Member postings for Nick Wheeler

One of the sub £30 mini HVLP guns used with 2k paint will do everything you want. Your small compressor will probably work OK for painting even large models; painting more than one car panel at a time will need a bigger one.

When I took O-level maths in 1986, we all had calculators. But we were shown how to use slide rules as part of the reasons why logarithms are so useful.

Why take it apart? Stick it in the mill, bore a shallow hole, wind it out 10 divisions and measure again.

Easy.

That's still highly complicated compared to nailing a couple of planks together and some rubber tubing to make a slingshot. The sort of thing that young kids could make after school with a hammer....

In the vein, a cook who can bake an edible cake is quite capable of using their equipment to make explosives.

If a truck is fully loaded, taking the whole load from a dock to its final destination, what makes it grossly inefficient?

The inefficient part of transporting stuff isn't the vehicles, but the number of times it has to be handled.

Even if you add the motor, it's got to compare quite well with the weight of an engine, gearbox, diff, driveshafts and fuel tank of a similar size RWD car.

I was surprised that neither Alan's articles, nor the previous one about updating small lathes didn't create any discussion. I preferred Alex du Pre's ideas, as they're easily applicable to existing machines yet improve some of the less satisfactory features; screwcutting and power feeds in particular

You might find the Citroen Ami more to your liking LINK

Sounds good to me.

Although for just one number plate, I'd use a normal printer for the template and be a bit more careful with the scalpel.

Your 70kg is the shipping weight. By the time you've removed it from the crate, taken the vice and drill chuck off it will be less than half that. Which is low enough to move around, although some help moving it down your path would be sensible.

Strapping it to a sackbarrow would also work.

I have the Chester equivalent of that machine, and wonder why you feel the need to take it apart to move it? I can lift it on and off the bench by myself. I did get help to carry it down the cellar steps, mainly because it's a bit awkward to hold.

Removing the table would remove a similar amount of weight, and is easier to do.

Brunel was a pioneer using state of the art engineering to do something interesting - he wouldn't be farting around with trains. He'd have been building Tesla cars better, or have people on their way to Mars rather than just predicting it might happen in our children's lifetimes.

My problem with all software manuals is that they're written by people who know how to use the software, and for whom just having the picture on the screen/ability to send files/whatever is their end result. You and I want that representation for practical purposes(although I think our personal requirements show the difference between your technical training and my pick it up as I go along experiences), to send a well formatted 1000page document to someone on the other side of the world who needs it, or to have an entire CD and photo collection on a memory stick to be used in all devices that are available to us.

I have both books you mentioned, and the WPS one is typical of any 22year old computer book - it's so dated to be almost useless, unlike the similar ones on technical drawing or gears that were largely fixed subjects when they were written. If you don't have Hughes book, then I would suggest it is exactly the primer(good description) you need to illustrate the principles you're struggling with. The fork jig and pedal crank are particularly good.

If I'm honest the engine was an academic exercise as I don't have the patience for all the repeated parts, the skills to make tiny fuel injectors or facilities to cast the block, head, manifold and throttle bodies. It uses defined parameter, lots of joints and other techniques to prove to myself that I now have a reasonable grasp of how to use the program. To get to that stage, I've been modelling every part I've made recently. Often that was after finishing them.

I lack the artistic abilities to create worthwhile renders. And I have better uses for spending time proving that again. All of these pictures are straight from the design space, with materials defined to better represent the parts. Fusion suggests that the engine will weigh 3.3Kg....

The grinder is a different matter, as I have a real use for such a thing. You noticed the table is heavily influenced by the Worden, and the grinding head follows common practice. It's in a third iteration that I will build at some point soon. The previous attempts were far bigger(it has to live on a top shelf), chunkier, more complex and had various conflicts that are now worked out. I couldn't have done any of that without the 3D CAD. It's also intended to be very easy to make; the table and tilting mechanism are ideal candidates for laser cutting especially as I would have to buy the material, and the slide rails are standard parts. An evenings simple work(a number of tapped holes along parallel lines is pretty simple, right?) would have that assembly working. The spindle from the WPS book is the only tricky part, and that's only because it needs to be made well. The belt guard is to be 3D printed as it produces a better part in less time than I could make in sheetmetal. Embossing my name into it is a whimsical touch that wouldn't be feasible any other way. I won't be buying any of the kits, because if I spent that sort of money I would expect to take it out of the box, plug it in and start using it.

