Musing On Murdering (….a printer)

[An OtherParticipant @another21905]

I was always a long-time user of Epson printers – originally because I could get a very dense black to print photonegatives for PCB making. Eventually I bought one of the types which used large ink tanks, rather than the increasingly expensive cartridges. Shortly afterwards, I bought a second one.

Then I found that if the printers stand unused for more than a few days, then the ink dries in the heads and feed pipes. The printers had built-in procedures for cleaning the heads, but sometimes this had to be done several times to have any effect. There is a ‘power cleaning’ routine, which is not available if you use Linux (or I couldn’t find it).

Eventually both printers were unuseable. I found a procedure for dismantling and cleaning the heads/pipes on Youtube, and since I had nothing to lose, I tried cleaning the machine – and ended up with a machine that would do nothing. As several people here noted, they are built to a cost, and dismantling/repair is not part of the philosophy – many parts clip together, and are virtually impossible to dismantle without breaking tiny concealed clips, etc.

I now have a Brother colour laser machine – which seems much better – no clogging, easy to use, fully compatible with Linux.

[GordonHParticipant @gordonh]

I have owned a succession of inkjet printers which failed for mechanical or ink delivery issues.   The last one was scrapped before failure in 2021 when one of the coloured ink cartridges needed replacement.  After seeing that a new printer was  not much more expensive than the colour cartridge set for my existing printer,  I bought a new printer instead.  The new printer is a Cannon Ecotank printer and included one bottle of ink for each of the colour tanks and two bottles for the larger black tank.  Touch wood, after almost three years of intermittent printing I have only recently needed to refill the black ink tank.  No problems with intermittent printing but I  do try to print a page or two every couple of weeks.

Gordon

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Bit messy breaking a large drawing into separate sheets, but it is an option. E.g. my engine’s cylinder block is about 3″ square X 5 long. At A4 that would need the elevations spread over at least 2 sheets at full-size.

How to print is another point too. Neither TurboCAD nor Alibre make printing easy, especially if you have to make the drawing fit an A4 printer’s own printing margins.

 

Sending files to a supplier for laser-cut parts? I don’t envisage ever doing that and I don’t know the drawing standards and file-types they want, so that would be a bridge to cross only if and when I need.

I considered a laser printer but cannot afford or justify the horrendous prices for printers intended for heavy commercial use. The tank types are not much less expensive. If I am to buy a new A3 printer it is for eventually replacing the existing A4 one for all tasks, from A3 drawings down to DL envelopes. I still want to be able to copy or scan material from time to time, too.

So really, my choice is narrowed to a multifunction one that will print that size range, but I think they are all colour machines. So either I don’t put coloured inks in it (which may cause setting-up and operating difficulties), I print in colours fairly regularly or I accept that eventually its colour plumbing will block up.

 

Sometimes I look at the wreckage of my drawing-board…. Last time I touched it was to mark out in pencil where to cut it down to a more sensible size, keeping the sizeable area needed to each side and below the sheet, to park the motion-work. (The rails can be cut to shorter lengths.)

 

Jason –

I can tell you when I last posted a printed letter, with printed envelope too… Last week. I needed contact Microsoft for help / complaint, and writing to its UK office is the only sensible way to contact Gates’ Wonder Boys.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I hope you sent it signed for, Royal Mail seem incapable of delivering normal mail.

I have a Canon laser printer and a standalone scanner. Both have given sterling service.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Nigel Alibre is not difficult (for most) to print from be it all or part of a part/drawing.

I could show you a whole waggon as a single .DWG drawing file with both GA and indivdual parts on it, no problem printing or viewing just one small part and that was sent to me not drawn with Alibre but I can open the file and do what I want with it.

Another example my 2″ fowler drawings come as A0 sheets yet to keep them clean I photocopied the parts some A3 and some A4 and built from that. There are others who have made the engine just using the artickles published in Model Engineer so all A4 and some reduced in size to fit the A4 sheet. Same applies to may models all built from just magazine articles.

