What did you do today? 2023

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, I think Chris is getting confused, as the two pairs that are standing against the wall, with the left pair with the folds facing away from the wall, and with right pair with the folds facing towards the wall, so it looks as if there is a left and right hand of each of the two different sides.

Regards Nick.

[Anonymous]

Further exposition will have to wait until the new, improved, website is in operation. But here is a taster of progress to date; the lefthand side:

And righthand side:

The steps and water pocket were made over a year ago to my own design, based on the full-size engines. I don't think I posted any details here at the time. I am happy to do so if people are interested.

Andrew

[Anonymous]

I think I see where the confusion has arisen. The order of the sides is LRRL, but are shown two inside and two outside, as Nick says.

The sides follow the full-size engines, except for the one in the Burrell museum which has the driver cutout and brake on the other side to all the other engines for which I have pictures.

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Having now seen Nicks post and enlarged the image I can see the way the flanges face so you won't have a "pair" as you do with ploughing engines

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Andrew –

Thankyou for that link!

That's a very reasonable price at £35 for 20.

Interesting that the manufacturers, William Lees & Sons, say on their site's home-page they sell to distributors and private buyers too. At one time industrial companies would only sell to industry, even though that may include distributors.

I see they stock 'Clecos' pins and their pliers too, as well as other tools including a slew of mysterious bars and clamps no doubt intended for building aeroplanes and similarly highly-specialised work..

Anyway I have added that to my ever-growing 'Engineering' bookmark index.

[Chris GunnParticipant @chrisgunn36534]

Nick and Andrew, I see it now, At first glance I thought they were all the same way round leaning against the wall. I have just had a reminder I need to go to Specsavers for an eye test, so need to follow that up.

Chris Gunn

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, I've had a large door from a scrapped electrical control panel for several years, it's made from 1.5mm steel. I got it for a tray for my Chester Champion milling machine, and yesterday I started to alter it, which was to round off the two square corners that will be at the front of the machine. I wanted a good size radius on them so they wouldn't hurt to much if I happened to bump into them, and they will make it look better. So using an 8" MIG welding wire spool, I marked a radius on the folded up side of the door, and at the point where the small radius of the folds start, and I then drilled five small holes spaced out from one end of the scribed line to the other, on the waist side of the scribed line. I then turned the door over to what was the outside of it, and scribed a new line at the edge of the small holes, using the same spool. this then enabled me to cut along the scribed line with my jig saw.

Using a hacksaw with the blade upside down in the frame, I could saw along the two folded edges, at the point where the small radius is, towards the square corner, and then though the edge corner itself.

Today starting with the two edges that will be at the front, I heated them up and gently tapped them round the edge I cut with my jig saw and welded them into place, and then heated the other two edges and tapped them round to a point where I could determine where to cut them, to butt up to the front two edges, and then finish heating and bending to line them up and welding. Once all the welding was done, they were dressed with a flap disc in my 4-1/2" angle grinder, to give the nice profile of the small radius of the folded edges.

I have also removed most of the old paint from the side of the tray that can be seen in the above photo, and you should notice the the two holes the the door catches were in, have been filled and flushed off.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 04/10/2023 22:08:01

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Interesting approach, Nick.

All looking the part, as if an original pressed-steel tray supplied by Chester with the machine.

Did you use a former for the bending or simply tap the flange gently all the way along each part until it met the flat? I was wondering how you persuaded the web to bend without cockling.

I'll have to remember that tip for turning the saw inside-out. It's a shame 'Abrafiles' seem to have vanished but I've found those abrasive-wire blades sold by builders' merchants, I think for cutting tiles, will cut mild-steel fairly well. Sometimes when cutting sheet metal I back it closely, even including the cut itself, with some scrap board, with more wood clamped on top, to deaden the vibration and prevent too much "flapping".

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel, no former was used, each one was just heated to a dull red progressively and gently tapped with a smallish hammer to meet the flat, but after welding each piece, they did need a little dressing to shape.

Regards Nick.

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

As to recent infornmation and learning, I am going to make 1-a dual indicator tramming device for mill, I got the parts, some turning milling & drilling and small boring for a good fit, then see where it lands. 2-to try to fit a normal indicator onto a coaxial indicator to try to monitor what it is measuring, and see if the basic design of it is usable without the indicator fitted to it.

