Member postings for richard markham

Just returned from Ally Pally.

It's been many many years since I last went to the model engineering exhibition.

I must admit, I was rather un-impressed. It's a pain to get to unless you live near. 2 and a half hours drive each way for me, which was, fortunately a great run, no traffic problems, but I wonder if putting it outside London might make it easier to get to and maybe cheaper for exhibitors to attend?

It seems to be a LOT smaller than I remember. Has it been gradually shrinking? I was done and dusted in an hour and a half!

Lots of punters though. It was getting very busy by 11am.

Didn't see much in the way of CNC or 3d printing.

Models on the SMEE stand were outstanding.

Shame so little was running. I didn't see any stationary engines going.

Good if you are looking for odd bits of material or odd bits of tooling, but not sure if bargains could be had.

Thanks Roger! That's quite a list!

Any recommendations for buying small quantities of bar/plate/tube etc for my first build. (Don't have much of a stockpile yet)

Usually I just get bits and bobs from ebay or metals4u or the metal store.

Back in the day I used to get stuff from Whistons, but they seem to have vanished many moons ago.

Aluminium warehouse seems to have a reasonable selection.

Anywhere else I should look?

I'm in Dorset UK.

Looking good Stuart, the Muncater is a fine looking engine.

I'm going to start with Gerry's Beam Engine. I have had a good look at the drawings and 3d cad model. Read a few constuction posts. Sadly the photobucket fiasco has ruined a lot of the photos... (I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at that business planning meeting)

The Jowitt is a nice little engine! 8 evenings and 4 weekends to make? That's good going!

Both links seem to point to the same article... will search for the Muncaster. Found it! Really lovely looking engine. Love the columns.

Just ordered a hex and a square one of these.... I found them while googling ER32 collet holders. Simple idea and economical.

Thanks Jez, nice looking engine. Thier boiler is really nice too.

That is very impressive, especially for a first model!

I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to £430 worth of castings just yet!

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I really fancy a beam engine and I found the Chiltern one. Great as a bolt together kit.

I've been on HMEM and found Gerry's Beam engine too with looks like a great model and loads of people have made it, so there's lots of experience and photos showing the machining ops.

I am metric, so metric plans help too. Also found the cad drawings for it so I can get back into Fusion360, which I started learning a while ago and have probably forgotten now!

I have a gantry style CNC mill as well as an old Elliott 00 omni mill and a Harrison M300 lathe. The Elliott has DRO but the lathe doesn't.

I have a dividing head for the Elliott, so that will come in handy.

One thing I have noticed is that most people use collets on the lathe, especially for small shafts, rods etc. I only have a big old 3 jaw and 4 jaw. A set of Burnerd Collets is pricey. Are collets essential or is there a slightly cheaper way to go? The CNC has an ER20 collet chuck, so maybe I can find an adaptor for the M300 to take ER20 or go to an ER32.

Looking for some suggestions for beginners stationary steam models.

Ideally somethnig that is not tiny, my mill and lathe are not 'model engineer' size, and ideally something that doesn't require hundreds of £££'s of castings.

Is the Tubal Cain book worth starting with...

Cheers!

Thought so, but wasn't sure if a new nut/lead screw would mean it wasn't necessary.

Hi David,

Thanks for the info.

Not sure the year, I'd have to check, but probably 1980's. I bought it used in the 90's.

Surprising that theres adjustment on the cross-slide and not the saddle, but hey ho.

I read about making half nuts in delrin by molding the nut onto the leadscrew which you heat up!

I would assume that when thread cutting, the backlash should be low enough to allow you to run the tool back up while still engaged with the thread? Or is that expecting too much?

Does anyone know if there is any adjustment in the halfnut on a Harrison M300?

Nothing shown in the rather thin manual...

I have noticed quite a lot of backlash when thread cutting. When I reverse the machine, it takes a while to take up the slack.

Finally fitted all the chip guards.

Question for anyone reading this, who has a Chinese DRO: What does the RI button do?

Manual says:

RI: Find RI

Function: prompt set the size of Zero and RI

Example: for x

1. clear the x as ABS, press Xo

2.press RI -> X

3.move the machine tool when it come by the RI

I have no idea what this is supposed to do!

My thoughts too, but HXX told me there is no battery.

It probably has flash memory or eeprom which don't need any backup power.

I did wonder if there was mains noise corrupting the memory, but the earth is good and there's no dodgy earth potential.

It's possible the psu inside is not powering up cleanly and the processor isn't coming out of reset properly.

I will see if HXX have any other ideas. They are the actual manufacturer of the DRO, so they should know what's going on.

It's annoying as once it's going, it works fine.

Still need to add chip shields, but here are some pics:

Just finished fitting the scales.

Fairly easy to do, X was easy as the table is nice and flat and has a handy T slot along the front.

Y was not too bad, I used the Y leadscrew nut holder bolts to hold the slider bracket.

Z was more awkward as the side of the machine is not flat. I put two studs in and mounted onto those. The top stud went into the oil reservoir but it stopped leaking once I got the stud in and tightened up!

The display box seems to need setting to default every so often for some reason. HXX gave me a series of button presses to try but it still fails to start up sometimes. Works fine after resetting to defaults.

Story so far:

X and Y fitted and working. The sliding part of the scale is very sensitive to flex in the brackets, but in use these have no load on them, so they should never flex in use.

The DRO display unit did nothing out of the box, the display came up but no buttons and no readout. I found the secret setup button and entered the password and found the set default command.

Once I did this, it started working fine.

Next day, same thing happened, no action initially until I reset the default...

No idea why.

I'm waiting to see what HXX say about this.

I slightly misjudged the Y travel by about 8mm, so I will have to stagger the bracket by 8 mm.

I am assuming that when fitting, it's best to keep the 'open' side of the scale down and in the z axis, pointing backwards to avoid getting crap inside.

The scales have rubber seals, but better to be safe than sorry.

I think I will put the Z scale on the knee rather than the quill as I would only move the quill for drilling.

I will probably strip off the original cross feed stuff to make some room for the X scale at the front of the table.

I did wonder about using some rare earth magnets to hold the scales on, instead of drilling and tapping but to much risk of moving something out of alignment.

Careful adjustment needed to ensure that the scale is square to the moving axis.

Any pointers would be welcome!

Credit card.