I was not suggesting that you stop using snail mail. Simply go to the post office website, enter details and you will get an address label with paid amount on it. This is easier to print than an envelope or jiffy bag and saves having to use stamps.

[Alan Wood 4Participant @alanwood4]

In the days of owning Wood & Douglas Ltd I had a HP printer in my office.  This slowly began to misfeed paper and it gradually got worse with age.  Cleaning the rollers would help but only for a limited time.

One particular day, with an urgent proposal to be printed, it persisted in chewing up sheets.  My frustration rising, I did the Basil Fawlty routine and threatened it verbally that unless it behaved it was going out of the window (first storey office with nice view over a grassy staff picnic area).  It took no heed of my warning and I duly dispatched it out of the window where it came to rest in various pieces of plastic all over the grass.

Somehow word spread throughout the factory about this ejection.   I was not disturbed by anyone for the rest of the day.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Alan Wood 4, maybe if you had used Notepad or something, and typed all your frustrations out, using whatever language you felt like, and then got your printer to print it, it might of understood what you where saying.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Jason –

That on-line business doesn’t seem much different or more efficient than printing an envelope directly and sticking a stamp on it! You still need pay for it, you still need post the letter – which I refuse to call or regard as “snail mail” since in most cases it does not matter if it takes a couple of days to arrive, provided you think ahead a bit.

The system may be designed more for business users.

=====

Really my original musings were on what was involved in designing a big printer, and on my feelings about destroying it.

Subsequently I mused on whether to replace it or stay with just the A4 printer / scanner / copier. At least its copier platen does take an A4 sheet, not some random or obsolete size below that.

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It’s a matter of cost, economics, likely use and not least, being able to print useful drawings of more than A4-fitting, simple items in any readable way. (Single objects that is. I can draw complicated things like complete assemblies only orthographically anyway, using TurboCAD in 2D mode or manually. Not in 3D.)

I found I used the printer less and less as it became impossible to learn TurboCAD to more than a very basic level; and it became easier to make things from rough pencil sketches made “on the job”.

Then I bought Alibre and made a lot more headway and far more rapidly with that; but have probably reached my limit with it. Not because it is CAD or uses a computer-driven printer especially, but by my low natural limit of ability with them; limits specific to the subjects so not comparable with others, as I found with Mathematics, French, sports, playing the drums… indeed anything I have attempted.

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So I am stuck between the problem of unsatisfactory ways to print nominally-A3 drawings without an A3 printer, and slowly killing a costly new A3 printer by insufficient use.

Or even of finally writing off over ten years of considerable expense and many failures with CAD, using it at most only very occasionally to draw some very simple, single item like a pipe-flange; but otherwise returning to manual drawing.

A difficult decision!

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I take your point about making projects from drawings printed on the pages of the magazine, but those drawings are prepared by professional draughts-people and editors, to fit the space available and still be legible. I don’t have their skills and equipment – I don’t know how they managed decades ago, before all this fancy CAD and DTP, and ME was printed to the forerunner to A5 size, but they did!

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Jason –

That on-line business doesn’t seem much different or more efficient than printing an envelope directly and sticking a stamp on it! You still need pay for it, you still need post the letter – which I refuse to call or regard as “snail mail” since in most cases it does not matter if it takes a couple of days to arrive, provided you think ahead a bit.

The system may be designed more for business users.

=====

 

It avoids having to go to the post office to buy stamps. Really useful for large letters/parcels. After my recent experiences of PO I wouldn’t mind if it took a few days. A letter I posted to my bank in September still hasn’t arrived. Neither have the 2 follow up letters asking why they hadn’t replied. To get reliable service you have to pay for ‘signed for’. Even that is dubious, I sent a letter to local DHSS office on Friday, according to the PO it was signed for on Saturday. That’s good you might think, but they don’t open on Saturday, so who has signed?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It also relates to your comment about choosing a printer that can handle envelopes, not having to print envelopes opens up your choice of printer.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

The PO does seem very patchy. It really does need sorting out! Going to buy stamps is not a problem for me though – I do it when I am shopping anyway.

