Member postings for Martin Botting 2

Sorry It's me again but I am wanting some kindly owner of a warco WM250v lathe to help with some real measurements of this beast. I am planning out the space required and I see that Wacro list its dimensions as 1120 x 585 x 500mm over handles I wish they had a line drawing of the lathe with relative applications of these dimensions. The one that I really need is from front to back of the splash guard so I can check the available space will accommodate it.

Its about the same footprint size on paper as the ML7 I am changing it for its just the front to back size i want to be sure of as I would like to prep the space and start making a stand base.

should I have posted this as a footnote to my other posting about bench or stand? sorry if I should have.

Martin

Yes Ziggar you are right it is me… firefox fired up… all working properly. many thanks

M

Hi all. Is it me and my Mac thats the problem or something wrong with the Blackgates engineering site I am trying to view the parts catalog but it does not seem to want to open..

M

As its a grey day and doing some armchair engineering I was going through the vast fount of information and came upon some on the face of it laughable accidents surrounding Co2 bottles going whoosh or pop, and this started me thinking. If I may relate a story on a similar line and some thoughts about our own well being.

I much admire peoples skill and the pictures I have seen posted here and the conditions and a layout of folks workshops and I am always impressed with very tidy and well organised working spaces and bow my head in shame when I enter my workshop and the accumulation of C&@p that seems to gather there.

In my youth a story spread very quickly that a chap had "borrowed" a cylinder of "air" to get a tugs engine started, it was a 4 Cly Glenifer 4 stroke engine. Now the problem was the air tanks that were used to store the starting air were empty, the donkey engine to run the compressor was knackered so the usual way of replenishing the bottles was at the end of the days running close the fuel to a dedicated cylinder and then open a valve on the head so that piston becomes a compressor. The tug in question ( tosher or launch tug) never carried an engineer or driver so it was down to the mate or the boy to tend the engines and it being a late finish on a friday the dash for last orders was a bigger draw than the nipping up of the air valves so come monday the tanks had about 50PSI in them. She was moored up on the river lea and not too far a walk from St Andrews hospital so off toddles the mate and "borrows" a cylinder from the cage outside the stores… with much sweating he gets it back and they jury rig a line utilising the valve and hose from the Calor gas that fuels the stove.. all in place open valve engine starts to spin.. decompresors closed and fuel on by the use of the staring lever which you used to pull back to spin her over then all the way forward to close the gap in the inlet valve and the cams for the injectors engage and she should start… now the problem was the bottle he had nicked was O2… result BANG.. he had part of his head replaced by a cylinder head casting and the skipper was castrated by the other bits…moral of this tale.. READ THE LABLE… this is not an apocryphal tale I saw it myself as I had to tow the said tug to a repair yard.

I know much is made of ELF AND SAFETY gone mad but as a H&S union rep for many years I have seen and had to investigate accidents and even fatalities for what ever reason have come down to minor things all coming together very quickly to become catastrophic. A common thread has been lack of training and funds to keep things in order.

I guess I would want my employer strung up if he made colleagues do things that we do as hobbyists and I know I am the same MIA CULPA sorry for the H&S police rant but we should all bare this in mind… Now how do I take the chuck guard off this bloody mill.. its always in the way! Happy and a safe new year.

regards

Martin

Bench… stand… stand … bench…

Evening all, as always the armchair and the laptop being the safest and warmest place at this strange time of year and my dreams of the new lathe are swimming in and out of the thing that holds the lug-oles apart is in another quandary I am pretty much settled on the idea of the warco WM250.. or was it the 280, Damned indecision! and was going to throw a question into the arena and ask this…

The old myford is on a stand and sits athwart ships in the workshop and while I could place the new lathe in the same place but have an open mind it could go along another wall, anyway do I buy a metal stand for the new one or build a bench to mount it on?

