Member postings for Nick Wheeler

I suggest that a real, on site tutor could lead you through the creation of such things to help break through your mental block. A QCTP block is just two fairly simple sketches and a couple of extrudes; the main rotating part is similar, but sketched in place(so all of the important dimensions transfer directly) and revolves for the solid. Add a joint and you have a working assembly. The piston is a simple rod and another joint. That's maybe 30minutes instruction but covers a lot of common concepts - components, bodies, joints, additional planes, use of symmetry, constraints and dimensions, creation of useful solids etc, etc

Pat, do you name each component, body, sketch, dimension and operation as you make them? Mine have names like front track width, cam follower bore or suspension tower boxing plate. I find that really helps to remind me of my thinking when I go back to models.

The 2012 Focus outside reads and displays MP3 data off a USB stick or any bluetooth device seamlessly. I wish the ghastly 1.0l 3 cylinder Ecoboom under the bonnet was as effective.

My success rate was far lower! And we couldn't get anything from the club chairman, so I went with the piss take that my co-editor knocked up to fill the space while we waited. After three years, we'd had him as a spy, ballet dancer and a number of other daft ideas.

Another actual contributor complained that I wasn't supposed to change anything after I had corrected her spelling and added some more punctuation - just three full stops in 2000 words made my eyes bleed, although having to read her tiny handwriting with a magnifying glass didn't help.

I've never bought a magazine where every article was something I absolutely had to read. Just like this forum, the most interesting stuff has always been on unexpected topics and the 'model' part of both MEW and ME is of very little interest to me.

That's one of the reasons why I've long argued that we should lose the 'model' part of the title! It does nobody any good and leads to stupid arguments about what is and isn't 'model engineering'.

But the shed in question is a workshop which is a major part of the magazine's title!

For those of us who don't buy Shed Maintenance Monthly, or avoid doing woodwork wherever possible, it was a potentially useful article - I wouldn't have considered the problems the author had with the corners.

Much the same applies to the museum visit, MEW has published them infrequently before.

It can't all be about creating fiddly gadgets to build toy trains....

I agree with Dave, and have written this every time Nigel complains about software not working the way he thinks it should: he needs someone to stand behind him and explain how to model a part - an simple assembly would be better - that he already understands like a QCTP or single cylinder oscillating engine. That would immediately show his misconceptions of how 3D CAD works and direct him down a more useful path.

I do agree that computer programs employ tortuous language: SE help constantly talks about 'syncronous' modelling but makes no attempt at explaining what it means and why it is/isn't preferred. That's a common mistake for a lot of instructors who often make a simple concept seem far more complicated and technical than it is. Nigel has fallen into this hole and has been enthusiastically digging himself deeper for some time.

F360(I suspect any worthwhile CAD) does this too. Although I'd start with the wheel and build inwards. This uses a base sketch to position(wheel base, track width and height above the ground) the centres of the wheel bores in relation to important features like the bulkhead and rear crossmember and is built from there:

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 17/08/2022 20:21:11

Swapping from straight to detergent oil is a common killer of old aircraft engines and is far more expensive than the couple of hundred quids worth of oil.

Like many here, I lubricate my lightly used and loaded benchtop lathe with oil that I already had - Dextron3 ATF, which is basically hydraulic oil with, unnecessary for the lathe, dye and detergents.

When I have to buy oil, it will be the 'correct' stuff, but going by current use that's several years away.

The change gears get a squirt of white lithium grease for the same reason.

One of our cats has recently become a successful hunter of pork chops....

Pre WW1, cars were powered by steam, electricity and internal combustion engines. They were all equally crap, but for different reasons. Steam was understood and well developed, but wasn't really suited to small, owner/user vehicles. Electric vehicles were easy to use, powerful, quiet and reliable - but the batteries were hopeless and charging opportunities were extremely limited. I/C engines were noisy, dirty, weak, shortlived, expensive and difficult to refuel.

WW1 accelerated I/C engine development so much that after four years, the other two were doomed until electronic control of three phase motors and better batteries appeared at about the same time and made electric cars look feasible again.

And lets not forget that horses were expensive, limited in use and created a huge environmental problem.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 10/08/2022 10:44:26

I have a myford size Dickson on my WM250 and it's just the right size.

