Member postings for Nick Hulme

Grease is a suspension of oil in a soap, over many years the lighter fractions in the oil will evaporate and the soap can also degrade and set, a Lithium Soap based grease is more stable and lasts longer and in a Synthetic Grease the oil component is "Built" from molecules rather than refined and so doesn't have lighter fractions to evaporate.

Chemicals like Birchwood Casey Aluminium Black work fine on material that's been exposed to air for weeks as long as it's well cleaned and degreased, keeping the surface to be treated covered with adequate fresh solution is essential, wiping it on and leaving it is a recipe for patchy results, different alloys take colour differently.

He was trying to do what Tormach told him the mill could do prior to it's purchase, it's irrelevant WHAT he was trying to do, the point is they refunded him because they lied about the capabilities of their machines.

Double your motor power and go 4 pole, the increased power will deliver adequate torque at lower speeds than the less powerful motor can manage.
If you choose a good quality 4-pole you can safely run at up to 200% of rated 60hz speed as the rotor construction is close enough to the 2 pole version as makes no difference.
You'll likely cover all the speeds you need without ratio changes with such a set up.

Fitting an air filter to the end of the motor will reduce fan noise, just a simple affair with a few layers of mesh and open fabric still allows plenty of air flow with massively reduced noise.

I find an old copy of Machinery's Handbook more useful, it even gives you good starting points for mandrel size/finished diameter for a wide range of gauges of piano wire.

No one here heard of or have a Test Lamp?
You can choose the load to suit your requirements and unlike a volt meter it shows you have current delivery capability and not just leakage.

Pushing that rock up the hill again Sisyphus? :D

I think you're putting the cart before the horse, machinists who hand write code tend to do it at the machine where no plot is available, relying on knowing what they are doing.
Those, like me, who can't work at the machine for anything but fairly simple 2D and 2.5D generally use CAM.

Use the VFD Stop rather than turning the speed control down, best case no difference, worst case your potentiometer calibration is off and you overheat something. 

When I referred to powering off I meant just that. 

Edited By Nick Hulme on 27/01/2019 20:30:24

Only £11 per hour, imagine what it would cost as a commission from an engineering company capable of such work!

The most likely failure point for electronics is when powering on.
I have Siemens VFDs which have been working for over 15 years and were ex-industrial when I bough them, I don't power off VFDs.

This is where an inverter from a (Relatively) local supplier who speaks your language helps, better still one which is also from a manufacturer who publishes online manuals in intelligible English!

A Z axis Zero will be a known distance from the work holding equipment (Chuck) and allows your CAM to know where to stop to avoid collision.

Simples.

I recommend

1. Enclosed.

2. Silver Contacts.

3. Ditch the "Shade Tree" engineering, it's not funny, clever or useful.

Cool, furnish us with your engineering reasoning for that!

If you want a DRO on a machine you should use linear scales, anything else fails to eliminate backlash.
If a DRO gets in the way on your lathe you have fitted it incorrectly or bought the wrong DRO, or both.
If you've tried a functional DRO (as opposed to semi-functional scales) on a lathe and can do without it then you have more time than projects to fit in before you die. :D

Tempering temperature/oxide colour charts are all over the internet.
Google search, pick a couple that agree and you have your temperatures.
I used to post links but you got here so you can get there.......

Have you installed the add-in which gives the virtual machine direct hardware access to the graphics adapter?

Now Tormach are releasing Servo machines perhaps they'll also fit higher powered spindles in order to deliver useful low speed torque, in the same way that most industrial CNC mill manufacturers do?

With a flat level surface to stand them on and with careful build and set up all these things work perfectly well and help to keep kit prices down.

If you wanted to use ball screws for Z you could use harmonic gearboxes with no micro-stepping to achieve good resolution and torque.

In an ideal world, where price was no object, many 3D printer parts would be precision made in better materials. To that end I'll be making a set of metal parts to replace the plastic bits on my Factory 3D printer, but I'm under no illusion that it's likely to be an economical enterprise, it's just on the list of things to do whilst commissioning and getting used to my new VMC.

- Nick