Member postings for Alan Wood 4

Thank you everyone for the opinions expressed which are noted and appreciated.

I have no idea why the crack has occurred but it does only emit a fine spray when the boiler is running. Given its age it is past its sell by date and I will proceed on the replacement path.

Alan

We have a very ancient gas boiler that is well past its sell by date and it has developed a small hairline crack on the outside of the cast heat exchanger that spurts a fine stream of water when the boiler is running.

The replacement of the boiler in the short term is not a budgeted option.

Question therefore is there an epoxy or similar that could effect a repair to get us through Christmas ?

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 08/12/2020 19:57:29

Not sure if it is relevant but a good check that all is well would be to set the TPI setting on the control panel so it matches the leadscrew characteristic and then put an optical tacho on the leadscrew and see if it matches the control panel readout.

I put a request into James to have an enhancement whereby there was an ability on the control panel to get a readout of the user settings as feedback that the config was set to what was expected.

I had a similar problem to Denis but not as severe which was a mixture of the slop on the end of the leadscrew and slop on the half nut.

Alan

I have just finished fitting steppers to my Myford VMB manual mill.

Write up here.

Alan

There is a later video on YT by Clough that explains how he wired the CAT5 and also explaining the software changes.

I confess I ignored James' recommendations and grounded everything to everything via the enclosure connector panel.

Alan

Thanks Tony, old habits/methods die hard !

Alan

Hi Tony, not sure what was happening. I have deleted and re-done it and think it is now OK.

Alan

I have just completed the ELS on my Myford S7.

I connected the control panel to the control box using approximately 2m of CAT5 unscreened cable. I noticed hand capacity effects when resting my hand on the control box leading to jitter of the display. I fitted a split ferrite inside the control panel box and one on the cabling inside the main electronics box. This cleared the problem without further mods and it has not shown any twitching since. RS sell these in pairs (#811-9109).

Note that I used a larger diecast box so there was room inside the control panel box. Users of the 'normal' box size will need to fit the ferrite on the cable external to the control box.

Article here

Alan

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 09/10/2020 09:34:36

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 09/10/2020 09:36:05

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 09/10/2020 09:37:08

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 09/10/2020 09:37:57

I am in the process of putting stepper feeds onto my Myford VMB mill. Priority is the Z axis which is a pain to manually wind up and down. The following is my KISS approach. I have no doubt it will invoke a tirade from the cognoscenti.

I didn't want the hassle of clutches. I have bought in a standard 5mm pitch gearwheel from BearingBoys and machined this to fit on the Z axis manual handwheel in place of the graduated scale ring. (I have fitted DROs on all three axis so I never use the scale rings). The gearwheel is belt driven from a 2Nm stepper on a 2:1 ratio. The stepper is fitted onto the Z axis assembly on a standoff plate. The stepper has a BearingBoys gearwheel to match and the drive belt also came from them.

The X and Y axis will follow the same method in due course. I have no intention of modifying for CNC operation as I have a Tormach/Fusion 360 combination for my CNC work. The mods to the VMB are simply convenience mods to make life easier and reduce my consumption of Shredded Wheat. It is very useful to have the combination of CNC and manual milling side by side.

The 'electronics' is an Arduino Pro Mini with minimal code content. This drives a 'bus' of three quad tristate buffers, one for each axis. The buffers for each axis when selected via the 'bus' drives the Pulse, Direction and Enable pins on the stepper driver (DM542Y). The axis selection line also enables a relay to switch on the 48V to the stepper driver. Only one axis can be enabled at any one time. An axis when not enabled allows full manual movement of the axis via the original handwheel. Also when not enabled the stepper driver consumes only a few mA so there is no heat dissipation to consider. Manual movement is not inhibited by the stepper braking as there is no enable or supply voltage to the driver. I can't wind the handwheel fast enough to generate any back emf issues. Limit switches could be added into the logic to drive the Enable function but that's a later refinement.

The control panel is simple. A 3 position rotary switch to enable the axis of choice, a centre off double throw switch to select backwards/off/forwards motion and a potentiometer to set the speed of movement. There is no reason why the pot could not be replaced with (say) a 12 position rotary switch with fixed resistors to represent fixed speed settings. The centre off switch disables control of all axis regardless of the position of the X,Y,Z selector switch. The control box is a lash up at the moment but could be a fixed panel on the apron of the mill or could be a 'pendant' type box. The connection is via an 8 way cable (to allow use of CAT5 stock).