Edited By Chris Mate on 05/10/2023 07:25:54

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

“401 through 410” it says there. Could do with British-isms not Americanisms!

Catching up a bit over the interegnum….

Two days at the Midlands Model Engineering Exhibition: Thursday as a visitor crossing our suppliers’ palms with plastic; Saturday as a steward on the MSRVS stand.

As in the past I camped on a small site just outside Harbury. The village is only about 3 miles from the venue, easy to reach from the Fosse Way or Leamington – Southam road; and well supplied with shops and pubs.

On the Friday, having done a little prior research, I took the bus to Royal Leamington Spa to enjoy the riverside gardens in tee-shirt weather.

……….

Arrived home to a bank statement with some very odd looking payees indeed. Worried, I did some detective work.

The biggest transfer, <£100, was to a Tipton manufacturer of fancy door knobs and knockers: it transpired they own College Engineering Supplies from whom I had bought materials for collecting at the show. While all those payments to something vague in Crewe were really through ‘Central’ franchise shops; and £20 to a local dancing school called ‘Platinum’ was really for petrol from a local Esso garage using a payment system also called “Platinum”!

Why don’t the documents show points of sale as well as the accounts-addresses?

……..

Having bought all that cast-iron for my wagon’s cylinders, the last thing I want is to mess it up, so I need design it fully and carefully. Experimenting with how to draw it, gave me an unexpected bonus in CAD, that of using two separate makes to dodge round obstacles too difficult in either make alone.

So Alibre Atom to create the basic model: full cuboid outline, the HP and LP bores, cylinder-cover stud holes, ports; but not passages and other internal details. One of Luker’s locomotive drawings showed how to avoid some horrible mistakes in my first attempt.

Then I turned that into five elevations translated in .dwg form to TurboCAD’s orthographic-only mode, to add the details too hard in Alibre but fairly easy in TurboCAD’s 2D-only mode. I need full elevation drawings for workshop use anyway.

Similarly the GA for the engine and transmission can only be an orthographic TurboCAD drawing.

The two systems are near-opposites. Alibre Atom is moderately easy for single, simple, especially symmetrical 3D Part models from which to derive dimensioned elevations; but seems to have no full orthographic option from scratch. Whereas TurboCAD offers both full 2D and 3D options; its 2D mode is fairly easy for me now, its 3D model mode is impossible.

Forming Assemblies in Atom is difficult though importing Parts from their own models is easy. I’ve no idea how to import and assemble them in TC.

So common file formats between them are useful to me. I may have to investigate transferring the finished TC drawing back to Alibre for printing though. TC’s printing system is utterly baffling!

I may then make a dummy version of the cylinder block in wood and plastic to ensure I don’t have holes in the wrong places, etc.

……

Finally, I succeeded in wrecking my HP A3-size inkjet printer, bought for CAD drawings.

Long periods of disuse had clogged the plumbing but an on-line video suggested it is easy to remove the cartridge and nozzle assembly to flush it. It’s surprising just how much ink it holds! Unfortunately mine was a slightly different version from the machine shown, and re-assembled, it went totally haywire. I’ve obviously done something wrong or broken some hidden detail; but have no idea what.

It was a gamble, because if not restorable, it would be scrap due only to dried ink. Printer repairers are as rare as poultry dentists, except to commercial companies with many printers. Curry’s, from whom I’d bought the thing, don’t repair anything but did give me the details of a local repairer!

So I am taking it there tomorrow to see….. If it’s not feasible then unfortunately it’s off to the Council skip-yard, despite barely five hours’ use in its life.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Was away today but this led to a possible line of enquiry for which I wanted to find a photo I thought I had saved in my Albums on the Forum.

Am now spitting rivets at it……

Not only is this new site messy and clumsy but it seems to have destroyed our albums! Re-opening one thread I had started, revealed its images; but their original archive has gone. Or is extraordinarily well hidden. Or closed even to the photo owners.

The word “Albums” does not even appear, and the “Gallery” has about a dozen random entries.

