Member postings for Neil Lickfold

Tim, if you buy the high precision Regofix collets you will be very happy. Please also note, that the inner taper is required to be running true as well as the outer thread of the holder. I have best results when using the Regofix nuts with the Regofix collets. I only buy their high precision collets. Other brands actually make a higher precision collet from what Regofix offers, but at about 3 to 5 times the price depending on collet size. They are best used on the nominal sizes. For that reason I am not using any inch series cutters, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4 inch. Now that I trued the inner taper on my router , I have a runout equal to the error of the spindle so is less than 0.01mm even at 40mm from the collet face.

The ER collets are best when holding onto a work piece that fits the entire length of the collet engagement. In the mix of collets that came with my 3d router, the 5mm unkown brand is just as accurate as the 3,4,5,6,8mm RegoFix collets I brought. The unnamed brand 3mm , 4mm, 6mm,8mm run out up to 0.15mm. Just shocking.

Neil

You will find it is for software that does it as part of the software package that they are making/selling.

Neil

I like the cup wheel myself, but the cup or 45 deg wheel's are good.

Neil

John Haine has it right. It sometimes takes longer to rework something over making new depending on the errors and what is required to be able to rework it. I assume that since you are after a kit, have the capacity to rework the one you have. The advantage of reworking stuff, is you will know where and how much the errors are. Then you can decide if it is acceptable or not.

Neil

I had a sticking Blake coaxial indicator. After getting it cleaned out and freed up using Shellite or in English terms liquid Naptha. I lubricated it with unscented baby oil , ( it says it is paraffin oil)sparingly on the jewels and a little on the bronze bush. When oiling the jewels you want just a very tiny amount so that it's surface tension keeps it in place. Too big of a drop and the surface tension can't keep it there and it will run away or off the jewel dimple. In clock making there a re lots of different grades of lubricants.

It's been a while now since using it and used it last week, and it was fine and free in it's movement.

Neil

Here are my piston mandrels MK2 , 1 for pistons with 13.6mm skirt diameter pistons and the other for 13.5mm diameter skirt pistons.
Then there are 2 threaded pins, 1 for trimming just pistons, and the other for trimming pistons or reworking pistons that still have the rods assembled.

Neil

I have made Delrin ER40 collets, and for special collets , I just made them from P20 tool steel, and slit them with a slitting saw on a mandrel to stop it collapsing in on the saw.

Neil

I would not run that unit on anything other than a .37kw motor or 1/2 hp on single phase.Buying something and then only using it part time is the wrong way to look at the issue. You got sold the wrong item. I have several VFD drives, all run within the power rating of the set up. I like them as it is easy to make the motors run at 60 hz or 20% over 50Hz . It is great. I never have over heating issues if I decide to spend all day in the workshop making my latest thing. It seems that some of these traders on ebay Aliexpress have a system of selling sometimes things that are not what is claimed. I'm in a dispute over some collets. They run out by .15mm when they claim to be 0.015 mm which I was happy to accept. Im not a happy customer with them. I think they should refund your purchase price and they should pay to have the item returned if they want it back. It clearly in your case is not a 1 hp single phase to 3 phase inverter.

Neil

Here is the Carbon prop we recut from a blank. Very happy with it. Measure the blank to ensure it will clean up.

Prop cnc cut on under side.

We flew this prop and are happy with it so far.

Neil

The blades are laminated in such a way that we can cut the 0.2mm off the top and bottom surface without interfering with the structural part of the blade. The area that is not cut though, will be hand blended to the prop hub, that area is running the slowest and is the most forgiving of the air foil sections. At a latter stage we will be producing our own moulds, but have to start somewhere. I am just absolutely impressed with how well a job HSMworks in the Fusion360 creates cutter paths etc. And the software is free for home users and students. It has been a lot of learning how to create reference planes and all of that , that is for sure, but the help files are really good with Fusion. The default settings in HSM works are really good for most things, they have been for what we are doing.

Neil

It is just some hard maple for a test. We are intending to recut just the blade area on single sided carbon fibre prop for F2A speed. It was to made a model so we could compare the cad model to an actual blade to see if we got the sections correct and enough to enable the carbon blank to clean up at the pitch angle we are wanting to make.

Neil

My son downloaded Fusion360 last weekend and during the week has been drawing up a single blade propeller to be made on our router. I was very impressed as to how well this program works.It has not been polished at all,These pics are as is, except for the pencil marks where it's been checked for pitch angle.

Her's a couple of pics.

