Member postings for MW

You often hear the always wear eye protection remark, which is of course a very sensible thing to do. But I would add hearing protection to that If you're working on a machine that's proving to be particularly noisy, don't try and tough it out.

Just stop what you're doing and stick some muffs on. It only takes ten seconds, and you can take it off again when you're finished, it's worth it if it stops you from getting permanent tinnitus.

If you still think that's being a pansy*, all the workmen I see with power tools have a pair in their toolbox. 

( *they don't deserve the reputation of being a wimpy plant, they're actually a very hardy species and will withstand even the hardest of frosts.)

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 07/05/2017 22:00:40

well at least they were likely to be cheap if anything. But I take it axminster wont be getting a Christmas card this year?

Michael W

I'm glad you mentioned this here because I've been living with it for the past 6 months or so.

It was really prominent at first, very tingly on the ring and little finger and the base of my palm. so I went to the doctor, "Oh you must've banged it". No bruises though, say again after 4 months or so "You probably slept on your arm and it'll go away soon".

So, here I am 6 months later and still no sign of going anywhere, to be honest I've grown used to it now. I never drop anything but they do get colder than the rest of my fingers, probably because I don't use them as much.

I'm averse to deciding to operate, mainly because it means cutting open my arm and messing around with what's inside, they don't have an awful lot to go on to know if they've done it right, other than looking at the nerve, only I can feel what my arm feels like after all.

So it can lead to being even worse than it was originally or another nerve entrapment somewhere further along the system. Not to mention the risk of infection, although they deal with it a lot I suppose.

However, not one to judge, if you do decide to go down that route, I would definitely like to know how it goes, but I would also try to make sure (or rather make your wishes known) that you get a doctor that deals specifically with nervous system problems or has some experience with sorting out ulnar nerve/cubital tunnel syndrome. 

This syndrome is very strange, because the cause certainly isn't obvious. If you hit your arm/neck/hand that hard you would certainly know about it.

It was very much like an oft repeated experience of it not being there one day and waking up the next with it, appearing out of nowhere like a phantom ( but with the difference that it decides it's going to hang around for some time rather than disappearing). 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 07/05/2017 21:22:11

It's pretty much impossible to have absolutely zero runout between different mating parts, however, so long as you turn everything at the same setting, it makes it much easier to ensure consistency.

I presume what lathe manufacturers did (or maybe still do) was to temporarily fix the tailstock and head stock body together and bore/ machine all the mating surfaces at the same time. so that everything lines up on the bed. 

Maybe CNC has made this much easier to achieve consistency but in my experience cnc can still falter especially where many are being made. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 06/05/2017 12:33:39

I've tried cheap and well branded stud extractors and been disappointed with both, I can't think of any time they actually worked, the left hand thread fails to engage with the metal in reverse. 

Like others have said, it would be fair to say I've had more success trying anything but stud extractors.

Well let me try and be a bit more helpful: I have got a very stuck socket screw (head inside rounded off) out by heating the body around it, as this causes it to open up slightly and it worked where brute force failed the first attempt. so theres gotta be something behind it.

Only caveat being you have to be able to get some kind of grip, even if it isn't much and heaving n ho-ing failed... 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 05/05/2017 19:06:43

It would be extraordinary if they could sustain hydrogen fusion. But like others have said, millions spent and it seems perpetually 50 years away from perfection. The perfect counterargument has always been "Ah, but what if it did work". Indeed, it would be marvellous, but it seems impossible.

Michael W

They also get tired and fed up just like everybody else does ​

Michael W

I quite like the idea of making the voyager 1, but sadly it looks like one of the untested types, perhaps it would make easier work for the printer if the design could be broken up into separate programs and assembled?

I think voyager past a landmark moment a few years ago for being the first object man-made object to leave our solar system, nearly 40 years after it's launch, zipping through space at hundreds of miles per hour. some of the sensors are still relaying radio signals back to earth. Incredible to think it's literally the furthest mankind has ever sent anything and for that reason it has a rather underrated and special place in our history.

Michael W

Lets try and shake this up a little, because I get a little tired of hearing about the same technologies over and over again. What about other options?

It's like either petrol, diesel, electric, hydrogen if it gets slightly whackier but that's about it. There must be SOMETHING else that nobody has thought of yet.

Like, it's a very flawed concept I know, but what if you could find a way of storing and suspending kinetic energy in a vehicle kind of like those cars you had as a kid where you wind them backwards and they go forward on the energy of the circular spring?

That's just an example but feel free to say anything, just, anything i'm tired of the same alternative options being placed infront of people like a binary decision.

Michael W

I think the reply would be "what's the quickest way into your wallet" rather than trying to preserve resources, the Victorians would've thought our world numbers to be absurd and impossible to support, so they wouldn't buy the argument that resources needed to be preserved, precisely because they believed in a future world where similar numbers of them would be around in their day.