I think most common printers will handle envelopes, but I suppose some of the industrial-size A3 ones won’t because that’s not their primary purpose.

If I can’t print them, I can’t print them. I’ll just have to hand-write them (print not long-hand!). I only print envelopes on formal letters anyway. If the printer does not have a direct DL size setting in the menu then prepare a template that will treat the words as if the corner of an A4 sheet, provided the machine will handle the small size mechanically.

I wrote a note in pencil on my A4 machine telling my which way round to feed the envelope! For appearance it is concealed when the delivery door is closed.

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The printer setting menus in TurboCAD are a nightmare. Preparing the drawing for printing seems to need selecting it right at the start, then there are two or is it three more menus in actually setting the printing, once you’ve waded through the ‘Viewports’ morass. Why you can’t just highlight the drawing area and tell the printer to reproduce that, I don’t know.

Alibre is just confusing, seems to want a lot of re-entering of choices, its little tiles thing to select elevations is not obvious, the dimensions are awkward to create and format and don’t seem to pick up centres of circles, and you can’t move the elevations on the paper outline once you’ve released them. I expect these problems are all solvable but I can’t see how.

 

Anyway that’s not the point: it’s what A3 printer to buy, to print A3 and A4 sheets. Or indeed whether to buy one at all.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel Graham 2, an A3 all in one, that will scan and print up to A3 is not going to be cheap (depending on what you call cheap) and I don’t know what budget you have in mind, but the one in the link below, is a reasonable price at the moment to my mind, and it does DL envelopes, it does have colour and black. If you want just a monochrome one, you’ll have to pay a lot more.

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/brother-ecopro-mfcj6540dwe-allinone-wireless-inkjet-printer-with-fax-10256155.html

I bought my Canon A3 Pro 9000 printer, about ten years ago, which cost £400.00 or so back then, and will print a page up to 594mm x 359mm. Canon still do a printer much like mine, but the paper can be almost a meter long, but still only the same width, but that costs almost £700.00.

A lot of the A3 all in one’s, only scan up to A4, so you need to look at the specs to make sure of what you want.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou Nick.

I can afford, if not really justify, up to about £500 so obviously am constrained by that.

I don’t understand why a machine can be made to print an A3 sheet but not copy it, unless that would necessitate a very much bigger machine.

 

Currys? Hollow laugh.  I bought that printer from a branch fairly near me in Weymouth and physically very accessible, but which has just closed at only a few week’s notice, and the company has not had the courtesy or courage to explain why. There is another branch about eight miles away.

E-bay? No. I don’t know how to use it, don’t have, don’t want, an account. I have found a specialist printer stockist possibly cheaper than the supermarket types. I have noticed users of this site sometimes promoting e-Bay over our own suppliers who advertise here and in the two magazines; but I don’t really trust e-Bay (nor Amazon) and don’t want to support such monopolies.

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My choice has changed somewhat anyway, from choosing type of A3 printer to deciding need.

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I will never publish any plan sets, after all. Even my main project’s drawings, manual and by two CAD systems, are scrappy and incomplete.

CAD is much harder than I had expected or hoped, so much less useful, so much less used now. The latest Alibre dates in the folder are in November, but of any file movements, not necessarily creation.

Yet it has cost me much money and time over at least ten years, possibly nearer fifteen. Money better spent on making than drawing engines. The large printer, TurboCAD and needless later edition, then potentially easier Alibre, a new PC, ink cartridges, lots of electricity….

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Losing my A3 printer, which I took to the repairer in December, is a financial write-off (capital plus the repairer’s time) and a terrible waste of a barely-used machine, although it had proven irreparable.