On a gamble I copied the address of that thread, omitting just the individual photograph and tried searching from the browser. It merely displayed a very aggressive “Unauthorized [sic] access” notice.

.

Hopefully the image is still on my previous, now off-line, PC (along with many others), possibly on this if I can find the right folder. If not I must assume it lost for ever. I recall we were warned to copy everything before this change but I assumed as a precaution, not because all our Forum photos would be deleted!

…..

Still, this is on the Internet and as we all know the Internet exists to facilitate communications and the archiving and exchanging of information…..   doesn’t it?

.

Just as Microsoft did when it up-dated my PC from Windoze-10 to 11 without asking and shattered my carefully-assembled sets of photographs generally. It took me some hours to wrest them all back from Gates Towers and re-archive them, starting by creating a home directory called “Photographs”. Mickeysoft had invented one called “Pictures” (‘cos foe-toe-graffs is a long word) and thrown them all in one jumbled mess into that…

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Nigel,

Everyone was warned well in advance of the old version shutting down to download the content of their albums as they would disappear on the new forum.  Didn’t worry me as I don’t store pictures on here or anywhere else other than on backed up hard drives, I just upload copies.

I only got on here Saturday and the first thing I noticed was the latest posts function missing (yes I have seen all the comments and explanations and understand it is being addressed).  I guess like many others commenting I am of the “older generation” and lean towards the “change is bad” end of the spectrum but I also understand change is necessary and still kind of working I have to embrace change, I even welcome and drive it when it brings about an improvement.

I have spent a couple of hours exploring the “new world”, it is different!  I haven’t tried posting a picture or video yet but am lead to believe this is now simpler.  I never had a problem posting pictures on the old site, was a bit clunky but it worked.  Never embedded a video but managed to insert a link.  So taking the comments re pictures and videos for granted I guess we have an improvement.  I haven’t experienced annoying pop ups as others have reported so guess this has been turned off for the while?  Maybe I am lucky.  Logging in was a faff but I have managed to keep my old password so that’s a bonus and so far I haven’t had to re verify I exist or been logged off.  However, general navigation is I think awkward.  I have been looking at the time since last post in the main forum index to identify if there is anything of interest having tried the latest post temporary fix and found it limited.  Navigating from the main index requires clicking through several pages, all taking time to load and if I use the back button regularly getting the “resubmit form” pop up (being addressed I understand).

Overall, I have never been a regular contributor on the forum, the holier than thou attitude of some of the contributors can make it annoying.  The changes so far personally I don’t consider have improved the experience for me, so this upgrade is unlikely to encourage me to increase my activity here.  Hopefully it will get better!

Paul.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel, if you put your name, as you use it on here, into the Blue search box, you will find every post that you have made, and will find any pictures you used in any of those posts. It might be a bit of a trawl to go through them all, but if you know roughly when you posted a picture you are looking for, it shouldn’t take too long.

Regards Nick.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Nick,

Where is the Blue Search box.  I cannot see one on my screen or even the word ‘Search.

Colin

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Colin, if you click “forums” along the green bar you should then hopefully see the list of headings, top right of that is a box to type in and a blue rectangle to click to start your search, just under the red FAQs/Help button

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Jason,

Many Thanks.  Would never have seen that in a thousand years.

Colin

[BaldricParticipant @baldric]

A few years ago, I was given a box of bits, I realised it was a machinists jack, but did not really look at it in detail, today I cleaned it up, only to find there are bits missing.

Looking on the internet, I found the same brand, Lushington, see https://www.thetoolsquirrel.co.uk/ourshop/prod_7622465-2-x-Lushington-1178-1176-Engineers-Jacks-With-Extension-Blocks.html

I assumed that these would be American, but luckily the thread is 7/16″ BSF & I have a pair of taps for that. A few hours later, I had working machinists jacks.

Baldric

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, after finishing the painting of my new stand and tray for my old Chester Champion mill/drill, today I was able to fit the adjustable pivoting machine mounts, and assemble the machine onto it.

 

Regards Nick

[Peter Jones 20Participant @peterjones20]

Today?

