Interesting write-up for the wanna be machinist out there…
stumbled across it looking up THK rails;
[LEFT]Like many machinists, I tend to focus my efforts on producing the “product”, such as an engine, and make use of off the shelf tooling and machines to do so. There is an entirely different aspect of the metalworking hobby which has a huge appeal for many, the toolmaker. Toolmakers are a specialized, very skilled subset of machinists who are concerned with accuracies and precisions which most general machinists only dream of. We can venture into this realm and get vague ideas of the skills required by producing accessories, jigs, fixtures, and cutters, for our own use. And we quickly learn that becoming a decent tool and die man requires years if not decades of dedicated effort.
So now I find myself in this role… engaged in the production of a device whose sole reason to exist is to create other objects, hopefully of beauty and occasionally of strangeness.
His other projects are pretty cool too, not bad for a “hobbist”;
http://www.5bears.com/index.htm[/LEFT]