Foundry Patterns and Machining a Center Shaftfor a Cane Mill Top Roller

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:06]Hello, Keith Rucker here at vintagemachinery.org. Guys, today uh I'm back to work on a project I started on.

[00:00:12]It's been kind of on the back burner for a while, and that is this uh John Deere Amazon number three cane mill. Um if you guys remember, it's been quite a while back now. This is the original top drum out of that mill. And unfortunately, somebody in the past has done some pretty major modifications to this U wheel, and it's not working the way it's supposed to. And after talking with the owner, we decided to go back to the way that this uh mill was originally designed. Salvaging the original wheel because of the what they did to it, uh really just isn't going to work. So, we're going to need to cast a new one.

[00:00:50]Uh, and I started making patterns for this over on my pattern makers lathe.

[00:00:54]You guys may remember these split patterns here that uh I turned out on the lathe. And uh, unfortunately, as I got into that project, uh, and kind of got further into the pattern making and and I got to thinking about my original design and realized that there were some flaws in my design that I came up with for the patterns.

[00:01:20]And there really wasn't a way to salvage these patterns without starting over.

[00:01:27]And by the time that I kind of got all that figured out, I'd actually purchased a 3D printer. Uh, previously, I've been using 3D printing to make patterns for quite some time, but I've always had to rely on other people to do my printing.

[00:01:40]Well, I I got a new printer for myself, uh, Bamboo Labs. What is an S2S, I think it is. Nice. Really nice printer.

[00:01:48]plugandplay, works like it should, has a nice big footprint. And uh so I decided that instead of making a wooden pattern, I would just 3D print a pattern. And basically this black thing that you see here is the pattern that I was able to 3D print. Uh I did have to kind of print it in in a couple of pieces, which it is a split pattern. So you got the two top and bottom halves. The um arms here or the the shaft that goes through it were printed separately and applied in place.

[00:02:17]Uh but anyway, we got the new pattern done and uh this one we were able to um you know, I was able to just draw it up and print it out. It took a while to print, but we got it done. But I'm kind of wanting to show you this because this uh coming week I'm planning on going out to Windy Hill Foundry. We're going to cast this uh pattern, cast this pattern, make make a new wheel. Uh and I'm getting things kind of ready in the shop. Uh now, I did go ahead. I had to make a flask. The flask is the container that holds the pattern and the mold in the foundry that you ram the sand in.

[00:02:52]Uh, this is a fairly complicated pattern and part to cast. And it's actually going to be a threepiece um mold, three-piece flask. And I had to custom make all that. And I I I did it off camera, but I did want to kind of show you the game plan. And some of it's probably not going to make really good sense here because until you see it being done, but when we get to the foundry, we'll get a video shot of us molding this thing up and pouring it uh so that you can see that as well.

[00:03:20]Probably it'll be over on the Windy Hill Foundry um YouTube channel, but I'll put a link into it so you guys can see it uh when the time comes. But uh I thought I'd kind of show you there. There's a one little bit of machining work I need to do to get ready. There's a shaft that goes through this that is steel. I've got a 3-in piece of metal here, but we need to cut some keyways in it. I'm going to go ahead and get that done today in this video. I got to cut it to length and do some other work as well.

[00:03:45]Uh, but before we get into that, let me kind of show you the the pattern and the flask for the mold uh that we kind of put together. Uh, and again, you'll see it better when we actually ram it up, but I wanted to kind of show you what we've done there.

[00:04:01]So this is the main pattern here and it is a split pattern. It being two halves.

[00:04:07]There's a top and bottom half. Um and we will start with this half right here when we start the molding. So what would what will happen in the foundry is is that they will flip this over like such and then they'll take the flask and put around it. So this is the flask. And if you notice, we got a couple little cutouts in here that will ride over. Uh we will actually put the steel shaft in here and cast around it. Um and that's the way the original is. The drum is cast iron, but the shaft that goes through it is steel. When the cast iron cools, it'll shrink and actually get very tight on that shaft. Uh but anyway, we got some slots in here. I got kind of a false bottom in this. This area here won't have any sand molded up in it because just for weight standpoint. Uh in this pattern, there's one side that has the flange down here and there one side that's flat. There's actually going to be another piece that kind of comes on the top to form a flange on that as well. But when we put this together, um the flanged, excuse me, that's going in there. Yeah, that's right. It the flask is going to kind of drop down like this. Let me show you. Get a different angle on that. Now, when we do this, this back back here I will take off. Uh I've got a cover for it because when we set this up, I don't want the sand to fall out. But that'll be open when we we do this. I'm not going to take it off right now. But, uh this just basically fits right down over here. And tell you what, we will take that top off. Let me get this put on here first.