It its loss important functionally though…..?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It is fairly easy to work out why a printer can print A3 but only scan A4. Just watch how it works the scanner part moves along the 210mm length of the A4 sheet but the printer with it’s wider range of movement works along the longer 297mm length of the A4 sheet. To print A3 the paper moves in the same direction as the A4  but is being printed along it’s short 297mm edge.

To be able to scan A3 would need the width of the scan head increasing from 210mm to 297 and the glass bed would also need to increase so a whole A3 sheet could be laid flat.

From that it is simple maths that the bigger parts will cost more and the printer take up more space.

If you are unlikely to be producing A3 CAD drawings then may as well just look at A4 printers

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Because quite a few packages cannot support tiled printing, I often print to, say, A3 (or whatever) using Microsoft “print to PDF”, then open the file in Acrobat Reader and use its tiled printing capability. Not flash quality with a strip of sticky tape down the middle but good enough for workshop use, making a paper template, things like that. I also have a Canon 9000 and suffer the dried-out cartridge syndrome, so it’s often quicker and easier to go down the “tiled A3 on A4 laser” route.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel Graham 2, it’s your choice who you part your money with of course, I dare say that with to stores within the distance you say, and with costs for running them going up more often, then the one with the lower footfall be be the one they choose to close, I don’t know if they have any duty to tell the general public why they have to close though. I’ve no loyalty to Curry’s per se, but if they have what I want, when I want it, and their price is right, I will use them, if their price is much higher than others for the same thing, I’ll go to one of the others. Having said that, over the years I’ve bought four laptops, three stand alone printers, at least three A4 scanners, a Brother A3 printer/Scanner, two SLR digital cameras complete with lenses, a compact digital camera, a digital camcorder, a really good Sandstorm stereo portable speaker, a Sony Walkman MP3 player, and my very first microwave oven, all of which have been worth the money that I paid for them and most of them still in use, although some less than others. I have bought things from Amazon at times when they have been a better price than anyone else. I bought my very first digital camera from Youngs Cameras in about 2003 as that was the best deal I could find for the one I wanted at the time, which still works, although I don’t use it that often now. I once heard an auctioneer many years ago say, “There’s no friends in business” when he was taking bids, and I came to the conclusion that he was right, every company that sells things, is only doing it for money, and if they don’t make a profit, they will simply disappear, simple as that.

Regards Nick.

[TomfileryParticipant @tomfilery]

Nigel,

Perhaps you’d be better off sticking with your pencil and paper!

I really can’t understand how you manage to find printing from TurboCad (TC) so complicated.  Yet again, you appear to be trying to go about a CAD task the wrong way, then start telling us how bad the software is!  I suspect the problem lies more behind the keyboard, than on the hard drive.

With TC, you draw your model in the Model space, then print from the Paper space (that word Paper might give a clue).  The easiest way to go about this is to select the items you want to print; copy them to the clipboard; and then paste them into a Paper space (you can have as many Paper spaces as you like).  BUT you have to be careful because you can specify reductions at each stage.  So, you can tell TC to print at 1:100, or  at 2 x full size, say, and that reduction remains linked to the page setting of that particular paper space.  Viewports can also introduce a reduction if you wish (perhaps to display ON A PAPER SPACE a scaled down representation of an object drawn full size in the model space).  I usually copy sections form my Model to a Paper space and then dimension them there, to print out and then use in the workshop.

TC also “tiles”  paper space drawings for you e.g. if you have an A4 printer and want to print an A3 drawing TC will carve it up for you and will even print reference points on each sheet, so that you can accurately align the A4 pages (if you ask it to).  I’ve regularly done 16mm/ft  railway points this way (they are around 500mm long and 250mm wide).  One thing you absolutely have to be careful of is to not click “resize” when told that part of your drawing falls outside the printable area, otherwise that will make the part fit the paper and screw up any scaling.  Sometimes I leave part of the drawing outside of the printed area, so as to avoid having to carve up constructed parts for printing.

