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.