[00:05:40]All right. So, it's going to go in.

[00:05:42]Again, the flat is kind of right up here to the top, flush, and it kind of just fits right down in here. This area here, we'll flip this over and we'll ram all this area up in sand. Again, this area in the bottom is just going to remain hollow. Um, and then we get flipped over like such. And what I'll just pull that top off so you can see it.

[00:06:12]All right. So, you can see the pattern in here. So, this will get rammed with sand. Uh they use green sand, which is used in foundry work. It's a special kind of sand. It's called green sand.

[00:06:22]It's not actually green. Uh but anyway, they'll ram all this up and this will basically leave the place in the bottom where the the the mold is, which will be pulled out. That'll leave a hollow in the sand that will then be filled up with the iron. So, uh, once this side is rammed up, they'll make this side flush.

[00:06:41]They'll put the top back on this and then this will flip over. So, let me get this, u going back again.

[00:06:50]This will all be packed with sand. And then they'll take the other half of the mold of the pattern.

[00:07:00]It's going to drop down on here. It'll fit in place in some pins to get it properly aligned. And then we'll take the other half of the mold, put it on here, and that side will be rammed up with sand. This will be a split pattern, so you can take it apart and have two halves. Um, I'm not going to Well, this the other other side of the flask looks just like this. Uh, it'll sit down on there.

[00:07:26]It'll sit down on here kind of like such.

[00:07:29]I have some little U latches here to latch it in place all the way around it.

[00:07:35]We'll take this cover off again. Ram that up with sand. And then once that's done, um it'll be set up on end and we'll have to do the third piece. Let me latch this all together real quick. So now we will turn the whole everything up and down. This is the direction that's going to be poured. Uh it'll be poured up and down. But there is a third piece that goes on this. So at this point, we will remove this uh top that just screws into place. And when we do, uh there is a third or another pattern here. I guess it is a third pattern that will drop down over the shaft. Uh this is just to basically makes up the flange. Uh that will drop down on the top. It'll sit down flush with the pattern that's in there. uh that's up against this piece here. And I've got a third piece of flask here that will then come over here and it will drop down over this. We'll latch it in place and we'll ram sand up around that. So again, that to be a third piece. Now, this pole casting will be poured vertically like this. Uh we will put a sprew runner that runs all the way down to the bottom, feeds it from the bottom. We'll pour the iron in the top and it'll kind of fill up from the bottom and fill up on the inside.

[00:08:56]Uh, and again, everything should go hopefully go well. Now, before we do that, before we actually pour it, we will have to take everything back apart. Have to take the pattern out and we're going to have to put the the steel shaft in. Uh, that will be inside of this when it's poured.

[00:09:16]Uh, and there are also going to be some cores that go on the inside. So, let me kind of show you some of this. First thing, let me show you what we do here.

[00:09:24]Um, once everything is is done, we'll take the take it back apart. Again, we'll pull the the pattern out.

[00:09:37]Again, there'll be sand in here. We'll pull the the pattern out. That will leave the cavity in there. We'll place the shaft back into the uh the the slots here. I can take that out. It doesn't have to be in there, right?

[00:09:53]And uh and then we'll set it back up again. Put it all back together. Set it back up again. Uh while it's up though, and you got the the hollow on the inside, there's a core that's got to go in here. That's going to be where there's a hollow spot inside of the drum. Let me show you the drum and show you that. So, we got a couple of different cores that will go on here.

[00:10:18]First, if you notice, the pattern is just flat across this bottom, but we've got this little recess in there. So, we've got to drop a core down in there.

[00:10:26]I've got a core box here made that we will make out of sand. And you can see it's got a place in the middle where it will slide up over the shaft. This area here will be hollow in in the core. Uh that'll go in through there. And in the bottom, it will leave some little what I call core prints. These little core prints right here. You see the four holes? Now, these four holes, this hole inside of this casting is hollow. So, you got an area that's around the shaft, and then you got an area up here, but there's an area in there between where there's nothing. And then you got the caps on the end. It's all cast in one piece, but it's hollow on the inside.

