Another old Ping mod

[MachineHack]

Well I came up a bit short on this one at 341 

and the bearings in the lathe are getting a bit noisey, which wasn’t really a project I wanted to tackle lolol 

need to go finish the face mill and throw the shaft on, I gotta give this as a present tomorrow hahaha 

 

[MachineHack]

Well there won’t be any finished pictures of this putter hahaha, jumped the vise during face milling it’s dead…. On the look out for another lefty anser now 

[BIG STU]

1 hour ago, MachineHack said:

Well there won’t be any finished pictures of this putter hahaha, jumped the vise during face milling it’s dead…. On the look out for another lefty anser now 

OH NOOOO say it aint so----Sad

[MachineHack]

26 minutes ago, BIG STU said:

OH NOOOO say it aint so----Sad

unfortunately so, dug in too deep to save, tried wiping the face clean but after 1mm off and still having more to go, I could see it was done for. 
 

 

the positive part is actually milling the pockets is the quick part of everything I’ve done. So I can salvage the weights which took a lot longer to machine 

 

the sad part is it was a really nice anser and I ruined it. 

[bigolherschel]

On 7/14/2022 at 9:31 PM, MachineHack said:

Got a lunch time mill session in WFH today 

 

this face mill was easily the most challenging I’ve had to do so far. I really wanted to keep the pingman and ping logos on the club face. Now the top little bit of an A4 actually has a higher loft then the rest of the club face, so after a first pass I had to reposition the club face in the vice and run it through again. I’m not sure if the fact the face mill had to be slightly off centre is going to drive me insane, but for this attempt I wanted to retain the original logos and that’s the only way, something had to give.

 

i think it turned out pretty well, sitting on my hands now waiting for some V14 tungsten rod to come, so I’m gonna send this out for a sand blast and continue thinking on what finish I want on it (despite my very strong desire to whack the weights in, throw it on a shaft and feel the results lol)

 

in the meantime I’m really tossing up between a few different clubs for the next one…. Will likely all come down to what I get for a decent price but I’d really like the challenge of a BeCu, mainly as it’s machine only, can’t sand it can’t polish have to have my tolerances spot on otherwise I poison myself

 

oh milling didn’t really change the weight so still 352 

 

also shoutout to @golfluvzme for some really handy milling depths information, I really appreciate it mate!

Beautiful stuff. Care to elaborate on the BeCu poisoning business? Also, any other materials to avoid for my first putter mods? 

[Motoboss]

5 hours ago, MachineHack said:

unfortunately so, dug in too deep to save, tried wiping the face clean but after 1mm off and still having more to go, I could see it was done for. 
 

 

the positive part is actually milling the pockets is the quick part of everything I’ve done. So I can salvage the weights which took a lot longer to machine 

 

the sad part is it was a really nice anser and I ruined it. 

 A lot of egg broken to make a successful recipe. The cost of progress.

[MachineHack]

5 hours ago, Motoboss said:

 A lot of egg broken to make a successful recipe. The cost of progress.

I would blame myself but it was obviously the vises fault and I should buy a new one lolol 

[MachineHack]

8 hours ago, bigolherschel said:

Beautiful stuff. Care to elaborate on the BeCu poisoning business? Also, any other materials to avoid for my first putter mods? 

beryllium dusts causes berylliosis, I suppose think of it like asbestos. Totally fine as long as don’t sand it (I cringe every time I see a polished BeCu come up for sale). Beryllium is/ was added to copper to improve its machinability, but it’s pretty old school. Tellurium (or teryllium for some reason if you’re Scotty Cameron) is added to copper now these days to make it free machining (and even that’s a bit old school now compared to some more modern copper alloys) 

 

nothing else really comes to mind, but if it doubt just look up the safety data sheet for what you want to work with to understand any precautions you should be taking 

 

 

[Jack lives here]

MachineHack, you're a genius.

 

Keep up the good work champion!

[MachineHack]

13 hours ago, Jack lives here said:

MachineHack, you're a genius.

 

Keep up the good work champion!

I don’t know about genius but thanks! 

