Member postings for richardandtracy

It's on a tender & doesn't get hot? If so, and it's painted.. how about car body filler like P38?

Regards,

Richard.

Why does hot track not slow or delay the bullet trains in Japan? They have a very similar maritime climate.

Is it just because Network Rail is incompetent?

Regards

Richard.

I have Lyndon ones for my most used sizes - M6 & M10. They work well.

I have carbon steel ones for odd sizes the are not often used, like M10 x0.75., or 7BA (don't often make cap jewels for Parker51 fountain pens, so HSS is not justified).

For really wacky sizes, like M7.4 x 0.45, or M12 x 0.8 triple start, they are only available in high quality HSS.

I had a cheap 'carbon steel' set from the late 1980's, and 3 of the 8 sizes were plain wrong pitch. A set of LH taps bought last year very cheap from a Chinese e-bay seller turned out to be a high quality RH set, so I kept them and felt I had a bargain even though I didn't have the LH taps I was hoping for.

Regards

Richard.

I have a 25 lb anvil I bought through Northern Tools about 14 years ago, a Chinese one. When I moved house & drilled attachment holes in it for my current bench 13 years ago, I found it was cast iron. This was the same time as I found my Chinese repro Victorian fireplace was cast steel. Both used exactly the wrong material. Hrrumph.

However, the anvil has not shattered in the use I've put it to, and would say any hefty lump of steel you can get to use as one will be worth the effort.

Regards

Richard.

I have no experience of the Proxxon, but I am in the slow process of doing a 3 axis lathe conversion to do a similar job of engraving the outside of pens.

The Nema 17 motors use in the Proxxon conversion are tiny, with very little torque. I would strongly advise that you check the torque requirements of the machine you are to convert. The torque needed to apply an axial force with a leadscrew is roughly as follows (from 'Ondrives':

Torque (N.m ) = Axial force (N ) x Pitch (mm ) / (2000 x PI( ) x thread efficiency )

Where: thread efficiency = 0.35 for conventional threads and 0.85 for ball leadscrews and PI( ) = 3.1415

The axial loads you will need to consider are:

1. Table friction, both 'stiction' and the smaller dynamic friction.
2. Required acceleration of the table
3. Cutting forces ( these will be tiny compared to the acceleration loads )

It is close on to impossible to guess the friction and stiction loads, so a spring balance pulling the table with the leadscrew removed is needed. You might just be able to calculate the torque by applying a load to a lever attached to the leadscrew drive handle and hanging a weight off.

OK that's one minor technical bit considered. The most important bit is being completely clear in your mind what you want to do. Is it just to create spirals? Or any type of engraving? How fast? How capable. It is an easy field to waste money in, as I have. I wanted to engrave and cut threads for pens, so bought a 4 axis gantry machine, and discovered the zeroing and repeatability of the gantry was such that the thread cutting was insufficiently concentric. For the engraving, it was adequate. But.. The multi start thread cutting on a conventional lathe is close to beyond me as I need up to 5 starts at really wierd pitches, which is one reason why I wanted the CNC. So, one answer is to convert a lathe, which is now what I am slowly doing.

Hope this sets you thinking

Regards

Richard.

Or put out so much even the greedy one can't eat it all? We put out all the cat food our 4 cats turn their noses up at, and it's shared between a local fox and the hedgehogs. No problem with rats taking it - the ones round us seem pretty much 100% vegetarian, and any that get close enough to the bowls quickly get dealt with by the youngest cat.He hunts rats with body length up to 8" and brings much of the remains back. Sometimes into the living room.

We had a feral cat many years ago, who lived in a little house I made for him near the back door. Once we heard the cat bowl clinking and startled a hedgehog. It then ran through the feral cat's house, over the sleeping cat. He then emerged wide eyed & confused as if to say 'What just happened?'

Regards

Richard.

The trouble is that so many of the wires are black...

I've broken the box around my one, but don't want to remove the outer casing for that very reason.

Regards

Richard.

I have got data off an IDE drive with a USB caddy, cost, iirc, about £15. With a caddy the disc acts like a USB drive.

Regards

Richard.

Now, I have a c1915 fountain pen ( a Mabie Todd 'Swan No. 2 eyedropper' ) that works perfectly and I use regularly, but to see a c1912 lathe do the same would be quite something.