I suspect you’ll not resolve your issues by buying a new printer as, it seems to me that, you aren’t driving your software correctly and so are highly likely to end up with similar results to now.  As others have said (and indeed some have offered) what you need is someone to show you how to do what you want to do, rather than you bungling around, attempting to make it work how you think it should – that way lies madness and frustration!

Regards Tom

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I think from all this I should not rush into buying a new printer.

..

Nick –

You could well be right about Curry’s closing one branch when it has another only 7 miles up the road. It is in business to make money so perhaps the Weymouth branch was not making enough. No, it does not need publish reasons for closure but it has miffed many people by not doing so. I hope it is not making anyone redundant, or not many anyway.

I bought that A3 printer and a few bits and pieces there, but my previous (now off-line spare) PC from an independent shop; and this one on-line directly from Dell, as factory-rebuilt.

My kitchen appliances are all from a local, independent retailer, very much on principle, but one that does not sell IT & Telecomms equipment.

If I do buy a new A3 printer it may be one of the Epson machines on the ‘Printerland’ website.

””’

Tom –

I was looking at drawing-boards on various dealers’ site last night! My local manufacturer, Blundell-Harling, was making them very recently but its web-site shows only one, very basic type. Yet others by the same manufacturer are listed on a retailer’s site.

You are right – I am not driving the software correctly. That’s because I cannot learn it to that level. I don’t blame it. I’m not trying to make it work as I think it should, but cannot drive it properly let alone fully.

There’s also a horse-for-courses aspect because I have two very different makes and each can offer me something the other does not. Comparing them:

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TurboCAD:

There are no useful instructions, but it is vaguely easy in orthographic-only, and is good for single-plane geometrical constructions. I find the 3D mode practically impossible, the printing process just baffling.

I do not know if TurboCAD intends you create a 3D model from which to derive the elevations, as in Alibre. What matters is that I can use its 2D option… only just, but just about enough.

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Alibre Atom:

Far easier than TurboCAD despite 3D-model based. It obligingly derives the elevations; it has no solids-generation traps; it gives easy multiple part copying to assemblies. I like its active dimension system too.

However I cannot grasp much of what the experts on here think basic. My limit is very simple, mainly symmetrical, assemblies of just a few easy parts… if I can get them to arrive the right way round. (Jason showed me which tool turns them round but usually, I can’t make it work.)

I find the printing system much simpler than TurboCAD’s but still difficult.

…..

So Alibre for single parts and simple assemblies. For complicated assemblies, TC, 2D elevations only.

….

So back to printers.

The summary of the above advice:

– Laser printer too expensive;

– Monochrome printers more expensive that their colour equivalents (oddly!)

– A printer might print to A3 but not necessarily copy or scan that size. A4 multi-function printers don’t have this problem.

– Any printer must be used regularly to keep it operating.

……

So to need:

I need printed drawings in the workshop.

Many drawings should be on A3 sheets; some might break into two A4 sheets. Not ideal but you can use a print-shop for important, finished-quality drawing files. It’s not worth that for a rough, preliminary, incomplete one to low quality.

Scaling and fitting a large drawing to A4 loses small details and notations.

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Am I going to need make many drawings?

I had not considered this until I demolished the broken printer!

My main project is a 4″-scale steam-wagon: no drawings available, just old advertisements and a few dimensions, so I have to design it as I go along. I started making proper drawings and when CAD became available to model-engineers I thought it would help me. Wrong. Too difficult, frustrating, even impossible.

So I used TurboCAD less and less; tried SolidWorks unsuccessfully, found Alibre much easier and with decent tutorial and reference manuals. (TurboCAD’s agent, Paul Tracy, supplied an introductory manual he’d written.)

Good progress with Alibre at first, not now.

I might still use CAD, having paid good money for it, only when really necessary. I cannot reach the standard of its regular users on here.

Having also dismantled my drawing-board, I don’t even make proper drawings on paper now.

