Member postings for Zebethyal

Actually, the SX2P had a brushless motor back in 2013 as well - I am taking my information from my blog, where I detailed some of my initial wants back then, so have saved pictures of what it looked like in 2013 as well.

I appreciate that the price increases are across the board, and are not restricted to the SX2 and clones, those were just the ones I had historical data for.

The concern is that these rising costs will further deter people from joining the hobby and the longer they wait, the more the prices are going up.

It would also appear that I can't count, making 2013 - 1018 to be 7 years rather than 5!, for some reason I was convinced it was 2020! this actually makes the inflation figure closer to 5% a year.

I also understand the £ to $ rates have changed, but that does not explain the 42% increase on the LittleMachineShop prices that are all in $US.

Edited By Zebethyal on 24/07/2018 15:12:20

I was reading another thread where someone was interested in buying an X2, X3 or similar mill and was tempted to respond with what I bought and how I modified it, but then checked the prices that I paid against the current ones and was somewhat taken aback by the increases.

My X2 was bought from Axminster, in December 2013 at a special price of £492.77 - down from £679.00 as they were just changing their colour scheme and selling off the old stock at a cheaper price.

They currently have a sale on and are selling the same model for £799.96, down from their normal price of £902.51 - this is a 32% price increase against the normal price over 7 years.

The Arc equivilent SX2P has gone from £585.00 to £771 in the same time period - a 31% increase.

The LittleMachineShop model 3990 (3960 back then) has gone from $819.00 to $1170.00 - a 42% increase.

Now I accept that prices fluctuate, exchange rates move, inflation needs to be taken into account, etc, but these increases are the equivilent of 4% or more every year.

This all during a period where incomes have remained relatively static by comparison.

This is by no means a dig at any of the above suppliers, and I am sure there are good explanations, since the increases seem relatively similar across the suppliers, it just came as somewhat of a shock when I started looking onto it.

Edited By Zebethyal on 24/07/2018 14:19:14

Welcome Beaker,

Dursley is the home of RA Lister/Lister Petter, famous for many diesel and petrol engines - I recall watching the office block burn down back in 1983 from our lounge window, this was the largest fire Dursley had seen and ironically occurred whilst the fire chief of the volunteer fire service was on holiday! I then watched them tear the buildings down several weeks later from the end of the road.

Dursley is also the former home of Mawdsley's Electric Motors, who make motors of many sizes, right up to those used in submarines (I did a week's work experience there as a child).

I grew up in Dursley, and still have many fond memories of the place, although on recent visits much has changed since my time there.

Edited By Zebethyal on 19/07/2018 08:00:58

@$$@$$1N63 (assassin) may or may not be caught by a crack attempt depending on the rules being applied, brute force will always break it eventually, just a matter of how long it takes.

Most password cracks will start with a decent dictionary, plus names of/from popular films, books, sports, pets, etc, then apply a number of rules to modify the letters: @ or 4 for A, $ or 5 for S, 3 or £ for E, 1 or ! for I, etc and then add numbers or random characters on the beginning or end.

I used to regularly run a similar crack against our password file, and used to break around 90% of them in under 10 minutes for the entire 1000+ entry file, and constantly warn them about weak passwords. Unfortunately several of them complained if their password ever changed from 'ChangeMe'!

You can still use the above approach, but don't use the same alteration for all instances of the same letter, and rather than use a single word, use multiple words or use a phrase that is easy to remember and choose the first letter of each word, that way it is not even in the dictionary to start with, you can also replace entire words with numbers 'won' or one' with 1, 'to' 'too' or 'two' with 2 and 'for' or 'four' with 4, etc.

C4t.$at.m@t - Cat sat mat

B6b$hy4w? - Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?

Nitt4agm2c2taotp - Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

The simplest way of obtaining any password is still watching someone type it in, so best to use both hands and learn to type it reasonably fast.

I used to have a passphrase for PGP (pretty good privacy ) around 20 years ago, that required a lengthy pass phrase. The one I used was my spellings for the Excalibur 'charm of making', that applied 2048 bit encrypyion to whatever message I was sending to someone:

Anaarl nathrak uthus bethud bethel nienthe - good luck to anyone remembering that whilst watching me type it in!

Watch out for criminals with cigar cutters looking to remove your thumb/finger (think Durant in Darkman ) for biometric recognition.

Edited By Zebethyal on 05/07/2018 14:36:40

A couple of items that make me cringe, but I bite my tongue rather than saying anything that might offend - Take the log out of your own eye before removing the splinter from someone else's and all that, I am sure I say many things that make others cringe as well, to say nothing of my unfortunate condescending tone of voice.

