Member postings for Kiwi Bloke

The point wasn't so much about the intrinsic fire risk of EVs, but the suggestions about how and when they should be charged, and whether this should be unsupervised, etc. Another point, not addressed in the link, is all the difficulties first responders face when attending an EV 'incident', including a fire.

Interesting discovery. The 'second tablet' seems to be a 'look-up table' for a limited range of triangle configurations, suggesting that the end-user wouldn't have understood the geometrical theory and couldn't work out general-case problems. Perhaps the theory wasn't known, and all that was available was empirical knowledge. Then along came theoretical understanding, with Pythagoras - although it's now suggested he merely popularized the theory.

Yes, absolutely! Good points! Personal realization was trying to get to grips with musical notation, as an adult. It's a disaster! Usually, of course, it's something that children, not adults, grapple with, and kids will accept anything... The crazy system we have is the fault of the Catholic church. There are rational notation systems out there, but they'll never catch on: there's no point battling against the traditional system's self-renewing user base.

Well, fine, but let's get things prepared for EVs, instead of just rushing out to buy them, encouraged by government cash incentives.

You'd think it ought to be easy to sort out greener transport in a little country with a small population, like New Zealand. The government seems to think so too, so it's offering cash incentives (discounts) on new EV purchases, and is threatening to tax the sort of vehicles farmers typically use (diesel 'utes' ). NZ generates most of its electricity by 'green' methods. Sounds good so far? NZ used and imported more coal then ever last year, and the trend has been upwards for years. This is because the country's electrical energy consumption cannot be met by 'green' generation, so electricity generation has to be topped-up by coal-fired generators, which use particularly 'dirty' coal. This means that, until more 'green' electricity is available, any increase in electrical energy consumption is effectively coal-powered. So are Kiwi EVs 'green'?

I'd like to see bumper stickers on Kiwi EVs loudly proclaiming 'Proudly Powered by Coal'.

Oh, and please do look at the link I provided just above...

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 05/08/2021 11:09:56

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 05/08/2021 11:11:56

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... **LINK**

Aaargh!

Damn! My bullshit detector has just overloaded.

Finally got around to looking at the Herbert surface grinder series. Excellent treatise on the art of scraping machines!

There's a rather worrying implication in this thread that, in order to get your lathe to 'turn parallel', you need to twist or untwist the bed. This is misleading: there's rather more to lathe alignment than possibly twisted beds, isn't there? Headstock alignment for one... Also, many posts seem to conflate alignment with levelling. The erudite Mr Gilligan has cast his pearls in the past, but...

Dave, I have to disagree.

Perhaps you're right that scraping in manufacturing is now relatively rare, but the machine tool reconditioning industry, and better metrology equipment manufacturers certainly still do a lot of scraping. Wyler are particularly proud of their scraped finishes - and it's for accuracy, not show!

The dishonest scraping for bling has become almost universal in dubious-quality oriental equipment. Oil-pocket scraping is somewhat contentious, but still practiced. The divots are deliberately much deeper than a scratch-keyed surface irregularity would be.

The great advantages of scraping is that there is but one step between master gauge and workpiece, it can be done by an enthusiastic amateur with minimal equipment, large workpieces can be accommodated, and the accuracy achievable depends only on master gauge and enthusiasm. It's really the only practicable and affordable way to go. As has been said already, a lot of metal can be scraped away, should it be necessary, but it's hard, slow work.

Perhaps it's obvious that I'm a scraping enthusiast - there's quite a lot of us about! In the future, I'll need to recondition a few machines. By then, I'll be less enthusiastic about all the hard physical work it will involve, so will probably buy a BIAX power scraper. Huge expense, but you can't take it with you...

Run the lathe via a mains filter salvaged from a scrapped washing machine, etc?

Some hi-fi gear 'back in the day' was very susceptible to radio-frequency interference, leading to a lot of articles in the mags about how to reduce such susceptibility, usually by ensuring good screening, and severe filtering of inputs to block everything outside the audio frequencies. I think things are better these days.

Exactly! Why does everything seemingly have to be connected to the internet? In this application, is it a way of the manufacturer, or others, gathering information stored in the car's computer?

I think it's rather pedantically called a 'carbide 4-flute drill mill'. Examples shown on www.maritool.com website. Sorry, I can't tell you any more than its name, but it gets one's search engine going. Hopefully, the indefatigable MG will be along soon, with more information, patents, etc.

Go ahead and weld (with precautions as above), fabricate in MS, and send the job to the galvanizers - better than spray-on Zn-rich paint.

Yes, understood - standard practice to attack new seats only after new guides have been fitted (assuming guides are to be replaced). However, my comments stand.

The gizmo - or something equivalent - comes into its own in industrial QC if the part or assembly is being checked against allowable dimensions, but you don't need quantitative information. The traditional engineer's blue method gets the job done perfectly adequately.

It's convenient, rather than essential, to have an accurately-levelled machine. It is not essential for true running (within reason). The idea is to be able to use gravity as a reliable external reference, to check, for example, the ways of the machine are aligned to each other, or to set up work accurately. If the work is accurately aligned, by the level, and the machine is too, then they are aligned to each other (within the limits of accuracy and sensitivity of the level). Of course, there are generally alternative methods available.

Machinists' levels are much more sensitive than builders' levels, and can be adjusted. This sensitivity can make life difficult if the machine is not on a very stable foundation - just walking around on a suspended floor near the machine will likely deflect a sensitive level's bubble massively. So, if you can get the use of one, fine, but it's not essential.

Edit - beaten by previous poster. We agree, so take heed!

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 26/07/2021 11:07:16

'Muriatic acid' is an archaic (although stubbornly current in USA) synonym for hydrochloric acid - without impurities. I think there's confusion here with 'killed spirits', zinc chloride solution, which is traditionally made by adding metallic Zn to HCl until no more Zn will react (the fizzing stops). Or you can buy Baker's Fluid (if it's still available...). It's an aggressive (and corrosive) soft soldering flux.

HCl used to be available to bricklayers for cleaning mortar off bricks ('brick acid' ). Easily available as such in NZ, but dunno about elsewhere.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 26/07/2021 09:04:33 - blasted silly winking face thingie removed.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 26/07/2021 09:06:00 - typos, and more typos...

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 26/07/2021 09:08:42

Beautiful job! Did you have to restore any plated components? Any details of methods used would be appreciated.

Hang on, let's think about this. Perhaps the dial gauge is an example of PSONKing - an acronym used by an old mentor. The Pseudo-Scientification of No Knowledge turns up everywhere, when 'accurate' data is expensively amassed for little purpose - but it sounds impressive and 'scientific'.

What would you do with the quantitative data that a dial-gauge run-out gizmo would produce? All you can do is to take some, probably uncalibrated, corrective action to restore concentricity - perhaps by leaning on the seat cutter a bit. Then re-check, cut a bit more with more or different bias, etc. But the quantitative information is pretty redundant.

And the guides will have worn, so are you 'measuring' seat or guide errors? Answer - both...

You surely can get just as far by using the traditional engineer's blue and a valve with a freshly-trued-up seat. I like simple...

...and before YouTube, there was Model Engineer, other mags, books and teachers of school kids and apprentices, all advocating the practice... It's become a tradition.