…

Upshot:

Best way forwards –

CAD: limit it to occasional, low-level use within my low ability. TC for orthographic assembly-drawings; though poorly-legible prints not to scale.  Alibre for small, simple parts drawings I can dimension (to a point) and print clearly.

Don’t rush into buying a new A3 printer.

Seriously consider reviving my manual drawing for complex assemblies. I have a very basic board but would really need rebuild my dismantled A0 drawing-board, reducing it to A3, perhaps A2, capacity and building a new stand. (It was too big for a small house anyway, and extremely heavy!).

…..

Sometimes I fear I will never complete this wretched wagon, or if I do it won’t work. It has come through all manner of difficulties with me, including two workshop (with house) moves, other interests and spells of sheer lost enthusiasm.

Now though, perhaps trying to use CAD everyone else here finds easy, to help me design it properly so I can work to proper drawings and not forever have to replace parts made wrongly maybe some years previously, has just become yet another barrier to successful progress.

 

 

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

…
Now though, perhaps trying to use CAD everyone else here finds easy, to help me design it properly so I can work to proper drawings and not forever have to replace parts made wrongly maybe some years previously, has just become yet another barrier to successful progress.

 

 

 

Trust me Nigel, I’m a doctor, but absolutely no one thinks learning 3D-CAD is easy!   It’s true some take to it more naturally than others, but it’s no different from learning any significant skill – blood, sweat and tears, not instant gratification.

‘Common sense’ is no help whatsoever.  Previous experience is often grossly misleading, and beginners have no way of identifying what’s easy and what’s difficult.   Therefore it’s unwise to start with something as difficult as the design of a steam tractor!   Although CAD would be extraordinarily helpful in skilled hands, the tractor is an advanced project, too much for a learner.

Difficult learn has to be done step by step.  It requires discipline, not poking about randomly.  Start with the basics, do not move on until they’re mastered.  Go back whenever it’s found something anything been misunderstood.   Otherwise, later progress will be frustrated by misunderstandings and gaps.   Having to invent convoluted ways of achieving ordinary results is a symptom the learning process needs to be revisited.

Start with a simple single part, like a cotton reel.  After learning how to dimension and edit it, learn how to print it; there are many options.  Don’t dodge printing ‘because it’s not needed yet’.  Gripping ‘how to print’ early, means printing won’t add to the learning load later, at the same time an advanced CAD problem is being explored.  In contrast, a haphazard approach causes endless confusion, because important basics are skipped.

Nothing wrong with Nigel’s intelligence, but his approach to learning CAD is flawed.   It isn’t simple and there are no shortcuts.

Yesterday I had a clogged ink problem!   When I take proper notes, not often, I improve my handwriting by writing with a fountain pen.   Had to unblock the pen with repeated warm water flushes, and now have blue fingers.   This is what happens to little used InkJet printers, except they can’t be washed with water.  There’s nothing new under the sun.

One way of avoiding a dried up printer is to establish a maintenance routine: every 5 days, no matter what, print a test page.  We understand the need to regularly oil machines and the same principle applies to Inkjet printers.   Expecting one to work perfectly after a long lay-up is too optimistic.

Dave

 

 

[Colin WhittakerParticipant @colinwhittaker20544]

One of the hardships of living in the third world …. well Phuket … Is that you’ve got a computer and printer shop (Mr Com in my case) where three technicians (never less than two and more than four) are waiting to pull out you your print head and clean it in solvents and if that doesn’t work then order a replacement part from Bangkok. Only the latter gets expensive but then the new part generally works for several years. (Knock on wood.)

Well the HSBC soothing music is still playing as they struggle to out how I can send GBP to Thailand, so life isn’t perfect but I’ll happily suffer the smiling Thai girls and the indecently dressed Russians as I trundle round in my open top Series II land rover.

Good night all.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Dave –

I did not assume CAD would be easy.

