Member postings for Nick Hulme

You mean like the regulation of Lathes and Milling machines which has been proposed repeatedly over the years by clueless politicians with no manufacturing or machining experience who don't realise that it's impractical and stupid to try to control illegal misuse with bans and regulation?

Do what you do in other rooms where smells are frequent, use an extractor.

There was a time when all you had was hand chipped flint, people seemed to manage quite well too!

HSS was adopted by Model Engineers when it was literally Cutting Edge in industry, the desire to stop time and manage with what Great Grandad had when he was actually using the best available technology at the time is quite funny!

Cutwel have remanufactured the Quick Change tool system with the R8 adapter at under £100 and the holders priced better than previous stocks, Leigh Cole at Cutwel assures me the holders are back compatible with the old system

I used to espouse an Emco Maximat Super11 (later big bore model), latterly I transferred my affections to the rather lovely Harrison M300, typically when a new lathe finally came my way it was neither of these.
When choosing a lathe keep in mind that 4 things in life are sure, death, taxes, that you will want a longer lathe and that you will at some point wish for more capacity through the spindle.

Syil maintain their own site for their UK product offerings but Emvio Engineering are the current UK agent for Syil, it used to be some box shipping outfit but now things are much different.

I've had my Syil X7 running without problems for a couple of years now, one of the things which encouraged me in the decision was the involvement of UK based Emvio Engineering as the UK agent, customer service has been outstanding.

Good practice is safe practice, if you always stop the lathe it's safe, I keep all of my tail stock tooling and head stock tooling on the wall behind the lathe, along with most of my QCTP holders.

If slots required "On Size" cutters we would all end up with an infinite number of cutters, you use the next size cutter down but you cut the slot or pocket to the correct size!

Use a shim disc between the inner races to provide the required pre-load.

316 will form, why muck about?

Machine DRO sell adapter cables

Machine DRO (Allendale Electronics) sold Sino DROs, if you ask them I'm sure they will be able to help.

My workshop was, until recently, a 5.2m x 3m Yard Master garage of plastic coated galvanised steel construction.
I devised a means to fix wood into the U shaped internal supporting members of the walls, filled the spaces with insulating sheets cut to fit and boarded out the interior walls with 18mm OSB. The roof was insulated with 25mm Celotex.
The workshop stayed above 10C in all weathers in Yorkshire with just a desktop PC running and I never had any issues with condensation.

That's what Roy Milner did, with most of the parts being taken from the headstock being converted, no new gears or pulleys were used.

John Stevenson suggested a native ER40 headstock would be the best option for the Super 7, I think Myford were just making a point of ignoring him and common sense by finally employing the MT3 design which one of their employees had come up with in the 1960s or 1970s.
Perhaps the "New Myford" will go with ER40 sometime in the middle of this century!

Edited By Nick Hulme on 05/04/2020 14:23:42

Pauly,
I haven't needed to strip it yet and it's used every day for production work at the moment, I currently have a rush of orders owing to people being at home with nothing to do but fit upgrade parts to their projects.
When I get around to stripping it I will put all the dimensions into CAD and I have an idea or two for improvement when I convert my spare head,
Regards,
Nick

If you can find a reasonably priced one then a Myford S7 in good condition might serve you well, if you can live with the lamentable headstock through capacity. 25 years ago I paid £700 for a 1964 Super 7 which is still turning out precision work.
The problem is that for what people seem to think is a reasonable price for a second hand S7 you can now usually buy something just as good and newer from a reputable UK based supplier.

Stainless has nothing to do with this sad story.
The cheerful purchase of Mystery Metal because it is seen as cheap is the story here.
If you buy known materials you can look up heat treatment and cutting speeds, this saves you looking like the chump who has bought Scrapbinium cheaply and now cannot do anything with it.

How does that jibe with a single step 30mm to 25mm reduction in 303 on my S7?