[00:11:02]The way we make that hollow is we will make the the sand cores. Uh this sand core again, we made first. It will drop down over the shaft that's in there, the steel shaft. And that will actually give you that where it kind of goes up in there. And then for the four holes, I've got another little core box here made for some riser blocks. We'll c we'll make those. Those will sit in the core prints that we have in right here.

[00:11:32]Uh it's kind of beveled in the bottom.

[00:11:34]So, those will be in place. We'll drop the the little riser blocks in there.

[00:11:39]And then there's a big sand column in here. Let me show you the core box for that.

[00:11:46]So, kind of take it apart.

[00:11:49]This core box, you got the center section.

[00:11:53]Got these two outside pieces. Basically, we'll put all this together. If I can find the the holes. We'll ram this up, fill it up with with sand. Um, we use a special sand that will get hard, but that basically is just going to be a big cylinder.

[00:12:12]Uh, and that cylinder will drop down inside. It'll sit on these four feet.

[00:12:18]And, uh, when you cast it, that sand that that cylinder is going to be filled up with sand. We'll have to dig it all out when we're done. There's still sand in this casting after I don't know how many years where they never did get it all cleaned out. And then drop that in.

[00:12:33]There'll be some more spacers on the top because there's holes over there that will fit up to the top and then we'll pour it and that will basically leave that hollow in there. So, this won't be one solid piece of cast iron. It be what's called a cord casting uh which will make it lighter and actually make it stronger because it's going to have the u um hollow spot on the inside.

[00:12:56]So, we're back to looking over here at the original drum. And uh you can again see the steel shaft that runs through this. Uh it is keyed on both ends. This is a 3-in diameter. Uh the total length of the shaft is a 20 or excuse me 32 and 1/4 in. And it's got a 3/4 in key again on both sides. This is where a gears will go up on to drive this and then also drive the gears the drums the smaller drums down below it depending on which side you're on. Uh, and then this area here is a bearing journal that fits up on can't remember if these are brass or babbit bearings or bronze or babbbit bearings, but one of the other is a babbbit bearing or bronze bearing that goes right there. These will ride on.

[00:13:41]Um, and also, you can't see it, but there's also a key in the middle of this shaft. Uh, and again, when this is cast, this cast iron will just be poured around this, and then as it cools, it's going to shrink in place and get really tight. But to make sure that this drum does not spin on there, we will actually put a key in the center section here.

[00:14:05]And uh, when we do that, when the cast iron is poured, it will pour down into that and basically it will make a key that fits into this keyway. Uh, so that will assure that the drum does not spin on the shaft. So, as it is used over time, get a little bit of wear and slop in there, eventually you could eventually get it where this drum is just slipping, making going around. You want it to drive. So, um there won't be an actual key that's put in there. The cast iron when it's poured and it will just become the key and that will fit down into a keyway that we'll put in the middle of the shaft. So, I've got a piece of shafting here, 3-in shafting.

[00:14:44]Let me show you that. So, we got this piece of 3-in material. Um, I need to cut it to length. I need to go to the lathe and uh on the ends, we're just going to face the ends off and put a center in each end because uh there will be some lathe work that has to be done after this is cast. And having those centers in there will make it much easier for to use it. So, we'll put a center on both ends of the shaft. And then we'll go to the middle machine.

[00:15:10]We'll cut our keys. Uh that's kind of the game plan. So, let's get this uh shaft uh knocked out.

[00:15:19]Need to cut my piece of steel here.

[00:15:22]This needs to be 32 and a/4 in long. So, I'm going to come in here.

[00:15:30]I'm going to do a little bit longer because we're going to be facing those ends off. I just need to cut a few just a couple inches off the end. Looks like this piece was a little over 36 in 3 ft.

[00:15:43]So, let's uh get this set up here.

[00:15:59]There we go.

[00:16:02]I'm over here at my Monarch Model K 16inch lathe and I've got the shaft in the chuck. We're supporting it with a steady rest here on this end. Uh what I want to do now is come in here and face this and put a center in the end with a center drill. Um to get this thing at the right height, I just came in with a little center finding square, one of these, and I went around and basically just marked it. And then I just used my live center or a my center drill. I just came up here and kind of got it where lined up eyeball there into the center.

