Member postings for Nick Wheeler

Make them in two pieces: the larger knurled part, and some M5 studding loctited into them. It's quicker and easier to do them this way, uses less material and makes for a stronger part.

There are. Sometimes. But how often do you go to a bootfair with the intention of buying a good quality 50mm boring head and actually manage to do so? Usually you walk past a load of stuff that looks like it was just pulled out of a skip, pay £5 for a slime burger and go home with a couple of £0.50 Matchbox cars that remind you of the ones you ruined as a kid. On the rare occasions I see engineering stuff it's either the contents of another skip, or priced for the collectors who only buy pre-war Starret in original boxes.

Scouring the secondhand market for two years is a huge cost in time, and a fair amount of money. When I bought my first mini-lathe, I looked at several Myfords locally that were 2 to 3 times the price. They were worthless to me, as I had work to do that wasn't restoring a used-up piece of machinery.

How about buy cheap, get the job done, move on? Would you watch that?

And balanced swape is actually rhyming slang for pain to make

He's a retired teacher, so explains what he's going to do and why, then demonstrates it and finishes with another explanation. Just like any competent trainer, and not the self indulgent Youtubers who don't know when to shut up

You know admitting that will make the Guardians of Myford(formerly the Model Inquisition) come and poke you with long travel DTIs until you repent your sins against Model Engineering?

How many MEs are using their collets in 10hp machines turning £200 tools at 15,000rpm to machine multi-thousand £ castings with the lights out?

How many of us have actually measured the runout of our collets to a reliable standard unless the parts they make aren't up to our relatively basic requirements?

After all, it's not that long ago that most MEs did all of their milling in a vertical slide using basic tool holders(and measuring equipment!) yet they produced useful parts.

If the tool in the collet is short enough, you could use a deep socket.

A crowsfoot spanner on your torque wrench and a simple calculation also works. As does welding a scrap socket a known distance along a spanner. But these are working mechanics techniques, so probably aren't technical enough for model engineering...

I would be amazed if anyone is tightening ER16 collets to 70Nm in their home workshop. Much the same applies to correctly torquing ER32s

Is a 3/8 thread really that big to die cut in a smallish lathe? I've made a number of M12x1.5 parts in both my wm50 and the mini-lathe that I had first.

And I really can't see why you'd faff about screwcutting something only to finish with a die. The reason for having the die is to save the extra work

You can use Fusion without the history. But doing so means you can't go back and alter features or processes, and that's one of the things that makes CAD such a useful engineering design tool so I don't see why you would want to

Phil, your question is like asking which house should I buy?

You need to give us more information like(mostly in order):

What are you going to make? -

How much can you spend?

Where are you going to keep it?

Do you have any experience with using tools to make stuff?

Here are some suggestions for unit names:

Yuck

Bleurgh

Ouch

You must be f*****g joking

Apply as appropriate.

Pat's comments are the ones that really matter here.

Making the body from 3 separate extruded cylinders looks simple but it doesn't make for a particularly good part, and is not easily editable if you need to change any dimensions. The same applies to creating the bore separately. And it's all so slow.

I used a single solid revolve originally, but the gaps had to be cut out using a more complicated sketch. The single spoke in an existing hole then patterned as a feature is easier to draw, easier to understand and all attributes can be changed simply. A major reason for using CAD is not having to do the calculations to decide on the angles or lengths of lines before drawing them.

Name the sketches and operations as you do them, because it's hard enough remembering what did what later in the day. You'll have no chance in six months when you want to make the part out of different material.

The cardboard box is designed to look pretty in the shop. It's hardly a lifetime storage container.

Here's Fusion, and there is no way I wouldn't use revolve:

Draw a construction line vertical from the origin, and a centreline centred to the origin. Add three rectangles, constrained symmetrically around the construction line, and make the two longest lengths equal.

Add the lengths

And the diameters from the centreline so no radius calculations are needed

Finish the sketch, and select both profiles. Click on Revolve, and Fusion automatically picks up that the centreline is a suitable axis, which is why it was defined as such

The resulting body, with the sketch still active

That's a new sketch, on the midplane; with the two diameters projected from the body, a vertical construction line from the origin, and a rectangle symmetrical to the line, tangent to the bigger circle, colinear to the small one and 1.5mm thick

Extrude the spoke profile symmetrically to the end of the body, ensuring that it is a join.

Use the spoke feature in a circular pattern, around the axis to create the other spokes.

Apparently, it will weigh 6grammes if made from ABS plastic....

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 11/04/2022 18:31:51

Perhaps Dave was using the modern definition of engineer, which seems to be somebody with a bent screwdriver and a hammer who can't fix your washing machine.

Yeah, that.

Once again, we have the ridiculous idea that feet and inches are somehow natural and intuitive, whereas mm and metres aren't. Our brains aren't naturally tuned to recognise 17feet, they're trained to do that. Whereas anyone who grew up with metric is just as capable of visualising 5171mm or 5.2metres. For the same reason.

Use them enough and you'll be able to do that with both systems, simultaneously

You do know that Rockoil is American? And that a US pint is only 16 fluid ounces? Which means that one US pint is 0.474ml. 

Does it make sense now?

Although using metric is far more sensible.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 08/04/2022 22:34:02

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 08/04/2022 22:34:27

Sometime after they fitted trackers to all the company vehicles, I got a phonecall from my boss -

Boss: Why are you doing 300mph through Sittingbourne?

Me: You said the job was urgent, and I don't pay for the diesel.

Boss: Click

Me: Pillock