What did you do today? 2023

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Posted by Oldiron on 19/04/2023 21:05:11:

Posted by Jelly on 19/04/2023 19:59:43:

Currently sat answering a set of clarification questions from IChemE in response to the Chartered Engineer application I made back in 2021.

I can't say I am super-impressed by the turnaround time, or the attention to detail by the reviewers, but ultimately they're all volunteers and IChemE's directions to the reviewers sems to actively discourage digging into the details, so it is what it is.

What's particularly infuriating though is that because I don't have a neat tidy modern MEng as my educational background I have to essentially duplicate the entire process, resulting in a total of four separate application forms and two interviews each of which comes with its own fees and waiting period.

Well good luck Jelly. I hope you are successful in your application.

regards

Thanks!

I'll post up how I got on in "What did you do today? 2025" I guess (though I am hoping it will be a mite quicker than that).

Had fun completing a question about my knowledge of other engineering disciplines, topping off my relevant experience with a list of additional qualifications from "UKCA Machinery Safety Compliance Assessment" to "BS 4872 and BS EN 9606 coded welder"…

I hesitate to think what the assessor will make of a "professional engineer" having vocational qualifications, hopefully it's someone from an Ops background who will get the value of having experience on the tools rather than a Designer or Academic who has lofty ideals of what engineers should be.

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Sorted out some 14mm×22mm M12 T-Nuts, allowing me to mount the vice on the new mill and cut the first chips, very happy with that, performance is if anything better than expected.

However, in the process I did manage to snap the handle which tensions the belt in the head, which appeared to have been cracking from a stress riser in the threads for years and chose today to let go, less happy about that.

However, I was able to come up with a novel method of broken bolt removal, if you drill two 3mm holes in a broken M12 stud, you can then use an impact driver to put two self tapping screws in the holes and wind it out with a mole-grip.

The handle had enough length to just cut an additional section of threads with a die and reinsert it, so it's a happy ending… Although I might re-make it at some point as you do feel the loss of leverage a bit when tensioning the belts.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, today after three days of trying to un-seize my Record No. 75 vice by using penetrating oil and a bit of bashing with a hammer and letting it soak in penetrating oil overnight. Mine you, it had been sitting in the footwell of an Austin car derived van for a few years, and as I've not been able to open the front doors for quite some time as the locks on them have been seized for quite a while, and I hadn't realised that the footwell filled with water every time it rained. So today was a Monty Carlo or bust kind of day, as I showed it how hot it could get with my big burner on my propane torch, with a couple of heating sessions and some hammering, it finally yielded, but it still needed a bit of toing and froing with penetrating oil and hammering before it finally gave up altogether.

After a bit of wire brushing using my 4-1/2" angle grinder, it looks a lot tidier, and maybe next week I might get a new coat of paint on it.

I'll probably ditch those lever operated swivel base bolts and use socket head ones instead, as I can see those levers are going to bug me, as they are bound to get in the way of something.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 22/04/2023 22:29:30

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

A little 2 1/2 in vice appeared in the Men's Shed today with an odd mounting which I immediately recognised and could have cried to see such ill-treatment.
Back 110 years ago Drummond Pre-B lathes had a topslide with a single bolt mounting foot in line with the slide and a fixed half inch stud in the slide top to hold the toolpost. Well this had been turned upside down to use the stud probably into a bench or drill table and the vice had a single bolt fixing used onto the foot. So it did provide a single direction positioning function. AAAAAgh. Topslide has been rescued and is convalescing.
Also a Pratt 'empire No7' 2 jaw drill chuck with the rusted in arbor cut off with an angle grinder or something. Will have to drill and bore that out. Probably was once used on the same lathe. I wonder what happened to the rest of it.

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

Nick Farr,

Does the curved lug on the bottom of the moving jaw serve a purpose? ..Is it for bending / cold-forming?

Nice.

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

Posted by DiogenesII on 23/04/2023 07:32:26:

Nick Farr,

Does the curved lug on the bottom of the moving jaw serve a purpose? ..Is it for bending / cold-forming?

Nice.

It was indeed intended to be used as a pipe bender

[Mike HurleyParticipant @mikehurley60381]

After carefully re-jigging a universal dividing head to fit my small Mill (WM14), making a tiny Mod 1 gear cutter, arbor, gear blank etc all together many hours of work – set it up ready to cut my first clock gear (test using aluminium blank). Ages spent setting the cutter height spot on – Oh the anticipation!

Rookie mistake – realised there simply wasn't enough travel on the table. Decided to give up model engineering totally and take up flower arranging.

OK, had to dismantle the cutter assy, re drill and set the bit further in so should be OK now – but is it just me or sometimes why is it you just can't see / check the bleeding obvious?

