Member postings for ronan walsh

The newer vfd's or inverters , have the ability to "assess", for want of a better word, the motor its connected to the first time it is connected and powered up. I bought a Yaskawa vfd to run a 5hp colchester lathe and it did this for me. The electronics are getting really sopfisticated now and can do things only dreamt of a decade ago.

I still agree with what jonathan says though, match the vfd to the motor, if for no other reason than to save money, the bigger the inverter the bigger the bill. Why pay for engineering you are not going to use ?

I don't want a digital height gauge. My reason being that, my experience of cheap digital equipment has been negative. The aldi/lidl calipers and a few other bits i have bought over the years have all perished because of cold or getting coolant or oil or something else on them , that sends the display crazy, usually at the time you need them most. Seeing as engineers all the way from Henry Maudsley and his governor micrometer ,to really only the past couple of decades have managed to scrape by with non-digital metrology equipment, i think i'll be fine with a good quality vernier version.

P.s. I am not completely anti-digital, the good quality (read expensive) stuff is good i know, i have a mitutoyo calipers that are excellent, but i do not want to spend mitutoyo money on a height gauge.

Mitutuoyo is not junk by any stretch of the imagination danny, but the prices take some swallowing though. What i meant was stuff of indeterminate origin and quality. Some of the tools i have bought, that i know were cheaper far eastern has been disappointing. I usually prefer secondhand professional tools , even if they are overkill sometimes.

I want to buy a decent quality vernier height gauge for general marking out. Having a look on fleabay etc i see there are a lot of chesterman and shardlow height gauges on there for reasonable prices, are they good quality ? I would rather buy a good quality older one than a half baked bit of far eastern junk , if you know what i mean.

Does anyone have any input ?

I had wondered about the effect of a large window (which it has) on the condensation situation in the shed. Natural light is so much nicer to work in than artifical light though.

I was doing that, but the oil tended to emulsify and act like a poultice on the bare metal. strangely i went out to the shed today and the machines were fine , no condensation to be seen, the uni-bond humidity absorbers did have some water in them though.

The shed itself is the usual cavity cement block construction with concrete floor. I wouldn't have built it like that personally, the father built it and its not a good job.

The dreaded condesation has returned to my shed for the first time this winter. Went into the shed today and was shocked at the amount of water condensed on my old mill, i could have sponged it off there was so much. Time to insulate the building me thinks and find some way of heating it that doesn't cost a bomb.

How do you fight this destructive pest ?

I have bought tools such as collet chucks , morse taper adapters etc from rdg tools and was extremely wary because i knew the tools were of far eastern origin. They were all fine and to be honest better than i had expected. If you have a problem, send the goods back to where you bought them and demand better. How is a supplier to know the tools are not acceptable to customers if the customers don't return them and complain ? They can then demand better from the manufacturers.

What was the matter with the ones from the usual suspects ? I'd be interested to know myself as i want to buy some too.

If i was going to buy a program it would be alibre design or the equivalent geomagic personal edition, its very similar to early versions of solidworks that i used to use years ago. Don't forget too that siemens do their 2d cad software , solidedge, for free. Its very good and the equal of autocad imho.

Michael

He did say he had several complex workpieces destroyed by cutting tools breaking and the remainder of the tool crashing into the job, like i said this was for aerospace work so the cost may have been an issue (piecework payments perhaps ?). I cannot say for sure if this was the reason for his hate of these machines and i suppose i will never know. I am indifferent to shapers as my experience of them is limited and i cannot make any comments on them one way or the other, but if they were so useful why have they been consigned largely to history in favour of the bridgeport and clones ? When i was finishing off my apprenticeship in a medium sized marine engineers there were rows of vertical mills, lathes, grinders, even some horizontal mills and a large planer (which i only seen used once for a very trivial job) but there was no shapers, they had been scrapped 20 years earlier.

There was an engineering lecturerer (now long retired) when i was back at college doing a degree, who had worked as a toolmaker in america in the aerospace field. I asked him what he thought of shapers one day and he nearly had a fit , he absolutely despised them, said working with them was a complete pita and was glad when the widespread use of the vertical milling machine came in.

Thanks john, i'll look into that fixture. As for slitting saws , i bought a job lot at an auto jumble a couple of weeks ago, i only wanted one or two for the occassional job, but the seller wanted rid of them and gave me the lot (about 70) for 40 euro and chucked in a few horizontal milling cutters too.

Does anyone sharpen horizontal milling cutters at home ? I have picked up a few lately, and while most were usable some could do with a grind.

I also thought the sticking might have been caused by me not removing the chuck from the machine often enough, but i never let any corrosion appear on any of my machines, so doubt its the problem, sticktion ? What also worries me is if i buy a set of morse taper collets (the type that hold the tool directly in the quill) they might also stick. I was going to use these as they give a bit more room in the z -axis.

As always thanks for the replies. Some good ideas on how to achieve this seemingly simple task. On BSA bantam fork bushes, i notice that they are a flat piece of material folded around a circular former, it would be easy to stamp the scroll on the flat plate before forming.

While working on various old british motorcycle engine and gearboxes i occassionally need to replace a bronze bush. It is a simple matter to turn the internal and external diameters and the length. However these bushes usually have a scroll internally through them for oil to enter the bush. When i say scroll i mean a thread with a large pitch , 1/2" or 3/4" at a guess depending on the size.

How are these scrolls cut ? Surely not by standard lathe threadcutting techniques ? Any ideas ?

I have given up on aldi and lidl tools and workwear. Bought some of their digitl calipers , they stopped working, bought some of their work shoes , the soles separated from them, parallel pin punches , must have been made from dead mild steel for all the use they were.

I'd rather spend a bit more and get something better quality.

There was no grease on it when it became loose, thats why i thought it would not matter using a little grease.

No, i have checked the bore of the vertical head and its fine and thankfully made from hardened steel, the taper on the collet chuck is only a few months old and again appears to be hardened steel and nicely finished with no rings or marks. I don't take out the collet chuck often , but occassionally need to if i want to use a boring head or drill etc. I'll use less force tightening the drawbar in future, but i found before that the taper could work its way out while cutting. Somehow i don't think morse taper is ideal at all for this particular task.