I am in the process of engineering a PCB for the control electronics and cleaning up the prototype wiring. I have the stepper mounted on the mill ready to go. The 2Nm stepper drives the axis very nicely.

It's not rocket science but satisfied my minimal effort to get motorised control of the VMB, create some nice smooth cuts and save my arm muscles.

If you would like a more detailed description, pictures etc let me know and if the PCB, (when completed) is an attractive item I can run an extra one for you (it will be CNC milled). The PCB design will be my first dive into Fusion's Electrical module so progress is a little slow as I get my head round the software. I have to say that so far it is very impressive in its integration with the CAD/CAM functions. It is not quite like it used to be with graph paper, scalpel and crepe tapes ....

Alan

Just fitted the Clough42 Electronic Leadscrew to my Myford S7 Big Bore. Lovely to have automatic feed without the associated gearbox noise.

Done a write up here ELS on Myford S7

Alan

Hi Laurence, not directly relevant but connected to the BK3.

I have just completed the blade guide modification on my BK3 based on the details in ME Vol 170 Issue 3944. If you haven't seen this I would recommend it. It has made mine a completely different machine to use.

Alan

The current offer on licences of 40% discount makes 3 years for a cost of GBP710 a very good price. If you can emotionally reconcile all the years of free use against the going forward cost it is a very small price to pay for the huge depth of capabilities in CAD, CAM and circuit board design.

Lars Christensen has just come back on the YouTube scene and has done a 2 part video on some of the latest Fusion sketch features. Part 2 is particularly stunning.

Thanks for all the helpful support on this. I have made one attempt at heat treatment which helped but wasn't perfect and was a real pain.

Working on a Plan B.

Thanks again

Alan

I have a strip of 30 thou feeler gauge, 1/2" x 2", that I need to drill 2 x1.5mm holes at one end and 2 x 3mm holes at the other end. (Apologies for the mixed units).

The 1.5mm holes are proving difficult so I heated the feeler to cherry heat and slowly backed off the heat and this has softened it sufficient to drill all the holes.

Question - what temperature profile to now harden and temper the feeler back to its former springy self ? I have a small kiln style oven so I can control the temperature fairly closely.

I have four such strips to make so would like an easy life and not too many broken drills.

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 16/09/2020 17:05:57

Edited By Alan Wood 4 on 16/09/2020 17:06:26

Sorry to be a latecomer to the party on this one but I have just completed the fitting of the Clough42 ELS to my Myford Super 7 Big Bore lathe. I have done a write up which might help others with similar machines. The main head scratching was how to couple the encoder and the servo to the Myford but this worked out well in the end.

**LINK**

Fusion 360 has an inbuilt script that allows gears to be modelled for direct CNC or 3D print.

See Kevin Kennedy's YouTube site on the link below. His site also has a lot of Fusion tutorial content.

**LINK**

Thought this would set a hare running.

We have a three chamber soap dispenser in the utility room and one chamber contains a well know orange workshop hand cleanser. I particularly like this brand of cleanser as it does not seem to dehydrate the skin.

This particular chamber used to drip from the nozzle and make a mess on the worktop around the sink. I made a tray to catch the drips using one of my favourite mediums, single sided copper laminate circuit board. It is easy to cut to size and easy to tack solder to size before reflowing the joints completely.

While giving the tray one of its regular rinses to clear the accumulated drip content I noticed that what had been a tinned copper surface has been patchily eaten away and I can see daylight through the fibre glass.

Sorry forgot to say that the AMS117 is available in various fixed voltages including 3.3V to replace the CRxxxx cells.

Follow up on Les's comments I also did some work on the Shumatech which I wrote up here. This involved making a small 1.5V regulator 'pod' using the AMS1117 three legged regulator which is a really nice device. You can buy a ready made module for this from EBay. Search on AMS1117.

I also managed to build the same circuit inside a physical replacement of the battery but this was severe eyestrain.

Alan

Look at Gear Wheel Designer by Graham Baxter. This allows all manner of wheel design, spokes, centres etc. It can output as a DXF into Fusion or similar 3D CAD or it can give you a CNC GCode to cut the wheel. I have had a great deal of success with it. Cost is circa USD100. See my various blog entries here by searching on Gearwheel