Nor did I expect to design an entire vehicle after a few introductory CAD sessions. Its advantage to me is simply it allowing relatively rapid, editable parts drawing.

The experts are people who find it easy to learn difficult things, CAD or anything else.

I have given this business of learning, of anything,  a lot of thought.

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Many of my friends and relatives have gained a Degree. I know they needed use masses of sheer hard graft, but could understand and remember great floods of facts and principles thanks to innate, high IQ and high learning ability.

I cannot progress beyond low levels, and learning one area can “over-write” previous ones. (I know analogies between brains and computers are flawed.) Also, I learn in odd, patchy, irregular ways.

For example, I found a few Maths topics moderately simple but others impossible. It took years and a fluke to realise what is Differentiation. Matrices are totally incomprehensible: abstract sums, undefined terms, no connection to anything.

(I learnt later Matrices are for… solving giant blocks of simultaneous equations and vectors. Oh, yes, natural GCSE material then. They were developed by Prof. Charles Dodgson as a sideline from writing about a girl falling down a very deep shaft into weird adventures… no wonder matrices are so surreal and un-wordly!)

So I cannot learn CAD properly because it relies on remembering and understanding all relevant parts of it equally well.

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Thankyou for your compliment about my intelligence. There is something odd about it.

My NHS Record shows at age 8, unspecified mental problems and an unusually high IQ, about 140. Only, that does not mean anything. It was the result of one clinical examination and I was, and am, slow to learn. A medical-lecturer friend told me most intelligence-tests are only academic learning estimates anyway.

I am nowhere near that IQ; but more to the point is how one learns.

‘

Learning is a mixture of memory and ability to understand. I don’t know the physiology but believe (cannot test) we develop internal, finite, specific limits for each area of study or skill. We cannot predict or control these.

I used to liken it to filling buckets on a beach with water from the sea, but a new, similar analogue recently surfaced.

Put small, labelled trays on your bench for nuts and screws. Fill each tray. Once heaped, extra fastenings just fall off onto the bench or floor. There they lay, not readily identifiable, all jumbled up. Some join the spiders in inaccessible havens. You cannot open further packets of screws because the trays are full.

Learning’s “brain trays” are not “2BA”, etc., but “Maths”, “Welsh”, “CAD”, “Finance”, “Playing the Organ”, etc. etc. The trays are all of different capacities with no clear, or any, relation to contents, outside your control. Same thing though: once each tray is full, further facts topple into a mental clutter or complete loss. This stops further progress and over time, the tray and contents shrink.

Back in the workshop, leave an empty tray on the bench, invite the local wood-mouse in overnight. He will tidy the bench by hoarding the fallen fasteners in the spare tray. Though a foggy jumble smelling of mouse wee, they are all there and recoverable.

Only, we have no mental wood-mouse and spare-facts tray, and the scattered facts rapidly evaporate or rust away.

‘

Unlike the physical trays we cannot add more or deeper mental ones. Those are as individual and natural as our faces.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Just as an aside, not sure why a drawing board needs to be at all complex – a flat piece of wood/ suitable material with one straight side, preferably on the left.

T-square, 45 and 60/30 degree set squares, an adjustable one if you’re posh.

Simples.

Rob

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Elm boards with loose Tee-squares and set-squares were the order of the day for the manufacturers of the machines we replicate in miniature, and the drawings they made were often of extraordinary complexity and quality. Look for example at the General Arrangements, often half-sectioned, of railway locomotives: a forest of hidden-detail lines and cross-hatching. While the tinted drawings probably made for contracts-bidding of installations like bridges, were often more art than architectural design, and there were standard colours for materials.

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My first drawing-board was just a large sheet of half-inch plywood, which I covered with plastic drawing-board material resembling a smooth version of that sometimes used for bathroom-floor mats. It suffered from vertical storage, with the plastic slowly coming adrift and subsiding.

