Member postings for Rainbows

Ah well at least part of the rear of the outhouse doubles as the retaining wall for the rear neighbours garden. Save the roof, blow a hole in the side of the building, what a life.

To avoid inter neighboural disputes ending in my tragic loss to a drive by shooting, pruning can only go so far as about the boundary line. Which will leave a very lopsided tree and a brief respite before the branches start encroaching again.

One thing stands between me and having a workshop again, the destructive power of pears. And a large amount of other things, but mostly pears.

They've punched through the roof, scattered pears inside, rolled more off the roof coating the garden. The previous occupier tells me they are delicious if you catch them but I've had to take his word for it.

The two roofing materials I'm familiar with and am so far doing after a coin flip (after attacking the tree with a polsesaw) are:

Re roof with slate. Future maintenance possibly infinite. Somewhat laborious to install

Re roof with corrugated iron. Maintenance free. Cheap and easy. Not original if not ugly. The roof continues the the neighbours outhouse and I don't know how that boundary line will work out yet.

Could anyone chip in with their experience with other roofing materials. Ballistic properties and aesthetics aren't a common combination but I'm hoping to find such a thing

I managed to shift a sizeable chunk of a workshop clearance auction by way of electrical assist pedal tricycle and bike trailer. Having gotten rid of the petrol I just need to find an alternative for the synthetic rubber tyres, wire insulation, battery casing, hydraulic hose and brake pads :^)

If it's like a Bridgeport in size then it would be reasonable to compare the safe table load of a Bridgeport, which is apparently 750lb/340kg according to google.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVc1Zd2682A

Possibly along your idea. A three station capstan and cross slide all powered by steppers

If I got given a bunch of money and told to make a British based small machine tool manufacturer, well first I'd have a nervous break down.

But once I'd recovered I'd probably go down the Sherline business plan of having highly modular machine tools but at a ML7 size. Gives a wide target market from hobbyist to commercial use. You're product is the perfect match for someone, assuming it has the right combination of parts. The accuracy required for interchangeable parts makes it somewhat difficult for SIEG to wrestle in on your product.

Considering where I've seen Myfords scattered about they must have gotten a steady income from garages and light workshops

A local museum has a spinning display of line shaft and associated machinery running 6 hours a day 6 days a week. Lathe, shapers, miller, etc all running on total loss lubrication and no one is allowed near them while operating for obvious health and safety reasons. Something like 30-40 oil points on the machines with tiny or no actual oil reservoir. Plus near 30 pillow blocks on the line shaft that also seem to run on oil but at least have a reservoir.

A small legion of drip feed oilers would be simple, relatively historically accurate and last a day of oiling but having someone available every day before opening to oil might not be doable. The line shaft pillow blocks are also a pain for requiring a step ladder in a place with no room to set one up, uncertain how often they would need topping up.

I know heavy industry has lubricators that would dwarf a workshop but the operating budget is £2.50 and a pack of smarties. I figure one shot lubricators can't handle more than one machine. There's some "CNC Automatic Lubricating Oil Pump"s on Aliexpress that might be good but I think an instruction manual in English rather than Mandarin is a reasonable request for a proper business and not one that these would meet.

Does anyone have a cheap and cheerful but legally responsible supplier or oilers or other inventive ideas?

Having something with the work envelope capacity of a 7x14 mini lathe but the depth of cut capacity of a Colchester Mastiff sounds like an unusual but enjoyable time.

A coreXY printer starts about 100mm/s print speed and 400mm/s rapids. Voron modders can go insane and get up to 700mm/s

A bit off topic but have you posted anything about this? Sounds very interesting

There is the saying of get the biggest lathe you can afford and fit, woe betide the man who has to carry a Colchester down the cellar stairs.

As someone who might have to migrate from a lovely flat access garage to, god forbid, spiral staircases can anyone recommend lathes that can be comfortably carried by two fit people?

Weight is one thing but I've seen some lathes that seem to come apart like lego and others if not cast as one piece are atleast a huge pain. My Wilfin is of unknown weight but combined with it's inconvenient way of mounting onto its legs its proven a big pain to manhandle.

A fun jig that feels like it must of been quite expensive.

Post is bare except for a dovetail. Figure it was for a lamp or magnifying glass.

Middle clamp slides in dovetails with a spring detent in the middle. The blade stiffly comes up and down into a groove. It has two sprung loaded little arms/clamps on the side of the triangle.

The side pointers are on leafsprings and a sprung pivot. The left can be adjusted X Y and rotationally. The right only X and rotationally. The pointer itself also rotates freely with friction given by a wavy washer. Quite a lot of effort has been made to make the V continue through 3 different components of the pointers but the dowel handle and on the left pointer another bit of metal block it so unsure of its purpose. The left pointer has a little flap of some type of copper/brass/etc held on by a slice of bread shaped bit of metal. The holes visible on the other pointer are neither tapped or through holes so how the bread slice and copper is held in place is a mystery.