[bigolherschel]

On 9/3/2022 at 5:30 PM, MachineHack said:

beryllium dusts causes berylliosis, I suppose think of it like asbestos. Totally fine as long as don’t sand it (I cringe every time I see a polished BeCu come up for sale). Beryllium is/ was added to copper to improve its machinability, but it’s pretty old school. Tellurium (or teryllium for some reason if you’re Scotty Cameron) is added to copper now these days to make it free machining (and even that’s a bit old school now compared to some more modern copper alloys) 

 

nothing else really comes to mind, but if it doubt just look up the safety data sheet for what you want to work with to understand any precautions you should be taking 

 

 

Thank you for this! I actually never thought to check the SDS … I think of that as a workplace only thing lol. 

[MachineHack]

Been MIA for awhile but have done a few more lol 

 

dialled in the whole removable weight solution, but haven’t finished these as I been working on a better solution for face milling 

 

the challenge with old pings is the face isn’t actually one loft, it’s two. I’ve just been resetting the pieces whenever I need to fly cut the second loft but it’s time consuming and tedious so been working through some jigs to help 

 

also need to do a garage reorganise. Need to somehow find room for a small blast cabinet, polished looks cool and all but sunny day on the course and yah. Anyways hopefully get the mill done in these soon! I also got a block of 1025 so stay tuned because I’m gonna hand mill my own custom soon! 

 

The pal 2 has been unable to remove the a4 from the bag tho (the a3 gets a turn every now and again). Blade length is just ok long for my liking.

 

really wish I could get an a4 in manganese bronze, that would be ideal. 

[MachineHack]

Face milled the pal 2 today and spent an hour trying to pull the shaft out of this A2 BeCu I picked up lol. I’ve pulled quite a few old bearing locked ping shafts and this has been the worst so far. I’m onto my last trick of freezing the putter, hopefully can get it out with having to drill a hole in the bottom in it, would hate to have to do that to a BeCu.

 

anyways face miller pal2! Final weight 341g. 
 

not sure I’ll do too many more full face mills like this, the old faces are not really flat enough for it. Could fully skim it .3 mm to flatten it but it’s always the toe and heel where the high sides are, which doesn’t really need milling anyways.

[Ilovemydriver]

Yo this is incredible. Just went through the whole thread. I have an Answer 4 I would love to try this with! And what are your secrets to pulling bearing locked shafts? 

[mynameisntshawn]

Reviving this old thread. Per the issue @MachineHack ran into with the old faces not being flat enough and the issue of losing weight trying to skin them: I had an idea to install a copper or brass plate over the entirety of the face of these old ping putters. This would add weight (could be combined with tungsten face weights hidden by the plate?) and would likely be easier to mill face grooves into. I have a small hobby cnc that could handle milling copper or brass but probably not mgbr or ss. I could mill the face plate entirely flat and then affix it slightly over-size on the putter face. Has anyone tried this? I was thinking a combo of tapped brass screws and some sort of epoxy to attach the plate to the face, but I imagine a silver solder of some sort would be the “right” way to do this. Thoughts?

Edited November 26, 2023 by mynameisntshawn

[MachineHack]

On 11/27/2023 at 7:55 AM, mynameisntshawn said:

Reviving this old thread. Per the issue @MachineHack ran into with the old faces not being flat enough and the issue of losing weight trying to skin them: I had an idea to install a copper or brass plate over the entirety of the face of these old ping putters. This would add weight (could be combined with tungsten face weights hidden by the plate?) and would likely be easier to mill face grooves into. I have a small hobby cnc that could handle milling copper or brass but probably not mgbr or ss. I could mill the face plate entirely flat and then affix it slightly over-size on the putter face. Has anyone tried this? I was thinking a combo of tapped brass screws and some sort of epoxy to attach the plate to the face, but I imagine a silver solder of some sort would be the “right” way to do this. Thoughts?

sorry don’t check the forums often these days, life has been so busy! 
 