Starting a sentence with "Me and...", it seems that this is even taught in schools on the othe side of the pond. Whatever happened to self deprecation, listing everyone else first and placing yourself last - I suppose this is possibly an extension of the "Me first" culture we see on the roads.

Ending every question with "Isn't it?", "innit?", or "you know what I mean?", hardly any questions need these additions.

Excessive use of the word "like", sometimes every other word, as filler by people who enjoy talking incessantly.

I fully appreciate that many people may not have English as a first language, and my attempts to speak their native language would be laughable, but I regularly hear all of the above from native English speakers. I am forever having to remind my own children not to use 'like' and either pause, slow down, or try to use an alternative word. I was taught to avoid using "get", "got", "nice" and "like", as these are lazy words and to try to use an alternative if possible.

There is a current Green Flag advert being broadcast on the radio that talks about "bucket fulls" of something as opposed to "buckets full", I cringe every time I hear it. I appreciate that not everyone is great at pluralising, but if something is going to be broadcast nationally, at least have the script checked first.

Another +1 for the DH-1, I use mine on a Sieg X2, which is a fair bit smaller than the WM-18. It has so many configuration options many of which are not possible with a conventional vice.

If you are at a show, Warco regularly do a bundle offer to include all of the extra jaw options at a bargain price.

Don't go bananas with tightening it either, it has amazing gripping power with just a small tweak of the handle once closed on the item. too much tightening will actually damage the vice.

If Daz 'ont wighten it, and OMO 'ont brighten it, B***er it.

Also the Finest Universal Cleanser Known

Ultimately known as, The Handier Houshold Help! - another Fred Wedlock fan I see.

If the gas spring reacted like you mention then it would be like attempting to compress a bicycle pump with the end closed off (thumb over the end) and I would agree with you entirely.

if such a spring were used on my mill, it would require increasing force to lower the head, constantly wanting to return to the uppermost position - this is most certainly not the case, it will in fact sit happily at any position throughout the travel without any locking of gibs.

The ones used for car boots/bonnets/cupboard doors most definitely do not react like that, they are smooth throught their operational range. Yes, they may require some effort to start compressing if there is no pre-load, but once that load is in place, they do not react like the above mentioned bicycle pump.

Maybe they are not true gas springs, but gas struts, or some other name, however that appears to be how they are marketed, and is most definitely the description on the item I bought.

Thanks Michael,

That confirms what I was seeing - the document states that "Unlike mechanical springs, gas springs have an extremely flat, almost linear characteristic curve and therefore allow a uniform comfortable adjustment or pivoting movement", the graph also shows exactly the same force required for both compression and extension.

As to the potential non-linearity of a gas spring: I have not noticed this myself.

With the weight of the head sitting on the spring, it seems pretty linear in both the upwards and downwards directions on my mill, requiring about the same level of force to move throughout the range of motion, regardless of direction of travel. It can be wound up or down using one finger on the rack feed handle albeit with a small level of resistance due to the gas moving in or out of the cylinder on the spring.

This maybe down to my choice of spring - I am using a 15Kg gas spring with 210mm of possible movement.

The mill head will also stay put without needing to be clamped wherever I choose to stop, due to spring resistance and friction in the rack assembly (obviously I would not think of machining like this), so acting as a pretty good counterbalance I believe.

Also because the threads on my spring go in from the side of the mill, I have no worries about them ever pulling out because there is very little tension on the threads, all the force is at right angles to the threads and cast iron is very good at resisting shear forces.

Far be it from me to stop you from installing a counterweight and chain - whatever works for you, I am merely suggesting an alternative that was cheap (IMHO), takes up minimal space, took less than 30 minutes to install and would still allow the tilting head to be used on the original installation if required.

Edited By Zebethyal on 15/05/2018 10:16:25

I also went down the route of using a gas spring, and removed the original spring mechanism in the process.

Just drlled and tapped 2 holes to M8.

Above, you can see it on the original tilting column, I also fitted it on the solid column after fitting that.

cost of the spring was about £13.00 from Ebay.

Many thanks for the STL files.

Hopefully I won't need them, but if I do, you will have saved me the design time.

Thanks once again

I'll have to check mine to see if it is suffering from the same issue.

if it is, would you be willing to share the files, either Fusion or STL?

PLA can work OK as a bearing, many printers use it directly for sliding on stainless rods.

Hi Spencer,

I have a Mellor Lathe, not entirely sure how much of it is original, as a few things don't quite match with what lathes.co.uk say it should have - 3 speed V belt (may/may not be factory), 2MT tailstock (probably replaced with one from a different lathe), now has 3MT headstock (I rebored it from the random taper that it did have), definitely has the wrong banjo, many change gears missing.

