Member postings for Alan Wood 4

I've made a number of ring light based illuminators for my equipment and for quite a few others who have requested the either the 3D printed mounting or the STL file. Ring light post

A few things worth doing :-

Remove the plastic diffuser to leave just the PCB substrate and LEDs. The glue holding it in place is brittle and easily pings off. The light quality will be greatly improved.

Chose the largest diameter ring you can find - 120mm seems to be the most common.

Which ever style mounting you chose don't make the ring sit concentric with the spindle but offset it to the front of the spindle. Without this you will have a symmetric shadow when working with very short tooling.

Glue a strong magnet to the back of the in line power supply so it can be attached to the machine body out the the way.

On my 3D mounts I also stick a baking foil backing with double sided tape to increase reflectivity.

If anyone wants the 3D print STL file customised to the diameter of your spindle send me a message with the hole diameter required.

James at Clough42 has announced a new batch of 300 x ELS kits will be released shortly. They will first be offered to his Patreon supporters and then openly.

I converted my Myford S7 with the Clough42 components and for those interested here is a link to my write up.

ELS Write up

The late William Smith's website still sells his Rub n Brite polish and protector.

I find it is very good for the initial polish while also giving a very long term protection.

**LINK**

As a follow up to Michael Gilligan's link above, this might be of interest to those needing a new key.

Woody's Workshop

A suggested Plan B popularised by William Smith.

If you can judge where the original pivot hole would have been you can use a tool called a Preacher that has three pointed prongs in a triangular format on a plate. The plate has a striking anvil.

You hover the apex prong over the point where you judge the pivot hole should be and then strike the anvil to leave two reference indents on the clock plate. You then broach out the existing worn and distorted hole from the inside of the plate and back fill with a solid brass bush. The bush is inserted from the inside surface of the plate. The bush is filed flat using a bulls foot file. If you don't want to damage the plate surface when filing then you can use a piece of 35mm negative or similar with a hole punched to match the bush diameter and protect the plate..

Once the bush is finished flush and likely invisible to see where it is, you relocate the Preacher on the two reference holes and strike the anvil to create a centre pop with the apex prong to locate the drill for the new arbor hole.

BTW the escape wheel teeth viewed through the hole in the plate look like they need some TLC

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 13/06/2023 17:46:33

Hi Paul

OK, understand on the location issue. It might not be dome and gloom.

When in your home region your phone will always look for the service provider you have signed up for and ignores other providers that might have better coverage in the location. This is why when you are roaming overseas the mobile coverage always seems better when in fact your phone is free to hop from provider to provider to always give you the strongest signal.

All the providers have coverage maps on their websites so you can check against postcode. The coverage maps will also change as more services / masts come online.

Hi Paul

You don't give any details about the geography regarding why you can't get an internet connection to the workshop. If it is very remote then I understand but if it is say within a few hundred metres of the house and the power supply is from the house then a power line adapter is an easy option to get a network connection. A lot easier than trying to get a WiFi extender up and running and reliable and probably a faster throughput.

If the workshop is very remote then get a 4G SIM based router in the workshop. These are standalone devices that provide an internet connection via the mobile data network. There are all manner of SIM deals available for these as contract and PAYG deals. 4G will give you Gigabits of data and Fusion only needs a dribble of a few Mbps to connect. You can use the rest of the SIM data capacity to watch your favourite YouTube channels.

Sainsbury's Non Stick Baking Paper comes in 15m x 380mm wide roles at GBP2 per roll and is very consistently 2 thou thick. Very good to use in the workshop when referencing. Suggest raiding the kitchen when the boss is at the hairdressers. There are other brands available.

I sourced some from Accu Trak in the US in 2016 which were from their KC series, Looking at their website today they do not list them as standard parts so they could be made to order. They were not a low cost item but have worked very well for my various builds and repairs including a William Smith designed vertical bug key for sending Morse.

**LINK**

There was a recent article in HJ where the author was moving the CoG of the pendulum and hence the timing by moving weights up and down a church clock pendulum with a stepper motor. This was done within a control loop. The idea appealed as it did not need modification of the clock mechanism and could easily be removed. Weight trays are quite common on church clocks. There are strict rules what you can and cannot do to such installations.

I then found this which would be much easier to implement. The author (at CERN) simply winds a ball chain up and down into the weight tray with a stepper motor, again within a control loop. Beautifully simple and elegant.

Chain timing controller

Alan

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 29/01/2023 16:38:32

I would worry that there is no such things as a simple PCB design package unless your need is just for single copper layer PCB designs. Once it gets beyond a single copper layer, unless you are using the package on a regular basis you will find you spend a lot of unproductive time trying to 'remember how you did it last time'.

That being said, Fusion 360 includes an Electronic module that is a fully fledged PCB design package. This has evolved from Autodesk's Eagle product. It has full integration within the Fusion CAD and CAM modules. This allows you to produce very complex PCB designs together with the associated enclosure, Gerber manufacturing files, CAM etc all within one application. It has extensive electronic library as standard and access to third party libraries either as a direct download or using tools such as Library Loader.

