Member postings for Neil Wyatt

Hi Brian,

They are very quiet machines, as a rule, partly because they don't have any metal to metal gears. Bear in mind that most of the time you will be using it at much less than top speeds as well.

Many people do a swap of metal gears for the nylon ones inside the headstock. After 15 years my headstock gears are still fine*.

Neil

*Those on my X2 mill went eventually (the old style X2 mills have the same gear arrangement), but this is probably because milling produces a lot more shock loads on the gears.

Hi Adam,

I've never come across a commercial lathe tool sharpening equivalent of a twist drill sharpening jig.

Neil

How did you do that? I should have used a spreadsheet instead of a calculator.

Two pairs of identical gears should make a design simples!

Neil

Well it's taken me about 5 minutes:

Jupiter on a fixed central spindle

Io on a outer rotating sleeve.

15:15 10:10 drive Europa on a second sleeve

15:15 10:20 drive Ganymede from that second sleeve.

14:43 14:43 drive Calisto from the first sleeve.

Best of all, the teeth numbers are such that either 1 mod gears would be a sensible size to use.

Thanks John.

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 15/03/2014 21:07:12

I wouldn't worry, it will make jobs that you could do with a more simple head a greater pleasure to do, and one day you will need something set out to an exact angle or a prime number of divisions!

If you're like me you will find something to do just to make use of it.

I have a fascination with Jupiter and the four Galilean moons, because they are so easy to observe (especially at the moment - go outside at 9:00 and look south and high - half decent binoculars should show you the moons). So a Jupiter system orrery might be fun and simple(ish)

Apparently the four inner moons have locked together orbital periods in the ratio 1:2:4 (something called Laplace resonance). The outer, Callisto has a period 9.4336 time that of Io. 9:85 is just over one part in a 1000 out and could be used as the basis of a gear train, say 18:68 and 20:50 which gives 1:9.44, an error of about 1/5 of an orbit over an earth year. Can anyone do better?

Neil

Paper subscribers and casual purchasers of paper magazines still hugely outnumber digital subscribers, although the number of the latter are growing. But yes, one of my assigned tasks is to look at putting more content on this website.

I have spoken to a number of contributors about making supplementary information available online, and have already received one contribution that I am sure will be popular when it is made available. Other contributors have been willing to do this as well.

A limiting factor is that online content needs as much effort to edit as paper content. This means it is limited by the spare capacity of me and the other people involved in design and illustration.

Finally, it is true, however, that I can only publish what In get, and within reason the more contributions I get the more choice and the greater variety. Equally, I would not want 'online content' to be seen as 'stuff that wasn't quite good enough for the magazine' - it should be supporting material. An example could be research material that informed a design, or content like links or spreadsheets that just won't work in a paper format.

New authors should not worry about quality, what matters is having something interesting to say, and as this forum shows we all can contribute something. Just don't dive in a with a 40-part series! Write a short piece and if necessary I'll help you get it straight. The more you articles you write the better you'll get, and you can widen your horizons.

Anyone wanting advice can email me on neil.wyatt@mytimemedia.com

Neil

Graham,

You must now make an orrery!

Neil

Welcome, Martin.

From a personal perspective, I find that articles which describe how the writer has solved a problem - of any kind or scale - are usually the most interesting. I don't know if all readers feel the same, but it's clear some do.

Neil

I see you have

Neil

Thanks,

You should enter that for the MEW Tip of the month

Neil

0.002mm? That's several wavelengths of light, you should be able to SEE the difference

Neil

I was very tempted to buy a pair yesterday, then I reminded myself I have four pairs of digital calipers already. Then decided I really didn't need the 33 draw cabinet either

At least I managed to get a very nice 'wixey-type' angle gauge from CPC, with built in (properly adjustable and quite sensitive) spirit level and a very handy absolute function, two features not on the typical gauges, and less than a tenner.

Neil

> The size of your scrap bin will get smaller and smaller as you gain the experience.

For once there is something John says that I can totally disagree with - my scrap bin expands to encompass the entire workshop! I actually had to throw some stuff out last week.

Neil

Hi Tony,

To help anyone who comes after, was it a right or left hand thread?

Neil

Hi John,

Dogs can be amazing. As a boy my little brother got wasps in his hair when we were camping. My mum was trying to get them out and our dachshund took over and finished the job. He was stung all over his jaws.

Neil

M2? definitely pin vice, no tommy bar needed.

Neil

Good stuff John,

Two of our cats and the dog know my workshop is out of bounds, but Gizmo (cat) is always begging to be let in.

Neil

Amazon!!l. MyHobbyStore are selling the Tubal Cain book for only £4.96, along with a number of other titles that may be of interest:

**LINK**

Neil

... and I counted the 4-wheel axles and multiplied by four, forgetting the front axle!

A true pedant might add the extra 12 on top as well.

Neil

You inspired me to get out my little compressor and fire up my (rather small) engine collection one by one!

Neil

Welcome to the forum Tom,

Take a look here, for a start. You should find something of interest.

The route to take is features (on the black bar above)> Magazine reprints

Also try the myhobbystore advert to the right of this panel.

Neil