transfer punch to prick the part, and then enlarge the prick with the center punch and hammer later.

Here I am transferring a "bolt circle" to the edge of a very thin cylinder. After being tapped these holes are very close to breaking through the sides of the cylinder, so any error in drilling the holes to be tapped could ruin the finished casing.

The block of wood under the cylinder is to reduce the marring from hammering on the transfer punch. For this part both ends needed to be aligned to a scratch line going from one end of the cylinder to the other. Notice that the mounting holes around the central opening are not symmetrical. Using the CAD program to layout the odd hole patterns for the two end covers helped simplify getting things to turn out usable on the first try.

Note that the adhesive tape was applied around the edge of the cover and on the cylinder, rather than from the face of the cover down the side of the cylinder, this was done to prevent the cover from rotating between transfers.

A transfer punch is being used to transfer a hole in an existing part to a new part. Since four holes needed to be transferred, trying to measure where the existing holes were and manually lay them out on the narrow flange of the new part would have been very difficult, i.e. it is easier to transfer than measure and copy the layout.

If the new part was being made on a CAM system you would have the problem of finding the center properly so that the part center would coincide with the "center" used by the four holes. In my CAM programs you can use the tool position Adjust feature while the tool path is being executed to adjust the tool position in order to correct, in some cases, for small errors in the clamping of the part.

Because transfer punches are pointed on their ends the hole being transferred needs to be in material thick enough to touch the parallel sides of the transfer punch's shaft. On this part the holes had been drilled out for flat head screws, it would have been better if I did the transfer before I drilled the holes for the screw heads.

Sometimes it is best to transfer one point first so that a screw can be inserted to told the parts in position before the second or other points are marked. Here you see four screws are in, and the remaining two holes are being transferred. The four screws that are in where transferred from the back side through existing holes in the existing part, the two new holes are being transferred from the new part from the front.

In order to transfer the holes from a ring to the face of the port in this turret I had to try to align the two parts to about +/- 0.003 inch without having any step or flange fitting together to automatically align them. I inserted a tube through the bottom of the turret and placed three strips of shim stock between the tube and the inside of the ring and port hole.

Once the ring was aligned in this way one drill point was marked with the transfer punch. That point was drilled and tapped.

The tube and shim stock were used align the ring again, and the first screw was inserted and tightened. A screw hole was then marked with the transfer punch on the other side of the ring, drilled and tapped.

The tube and shim stock were used align the ring again, and the first and second screws were inserted and tightened. The remaining screw holes were then marked with the transfer punches, and all the remaining holes were drilled and tapped.

The complex pattern of the screw holes in the ring was laid out in DANCAD3D.COM (tm), these had to fit around existing holes in the existing part, so any errors would have ruined the existing part since there was not much place to drill more holes. If you take a rubbing of existing holes by putting a piece of paper over the part and rubbing with a pencil, then use your flat bed scanner to scan the rubbed tracing, then save the image as a line art BMP file, you can use DANCAD3D.COM (tm) to load an image of the tracing as a drawing element (through the Files Load Industry BMP command's raster to vector conversion), and draw the new part layout pattern over the tracing, rather than making many measurements that could round off the actual positions of the existing holes. If you scan the rubbing at 300 dpi and use the 300 dpi JET drivers for the conversion the converted element should be one to one, scanning at 600 dpi double size, and so on.

The block shown here was being mounted onto the cross-slide of a World War II "Victory" lathe to hold the camera platform from an Oxberry optical printer as part of a dual purpose 16mm/35mm Optical printer and 16mm/35mm movie film scanner where the Oxberry film camera swaps off and the digital camera swaps on to convert back and forth as needed.

Because of the heavy camera platform to be adjusted in the block's slot with many set screws, it needs to be aligned to close tolerances, several hold down screws are used. To be sure the the holes will be drilled in right places it can be better to transfer punch one of the holes, then drill and tap that hole, then put the block back on, bolt the block down, then transfer punch the opposite hole, drill and tap that one, then bold the block down with two bolts and transfer punch the other mounting holes.

The piece of round metal bar you see off to the left is my "hammer" that I used for making center punch marks with a center or transfer punch. You hold the bar at one end like a "black-jack" and tap the end of the punch with the side of other end. I find using the steel bar works better than a normal hammer with a handle since it tends to give more of a dead blow, less bounce, and better control to avoid having the punch pop out of the first dimple if you need to tap more than once to make the dimple deeper. Since the steel bar is a cylinder it hits the punch at its center, whereas a hammer's flat surface can be tilted and push the top of the punch to one side. If you use a ball end hammer you have to have better aim then using a cylinder since the cylinder has a line as its contact point. You hold the steel bar so that its contact side it level and 90 degrees to the top of the punch, then raise the end over the punch, then tap down with force and gravity assist. To get a clean transfer punch dimple it helps to have the part being transfer punched on a solid surface. The end of the transfer punch with the sharp point goes down toward the part to be marked and drilled, you tap the flat end. To help keep the tip of the transfer punch in the dimple you can hold the transfer punch on its sides with your other hand and press down with great force while you tap the top end of the transfer punch with the steel bar. You select the transfer punch that has the closest fit to the bolt hole of the part to be mounted that still allows for free movement of the transfer punch not the transfer punch that is the size of the hole to be drilled, that is you want the transfer punch to find the exact center of the hole to be transferred, later you can drill any size hole you need, larger or smaller than the size of the hole whose center point is being transferred.