(Table Fully forward)

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

So I woke up early this morning and decided to be productive, by 7 am I had cleared two workbenches of clutter, swept up, and figured out how to adjust the split nut on the new mill to take up backlash (it's down to 4 thou from 9.5, I can get zero backlash but it makes it unpleasantly stiff, may have to replace/remake the nuts/leadscrew if I want it to be any better)…

At which point I decided to do another of those I'd been putting off for ages, and move the 24"×24" cast iron surface plate up onto the welding bench (it was declared uneconomic to rescrape by several surface plate companies, but it's still more than good enough for fab work)… By the time I was fully committed, it became apparent that it would be a very difficult lift to say the least, (given that now I remember I did weigh it and it's 142kg), I think my shoulders will forgive me eventually but it's not going to be today.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi DiogenesII, as Craig has said, it's for pipe bending. I don't have an illustration of the No. 75, which is a garage vice, but the scan below shows the similar No. 74, which is an auto vice, and is smaller.

Regards Nick.

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

^

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Finally completed testing the 3 phase wiring in my workshop after moving everything around.

I now have the Phase Converter going into an Inlet on the side of the distribution board, which goes to a 30ma RCD, then to individual MCB's for each radial circuit for a socket.

I could regret it if I find that I want to use anything with inverter drives in the future, but otherwise was the cheapest way to achieve compliance with the 18th edition and is substantially safer than having trailing leads on the floor to the RPC, it also future proofs things if I want to use a genset rather than the converter down the road.

.

Followed up by beginning to strip down the big welder for a proper overhaul, before it was time to head out.

.

Then rounded the day off by attending a Panel Discussion organised by the Joint Professional Engineering Institutions Committee: Does Decarbonisation mean Deindustrialisation for the Sheffield City Region", which far from being doom and gloom actually highlighted:

• the significant number of good jobs and apprenticeships being created as a result of manufacturing demand created by new green technologies,
• the huge investments being made by all three of the remaining steel mills in the city in low/zero carbon steelmaking technology,
• a joint project with EDF to build a 300MW green hydrogen plant to supply high volumes of gas for industrial use to all three steelmakers and several large forging companies which has now completed a feasibility study and initial trials,
• a project to establish a consortium of several companies to form an integrated manufacturing supply chain for small modular reactors feeding an assembly plant utilising the Davy-Markham manufacturing site which is currently stood idle, they have the financing to build 3 GE-Hitachi BWRX-300, but are waiting for the customer to get government approval for the proposed location the reactors would be going to.

All very cool stuff.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

That all looks a very fruitful future for Sheffield, then. Good news indeed!

++++

I completed the straining part of my steam-wagon's water-tank strainer.

Using Vee-blocks for support; and the end-fitting's own spanner-flats with a square and spacers as crude "indexing", drilling lots of little perforations in a 5-in length of 15mm copper plumbing pipe, actually went quite well.

The milling-machine would have been overkill although it does accommodate a 'Vertex'-clone dividing head and has a DRO. Unfortunately its quill has been incurably very stiff ever since I bought the machine several years ago, putting delicate drilling out of the question.

The Meddings bench-drill probably runs fast enough for tiny drills (which may need a pin-chuck) but I doubted my applying sufficient feed sensitivity.

So I used the BCA jig-borer for its ability to use little drills, though a properly-balanced quill rather than screw feed would have been nice! Such a task would be enhanced by a simple spin-indexer sized for the BCA, perhaps to hold my EW lathe chucks or ER collets.

Especially when drilling so many 1mm dia holes, all 552 of them.

…..

Then after tea…

A little more work on that strainer, followed by coming to grief with an Alibre tutorial.

===

Oh naughty words… I've just remembered I do have a very simple, compact indexer, somewhere; using a gear as a dividing-plate! It carries an ordinary drill-chuck, but that's not insuperable. Will have to investigate…..

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Very prompt service from Metals4U: a batch of aluminium extrusions I ordered on Monday, arrived this afternoon.

This as I've somehow volunteered to make 16 "Heyphone" ariel reels for the Mendip Cave Rescue. Each reel consists of two strips held apart by two cylindrical spacers, a bit like those seaside crab-bothering line reels.

16-off reels so 32 each side-bars and spacers…

Then started setting up the workshop for the batch work.

= Depth-stop on the ML7 spindle, for facing and centre-drilling the spacers.

= Drilling-vice on the Progress bench-drill for depth-drilling the spacers then threading them, using a tapping-head for the spacers. Why not drill to depth on the lathe? Using the bench-drill is easier and quicker. I may replace the vice with a 3-jaw chuck on a base-plate.

= Fence with end-stop on the milling-machine table for making the bars – though I may use the smaller Meddings bench drill for their screw-holes, after drilling the first on the mill to use as a setting-gauge.

'

The photo below is my "drawing" and Estelle says her hand-span there is 7 inches, so for the racehorse breeders among you, 1-3/4 Hand long. I took the picture at the end of a cave-rescue practice I'd attended, on the surface only, as ex-officio observer and photographer.

.

The 'Heyphone' is somewhere between Ultra Low Frequency radio and induction-telephone, capable of two-way communication through a significant depth of rock between two ariels that are just long wire dipoles laid along the ground or cave floor between earth-plates, with the instrument connected at mid-point. The electronics live in a dedicated "Pelicase" – a rugged, waterproof plastic carrying-box. The ariels on their reels fit in a small kit-bag.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

re above: cited a photo but didn't attach it!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Spent half the morning on that ex-MEW Alibre exercise (scribing-block), finishing the parts as best I could.