Some early electric cars seemed ungainly, the appeal of IC fuels is the high amount of energy they contain that allows them to exceed the horse power of any electric motor. But I don't doubt it is a good idea and definitely very underrated considering what we know now about putting excessive waste gasses into our atmosphere.

You might put it like this, they were driven by their ambition to provide fast transport, and they saw the potential in petrol and knew they could pull it off if they tried hard enough. Every car company was building cars that competed against each other with speed in mind. 

Electric cars on the other hand, probably didn't seem like it had potential for that, they didn't have the "goal" that we have now to provide cheap and energy efficiency in their transport. So therefore, without the goal, means no ambition, no ambition means it never happened. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 03/05/2017 21:58:48

One of the best things they ever did was to remove lead from fuel, that was downright hazardous. Never mind the emissions.

My great grandfather worked at a smelter in london and he died from lead poisoning when my grandfather was just 5 years old. 

I cant really decipher whether or not that had anything to do with it, it could've been from drinking water from lead pipes but i'm pretty sure standing near or directly over where it's being melted would be a lot worse. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 03/05/2017 08:49:35

I prefer using my teeth.

I remember the 90's and I was definitely poorer than I am today. Everything seemed more expensive, I would get glances if I actually got to eat at a nice restaurant then. 

Did I really notice it at the time though? No, not really because I didn't know any better. 

Michael W 

Edited By Michael-w on 03/05/2017 08:34:03

I think I might be able to help you in that department, the only time it gets difficult is when doing very small drills,(need to be very delicate when touching the facets) send me a message if you want me to show you on a bodge-made diagram, I can guarantee a decent cut on any drill, no matter how blunt, by eye and hand, all I need is just an average bench grinder.

The technique is so simple it's unreal, and I learned all of it just by observing how a Sherwood drill was ground and trying to copy the shape.

as I've got a friend who, although is a farmer, has a need for sharpening drills, he's probably poured a hundred quid of the farms budget on a small drill grinding machine and he still can't get decent drills out of it, so he always gets me to do it, I have offered to show him (because i'm not always going to be around!) but I can't take a horse to drink if it don't want to.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 02/05/2017 16:43:40

That's a little cynical don't you think? :P They'd have to be atleast machine ground - a hand ground job would look awful unless you spent a lot of time on it. I don't think he'd be too happy standing over a bench grinder all day neither!

Also to respond to tother post, the ebay system only lets you stipulate a set number, a lot of vendors just put any old quantity down as they're not expecting a flood of interest. 

Edited By Michael-w on 02/05/2017 16:32:30

Edited By Michael-w on 02/05/2017 16:33:40

No i'm pretty sure the DRO isn't at fault, it is reading correctly and it doesn't measure the handwheel,

but i'm thinking maybe a couple of the bolts on the home-made register plate might be loose enough for the scale on the table to start moving before the DRO pick-up unit kicks in. I can't check it now but i'll look at it tomorrow. 

I checked the table for backlash by rocking it as hard as I could and I didn't get anything like 1.5mm out, more like 0.1-0.2mm 

Good way to test this might be on a piece of scrap, moving incrementally in the same direction, check to see the distances are the same, then move in the opposite direction and see if theres a difference. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 01/05/2017 23:19:45

Might not be totally relevant to milling cutters but as others have said, you do have to pay attention to the type of cutter you use for different materials. Harder does not always mean better, it quite often gives a poor finish on those softer materials

The ARC polished aluminium grade carbide tips, sold alongside the sumimoto tools, absolutely fantastic for plastics, use the steel grade one and the finish is understandably poorer.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 01/05/2017 22:21:33

Hey,

I've had to drill a lot of holes recently on my WM16, I use a glass scale DRO system from ARC.

And I've noticed that if I centre my work on the middle of a centre bore on a work piece, if I move, say 15mm to the left, considering the radius of the centre bore too. drill a hole, then move back 15mm to the right without changing the setup, i'm always 1-1.5mm out. Meaning, it will be 13-13.5mm on the right. 

When technically, I should still be using the same datum from the middle of the bore. Am I not including the radius of the centre drill? Is this what's going wrong?

I was trained on a lathe and only had to find my feet with a mill. So i'm pretty sure theres something i'm doing wrong. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 01/05/2017 22:08:02

It would be interesting to see just how many start looking into M.E.W/M.E on the basis of the magazine, as once you become a subscriber then clearly you would stop buying it over the counter.

I used to buy mine from the shop on a regular basis but have since become a subscriber, as it was becoming clear that I would find at least something of interest in each magazine.

Michael W

I thought over-the-counter and newsagents were part of the same thing?

Michael W