Member postings for Kiwi Bloke

A few people have discovered that an EV parked in the garage heats it spectacularly.

In addition to all the good advice already given, don't forget to tackle any dampness ingress, and arrange for some ventilation, to get the damp air (including what you breathe out) out of the garage - it's condensation waiting to happen.

Dangerous ground... Much has been written by scientific philosophers about proof and the affirmation of theories. Popper pointed out that a theory could not be affirmed by weight of evidence, but it could be falsified by a single instance of a conflicting observation (provided, of course, that the observation was a good one).

Scientific laws are a a formal statement of how to think about things, rules of thumb to be followed, if you like, but they are not 'proven' - they are merely the best formalization yet discovered. Classical, Newtonian mechanics laws were overturned by relativity theory. But one can still employ the laws, provided one is aware of their limitations.

Science does not deal in 'Truths': it humbly acknowledges that the truth cannot be known. 'Truth' is the imagined speciality of areas of human thought like religion, politics, the legal system and so on. Scientific theories are always up for discussion and revision, provided that it is done properly, according to the scientific method. Disciplines which don't employ the scientific method are not Science, so political science, social science and 'ancient science' or the 'science' of aboriginal peoples are oxymoronic. Academics at Auckland University recently got into trouble for pointing this out. The Woke didn't like it. (Unfortunately, 'science' used to mean knowledge of all sorts; lots of people still get confused. The term 'Modern Science' is available to clarify.)

I'm not arguing, Dave, but reinforcing what you've said.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 15/01/2023 01:24:06

When I rebuilt a 2-stroke strimmer engine for a friend, I was faced with the problem of sealing the two halves of the crankcase. No official manual or other guidance could be found - Stihl like to keep these things secret, it appears. The conventional approach seemd to be RTV, but it's not good at standing up to petrol. Loctite 518 flange sealant appeared to be specified as being petrol-hardy, and all was well for some years until the strimmer was destroyed by its 'operator'.

In the early days of contactless-payment cards, a very bright light, shone through the card, allowed one to see the embedded conductor traces. The antenna loop, usually running around the card, near to its edge, could then be cut, to disable the contactless payment function. I used to do this, because of scare stories of folk losing their cards, only for some low-life to run up a stonking bill. My bank claimed that it could not turn off the functionality, however I believe that it's now possible. Later on, the cards became opaque to light, so I got a friendly mammographer to image a card. What surprised me was the complex network of conductor traces converging on the area for the signature. Does the act of signing make or break internal contacts, so the chip can detect a signature in some way? But why bother, since we're rarely asked to sign things these days? Anyone know? It all seems rather sneaky to me...

I call them something rather different when I'm trying to remove them...

Oh, I didn't know Tony Griffiths thought that. It's wrong. The Compact 5 head is completely different, being larger, with ball bearings, and the quill return spring buried inside the quill - a rather odd arrangement.

Following a PM exchange with julius, I've put *.jpg images of the Unimat 3 quill modification into my album, for all to see. I trust the moderators will remove the images if copyright is breached.

Neodymium is too brittle, fragile and chemically 'active' to be used 'naked'. Hence the magnets are encased for mechanical and chemical protection, and the Zn plate is presumably to protect the case material against corrosion. It looks like the case also acts as a 'pot' magnet's peripheral pole piece, as suggested in the post above.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 18/12/2022 08:54:03

The NHS hospital cleaners used to be hospital employees. They knew the job, knew the staff, and knew how to behave in hospitals. Part of Mrs Thatcher's pseudo-business ideological mistake was to 'encourage competition' by hiving off some areas of the NHS to commercial businesses. The idea was that, for instance, a number of commercial cleaning companies would bid for the business of cleaning the local hospital. Any profits made would, naturally, be money 'taken' from the NHS. The NHS already paid cleaners at the low end of their job's pay scale, so how was that ever going to save the NHS money? Well, of course, it resulted in fewer cleaners, many of them who didn't know the job, and less-clean hospitals. In all cases where activity was 'privatised', it had to be financially attractive to the 'private' firms, thus it had to disadvantage both the workers and the NHS. And still, there was an enormous increase in 'managers', getting in the way and drawing fat salaries - and pensions. Their value to the NHS was, of course, not monitored.