The floor is wooden on joists with a solid concrete base some 4 inches below and would not be a bad idea to cut the wooden floor away and pour some plinths to bolt a nice shiny metal stand too but my thinking is if i built a substantial wooden bench then the amount of c&@p i can store under it would be greater and I can make it higher or lower as I find that working on the myford my back and shoulders sometimes get very tense, and A tip is was given years ago the handles should be roughly inline with the elbows, so folks some of your words of wisdom and ideas of bench over stand or vicky versa.

May I take this opportunity to say happy new year and thank you for all the help to my previous questions and the great items that folk here have posted and given me inspiration!

Yes you are quite right! well spotted.

Folks.

While wandering the web and reading with great interest the link Jason supplied about the WM250 stable I also came upon this:

http://www.cign.org/lathe.html

and its got a great review on the older model and the site owners "mods"

I was wondering about the QCTP on my old ML7 that i bought from one of the major tool suppliers a while back and the plethora of holders. I have found someone that might want the old ML7 so i was thinking about what I can keep and whats to send with it… I will not need any of the head stock tooling chucks etc but the QCTP might be worth saving or go mental with the plastic and get a brand new piston type… would any kind owner have a measure up of their compound and give me some dimensions of the stud etc.

Again thanks to everyone that replied to my initial query and I am looking forward to pestering Messrs Warco and chester et al.

As an aside I have read the runners and riders for the Kempton park show… very poor field and I bet the going will be soft! This is one punter that will NOT be having a bet on the day.

WOW! Thanks folks for your advice. I contacted Warco and they won't be going to the MEX but ally pally so thats decided it for me. I will wait till after the mad spend up called Xmas and have a look and tinker at the warco stand.

I was looking at the Chester machines and while they look "rougher" than the warco jobs I was drawn to the Norton type gear boxes.. Gawd knows what I would do with one… I mean what is screw cutting without black hands, bits of paper and nipped fingers in banjo's?

Yes, I would love to think I was able to build models with the aid of a finely tuned BRITISH machine but finding good ones like college machines is so rare now, do they actually let youth loose on real machines or is it all theory and video and CAD? I recall the little Boxford's we had a school and the BIG Colchester.. I would have given my eye teeth for one but the bank balance and the gamble of getting a good one and tooling is out numbered by the folding stuff! when I make my mind up and IF i get one and it goes wrong I will accept the verbal kicking and "told ya SO!' with grace.

Thanks again people.

Hello forum users.

I was thinking about something of a gift to me for a change from being the bank to family and friends, The old ML7 is tired and in need of more repairs so casting my eye about I thought I may take a punt on a new machine and the Warco WM250 seems to shine. I would like some advice from any owners about how they shape up.

I know that many here will roll out the usual comments about the far eastern machines and being bad/ indifferent but truth be told it all comes down to the size of the bank balance. Sure colchester in mint condition and a Bridgeport housed in a 30X20 workshop would be heaven but thats pipe dreams.

I have searched the forum and other places on the web and the reviews for the warco machine seem few and far between, I hope to have a look round one at some of the southern shows over the next few months or have a day out to the showroom but I would like some help with up's downs and round and rounds, OR a suitable replacement for a very old ML7, I fitted an inverter last year and thats been a bit like putting a merlin engine in a morris minor.

Thanks In advance

Hello folks me again with another odd question, first off I don't like to be a bother but I tend to do a search in the forum to see if there are any prior posts but I might be getting the question wrong as nothing ever shows up most times anyway don't shout at me if this question has been asked before.

I was studying some loco drawings and looking at old photos and the angle of the cylinders on loco's like the "crab", Big Bertha and the 9f had quite a rake on them would I be right in thinking this gave better tractive and adhesion qualities as the power is more downward to the track but the pay of fwas power to the hammer blow on the rails.. reason for the question would changing the rake on lets say a robroy give it more grunt. and what would be the problems with the geometry.

Thanks to all posters for your valuable input I will have another bash and see what I can do. now for a giggle I will take some pictures of the disasters and hopefully the success. please at least try and mask the laughter!