In passing, Fusion 360 is currently on a 30% discount for a 1 year licence (~GBP357) but is also free for private individuals albeit with restrictions as regularly debated elsewhere on this forum. (I have no affiliation to Autodesk but admit to being an enthusiastic F360 licenced user bewildered by the value for money that the integrated product offers).

Like Joseph I also use FlatCAM to convert the Gerber files to GCode for CNC milling the prototype board. FlatCAM is a powerful manipulator of PCB manufacturing information.

Alan

Mike T - sorry been off lunching ... diesel at low temperature thickens up and goes a bit like soap. I am guessing that modern lorries have some form of heater in their tanks to protect against extreme cold ?

Mike T - it could be the diesel going soapy.

My pump is mounted vertically as recommended and is well wrapped with insulation to try to minimise the ticking noise. I have not insulated the header tank even though the whole assembly is mounted outside albeit fully enclosed (see blog image). The enclosure is a double decked affair with the heater on the lower level. The residual heat from the heater therefore warms the inside of the enclosure with the header tank directly above the heater. The fuel and the pump therefore benefit from protection.

I have two write ups on my blog relating to my experiences installing and using one of these heaters.

Heater install

Heater Update

Re pump sticking this may relate to using domestic heating oil rather than diesel fuel. Domestic heating oil has no lubricating oil content and therefore the impulse pump will fail. I use a 60/40 mix and have had no problems.

Alan

I have a SMS commanded device which on command will remotely hard bounce my internet router overseas in Europe should it lock up for any reason. I talk to it via simple SMS commands from my smartphone in the UK.

When we are not overseas the router allows us to monitor the property security and facilities.

Since the re-introduction of roaming charges a UK SIM can only roam for a defined number of days before it has to show activity in the UK. I guess this is to get round competition issues of UK providers undercutting EU providers. I am therefore very restricted if I use a UK SIM in the overseas device for an extended period without bringing it back to UK for a 'refresh'. I could have two SIMs and swap them out after each visit but that means I must visit very regularly which many not be always possible.

I could install an EU SIM in the device but these are very expensive for just a few SMS messages every now and then. EU SIMs with very low tariff do not always allow outgoing SMS messages to non EU locations.

There are providers offering IoT SIMS that are only for telemetry and monitoring services (no telephone) which purport to be worldwide and very low cost but equally look a little dodgy. International might just imply any country for use and not cross zone connectivity. The IoT SIMs also seem to be restricted to business use. Has anyone had experience of these ?

Given a functional SIM the system works well.

As an alternative I could get very complicated and have a watchdog monitor that pings an IP address and if no reply assumes the router is down and bounces it. A simpler solution would just be to reboot the router on a timer every week/month. The problem will be that it only needs one heavy thunderstorm the next day after a reboot and the router will probably lock up and we loose connectivity.

Any thoughts or experience of such appreciated.

The media would have us believe that we are heading into a serious situation over winter with fuel shortages. They also, probably correctly, imply that the more senior members of society will suffer the most from an inability to heat their homes.

I would guess a significant number of these homes will have the traditional single mechanical thermostat located in a draughty entrance passage or similar. This is not an area of the house that they will choose to hunker down in as temperatures drop.

I can see that a wireless device close to hand controlling their immediate surroundings and not wastefully heating the rest of the house would have its attraction in these circumstances. As to whether a blob of mercury in a glass bulb is more reliable than the latest tech gizmo I am not privy to the facts to be able to objectively comment.

I've installed three Tado units for friends and family. All are working very well. Can't remember why I opted to use Tado over the other options such as Nest etc. Installation is straightforward but recommend you download the professional installer notes.

The thermostat can directly replace a wired old style unit. If you want to use it 'wireless' you need to install the Extension Unit at the boiler (again straightforward to do). Either route there is a dongle to hang off the WiFi router that acts as the comms hub.

Using the Extension Unit means you can move the thermostat from room to room to reflect where you need the heat to be focussed. You can also add WiFi connected radstats to the network for localised control.

Profile programming is from a Smartphone or from a Desktop. The profile is stored on the Tado cloud which will immediately horrify the anti 'anything to do with the cloud even though my banking is' fraternity. If your internet connection goes down you can still control the thermostat in non profile mode.

The smartphone control allows you turn up the CH and water as you exit Arrivals making homecoming a much more pleasant experience. The app provides various stats on usage and consumption. If you want it, it also uses geofencing to turn the temperature up or down depending on whether it detects your phone is at home or not.

The full Noga catalogue makes interesting reading. The 'Swiss Army' style tool on page 51 looks like a nice Christmas present. Might have to drop some subtle hints in the right quarters.

**LINK**

Following on from the mention of tree stump killer - if you use a dilute solution of this in a plastic bottle and immerse the end leaves/shoots of ground elder, bind weed and brambles etc they merrily drink the solution and very quickly die back to the root. The immersion is more effective than just painting weed killer on.

Providing you don't want anything else to grow (e.g. pebble driveways) then a solution of salt and white vinegar is very effective.