Member postings for Nick Wheeler

When parting off parts with a bore, I catch them on a short length of welding filler rod held in the tailstock chuck.

Then you should find your local industrial/automotive paint supplier, and get them to colour match your machine. You'll need to take a piece of the machine with you so they can do that.

The last custom mixed aerosol I had was about £16, and 250ml of 2k paint is about the same. You'll need a very large machine to use 250ml!

if you're going to file it in the lathe, then you could use the jaws of a four-jaw chuck to provide the indexing.

But a chuck doesn't need much precision of either the square or concentricity to the stock, so mark out and file in the vice. Or mill to the lines by eye. It's not worth lots of setup time for such a simple job.

Let's not forget that a sturdy vice is an essential part of good filing and sawing, which isn't necessarily true for a Dremel.

A selection of files are far more efficient than a Dremel for most purposes.

With some practice, a hacksaw is quick and accurate. A grinder is quick, not particularly accurate, doesn't work well on non-ferrous metal and the cut always needs cleaning up. They're noisy and dirty too, which isn't the case with a saw.

Having recovered dozens of burnt out cars, it's very rare for the fuel tank to be the cause or even site of the fire. Most are caused by electrical faults inside the car setting the plastics alight, or mechanical faults creating extra heat and finally fuel leaks onto hot engines. EVs will still suffer from the first two, but not the third.

An ICE car once alight will burn out quite quickly, and is then just pollution. Once alight it takes real effort to stop them, so it's normally only done to prevent the fire spreading. That's not true of battery EVs. But if we're honest, neither batteries nor fuel tanks are solutions that are particularly safe. We're just so used to the risks of fuel tanks in vehicles that we don't realise they are risks.

That's common for toughened glass whatever the application. Although it's usually caused by impact damage(stones thrown up the lawnmower breaking patio door sealed units) they can, and do, just break. But because toughened glass shatters into thousands of tiny pieces, it's often not obvious what the cause was.

One of the churches where I ring has the ringing chamber separated from the rest of the church with a glass wall that is three massive pieces of glass. Each one is two sheets of toughened glass laminated together, and the centre one shows where the fault occurred with the damage radiating from it, all because every piece is still stuck to the plastic between the sheets. We're still waiting for the replacement, as there is a row about who will pay for it to be fitted, even though the warranty covers the cost of the glass.

Another reason for spending a little more money on a grinder(most power tools really) is the power cord: cheap ones have poor quality cords that are too short for real jobs - like under/inside cars, or up ladders.

I have a cordless grinder that is far more useful than I expected it to be, although it isn't suitable for long jobs.

Back to hardcases:

every one I've ever had was at least twice the size of the tool, and still needed the cable wrestled in so that the damn thing shut. And you often have to dismantle the cutter/working part to get it in. The hinges and latches are rarely up to much. If it's a blow moulded case, there's little room for your own accessories. I find the time of getting them off the shelf, using and putting everything back to be a real time thief. And the case just gets in the way while the job is done.

Most of my power tools came in them, none of them are now.

The only tools I reluctantly keep in such cases are the ones that have lots of small parts that are needed to make them work and don't get used very often, like the cooling system tester, or valve spring compressor.

Cables are a problem, but a small loop of velcro soon fixes that

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 05/06/2022 23:12:49

One tool in a hardcase takes up far too much space for me, and they quickly go in the bin. If you buy one of THESE, then you don't even need to cable tie the disc spanner to the end of the power cord and that's the only accessory needed to run a grinder

The main reason to spend a few quid more than the very cheap grinders for occasional home use is that they are much better to use: quieter, smoother and cooler running.

4.5" is the sweet spot for availability, cost and running costs. The 5" ones use a surprising amount of extra space, which can be a nuisance in use.

The two little pots that came with my lathe had the RAL codes written on them. If I had made a note of those, getting a suitable paint(two-pack car paint for preference) would be quick, easy and cheap.

Or 'utilise' when 'use' would do just as well.

And what's with 'beverage' for 'drink?'

Why does it have to be wood? There are plenty of usable and sensibly priced metal toolboxes meant for mechanics. I've had one of THESE for years, and have used it for several different types of tools. It currently has my most used body work gear in it - several different hammers and dollies, marking tools, snips, clecos and a selection of abrasives.

In Fusion Design in place is known as Top Down Design.

Each discrete part(or component) is created in the same file, so your engine, locomotive, chassis, whatever is a complete, but virtual, thing. This chassis, complete with fully articulated suspension is an example:

I see no reason to make separate components to import into other files, even if the free version didn't make that slightly trickier.

It is much easier to create each new part in the place it's going to fit, referencing the relevant geometry, like a piston in a bore as a simple example. Or the other way around, as you can create the crankshaft, rods, pistons and valve mechanisms first, then build the block/heads etc around them.

One thing to consider is that the definition of 'fitter' has changed for the worse: now it means fit a new part out of a box and hope the job doesn't come back, instead of make/modify/adjust a part(using skills developed over several years) so that it works correctly. Engineer is another overused word - the man who can't diagnose, let alone repair your boiler isn't an engineer. He doesn't fit the definition of mechanic either, so we get the deliberately vague technician

And takes about the same time as reading this thread

curved cuts in 2mm steel would be a jigsaw job for me, as they're difficult to do with an angle grinder. Plasma cutter is good too.

You didn't say what they are for, which dictates the finish required.

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 24/05/2022 21:19:30uggests shortening the conrod by 4mm will allow the piston to run full travel inside the cylinder without hitting the ends. Hope so because the other options are more complicated - changing the cylinder length, crank throw etc.

 

That's why you design the mechanism first, and add the pretty pillars and base once you know it's all going to work. That way, all you'd need to move would be a well defined plane....

As an example here is my doodle for a small, fabricated, powered shaper that would work, but shows where the material needs to be rather than where I thought it should be(the blue top plate supporting the ram needs to be shorter in the front and longer in the back)

This was more of a mental exercise for how the mechanism works, using some guesstimated basic dimensions

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 24/05/2022 22:19:15

Here's the other side of that:

my copy arrived earlier in the week, and I noticed that the cover and paper were slightly different paper. Then I read the magazine, which has the same mix of articles that it's had for ages - the reason I buy it.

I too have too have to change how I store the old copies, but that's because the space I keep them in is now full.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 21/05/2022 10:10:03

F360 uses the modern approach to a UI, so you choose a basic function like an extrude, and decide as you use it whether to change the suggested result of cutting, adding, creating a new body etc. The same applies to joints, you pick joint, then the components, then the relevant features, then the type of joint, instead of getting your magnifier to find the three separate functions to make one part rotate around another. F360 actively removes things you can't do, like apply parallel or perpendicular constraints to a circle. My initial reaction on installing Solidedge was no wonder it took so long, it's reinstalled Windows 98! All those tiny icons covering the screen; one for each separate function. Although F360 does fall into the modern trap of considering tarting up the icons every couple of years as an important and exciting upgrade, which has happened recently.

Neither approach is wrong, as people think differently. The same applies to other devices; look at electronic indexers that use 4 keys to scroll up/down/across a tiny screen instead of a 16 keyboard to directly enter the number you want.