Happy to answer any questions that I can.

Tim

A former work colleague of mine had a radical idea for the prison system to deter re-offence, and that was to outsource the prison system to Turkey/Thailand!

First offence - a suitable fine (slap on the wrist) along with community service (make them give back to the community).

Any subsequent offences - you go to Bang Kwang in Thailand or Diyarbakir in Turkey, for extending periods of time starting with a 1 month period.

His view was that prison in this country is more like a hotel that is paid for by the tax payer - where is the incentive to improve and not re-offend, many of the prisoners would prefer to be inside that out, which is why they re-offend within weeks of leaving!

He appreciated that there would also need to be some level of oversight, such that you are not sending someone off to Big Tiger (Bang Kwang) for stealing an ice cream, or some other such misdomeaner.

Edited By Zebethyal on 03/05/2018 10:00:57

How long do the scales need to be if you are looking at 150 Euro each - you can get a 36" magnetic one for around £40.00.

I bought my igaging scales that work well with Yuriy's Toys TouchDRO from Taylor Toolworks in the US, 2 x 300mm and 1 x 150mm for £82.00 including shipping to the UK - I told him what I wanted and he set up a dedicated ebay listing for me.

Worth changing to shielded 'USB' cables at some point - my scales were resetting due to interference from the Mill motor - this made using them with the supplied displays a bit of a problem. All works perfectly now with a cheap Androd tablet running the TouchDRO app and some shielded cables to my interface board.

Edited By Zebethyal on 19/02/2018 09:54:18

Loving your build and following it with interest - the parts you have built thus far look way more study than used in most hobby 3D printers.

I built my first 3D printer using a set of Prusa I3 parts and some shelf panels, to my own design, having first re-created all of the parts in Google Sketchup and then modelled the printer from scratch. I have since replaced several of the parts, some broke, some needed improvement, some were just additions to the design.

I have since used it to print all of the parts for my Buildlog.net 2.0 Laser Cutter, and all the parts for a 2020 Mini Kossel 3D printer, some parts again were my own designs.

To date most of my modelling for items I wanted to print, has been in Sketchup, although more recently I have started modelling my Mini Mill, and associated CNC conversion parts, in Fusion 360, as a learning exercise.

For printing, I use Repetier firmware and the associated Mac frontend, although most prints are performed from Gcode stored on an SD card, I merely use the front end for initial setup and kicking off the print.

The printer has largely sat idle for a year or more as I am currently struggling to dream up things I want to print with it - the last serious items were Nema23 end covers for the various axes of my Mini Mill CNC conversion.

For around the same ballpark price, you could buy a Handibot, which has already been brought to market. Where all you really do is hold the frame in place while it cuts (you can also clamp it in place to save holding the handles.

This is also an open source/hardware project, so you can build one yourself should you so desire.

For larger areas, simply overlay a grid on the surface and move the Handibot to the next location in your grid to cut the next section.

Now has a big brother that allows for 24" wide cuts (as opposed to 8"

@Russell, thanks for that - not one I had seen before. I may yet remove the gas strut once I have converted to CNC, If I keep it, it will be to keep the load on the Z axis motor the same both up and down.

@Andrew, The strut came from Ebay and is 500mm long (210mm compression), has M8 threads and requires 15Kg (33lbs) to compress - similar spec to the one used by Little Machine Shop in their conversion. I use a lock nut to secure the top thread so it sticks out far enough to clear the Z axis scale.

The DRO is a set of Igaging scales (from US ebay seller Taylor Toolworks), I use a Yuriy's Toys based DRO for which I built my own interface - total cost of the scales, interface, cables and tablet was around £120.00.

Edited By Zebethyal on 24/01/2018 12:51:48

I have an SX2, hated the standard spring and opted for a side mounted gas strut modification, (cost of modification £13.00).

I did not like how most of the centrally mounted ones had been done, and was still undecided on where I was going to mount the Z axis motor as part of the CNC conversion I am still working on, the install still allowed for tilting the column.

I have since replaced the column and base for fixed versions and re-fitted the gas strut to the new column.

I can leave the column unlocked at any height and it will not move (obviously I do not machine with the Z axis unlocked). It also has the same level of resistance throughout the complete travel of the Z axis (unlike the spring) which is usefull for drilling operations.

By the time I have finished converting the mill to CNC, I would probably have been better off simply buying the parts I needed (if they were available) and building from there - I will have almost enough parts left over to make a new mill! - but then I would not have had a machine to make all of the new parts on either.

Edited By Zebethyal on 24/01/2018 11:34:28