So far not much but yesterday I finally managed to drill and bore some holes in hard stainless cutter blades (really really cheap, $0.50 each, 35p?) using a 3/16″ solid carbide centre cutting end mill as a ‘drill’, opening with a broken 3/8″ straight flute drill I picked up 25 years ago (really bad grind even with green grit wheel, chisel point too wide) and boring head to open to 0.680″

Next comes the mounting plate (old stainless steel motorcycle brake rotor off some Harley Davidson ‘something’

It’s going on my walk behind 6.5hp strimmer (weed whacker in US) as things are a ‘bit overgrown’

Still have to enlarge holes in rotor a little (either 10mm, 7/16″ or 1/2″ for high tensile bolts) then make some hardened bushings for blades to pivot on.

No one makes a ‘ 22″ diameter blade’ for walk behind but hand held are easy to find in 7″ or 10″.

Not being an engineer I’m making it stronger than really necessary?

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

I’ve been doing some preparatory tool making and practicing techniques:

Rod

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, not so much as what I did today, but more to do with what DNL delivered at about midday, today. Having ordered  a ER25 Collet chuck from Warco to fit their 75 & 100mm rotary tables https://www.warco.co.uk/rotary-tables-engineering-tools/302813-er-25-collet-chuck-for-75mm-rotary-table.html about mid morning yesterday, I certainly can’t moan about delivery time. So I checked it all out and it is just fine for my Warco 75mm RT. I just used their Friday15 voucher, which made it a nicer price, and as it happens, it also fits onto my old Soba 4″ RT. as well,  https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/name-that-rotary-table/#post-139628

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

A gentle morning at the Club track. Only half a dozen members present, probably due to the weather prospects; but between us saw gardening / grounds-keeping, a repair to part of the 16mm-scale track and some plastic sleeper making before the sky started leaking.

 

Back home, I started work on completing a boring-table for my Harrison L5 lathe. I’d bought it with the housing for the nut still to be made, so spent a while working out how to locate this, a counterbored hole.

I already have a genuine Harrison table, but I think for a different lathe, or at least different L5 edition. It fits the saddle but is so massive it loses a lot of useful height and pushes the tailstock further back than I’d like.

This beautifully-made home-made one, via a private-sales ad on this Forum, is longer but only a little wider and higher than the normal cross-slide. I measured the crucial width difference by referencing, using a straight-edge and drill shanks, with the two units on the cross ways.

Ii will have to think how to swap units easily. Normally you’d slide them on and off the back but I don’t have room behind the lathe. Moving the lathe forwards three inches would make the workshop even more cramped than it is already!

….

I preparing for this I was dismayed to discover the thrust-bearing on the tail-end of the lead-screw, and that on the cross-slide handle, are breaking up. Goodness knows how long they’ve been like it, but luckily BearingBoys at least, list equivalents.

…

 

Oh – and Moderators……

Can you please turn that blasted Unlimited Reads ad off! It is big, bright yellow thing alternating at <1 second flash half-second rate, right next to the entry panel so right in your eyes, and very uncomfortable as a result. It’s basically a bright-yellow strobe-lamp flashing in your face.

There is no excuse for gimmicks like that.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, have been getting fed up with that awful flashing all my reads ad, so I’ve used a WWII idea that they called a Blackout.

Covers up all that glaring white space to the right as well. It’s just a piece of black card, which can be taken out of the way when required.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

That’s an idea!

The ads pay for the Forum and we do use some of the advertisers, but should not be intrusive.

Perhaps we’ll see plans in the magazine for a well-engineered, hinged cover!

.

Completed the Harrison lathe’s boring-table yesterday evening, and it fits correctly! The critical point was an off-set not easy to measure accurately. Though the necessary counterbore does just nick a T-slot’s outer wall by my being too cautious with a long-ways dimension change.(Irritating but harmless.)

Now need order grub-screws for its gib, and more importantly new thrust-bearings for the lathe screws. Also make a small modification to the cross-slide handle to facilitate exchanging the units. Or an access hole in the workshop wall!

This table was made but not quite finished, by the father of the lady who sold it for him, via this Forum.

I already had an original Harrison boring-table but probably for the slightly larger version of the L5, as it fits the ways but is too wide and tall for my edition. So will create an ad for selling that.

[Author]

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