I made a clamping tool for holding the wheel of my bike on my workshop table.
I designed the part with Fusion360 on the computer and then started making it from a rough-cut from an aluminium bar.
Cutting such a thick piece of aluminium is not easy and takes a lot longer than one would expect. I use an electric hack-saw but still, it is hard work.
Once the rough block is cut approximately to size, it is time for proper machining with my CNC-Mill. The starting block was about 5.5cm wide in all dimensions. This is almost the maximum size for my little milling machine! I had to get a bit creative with the holding clamps etc…
I used a fly cutter (a scary piece of tool steel that appears to be “flying” over the part), it was creating so many chips of metal in the workshop that I had to build some sort of box to enclose the mill. I use my laser cutter to make the pieces and attached them to the wooden base.
This project was a classic demonstration that once you start one project it spans many other small projects.
Just to change a small ratchet on my bike, I had to build the aluminium clamp, I had to build a box for the mill, I made some helping tools such as a laser-cut protractor, I then had to modify the software on the CNC Mill to make the cutting less tedious, I had to update the raspberry pi that controls the Mill etc… This would have frustrated me to no end in the past when “only” a weekend was the time I could do any of this. now, I take the time to do everything one step at a time. If I can’t do it today, who cares…
By the way, once I had everything done.(a full day of work)..changing the ratchet only took a couple of minutes…