I’ve actually got a sketch of this for a anser I’ve got that jumped the vice and ruined the face during milling. 
 

was planning on just machining the whole face down and attached some other metal to it (was thinking 1025 because it’s cheap as a proof of concept) 

 

few different ways you could go about attaching the face 

 

you could drill a few holes in the cavity (a la Scotty Cameron style) and install some threads on the back of the face plate (I would press a thread insert in as you won’t have enough material to tap the blind holes) 

 

or you could dowel and epoxy the face on. Dowels could be interference fit so the epoxy is just there in case 

 

I’m not sure silver solder would be any better than a quality epoxy 

 

if you found the screws were backing out I’d just loctite em 

 

but either way could work 

 

what I haven’t check is how much of the face you can mill flat before you get through the cavity, because the top 1/4 of the putter has a the chamfer/ secondary loft cut into it and it’s like 2.5ish mm you’d have to completely cut the face down to get it 100% flat 

 

Won’t leave a lot of metal left where the cavity is 

[MachineHack]

On 10/31/2023 at 12:51 PM, Ilovemydriver said:

Yo this is incredible. Just went through the whole thread. I have an Answer 4 I would love to try this with! And what are your secrets to pulling bearing locked shafts? 

sorry lazy with replies! 
 

I’ve only had one I had to drill a hole in the bottom of the hosel to knock the bearing out and pull the shaft and surprisingly it was the only BeCu one I’ve done (well half done hence why no pictures) 

 

otherwise like 75% of them come off with just normal heat 

 

a few stubborn ones I’ve soaked down in wd40 and gone at em a few times with heat 

 

the absolute worst one I tried everything on, heat, wd40, smacking the hosel to try and loosen the bearing 

 

even cut the shaft off to try and drill out the ball bearing (but it’s too hard, can’t get a centre to punch it) and ultimately resorted to drilling the old hole in the bottom 

 

but I’m gonna machine up a little plug out of probably copper tungsten because that’s what I have lying around and it’ll be fine 

[mynameisntshawn]

Because things don't have to look pretty under the plate, you could just hog out even more space for adding weights and then sand/mill down a bit to get a smooth surface. I don't think I need to try and mill/remove the same thickness as the new face plate, because I don't mind cutting down on the offset a bit by making the face sit a little prouder. I have an Anser 2 stainless that I've absolutely mangled the face of, and I'll probably use that as my guinea pig. As a starting point, I did flatten and anneal a couple pieces of copper pipe to use as a proof of concept:

The one on the right got some really cool coloring after I heated it, which I may try to retain. The left I will probably try to get looking uniform and mill before affixing to the putter.

[MachineHack]

Keep us posted on your progress on it! 
 

should have the BeCu A2 done with some time coming up for Christmas break. 
 

gonna be a fun one as I’ve got an even larger end mill and some really big dia copper tungsten rod for the weights 

[mynameisntshawn]

Oh interesting! I've been looking at the copper tungsten but wasn't sure how machinable it was. I find SS to be basically impossible with my tools but the MgBr is easy.

[MachineHack]

3 hours ago, mynameisntshawn said:

Oh interesting! I've been looking at the copper tungsten but wasn't sure how machinable it was. I find SS to be basically impossible with my tools but the MgBr is easy.

all heavy tungsten carbides are sintered so it depends how exactly you’re trying to machine it 

 

Turning, facing and drilling are fine on the lathe but I have a feeling getting a decent finish milling would be tough as it doesn’t evacuate chips well (it kinda just turns back into powder instead of forming chips) 

 

stainless depends on the grade. 17-4ph is very hard compared to 303 or 304 so it doesn’t machine as well. I’ve really gotta sneak up on the final diameter when I’m drilling and boring, where MgBr is like drill my pilot hole and hog it out lol

[mynameisntshawn]

 

Finally got things all set up to drill out the holes on my CNC. Video here. It takes way longer but is much more precise and I can do it while I work at my desk. Next step is to practice face milling, which I'll need to do in a pretty manual fashion with a v-bit since this machine isn't strong enough to run the customary fly mill bit.

Edited December 14, 2023 by mynameisntshawn
Swapping video link to better source

[MachineHack]

Awesome stuff! 
 

man gotta get back to the garage myself and finish off some of these putters that are all half done lol

[mynameisntshawn]

I have an idea for the weights on this but need to do some tinkering

[MachineHack]

Absolutely love that turned finish on the face very cool!