Hospital 'Trusts' were invented, supposedly as competing health providers. The insane idea was that these hospitals would compete for business, the 'cheapest' getting the contracts. So patients were expected to travel well beyond their local hospital to get a treatment no longer available locally, because it couldn't be provided 'competitively'? Well, that may work in London, or where there is a high density of hospitals, but what if you lived in Truro, for instance?

Trusts became 'brands' and their management liked to do things like changing the letterhead of the hospital stationery. That was pointless, expensive, and took money away from healthcare delivery. The 'shop floor workers' protested, but bureaucrats generally win.

Does anyone remember the TV series in which Sir John Harvey Jones (hope I've got the name right) was parachuted into various firms, to solve all their problems? He went to the Morgan Car Co., and 'discovered' a living fossil that obviously had no future unless it did all sorts of stupid things that he suggested. He predicted that the company would die within a few years if it carried on as it was. It presumably never occurred to him that he knew nothing of the car industry, nor the preferences of its customers, nor the value of craftsmanship, and was thus unqualified to comment. Like him, politicians' ignorance or competence is no bar to their pronouncements or careers. They seem oblivious to their errors.

How is the BMA, which is effectively the doctors' trade union, and of which membership is voluntary, responsible for the mess? The BMA is not particularly politically effective, and has not held the population or the government to ransom, and it isn't responsible for a shortage of doctors. Indeed, it would like there to be more doctors, and thus a larger membership.

The provision of healthcare is horribly expensive, with no obvious limit, given continuing scientific advances, greater demand, and no evidence that people are really interested in making much effort to preserve their health. No government can afford to fund something like the NHS 'adequately', because the money will always be used up. Likewise, no government would ever want to be seen to be rationing healthcare. Therefore Something Must Be Done!

Mrs Thatcher was apparently horrified to discover that the NHS effectively ran as a 'black box', into which vast amounts of money poured, but no-one really knew where it went. The workings of the black box were mysterious to those outside. And so the NHS was made into a pseudo-business, with 'purchasers' and 'providers', in the hope that the government's money could be tracked a bit more easily. Also, any rationing now became something that could be blamed on the purchasers, and the purchasers could beat up the providers for being inefficient. Divide and rule!

In order to operate this massive pseudo-business (the NHS was Europe's biggest employer at the time), a huge number of 'managers' and administrators was required. Many of these were pulled from health-delivery positions (nurses, occupational therapists, and so-on), exacerbating clinical staffing problems. They, at least, had some understanding of how things worked. Others were brought in from industry and who-knows-where, and rapidly demonstrated that they didn't understand the nature of the beast. Health care doesn't work like a typical business pyramid, where those nearest the top (the higher management) control the money flow. Instead, (and this is of course a gross simplification) people like doctors could, at a stroke, initiate horribly expensive treatment, arrange expensive tests and occasionally make ghastly and expensive mistakes. And they practiced with scant regard for (financial) cost.

And so the proportion of people employed by the NHS, who were not directly delivering health care, ballooned. The NHS, pre-Thatcher spent far less than other health care systems on 'administration. Post-Thatcher, the non-deliverers syphoned off enormous amounts of money as salaries, new, plush office space, etc., but the NHS's funding did not increase to cover this. Bureaucracy is expensive, and, in a system like this, where the 'shop floor' workers really take the decisions which summate to enormous amounts of money, outwith the control of the paper-pushers, bureaucracy just gets in the way. As an example, a 'business case' is required to justify the purchase of any significant item of medical equipment. Just demonstrating a medical need won't do. Who are the experts in the NHS? Who have the power? Why are the clinical staff so unhappy?

The essential problem is that the government can't won't fund the monster that has been created. IIRC, in the late '90s, the cost of a new district hospital was (optimistically) considered to be around 50 million pounds - about the cost of one of the RAF's Harriers.

Taf, your ideas are more-or-less sound, providing you can control the die-grinder (I know I couldn't, so would have to set up some sort of guidance fence, template, whatever).

