Member postings for An Other

Sorry to put this in here - if the moderators don't like it - please delete it.

I have been trying to register on the MECH site for some weeks now - I followed all the steps carefully, including the Registration Video, many times, but get to the final stage, and it apparently just freezes. I have checked many times, and don't believe I am making any mistakes. As far as I can see after much searching, there is no way to contact the web-manager, or anything else to ask for help.

This thread happened along and mentioned the MECH site, so I wanted to ask if anyone here can offer any suggestions.

Thanks.

I guess these problems with different OS's and different opinions will always be with us, and I certainly don't want to aggravate the issue, bearing in mind the responses which have appeared in the past in this forum, but I do have one observation I would like to make:

Why is it that posts with complaints aimed at Microsoft seem to vastly outnumber the complaints aimed at Linux? I haven't actually counted them, but it does appear to be the case over time. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry, but I don't think so.

If I bought a car which turned out to be, as they say, a lemon (and I have, in the past), then as soon as I can, I cut my losses, dump it, and look for something better, subject to available financing, yet people apparently defend non-functional or intrusive software almost to the death, even when the alternative is largely free, and generally non-intrusive due to its Open Source origins.

Of course, I would defend to the death (well, perhaps not) anyones right to use whatever they want.

Its a little surprising to see the online NTP being used as a timing reference. Surely the 60Khz signal from NPL in Cumbria is far more accurate (1 part in 10-12 - more data in Wikipedia)?. The 60Khz signal can be received almost everywhere in the UK and Western Europe., and it is very easy to build a simple receiver with ferrite rod antenna.

Back in the 60's, we built a receiver using a single CMOS Nand gate as a receiver for this signal (The A-series gates could be used in a linear mode, much like an op-amp).

At least it would not be subject to the vagaries of the internet.

Many other countries also operate a similar service.

Hi, Neil,

I played with it a bit while developing a software tool to generate Gcode directly from a PCB layout drawing - not happy with the usual offerings. LibreCad works, but 'up to a point', is my opinion. Its biggest problem seems to be that its development/update cycle seems to be painfully slow, so new versions don't appear often with improvements or bugfixes. It can't handle 3D.

I only wanted to produce 2D PCB layouts, but gave up on LibreCad eventually, and used the LibreOffice Draw app instead, which can be improved by adding the CADLO extension, and will give me the SVG files I needed at the time. I find this a useful tool for drawing purposes, with 2 decimal place accuracy, a good user interface, and easy to learn.

Sorry I can't tell you much more.

If you do decide to go the modification route, this one is good - I did it to my lathe.

Link

There are several different descriptions online.

As above, you can buy longer screws for the job, but I turned my own (on the same lathe before I modified it) - not difficult with a little care. I have also seen one with an extension pegged and brazed to the original.

Edited By An Other on 02/05/2023 16:55:05

Fine, but it would have been good to know, so I don't offend any other sensibilities unwittingly.

I posted an article about a miniature stirling engine a couple of hours ago, in the believe that it may be interesting to someone - I note that one of the moderators(?) has seem fit to remove it - WHY?

Link - May be of interest.

For general info.

GRBLGRU runs under WIndows, but on the GRBLGRU home page, there is a procedure for installing it under WINE in Linux.

LINK

Russ B -

I run a 3D router and a 3D printer - both use a variant of Arduino Uno running GRBL, and they cope with no problems. I have run the router on an Arduino Nano loaded with GRBL. Note there are several variants of GRBL around - I am running 1.1h at the moment.

Like Ronald Morrison, I use UGS to feed GCode to the machines from a computer. This computer does not need to be anything special - I actually use a FItlet mini computer which is only running at 1GHz, so as to leave my main desktop free, and it handles the work easily - it only has to stream serial data (Gcode) to the machines. I have also played around with using a UNO to stream the data to the machine. It worked, but the Uno has limited memory, so not much use for 3D printing.

Ronald - UGS can be set up so the origin is anyplace you want it. You can edit the setup data easily enough from UGS itself. I have changed my system so the origin is 'bottom left'. If you can't find out how to do this, let me know and I'll see if I can help.

An

Tony - I can only wish you the very best of luck, and my sympathy - HMRC were very difficult to contact - I waited hours on the phone to be put through, then time was wasted having to listen to endless pre-recorded messages. I was NEVER able to talk to the same person twice, so spent hours on the phone just explaining the situation, on some occasions to several people, having been transferred because I was 'talking to the wrong person'.

Their single contact number seems to route you different offices. Don't bother with their idiot online 'chatline" - its useless. It keeps you waiting "until an agent is free", then asks you to log in - while I was doing this, it repeatedly disconnected me and told me no agents were free. When I did finally get to a human being, I was told "we will write to you" - they never did.

I was recommended by a friend to get a financial advisor to deal with it instead of doing it myself. Then I asked what he would charge - It would have been cheaper to make a banknote bonfire.

All I could do was to make damn sure my figures were correct, and keep pressing HMRC - it took me about three years to get it all resolved. A worrying thing was that they make mistakes, but would not admit it, and also that they made repeated errors over a period of about three or four years.

An

Good luck - and don't let them steal your money.