I have the printed guides IMSI published for TurboCad for both 2&3D. They're typical of such software 'manuals' in that they only really make sense when you know how to use the damn thing. I gave up on Turbocad several years ago, so they're useless to me and you are welcome to them if you want.

Any 3D Cad will draw your polygons just as easily. One extra step - extruding them to be solids - would add the thickness for your aesthetic comparison.

The grinder I showed is intended to be compact and made out of simple sections with as little work as I could get away with. The spindle is mostly from published drawings. None of the things I've shown have had any visual finishing applied to them as it requires lots of faffing about with lighting, shadows and other artistic judgements that are of no use or interest me.

I don't care about parts; finished assemblies are what matter. Drawings, 3D models, sectional views, combinations of all of those or even scratchings on a dirt floor are just as much steps on the way to that as rooting through a pile of stock then milling the curved slots for a tilt 'mechanism.' It's all just work that should be done in as an efficient way as possible.

That's Fusion360, but Alibre that Jason used and any other 3D program is very similar.

You're trying to force the complex restrictions, that fudge a 3D object onto a flat piece of paper, onto a system that simply doesn't need them. Look at how complicated your description of how to do that is compared to mine.

Turbocad's workplanes, scales and viewports confused the hell out of me so I didn't get very far with it. I've never used coordinates for anything I've done in Fusion. This

is based entirely around this simple crank web and a known spacing of the bores:

with all the components designed in place and can be switched on and off, or animated as needed

I wish Fusion had a follower joint so the entire valvetrain could be animated properly. It took about a week of evenings in front of the telly, and there is no way I could do it as 2D. It does need a couple of modifications to actually produce it. Nor do I see much need for traditional flat drawings to make most of it when the models are available in any orientation or dimensions you need.

Why make it complicated, as it can be done with two simple, fully defined and editable sketches:

Sweep this profile(note the internal radii)

along this 3 line path(which could also kick up or down on another plane if needed)

to get this

The bevel would be another single line across the flat face and a 'cut' extrude. The whole thing instantly updates if you alter any of the dimensions.

It took longer to copy the images to my forum album than it did to create the 'model'

Copy, rotate and move for the other side. Draw the crossmembers directly on one of them, and extrude(they're straight) to the other one. No coordinates or working out needed

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 05/05/2021 18:21:20

Interesting.

I wonder if various combinations would be effective

I don't do much screwcutting, and don't offset the top slide. I'd be more likely to do it for really fine pitches, to increase the amount of adjustment.

No, I agree completely.

Here's one I bought for about £8, twenty years ago:

On it, I have built and painted engines, ported cylinder heads, made assorted repair panels, welded engine mounts and other heavier fabrications, used it for the sort of woodwork that's normal and  as a painting stand. Chucking it in the car is no big deal. It's lived outside the entire time I've had it, and about five years ago, the original surfaces finally broke. So, having spent about five minutes replacing them with some offcuts form my neighbour's decking that were already an appropriate length, i also treated the clamp screws to a squirt of oil. As you can see, I have no qualms about clamping work to the top, and cutting or drilling into it - I have another couple of pieces of decking if needed. This is a good example of why buying the 'best you can' isn't always a good policy; I have used the genuine ones, and they don't do anything better enough to make spending the extra justifiable.

As and when it does need replacing, I'll buy a matched pair of something similar which would make handling larger sheets or lengths easier.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 25/04/2021 18:26:52

Late last year, as part of a clean up I found this tucked behind a cupboard:

That's the frame and swinging arm for a powered hacksaw as featured in MEW 111, which I made about 12 years ago. The photo is after I cleaned and checked it the frame still slid along the arm.

After scrounging a wiper motor and linkage(from an MGF I helped a friend break), then making the missing parts from scrap I had lying about, I ended up with this:

I still need to wire it properly with a switch and fuse, but when connected to a battery charger it gently saws through steel bar which was what I wanted it for. I'll be clamping it to the workmate to use it, and will paint it when I've finished the wheeling machine I started at about the same time.