Recently Luis ask me to make some prototype body rings for the new Argonaut double hose reg that Bryan is producing and I though some of you might like to see the process. Besides, it gives me a chance to show off my new mill Santa brought for Christmas…the reindeer earned their oats that day.
A piece of corrosion resistant brass was procured for the rings. This stock was pretty rough on the outside and needed to be turned down some to clean it up. This thing is heavy….and expensive.
Once it was cleaned up some, it was cut into manageable lengths, the outside and inside turned to the proper diameters and the ends squared up. Since it was going to be threaded inside, I needed lengths that I could thread so the stock was cut into 4- 1.5 inch lengths, about the maximum length I could easily thread.
Threading the entire length is much easier than trying to thread each individual piece. I was “forced“ to buy a fancy new threading tool for this operation…..that’s my story and I am sticking to it.
Threading on a lathe takes a good bit of setup. The proper drive gears have to be installed, the lathe tooling has to be correctly positioned and once that is done, the actual threading process is performed in multiple passes with the cutting tool adjusted before each pass. The slightest misstep and the piece is ruined.
One of the 4 pieces threaded and ready to cut into rings.
With any machining project, setup and special jigs often takes as much or more time to complete as the work does. For this project I had the make 2 work holders. One to hold the threaded length to cut it into sections and to cut the wrench slots and another to hold the individual rings in the lathe for rounding over the edges and cutting the chamfer on the ring.
Once the blanks are threaded it’s over to the mill to separate the blanks into individual rings. The threaded blank is held in one of the tools I made earlier and a slitter saw is used to cut the blanks into rings.
After the rings are separated, it’s back to the lathe and another holder to round over the edges, cut the chamfer in the ring and a general polishing.
Next the wrench slots are cut on the mill, again the part holder is used to hold the work during the cutting process. My strobe stopped the action, brass pieces in mid air during the cutting process....man I love the new auto feed.
Once the slots were cut it, the edges were touched up with a file to remove any major burs and into a vibrating polisher to smooth out any remaining rough edges. The final product, a pile of shiny new body rings.
More photos can be found on Photobucket under Customscubatools.
Hope you all find these threads interesting.
Happy New Year and Safe diving.
maybe he could put a downpayment on the lot for you, if you agreed to make 1 reproduction part, for every nuvo DH part off the line... 