Otherwise, completed the first-off of the ariel reels as in the photo above. It is for "Inspection Department" approval prior to making the rest of the 16 they need, and partly to assess my workshop arrangements and methods for the task.

Examining the photograph closely reveals the reel has two sections, the lower much narrower than the upper, but I'm assured that's not necessary.

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

I started to prepare the vegetable plot ready to plant out the seeds I've been growing in my conservatory. Runner beans, courgettes, red onions (I seem to have developed an adverse reaction to other onions), abd beetroot. The seed I potted up a few weeks back is really growing well. The beans are nearly 6 inches tall, and the courgettes about 3. I managed about three hours of weeding before I had to stop.

[Chris Pearson 1Participant @chrispearson1]

Continuing the gardening theme: notwithstanding that there is work to be done in the workshop, I trimmed more of my 9 ft conifer hedge. It isn't getting any easier as I get older and more arthritic!

But, why are badgers (I think) digging up my potato patch?

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

Got hold of an Angle Plate cleaned and repainted, plus a 85mm/45degree(100mm) Sine Vice which I cleaned, repainted and replaced knobs with bolts & split washers to tighten angle down properly its good condition.
I also got hold of a RongFu RF-115 bandsaw which throw blades=Found main pulley loose plus other pully bush ok, but it had a 10mm forward/backward play=I am going to restore this one so completely disassemble it, will have some parts sand blasted and repainted soon, to replace all bearings

Edited By Chris Mate on 01/05/2023 23:09:22

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Posted by Chris Pearson 1 on 01/05/2023 22:57:11:

Continuing the gardening theme: notwithstanding that there is work to be done in the workshop, I trimmed more of my 9 ft conifer hedge. It isn't getting any easier as I get older and more arthritic!

But, why are badgers (I think) digging up my potato patch?

Maybe because Badgers are rather partial to worms amongst other things?

Certainly dig up my garden and no spuds there!

 

 

Edited By V8Eng on 01/05/2023 23:41:13

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

A friend told me that she couldn't plant bulbs (no, not electric light bulbs, that would be silly) in her garden because badgers were very partial to them. Are potatoes bulbs?

The badgers in my garden dig chunks out of the lawn, but not too much in the flower or veg beds. The deer on the other hand, prefer the roses.

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

Snapped the arm of my favourite wire-framed reading/workshop glasses across the eye.

Managed to scarf in a piece of thin brass strip with hard solder (I was rather waiting for everything to instantaneously vanish in the flame) and then drilled the 1.4mm pivot-hole on the Warco Major, before spending a jolly quarter of an hour filing it to shape peering at progress through a magnifying glass at intervals.

A successful outcome.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Posted by lee webster on 02/05/2023 00:08:43:

A friend told me that she couldn't plant bulbs (no, not electric light bulbs, that would be silly) in her garden because badgers were very partial to them. Are potatoes bulbs?

The badgers in my garden dig chunks out of the lawn, but not too much in the flower or veg beds. The deer on the other hand, prefer the roses.

Hi, and Muntjacs are apparently the only animal that eat Bluebells, which there used to be a good bed of them at the back of mine a few years ago, but have now all gone.

Regards Nick.

[Iain DownsParticipant @iaindowns78295]

My excitement was to do with a dripping tap. One of the single pillar kitchen taps with quarter turn.

Wasn't too bad and we are selling the house, so wasn't worried. then it turned from a drip to a trickle and looked like getting worse. Of course I have no idea what tap it is and the Franke picture which looked like it has a totally different cartridge.

I have found one on the interweb which may be right, but it was going to take a while to come (bank holiday), so I took a short term hammer approach and gunged up the cartridge with araldite. Stopped the drip. We have no hot water in the kitchen mind, but that's why kettles (and more to the point dishwashers) were invented.

I know you mustn't let araldite near food and will run plenty of water through before use once the replaced.

My fear is that the only one I've found online won't fit and I will have to change the tap – something that requires a double jointed contortionist with fingers of steel.

Iain

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

We have a 25 year old Franke tap that started dripping a couple of years ago, I paid mega money for the proper cartridges only to discover that they were no different to the cheap as chips ones from the high street plumbing merchants.

[PeroParticipant @pero]

You may find that a piece of grit has become stuck between the two ceramic plates. If you work through it carefully you can dismantle the cartridge, give it a clean, reassemble and all is well. I think I found the method on an interweb video.

If the worst has happened and one of the ceramic plates has cracked, buy the cheapest tap you can find, swap over the ceramic plate and all should be well – the plates all seem to be the same.

If doing a DIY and replacing the whole tap be sure to check the operation of the replacement – 1/4 or 1/2 turn and clockwise or anti-clockwise operation. The are all different and I have a number of unwanted spares to prove it!

Best of luck

Pero

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