If I was starting from scratch, I would go with the wedge type, mainly because it's easier to build tools(like a powered spindle, slotting tool etc) that fit directly onto the post.

Does Autocad have a radial pattern tool? That allows you to pattern a feature as many times as you need around a fixed point or axis?

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 09/08/2022 10:51:38

Be very careful of all this common advice, because much of it is just repeated dogma: QCTPs might reduce rigidity compared to a 4way post, but it's barely going to be noticeable even when working the size of lathe mentioned really hard. There are better things to spend the money on when you're learning to use the machine. I wouldn't be without one, but using the lathe is just work on the way to having the required part so it needs to be efficient.

The same applies to centre height gauges and their 'necessity'. One made in a couple of minutes from a small block, some fine pitch studding, a washer and a couple of nuts all loctited together will work just as well as the various fancy designs that are a lot of work. The actual value of those is for a beginner to learn about fit, finish and how parts need to work together, using a piece that isn't actually important. On the rare occasions I need one, I just set my digital height gauge to the dimensions I took when I got the lathe, and use that.

I've had a set of micrometers that measure from 0-100mm for almost twenty years but have never used the biggest one. For most of my work, a digital caliper is more than good enough. The DTI has barely been out of its box because I rarely use a four jaw chuck.

I've never needed a travelling steady, despite having bought one for the mini-lathe and the WM250 being supplied with it. I do use a toolpost spindle a lot because it simplifies cross-drilled holes(for R-clips, split pins, safety wire etc) but one probably shouldn't even be on your might come in handy list.

I would suggest buying a few cutting tools - both pre-ground HSS to give yourself a fighting chance, and carbide - a set of good quality drill bits in the size and range appropriate to the work you expect to do. That will decide whether you need number and letter drills, or just 0-10mm in 0.5mm increments. Add a few pieces of the sort of material you're going to use and start making stuff. That will then show what you do, and more importantly don't, need to buy.

Having somebody physically looking over your shoulder while you do that is worth dozens of internet posts....

The additional bits&bobs will be the same for any of the three machines you listed, so you might as well get the biggest machine you can afford and have space for.

Whatever work you do, you'll always run into jobs that would benefit from a bigger machine, and will have some that can only be done on a bigger lathe.

Having a more powerful motor makes for better productivity - cranking handles shaving off bits of metal for dozens of passes gets old really quickly, when more power could do the same job in two or three passes.

Power cross feed is similarly useful especially for large diameters. And it makes parting off much less fraught.

Inverters give better and more reliable speed control than the simpler DC motors.

So buy the 250.

Another plus one from me too; basic master cylinders are pretty much interchangeable available in lots of different bore sizes and don't cost much. So a simple bolt-on part should do everything you want without the time and work of engineering some assistance.

Electric steering cloumns use a motor and gears directly onto the shaft, so I don't see how that could possibly help?

It was in Portsmouth, not Plymouth. There wasn't much of America in 1803....

Although the Americans took the principles demonstrated, and built on them

So resist the challenge, and don't keep so many. I gained a spare drawer in the toolbox by binning 12 years worth of such scrap. The space is far more valuable than random bits of material too short to be of any practical use.

It also smells awful.

I use Dextron3 Automatic Transmission Fluid in and on my WM250 because it's basically just the thin hydraulic oil with some extra dye. And I had about 3litres of it going spare.

We don't have AC everywhere because there's approximately 15 days a year when it would actually be of any benefit. If we get five of days in a row(like now) over 30° we call it a heatwave, and imply that the world is about to end in a hellish fireball. The other ten days will be randomly scattered between the beginning of May and the middle of October.

We do a similar thing when the temperature drops below freezing for a week and we get a few cm of snow. There's not enough of it that stays as snow to treat it like countries that will have it for the entire winter.

The efficient thing to do in both situations is to modify our normal behaviour slightly - mostly by not going out much for a few days - and moan a lot.

It makes far more sense to have buildings that are suited to the cool, damp, breezy weather that is our annual climate. Which, funnily enough, is what we've done for centuries.....

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 20/07/2022 10:02:12