I took the drawings to my local ME club and there was a symbol used on the drawings that I really could not understand, I was told by a very wise and experienced engineer " thats the surface finished tolerance, and being thats in metric they will be microns" he said… I knew from his expression that he knew his words were lost on me. and the rolling eyes when I mentioned "so more emery cloth and less 'dreadnaught' draw filing then?"

This is where I say again the value of the web and the willingness of forum members and other ME's is great and thanks again everyone…. Till the next disaster!

Hi there fellow swarf makers!

got a small problem I would like to fire into the ether of the www... I am working on a project that i asked for help with ref: understanding German drawings. I am working on the actuating shaft and I have come upon a few glitches. I have attached a screen shot of the part I am trying to machine for your perusal. Now the problem thus far is this, I decided to turn it between centers ( right or wrong) thats what I did Mk1 was all going swimingly UNTIL i was machining the lower end of the component which was now closest to the headstock and the tool ( tipped indexable type) dug in and PING snapped it and I now had a loverly nearly finished part. As you can imagine the air was blue! Nahil desperandum as my old latin teacher would say prior to beating the C@&p out of me... I cleaned the lathe of all the shards of stabby brass and un- screwed the catch plate and re- chucked the collet holder, a fresh bit of brass was duly faced center drilled and then re swung between centers... (Don't you wish you had a second lathe?) and work started again lesson learnt light cuts working as close to the headstock each time to facilitate turning those pesky tapers and then turn end for end to do the lower portion.. now relying on the mic and my turning skills (HA!) it was time to part off... well my faith in my parting such a thin bit of brass was not great so hacksaw ( chuck board in place.. and a nod to Mr John of twastard engineering) I parted off.. eager to try the bearings and cut the thread halfway up only to find the slackness in all the bearing surfaces. I can only put this down to poor measurement and the spring in the stock from turning between centers..

AT LONG LAST I get to the cry for help, could any kind soul with more experience like to suggest another way of manufacturing this component on a rather old Myford ML7 with 3+4 jaw chucks, ER collets. NO traveling steady...

many thanks in advance Martin.

Loverly job sir! another one of Mr Hall's thingy's on my "to do" list…

Till then the perfect 107.337 Deg cutting angle I can achieve by slinging my drills at the back door step will have to do.

please tell me that Dremel sanding drum is not what this is going to be used for…..

Edited By Martin Botting 2 on 28/10/2014 22:55:46

Robert. I have seen that and yes its rather fun. The draw back with the voith system and controllable pitch props is they are always turning and the biggest worry for any tug man is the rope getting caught in it. they don't stop till the blades break or the rope or wire does. the son of my workmate was killed because of this fact on the woolwich ferry a while back.

Thanks Jason… I have just reminded myself what I had for lunch…

Thats quite right Jason they are fantastic tools in the right hands and you can give it some wellie through 360 degrees you can wind on more thrust as needed and unlike conventional screw propulsion you don't have to wait for the engine to rev up. In ship towage the biggest danger is being "girted" where on conventional tugs the fixing point if about on the centre line at the natural turning point i.e. just slightly aft of centre. if the tow rope exerts pull to out do your thrust over she goes! brown trousers!. the towing point on a voith or "tractor" tug is right aft and if the ship starts to beat you all that happens is you follow it and not roll. My initiation with this kind of propulsion was a 15 minute chat over a cuppa and there get on with it! Needless to say my first job was one of lots of OOP's and Sorry!

You can buy pre made models of this unit for about £150 but what I have seen of them they work but boy they are noisy in a model anyhow buying one where is the challenge in that?

there were several ships like isle of Wight ferries had these in then around 1933/34 but come the war the parts were not easy to come by some red tape about not being a good idea having bits shipped in.. so were converted to standard screw props and shafts. same thing with Sulzer engines as they were built in Switzerland you could buy the bits but they had problems getting the parts out.

Sorry for a rambling post. They don't let me get out much.

Thanks Keith for the leg work and again thanks to everyone for posting replies! I owe you all a cyber cuppa tea in the ether based canteen!