After lots of confusion with HM Robbers and Crooks overtaxing me, so I had all the problems of having to claim it back before repaying it, I was told by them that the tax was calculated as 20% of the balance left on the total of my pensions - State, Ex-Service, and a Work pension, less the allowance of 12570 pounds, which seems fairly simple and straightforward to me.

What makes it confusing is that instead of simply holding back the amount I was taxed from the State Pension (obvious solution to me) - they subtracted X from the ex-service pension, and Y from the private pension, and Z from the State pension, where X+Y+Z = 12570. Also not too confusing in itself, but X,Y and Z were never the same proportions from each pension for each year.

That resulted in the usual cockups, and again as usual. HMRC demands the money first, then I had to claim it back - sometimes quite large amounts. (and no interest paid, also as usual).

Dealing with HMRC is a nightmare - I hope no-one has that problem.

Kiwi Bloke - Very well said!

Buna Ziua, and welcome to the Forum, Andrei.

I have to admire your ambition to want to build a mill from scratch - but I fear it is not an easy job. You will definitely need a much more rigid arrangement than most pillar drills can provide.

I have sent you a private email - look at the envelope in the green line at the top of the page when you are logged in.

Could you tell us what type of work you intend to do, and this dictates the type of machine you need?

Regards, An

Sorry about the delay responding - been busy.

I'm not using a 'free hosting' site (whatever that is) - just the ME URL on Firefox in Linux Mint 21.2.

It also doesn't happen every time. I can open the site in my browser, select and open one or other of the threads that interests me. On several occasions I noticed a post with this "reCapture" in it - it looks like an image of the thing, because nothing happens when I click on it. I realised that a picture should be there because of the post content. It also doesn't seem to be 'reproducible' in that if I close the thread, then re-open it, the correct picture will appear.

I can see both your pictures OK Jason (this time) - but one looks a bit "older" than the other, as commented by Bill above. (Wish you could still get steam engine kits for 16/- those were the days!)

I will try and post a screen shot if it comes up again - very odd, I think.

Thanks for the efforts to help, and regards.

Thanks for that, Frances. I'm a bit puzzled by it, for several reasons. As you say, it does seem to be an 'image' - it is not an active reCapture (not possible to enter anything). I'm not too worried even by the 'normal' reCapture having things like my IP - from past experience, I have found out that anyone using my IP to locate me gets pointed to a city that is at least 200km from where I live. I'm more concerned that it may be some kind of 'phishing' attempt.

I also wonder how it is being inserted into the post - assuming the intended picture in the post is saved somewhere in an album on a server belonging to (or used by) this site, then I would guess that if someone references a picture from their album in their post, then presumably local (site) software recovers the appropriate picture and displays it - which raises the question how is the reCapture being inserted instead?

Regards.

In the last two or three weeks, whenever I open a post on the ME site which has a picture embedded in it, instead of a picture I get a "reCapture" page - not the picture - anyone else seen this?

+1 for Macolms suggestion. We have a wood-burning heating system, made of steel, with two opening doors, and both doors have hardwood handles. The metal parts of the handles are much too hot to touch normally, but the handles have survived for at least 5 years now, in regular use.

I would also have thought a saucepan handle would work,as per SB5 - but my wife says no - she has some saucepans where the plastic? handles have burned quite badly - she want sme to make new hardwood handles for them

Smoother running and better control was a good reason to modify my machines (3 lathes and a mill), but another reason was the cost of repairing the original motors/electronics. I did repair the control unit on one lathe myself successfully a couple of times, but it failed again later, and also the DC motor. After looking up the cost of replacement, or the rip-off prices charged to get them repaired, with no guarantees, it was cheaper to buy VFDs and new 3-phase motors, both of which were easy to source from many suppliers, whereas the original parts (in some cases) came from one or two suppliers. Sure, I had to make some modifications to fit different motors, but nothing complicated, and it meant the mill got converted from gear to belt drive - far quieter and smoother running.

In reply to the comments about electronics reliability, it depends what you mean by reliability - you only have to look at this forum to see the number of times the original electronics fails on Chinese lathes. Sure, a lot of VFDs are Chinese made as well, but at least they can be purchased for a reasonable price, unlike the lathe and mill controllers, and I have never had problems with the ones I have.

That said, I for one have had no troubles with my VFDs after doing the conversion, and the machines are much more useable - soft starts, smoother running, speed control, reversible, remote control - the advantages easily outweigh the disadvantages in my opinion.

This PCB was made using the techniques described in my rather long post above, with freely available software as mentioned. The board is 160mm x 100mm and took about 2 hours to design, and an hour to mill - total cost = Board + zero.

I notice in the original post, John mentioned production of 'isolation routing' - I take this to mean that instead of etching (or routing) tracks as in the 'traditional' type of PCB, usually involving removal of relatively large amounts of copper, isolation routing simply removes a thin 'track' of copper between conductors - as per my photo below.

In this case, I had no necessity to make tracks the same width, or 'symmetrical', but this can easily be done using LibreOffice Draw.

I have never been able to find any available software which can be used to design this type of board, despite playing with the software mentioned in this thread, and others (but I guess it may exist somewhere). This was one reason I went the route I did, to avoid having to remove large copper areas - particularly noxious if you do it using old-fashioned etching methods, and harder (but not impossible) if you use a router.

Sorry about the quality - never was any good with a camera

An