[00:16:38]It'll be good enough for what we're gonna be doing here. And right now, we're gonna go ahead and fire the lathe up and get that faced off and get the center put in.

[00:16:59]That looks good.

[00:17:02]We're just going to cher that in a little bit.

[00:17:11]these rollers.

[00:17:14]There we go.

[00:17:16]I got a number five center drill.

[00:17:21]This will drill out a hole and put the taper in there so that when we put our live center in the end, we can support it on the ends rather than having to use a steady rest. uh when we get over turned action drum.

[00:17:38]All right, that should do it. Nice center in the end. I'm going to flip this around, do the same thing the other side. Before I do, I am going to come in here with some emery cloth and just kind of polish this shaft up a little bit.

[00:17:52]Got some rust on it right now.

[00:17:55]Want to clean it up a little bit.

[00:17:59]While I'm polishing, I'm just going to go ahead and polish the whole shaft here. At least knock the rust off of it.

[00:18:08]Not going for a perfect finish here by any means, but uh that shaft did have a little bit of surface rust on it.

[00:18:17]When I flip it over, I can get this area at the very end down there chunk.

[00:18:27]All right, let's go ahead and flip this around.

[00:18:54]We'll do the same thing to the other end here.

[00:18:58]We got the shaft u turned and on the ends uh faced on the ends. We got center drills in it. We got the shaft polished a little bit. I mean, it's not perfectly smooth, but at least we got the rust knocked off of it. We're ready to go over now to the milling machine and work on our keyway. So, let me get that set up over there and we'll meet you over the mill here in just a moment.

[00:19:19]So, we're over here at the Wells Index vertical mill machine, and I've got the piece of shafting just sitting down directly onto the table. I took the vise off, and it's just sitting right here in one of the grooves. So, I I put it on that. It will kind of self center itself up. It'll be lined up nice and square with the table, and then I just clamp it all directly down. I prefer doing big shafting like this where it's just going directly to the table rather than putting it in a vise. If I put it in the vice, you know, you got a little small area here that's supporting all the weight, but you got all the weight down here that's kind of caner levered out and it wants to drop it down. You have to block it up and shim it and everything else. This is a lot more rigid. Just go directly to the table and it's super easy to set up. Like I say, you just drop it in that slot and it is square. So, uh, anyway, we are ready to go here. I'm going to first put an edge finder in here. We'll find the center of the shaft. Then we'll put a 3/4 inch inmill in here and cut the keyways. I got to cut a keyway on this side 5 in in. We'll flip the shaft around, do this side 5 in in. And then we've also got again, like we mentioned before, cut a keyway here in the center. Uh the length on it is really not critical. Uh it just needs to have an area there that will that drum will key in whenever it's cast in place. So let's uh find our center and we'll get these milled out.

[00:20:41]So, I'm just going to put this edge finder here up into the I got a chuck in here from the last job. We'll just use that to spin it around with.

[00:20:51]Get that going.

[00:20:54]Just drop the quill down here and I'll bring the table to me until you see that little uh edge finder just kind of jump over. When I do, the edge finder is tangent uh with the piece of metal. So now the edge of the edge finder is perfectly on the edge of the part there. I'm going to zero out the read out so I can get my measurements. I like to do it twice.

[00:21:22]Make sure I get the same measurement.

[00:21:23]And I do. So now I'm going to go up.

[00:21:28]We zeroed out everything. So we'll go to the other side and do the exact same thing.

[00:21:34]That's out of y'all's sight in the camera, but you'll just have to trust me.

[00:21:39]Come over.

[00:21:44]Change it right there.

[00:21:47]So now cut the mill off.

[00:21:52]I'll pull that up and I need to just go half of the that 3.496 and that'll put me right into the center. And I'll just use the half function on the milling machine here.

[00:22:07]It'll automatically calculate that. Now I just take it on the digital readout to zero.

[00:22:12]And that'll put me right into the center here. Boom. That's it. I'm going to lock down the table right there.

[00:22:21]And uh we should be good to go to cut our key. I want to go in five inches. I put a mark there. Let me get an inmill in here and we'll start cutting. I think we're ready to go here. I'm going to start by just using my quill and dropping that down until it touches.