The only covering material I can find now is the “Papyroboard” brand, though others might exist. Another user of this site had showed me that, a year or so ago when I was trying to re-assemble my dismantled board! I have used thick cardboard or a couple of sheets of paper, but not very satisfactorily.

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Though not of hardwood, similar boards are still made although with sliding rules in place of Tee-squares. I have one such, which will just take an A3 sheet, but its action feels a bit uncertain.

The only thing that seems to have gone is the parallelogram-motion draughting-head, in favour of the rail-mounted type.

The advantage of the fully-equipped version with two-rule, protractor head on orthogonal rails is convenience – and Tee-squares tend to fall off sloping boards!

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Tee-squares, set-squares and other drawing instruments are all still available too.

CAD is so widespread now, for many reasons that must include much more rapid drawing and ready editing in expert hands; and it was its use by my own employer that inspired me to buy TurboCAD when that became readily available at a sensible prices to amateurs. Even so, since conventional drawing-boards and tables, from simple boards with sliding rules to full “draughting-machines”, are still made and sold, they must have applications and advantages over CAD even for professional users.

One is that you can study, take information from and annotate existing drawings, maps, etc., and as a single example I have used this to plot a geological cross-section from the map.

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel Graham 2, I don’t posses any high skills of CAD, but technical drawing (as it was called at my senior school) was one of my best and favourite lessons, I do have a fully adjustable pro 50″ x 36″ drawing board, with a sliding rule, which I obtained free from a drawing office, that was been cleared by one of my workmates father many years ago. But I do have an A3 size one, albeit made of plastic, which I bought from Ryman stationery, it has a T type square, that clips into a groove, a groove which is on all four edges, so it could be handy for left handed people, but also can be used in portrait mode.

A conventional T square though, can be used in place of the clip on one. I can use it on my lap fairly easily for short periods, but a suitable easel for tilting it up slightly would make better use of it, but I don’t do much serious drawing these days.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Ah – I have something very similar, given to me by my neighbour. I think it was a left-over from a WI sale or something. It has two rather flimsy protractor / square units, non-adjustable and no clear way to fit them to the rule so I think there is something missing. And a missing foot.

I’ve also a Blundell-Harling equivalent, rather more robust. At least, I did have. All I can find is the rule! You wouldn’t think it’s possible to mislay an A3-size drawing-board in a small 2-up-2-down house, but it is.

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I had another go at Alibre this evening: the drawing below.

I have a ‘Stent’ Tool-&-Cutter Grinder given to me incomplete, err, a long time ago and it’s time I completed it. So this week I made a spreadsheet inventory of the parts to be completed or made completely, and these include the “Main Feed Screw”.

I discovered I’d made its guide 5/16″ too short so set out to create a new drawing of the screw to compensate for the error, and make all the dimensions decimal.

The threads are both 3/8″ BSF. Plotting threads is in the same league as gear-teeth, cam profiles, developments &c. That tutorial using a Scribing-block has you draw a thread, but it’s very difficult and fortunately not normally done for a standard thread.

Once I managed to draw the shaft and its pinned-on collar I had problems trying to assemble those 2 parts. Importing the Parts into the Assembly was very chancy and I have no idea what Alibre really wanted me to do, but we got there somehow. Then having made a Drawing, with much faffing with the scales, the dimensions revealed I’d made another mistake in the length.

Nowt for it but to start the whole drawing again right from scratch.

This time dimensioning revealed the result of being unable to make the Constraints work properly, to set the collar face co-incident with the face on the shaft. Hence the annotations!

The 2 top lengths should be 4.75 and 4.25″ but are not so critical.

The important one is that shown as 4.245, hence the “Correction” – this error due to having to slide the collar along the shaft by eye.

The overall length would just fit an A4 sheet but not necessarily the printer’s own margins; also I have not found if you can adjust the position of each elevation on the page once you’ve planted it. So I drew it at 1.5 : 1. Well, possibly. There are two menus, showing different values by default, so that’s clear isn’t it?

 

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