The right pointer is on a plastic sheet and secured with plastic screws, electrically isolating it from the rest of the jig. The two plastic knobs for hooking something electric are also apparent.

Complete mystery what it is to me, would be nice if anyone recognises it

Adepts and Wizards are cute but rare, not that practical and only found in England. If you need a very small lathe -

You could try TAIG lathes (https://taigtools.com/product-category/micro-lathes/micro-lathe-ii/micro-lathe-ii-machines/)

Or the well made but expensive Cowells lathes (http://www.cowells.com/90me.htm)

Not sure how easy it is to import them to Turkey though.

I don't think I've heard of beekeepers deliberately going out their way to destroy wild bees but domesticated honey bees and wild bumble bees are in direct competition. Depending on the situation a commercial honey bee business can be pretty awful for the surrounding insect environment.

Hope we all love a bit of mystery machine identification. Found this at auction with no context other than an accompanying Lorch lathe. Googling the maker the nameplate would be better suited sitting on a machinegun rather than a mill. I assume they bought it off the maker, slapped their name on it only for it to then be stolen by an englishman circa 1918.

I seem to remember seeing a lathes article about a mill with the same unique slot on the front of the spindle but going through again I can't find it.

edit: more pictures in album, it has an odd mechanism that shifts the pulley back and forth linked to the table feed trip switch 

Edited By Rainbows on 30/07/2021 18:16:13

The jack I had thought about using was this:

http://www.screw-jack.com/jtc25-mini-screw-jack.html

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-5-kN-Cubic-Mini-Screw_60781608045.html

Some measuring showed that it would be just small enough to fit under the knee (vertically speaking) while still giving the full travel. A TR14x4 leadscrew feels like its on the slender side but but the load rating says it could lift the entire mill. For £40 it would as cheap as some second hand jacks. For £100? eh well maybe then homemade is the path to go. Yet to ask for a quote. Unfortunately the 4mm pitch doesn't match up with any mass produced machines so I can't buy a standard spare leadscrew dial to use on my machine so maybe a DRO is the way.

I was thinking that having an off centre leadscrew would be bad for the machine, but then again all our lathes work that way, so maybe I was overestimating that problem and getting stuck in a mental rut.

Something I've seen is stick a big worm wheel on the pinion axle and bolt a mount for a worm gear somewhere on the side. I've been keeping an eye out for scrap rotary tables to steal the gears out of but have yet to stumble across one. Essentially the same idea the Centec company had for the 2A

Optimistic listing there, sure I could buy an entire respectable second hand milling machine for that money but why do that when I can buy a milling head? I still have a milling spindle I bought from china for an eventual vertical conversion, it cost me all of £100 and some change.

Bonjour

Going to resurrect this thread for a basically identical issue - except the knee casting of my Centec 2 has extra iron between the two webs seen on Sean's machine. Good for rigidity, bad for having a clear space to stick a leadscrew and gearbox and handle and so on in. I'm missing the original handle but otherwise the rack and pinion still functions.

Thinking about working within the limits of the existing set up I don't like that 1) the stop screws aren't graduated 2) if you have to move the knee further than the travel of the screw you have to move the entire stop, thus losing your measurement, 3) if you let go of the lever and the position stop / gib lock isn't tight then the knee will fall down

1) -> replace the screws with micrometer barrels, though I do wonder about the durability of them. Doing repeat cutting passes would get boring fast with no way to switch between precise adjustment and rapid approximate cuts as on a leadscrew dial.

2) -> replace the screws with extra long micrometer barrels? This one I haven't properly worked out yet.

3) -> A mystery to fix. Counterbalancing the knee with a gas spring would help. A switch attached to the handle which actuates a form of lock/clamp would be nice but I can't yet think of a mechanism

If anyone has ideas or has solved this on their own Centec then I'd like to hear them.

Also if anyone has a centec handle for sale I'd be interested, trying to work out that taper and cut a square hole is possible but maybe a bit tedious.

Shame I can't see anyone selling just the headstock and tailstock riser. Looks like it would otherwise be possible to retrofit it onto bog standard minilathes

Place long needle in the grip, place tool in tool post. Aim the needle tip into a centre punch or centre drill mark in the workpiece and use that to centre it in your 4 jaw chuck by seeing how much the needle wobbles.

Not sure of the name but I do remember seeing someone use a tool like this that way.

Title is the question really

Bought some brass sheet that comes with a translucent greeny-blue adhesive film for protecting the finish from scratches.

My thought is can I laser cut the film I can then use that as a stencil for acid etching text or symbols. However if it turns out to be vinyl the laser cutter is going to get wrecked by chlorine gas.

If it does turn out to be vinyl then I have some PP adhesive film as a backup but it would be convenient.