Starting this week we will be giving hands-on demonstrations of some machine shop items.

The plan is each student will be able to make a simple item out of steel which they can keep. For this they will learn to use a horizontal bandsaw which can cut steel up to 100mm x 150mm

They will also be using a metal cutting lathe, known as an “engine lathe”. This machine is normally used to make round things although it can also make other shapes, even a cube! This type of lathe can also add threads to parts, so you could even make your own bolts!

Here’s an example of a part I threaded, you can see I used a nut to test that the threads were good.

There will also be an introduction to welding, using “Flux Cored Arc Welding” normally shortened to FCAW. This is one of 4 commonly used methods to weld with electricity, but there are other types of welding but we won’t be covering those at the moment.

Here’s a pretty good video showing all 4 common electric welding methods.

That’s all for this post, I hope everyone has fun and learns something during these demonstrations.

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