Alot of people made simple screw jacks with a 0.5mm pitch or the imperial equivalent fine pitch. This was because many years ago gauge blocks were very expensive. The other alternative was to use adjustable parallels . Now gauge blocks are quite cheap and affordable. But to keep them in good order they used to have wear blocks to use in the outer of the stack to protect the very special surface finish. They can be easily damaged if no care is taken.

Neil

Years ago, in toolmaking, we had a bunch of drill and reamer guides. These took drill bushes and reamer bushes and were made to a nominal outside diameter. There centre spacing was set with length rods and trig. These were clamped into place and used on the drill press or mill, these were quite large for the clamp to be secured. We also used buttons, also spaced with length rods and trig. But a smaller hole was drilled and tapped, a small screw to hold in place, then an indicator to indicate the position. Lock the machine in place, then removed the button, and used a milling cutter as a drill/boring bar to remove the thread. Then drill to the size, another milling cutter used as a boring bar, then the reamer. We used this method until we had mills with digi readouts and of course a lot better quality mill.

At home here I made some small buttons with a hole in them. I then made a tool to go into the drill chuck that sits over the button. I then clamp after the tool locates the part for me. Remove the button and drill ream etc

Neil

When the length to diameter ration starts to get greater than 5 to 1, like a 10 mm bar , boring 50 to 60 mm deep, have a small radius on the tool helps immensely. My boring bar inserts are all 0.2mm radius for that reason. They also need to be sharp. Sometimes having the boring bar above centre slightly can help with getting a better surface finish. If it digs in a little, the bar deflects to the centre line and reduces the cut depth. But when an on centre bar deflects , it digs in more as at goes further below the centre line, leaving a series lines or score marks.

If you can afford them, solid carbide boring bars do make boring longer holes a lot easier. For very deep bores, as been mentioned, line boring is the way to go.

Neil

The picture is not really good enough to make a call on that. I find that if the fine grey scotch brite or at most the redy brown scotch brite does not clean it up, and it is all pitted, who knows how much damage there is. I did a fixup on a Tesa comparator that has surface rust on it. The owner thought it needed to be reground and lapped again. From the tests I did, the main table was still very good. So we got lucky. But on a toolmakers vice that went rusty in my shed from a roof leak, it pitted so bad, that it took 1mm to clean up both sides, .5mm on each side that was rusted. That really ticked me off that was for sure.

Neil

I did not make the crank, only polished the bearing area that had some wear on it. The crank is very hard where the bearing area is. On previous damaged shafts, they are 60 Rc.

Hi Gerry, the failure is in the crank shaft, it will deform and wear, once it gets a little bit worn, they deteriorate very rapidly. If you are careful and replace the outer race and steel balls when they just start to get some noise in them, polish the crank, you get more life from them. They last longer just by replacing the steel balls with the G3 ceramic balls. With my older engine, it has worked quite well, so tried this on the newer engine that uses 1/8 balls instead of the smaller 2.5mm balls. In all cases, they use a C3 clearance bearing, but more specifically use a clearance of Ø 0.02mm to Ø0.03mm. I like the higher end of Ø 0.03mm clearance between the inner and outer race ball clearance. The end float and loading position is still the same. In reality, model engines set the bearings so that they are in effect being used as Radial contact bearings instead of the regular deep groove position of running in the middle of the race. These engines do about 39300 to 40200 rpm. If the engine is only making power to fly the model at 275 to 280 Km/h they last a lot longer than when they are making power to be doing 290 km/h or faster.

Neil

Hi Gerry, the failure is in the crank shaft, it will deform and wear, once it gets a little bit worn, they deteriorate very rapidly. If you are careful and replace the outer race and steel balls when they just start to get some noise in them, polish the crank, you get more life from them. They last longer just by replacing the steel balls with the G3 ceramic balls. With my older engine, it has worked quite well, so tried this on the newer engine that uses 1/8 balls instead of the smaller 2.5mm balls. In all cases, they use a C3 clearance bearing, but more specifically use a clearance of Ø 0.02mm to Ø0.03mm. I like the higher end of Ø 0.03mm clearance between the inner and outer race ball clearance. The end float and loading position is still the same. In reality, model engines set the bearings so that they are in effect being used as Radial contact bearings instead of the regular deep groove position of running in the middle of the race. These engines do about 39300 to 40200 rpm. If the engine is only making power to fly the model at 275 to 280 Km/h they last a lot longer than when they are making power to be doing 290 km/h or faster.

Neil

Thanks Emgee, yes Profi, I am not a good speller, I will edit it. The main reason was to get longer life from the shaft bearing. The added rpm was an unexpected bonus.