There's a typically excellent YouTube video by Stefan Gotteswinter, some time ago, in which he discusses the desirable features of oil grooves, particularly the desirable shape of the arris at the transition from groove to guidance surface. (You don't want the groove to act as a scraper.)

Not sure about Tug's suggestion. I'd have thought that when the table picks up some oil, the saddle's groove's oil level drops, so no more chance of pick-up by the table. Perhaps a sump and wick might work? Having the grooves in the upper surface is like having oil-retaining scraped features preferentially in the upper surface: they don't accumulate potentially abrasive gunge. Also, the resevoir of oil in the groove and its supply channel feeds until it's empty. Sure, oil dribbles out from the exposed grooves, where the table overhangs the saddle, but that's a reason to have the table's groove system broken up into shorter lengths, with individual supplies.

Not sure whether you're inviting comments, or just casting pearls...

Let's keep it simple. 4-facet (or 6-facet, if you want to be fancier) points are the answer for most (of our) applications. They can be elaborated to split point (as Ady1's link shows) if you want to make re-sharpening more difficult. The chisel point on 'conventional' bits just makes things difficult, especially on less-than-rigid machines.

As for 'step drilling', try to avoid the need - it's a tricky operation at best, and a drill-bit breaker at worst.

Oh, and don't start drilled holes with a centre drill - use a 4-facet pointed spotting drill.

That's all I know...

The question piqued my interest and resulted in a bit of simple spread-sheet bashing. No doubt someone like 'Silly Old Duffer' will come along and explain a proper, analytical way to do it, but my maths has withered over the years, and laziness makes spreadsheets an attractive alternative to deep thinking...

So I now have a general-purpose spreadsheet that can (sort-of) answer questions like this. It's something I meant to do, long ago. Thanks for providing the impetus. Perhaps you might find it interesting to do the same, and (re-)discover the underlying maths, etc., it's quite satisfying.

A 57 hole plate, on a 40:1 head gets you 37.895 minutes, which should be adequate...

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 10/12/2022 09:36:10

I hadn't heard of this phenomenon before, so, out of curiosity I 'did a Gilligan' and found this: www.gasinfo.uk.com/Distribution_page.htm

I haven't seen this retracting slide design before. I think Clive Foster's negative comments are hasty and harsh. Why should a well-engineered moving nut be worse than a moving feed-screw thrust bearing? If the user screw-cut with the top-slide slewed round, the handle is more accessible than it would be on t'other side, especially if tailstock support is employed, when the tailstock would likely get in the way.

It cost a lot!

From a 1996 Myford price list, the 254V series lathes cost from GBP 5440 to 5705, depending on bed length. Milling attachment cost from GBP 2019 to 2167 in 1995, when a 4" 3-jaw Toolmex chuck was GBP 92, a 5" 4-jaw Toolmex chuck was GBP 120, and a Pratt-Burnerd Super-precision 3-jaw, with fitted backplate, was GBP 225. All prices ex-works, excluding VAT. From a 1990 price list, the lathes cost from GBP 4411 to 4686, reminding us that we have lived through inflationary times (several times) before... Not really surprising that the ending of 254 production signalled that Myford's demise was inevitable.

Economics - you couldn't make it up. Oh, wait a minute, someone did...

Modelfixings  **LINK** list open-ended and combination spanners in these small sizes - although the 5 X 5.5 open-ended is currently out of stock. I have no connection with this company, but was about to place an order, including these little spanners, but, with the postal strike and Xmas chaos looming, will wait 'til all the hullabaloo is over...

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 06/12/2022 09:34:11

Michael - that's what I thought it may be, at first, but couldn't see how it could work, so binned that idea, and came up with - nothing...

Brett - thanks for the explanation; it makes perfect sense now that you've explained it's all about machining the ends of tapered workpieces. Neat idea. I don't think you'll be pleased by how your text has been mangled by the MEW production process. I'm sure you didn't write what was printed...

I used to be considered smart, but now I'm just old. Please can someone put me out of my misery and explain what the thing described on p38 of MEW No 321 is supposed to do, and how? It looks to be nicely made, and is clearly useful, but it's got me beat. Perhaps the explanation has suffered from the typesetter's attention.