Regards,

Richard

After reading this thread, it seems less improbable that people died in the middle ages during arguments over whether it was 6 or 7 angels that could dance on a pinhead.

This really is like that argument, so abstruse as to be arguing for the sake of it. Just as pointless as the argument over some extra zeros appearing in the same article in MEW 269. Life happens. Just live with it. Or don't. Your choice, but is it really important enough to go round and round in circles about this sort of thing? There's a limit to how much pedantry is amusing and fun to read. I read most posts on this forum for the gems people come up with - and there are quite a few, but dilution of the gems still has to be waded through to find the gems., and, I dunno, this weekend has been a bad one for dilution.

Regards

Richard.

Edited By richardandtracy on 17/06/2018 21:19:57

There are some interesting books there. But I wouldn't recommend downloading the 'Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare and self defence' series, with its books on chemical and bacteriological warfare in addition to explosive manufacture, in the UK. Hardly likely to be treated differently from the banned 'Anarchists Cookbook' in legal terms.

I think it's a great resource, but tend to go for workshop books published 1920 or earlier. There will then be no copyright issues and they are also relate simpler technology, that doesn't seem out of place in my workshop.

Regards

Richard.

In such circumstances, provided there is space behind, how about a blind 'Rivnut'?

Regards,

Richard.

As this is within copyright, I am not convinced it's completely legitimate.

Regards

Richard.

Oh, is it out?

Been looking at the announcement banner line at the top of each page before looking in the shops for a new edition. I have the May one currently advertised.

Regards,

Richard.

That little saw should be OK at up to 6mm aluminium & brass so long as you don't push it hard and realise the body of the saw will flex if you do. It may go thicker with care. The blade tpi should be such that you aim for a minimum of 3 teeth in the depth of the material. So, for 3mm (or 1/8" brass you're looking for a blade with 24 or more tpi. I doubt if you'll get much higher tpi, though I've not looked. So, this suggests that 3mm is probably the thinnest you should cut & expect full blade life. If you go thinner, the load per tooth will be higher & teeth will snap off more quickly. You will still cut the material, just reduce the blade life.

On my Clarke metal band saw I have cut sheet steel of .75mm with an 18 tpi blade. Had to be careful as occasionally the saw tooth in contact with the steel bent the sheet rather than cut it if I let the feed rate get too high, and the blade lost teeth fast, but it did the job quicker than any other tool I had available to me at the time.

Regards,

Richard.

You are unlikely to find much extruded section from 7075. 6082, instead, is available in quite a few sizes. Go for the T6 or T65xx temper.

Regards

Richard.

What is the material - can't really tell from the photo. Is it aluminium?

If it is, I had the effect this evening myself. I speculated that in the uninterrupted cut the metal chips were getting warm enough to adhere to the tool tip on my carbide face mill. In the interrupted parts I speculated the tips cooled off and the chips never got hot enough to adhere. Testing this hypothesis, I reduced the feed rate a great deal, and ended up with a near mirror finish every cut thereafter. Even if the hypothesis was wrong, the result was good.

May be the case with you if it was aluminium.

Regards

Richard.

Murray's idea of candles is the one I always use. Particularly when considering a new design of pen.

In my pen making, almost exclusively on plastics, the deflection of plastics is a real pain, so much so that it's a pleasure to start on metals. I usually have to use a steel mandrel inside the pen bits to ensure that they don't deflect away from the cutting tool. The acrylic/polyester alloys I often use behave very much like Delrin, and while it threads well, it often needs a mandrel. Trying to get a good thread seems to throw out the rules for metal, and is often not a good indicator of feeds and speeds. And some things cut when you think they shouldn't (like blunt carbide inserts) and some don't when you think they should (sometimes sharp HSS doesn't work). I can find neither rhyme nor reason to it and just go with whatever works on the day.

Weight for weight, some small quantity exotic plastic pen blanks end up at £20,000 a ton or more.

Regards

Richard.

I have done something similar. I spent 30 minutes looking for my glasses all round the house before I realised the reason I was able to look so diligently and easily was because I was wearing them.

Regards,

Richard.

In my short and unprofitable experience of one-arm bandits, there is no connection whatsoever between the payout disc and the wheels that rotate.

Regards,

Richard.