Member postings for Andy Davies 99

I only have one day of welding experience, taught by a friend in his garage, but I used a nice mid-range inverter welder and found it to be very easy to learn to use. It had a wide range of amps, and a good duty cycle meant that I could make the new table for my mill with little fuss. We used varying sized rods and it coped well with all of them.

I will certainly be looking to purchase a decent inverter welder in future, and am going to stay away from the cheaper options.

Thanks for all the replies, I am thinking simplicity over cost and I like Len's suggestion to follow the pretty impressive myfordboy saw pulley system, or go the poly v route as the part count is much lower than the countershaft approach. I am looking into this. Originally I came across RDG single v-belt pullies, which appear to be cheaper than machine mart etc but would need 2 inch drive to something like 9 inch on saw, too big to work.

Gordon, I want to stick with pulley and belts rather than sprockets and chains for simplicity (although it's probably just as easy).

I will post back when done!

Thanks

Andy

Thanks Michael and Keith, I've looked into it and I figure if I run the following arrangement it should work well:

2 inch drive to 5 inch countershaft 1425 > 570, then 2 inch to 4 inch (saw) = 230 rpm ish.

Now to source the parts, many thanks for the advice.

Best

Andy

Hi all,

I have recently acquired a Kennedy Power Hacksaw which is the v-belt drive version, i.e. to run off an exisiting motor. I am having trouble sourcing a suitable motor to power it. I have a 1425rpm motor 0.25 or 0.33 HP but the speed is too much for the saw, hence I have to either reduce this down or find an alternative motor. Rather than spending insane amounts of cash.

I was thinking if I could source a gear box but searches on the net are proving fruitless. Alternatively is to make a worm style gear to reduce it down. But before I embark along the incorrect avenue, I was wondering if any of you have an idea on how to achieve a reduction without it costing the earth.

Some stats, my motor is 14 mm shaft, and the pulley on the saw is 4 inch, the saw needs to be driving itself at around 240 rpm. I'd need a very small pulley for the motor to do it with the current pulley on the saw (can't find one and would have to make one, but I think it is too small for the shaft and good operation of a v-belt). The pully on the saw is 1/2 v-belt. The manual for this is on this site:

**LINK**

Thanks in advance,

Andy

I agree John, I only deal with real people who are not selling items for business purposes. Emailing or chatting with them, seeing items in advance are all good routes to avoid the experiences you state. Personally, with 10 years of dealing on these sites, I have only had one problem and it was a lost in post occurrence, but I am very careful and consider each item fully before committing to buy.

I've had a similar experience when buying through online auction sites, although not exactly the same.

I often find myself buying old machinery from retired gentlemen who want to move an item because it's not being used any more. I always leave with a huge amount of extra knowledge that I wouldn't have got from buying an item new. I often stay in contact with many of the people that I dealt with and show them how their old equipment is being used to create new stuff in my very small workshop. I find it is important to really respect the fact that a person may have had a lathe for 40-50 years before passing it on to the next generation.

Thanks to all for your invaluable advice, I have just placed an order with CTC Tools for an ER25 chuck/collets, the price is not too bad (postage was almost as much as the items, but the total was still cheap enough for me to play with).

I will look to get some normal Morse Taper collets when the time comes, but most of my beginner projects are small, i.e. making t-nuts, milling the faces of angle plate and so on, so I won't need too much throat for now.

Thanks,

Andy

Great advice everyone, thanks for your time.

Dusty, the Vertex are ones that I have seen highly recommended around the internet, so I was considering those, thanks for the recommendation. I have had very mixed experiences with older tooling from eBay, and I find it to be hit and miss as to what you can get, plus whenever I seem to go for something.

Mike, thanks for the advice about contacting Arc, I will do that tomorrow.

Neil, I have been looking at the size of mill bits needed for most of the beginner projects in the books I have and I agree, an ER25 is certainly more appropriate as I would never use the full capacity of the ER32, so that is one decision.

Mike, thanks for directing me to CTC Tools, I will investigate their very expansive catalogue. Generally, I am happy to pay more for quality that will last me a long time but will certainly have a look as the prices appear very competitive, especially for the beginner whom is likely to damage something.

Bazyle, definitely in future I want to be doing my own castings especially with aluminium but I am some way away from that. One of my to do projects is to make my own fly cutter, but I would have to be careful to keep it balanced as this is probably one of the more dangerous tools I have ever seen. As for what I want to do, pretty much anything that I can work with.

Thanks all for your invaluable advice. I appreciate it.

Andy

Hi all,

I've continued with more research and I feel that the ER Collets in size 32 would be a good purchase, but there are so many different brands available, can any one recommend a good value for money set? Or should I steer clear from ER all together?

Thanks

Andy

Hi all,

I have just bought my first lathe and mill, and am in the process of building up a stock of tools. I have several of the Workshop Practice Series books and am researching around the topic and looking forward to actually following the basic projects within the books.

My first real question that I am stuck on is what are people's feelings about the ER collet chuck system versus the normal morse taper collets, Howard Hall's "Milling a complete course" seems to favour normal taper collets and recommends a threaded end.

I have an X2 mill with a MT3 spindle. As the tooling is a major expense, I do not want to end up with several sets of collets with some that hardly get used.

Any advice would be greatly appreaciated.

Many thanks
Andy