So as the title says, I've been a welder for 15 years, and now I've been hired into a machinist position, but I'm running the machine shop in this business. I've done machining work related to the welding I've done, sometimes even working as a machinist when the welding work slows down. My last job was 90% machinist work with 10% welding repair.
Now I'm expected to be a full machinist and run a whole machine section (2 lathes, 2 mills, and an entire wall of disorganized tooling) by myself. To the point where I'm the only guy in the shop that can figure out how to set a power feed on a lathe or mill. It's a little overwhelming tbh. But I'm struggling through.
Today's challenge: drill and bore a hole through 10.5 inches of 1018.
What I've done:
chucked up the material in the 3 jaw on the lathe
beat around the stock until it was running mostly true (as far as can be read with a dial indicator on mill scale)
Center drilled with 3/8 center drill (only center drill available)
Proceeded to drill through with 9/16 because that's the only drill we had that was long enough
My problem now:
When the drill popped out the other side, I can see through my spindle it's maybe 1/8 off center. Definitely wobble as seen from the back of the spindle.
How can I correct the straightness of my hole? The plan was to step up to 1 inch then 2 inch drills to be able to fit in the big boring bar, but i don't want the bigger drills to follow the pilot off center. Does it matter? Can I just feed the bigger bits slower and the problem will self correct?
Edit: Success! Flipped it around and started a couple inches with a stubby 3/4, then I got an extremely stout 1 3/4 to redrill the hole nice and straight. Once the first couple inches were started it was rigid enough to follow its own hole all the way back through.
The scientific name for this phenomenon is a heckin chonky honker.