[00:22:37]That'll kind of give me a a zero on my height that I want to cut. And uh it's a 3/4 inch wide uh keyway. Uh we want to go 38 inch deep, 375,000, which will be half the the thickness there. And uh I think we're going to go 5 in deep. But I will note that I want there to be a full five inches. So we'll kind of go until the center of the endmill is at that line or right there at it close by. So it'll actually the end's going to kind of go around, you know, past it like that. Uh that's what we're going to be shooting for. All right, let's uh start here.

[00:23:20]I'll do about a 50,000 depth of cut. Let me zero out my Z-axis and we'll make our first pass.

[00:23:32]Here we go.

[00:23:43]There be 100,000 speed.

[00:24:12]That should be it.

[00:24:17]Take my calipers and just confirm my depth.

[00:24:21]Yeah, we're good.

[00:24:24]I'm gonna flip this around. We'll do the same thing on the other side and get the center one as well.

[00:24:31]So, just a little trick here in case you've never done this. If you want to get your keyways lined up and you flip them around where they're more or less in the same spot, just take a level and put across it after you do it. I'm going to look and see where it actually is on the level. this a little bit. My machine's not perfectly level, but I'll note where that's at and I'll set it up on the other side where it's in the same position uh when I rotate it around. And that way I'll know that keyway will be lined up. And again, in this particular situation, it's not critical that it be perfect. Uh but it will just look better if you do it that way. So, uh we'll use the little level trick.

[00:25:09]So, we'll put the level back on here.

[00:25:13]And that's pretty close right there.

[00:25:26]Clamp that down and we should be ready to roll. I'm going go I'll do this other one off camera. Uh, but you saw the process. So, I'm getting ready now to do this center section. And unlike the ends, you know, we can't pull the cutter off the end and go down. We're going to have to plunge down into the material. So, it's real important if you're going to do a plunge cut with an endmill that you have a center cutting endmill. One that will cut all the way to the center. Um, I got some inmill here, inmills here to show you. This one here is not a center cutting endmill. If you see here in the middle, you got an area. It's only cutting on the outside. So, you cannot do a plunge cut with an endmill like this unless you drill the center out first. So, if you were going to use this endmill, I'd have to come in here and drill out a hole larger than that diameter in the middle. Then, I could plunge down and cut down on these outer areas and it wipe that middle part out.

[00:26:23]If I try to plunge with this, it'll plunge down until the center part hits the metal and then you're done. It's not going to go any farther. A center cutting endmill is going to have a bottom that looks more like this. You can see we've actually got cutting going all the way to the center on this one here. So, it will cut all the way to the middle. Um, and the one that's in here is a center cutting inmill. So, we should be able to plunge with it. And I'm just going to go ahead and nibble out that little center section there.

[00:26:52]Uh, so that we can have that keyway cast into the drum as it is poured.

[00:27:01]till it touches off right there.

[00:27:06]Just going to slowly punch down in there. I don't want to go too fast.

[00:27:18]We're about 50,000 deep and we'll cut across.

[00:27:43]All right, there we go.

[00:27:49]That ought to do it. This shaft is finished up.

[00:27:53]And with that, guys, our shaft is ready to go to the foundry. Our patterns and our uh flask, pouring flask are all ready to go to the foundry. So, all I got to do is pack up and drive to Mississippi, which I'm going to be doing here in a day or two. And like I said, we'll hopefully have some videos of us pouring this. And again, I think that'll make things a lot more make a lot more sense when we show the whole process of the pouring and laying out the patterns and putting the cores in place. You'll be able to kind of see how it goes. this foundry stuff, it kind of takes a little bit to wrap your mind around if you're not familiar with it because you're kind of working in the opposites in a lot of ways where you're having to pull, you know, put something in sand, pull it out and figuring out how things are going to look and uh work. U I did all my design work in on the computer using a Fusion 360, drew it all up, and then 3D printed the patterns out. So, uh should work just fine hopefully. Uh yeah, we'll see.

[00:28:47]All right, guys. With that, that is a wrap. As always, thanks so much for watching. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Those thumbs up and comments are always greatly appreciated. Please hit that bell icon up there to get notifications when new videos are posted. As always, a huge thank you to those who support the site financially through Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube memberships. And again, as always, thanks for watching.