Here you can see that I've just started turning these pieces. If you look close you can see the sharp corners are gone now and the parts will soon be round. 
 

Here are the 11 pieces nice and round and now they will need to be deburred. Notice the pin doesn't exit the parts here. This way the washer is held against the parts only and the pin is out of the way. I figured out how long the pin needed to be and then cut it to length so it fits like this. On a side note: I just happen to have a large enough washer that would work with this setup so I didn't have to make a custom one. Lucky me!
 

I did the deburring on my belt sander which was quick and easy. Now they will need some paint as Matt and Angela didn't want things to look very modern, but I'll get to that later. On the other hand, I personally am all about contrast and not having everything blending together. But this is their project so whatever the boss wants, the boss gets  :-]
 

Back from Plating

Here are all the gears back from the plating shop. They came out pretty nice and the kids are happy with them. The one with the 12" pitch diameter that you saw earlier is at the bottom right. Now it's time to put these aside and keep them clean until I need them.
 

Awhile ago I mentioned there would be some chains, and to move those chains I'll be using sprockets. There will be three sizes of sprockets, two 4" (below), one 5" and three 6". I'll be using a total of six sprockets but two of them will be paired with gears. This 4" sprocket that you see below has a 1/2" diameter hole in it. This hole is the same size as all the shafts but the other two sizes (5" and 6") have an odd size hole of .594" diameter. The oversize holes in these larger sprockets are something I'll have to address because I found out when I was buying all the sprockets that once you get larger than 4 inches in diameter, that's when the hole diameters increase. In other words, having oversize holes in the larger ones were unavoidable.
 

The only machining that I'll do on the 4" sprockets is putting a keyway in it. This keyway, along with a key, will be used with the corresponding shafts that will drive the sprockets. I'm using an 1/8" end mill here to cut the keyway, which will be 1/8" long X 1/8" wide. I'll talk more about this size in a minute. To cut the keyways I used an indicate to find the center and then machined them. This is a simple operation and it went quickly.

Side note: the aluminum plate under the sprocket is used as tooling and is sacrificial. When using a cutter that pass's through your work piece (or drilling), you need something to cut into other than your mill table. If you look close you'll see many holes in this plate as it's been used for this many times over the years.
 

Here is the finished keyway in the 4" sprocket. The shaft that has the keyway in it measures 1/8" wide by 1/16"deep. With that size keyway you would normally use a key that measured 1/8" X 1/8" (1/16" deep keyway in the shaft and 1/16" deep keyway in the sprocket). However when I had the gears made by my water jet guy at R.I. Industries, I drew the gears with a keyway size of 1/8" X 1/8". This meant the key material would need to be 1/8" X 3/16" to fit correctly. However this was something I planned on awhile ago.
 

Here you can see I've got some steel key material that measures the exact size I needed, 1/8" X 3/16". It seems McMaster Carr has just about everything I needed which makes buying from them that much easier. Now it's just a matter of cutting this material to length later on.
 

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