Member postings for HOWARDT

Short of chopping up a tree with an axe there is no way to produce free heat. What needs to be done is reduce the heat loss as much as possible therefore reducing the amount of heat input to a minimum. All heat input costs money and in the UK even wood stove installation is controlled by local councils, not sure wether it is everywhere certainly is where I live. Without spending a great deal of money there is no way to heat most UK properties cheaply. I think the number of tea candles required to heat a room would cost far in excess of your normal electric supplier.

Working most of my life in machine tool manufacture in the UK it was always a hard g, as in gibbon. We used to use them a lot, years ago.all machines had at least one until they mostly got designed for linear rails.

I like Joe Pie, an experienced engineer willing to let us how to do many things relatively simply. But I agree for many it is all about money. I’m not sure but I think a lot of the rules and regulations changed over the last couple of years which made some people think again about being on there. Some previous weekly content has become less frequent and some almost never shows now. I know it takes a lot of dedication to create regular content and applaud those that manage to do it.

You don't need a DRO in order to make anything. If you have some measuring instruments and a way to mark things out then most things can be made. Remember this is a hobby and time is not a factor so making one part fit another with somewhere near limits and fits works. Drawing dimensions for the hobbyist are there as a guide, if a piston is drawn to be 5/8 inch it doesn't matter is you made to 16mm so long as the bore it goes into is the same and all other fitting parts are as well. I went without a DRO on my initial lathe and mill, a SC3 and SX2P for five years before changing both for bigger machines which now have DRO, but I still managed to make a working 3 1/2inch steam loco running chassis. A DRO setup, particularly on a mill, allows you to do things quicker but no more accurately if you take care and the additional cost may not be worth it if the machine doesn't cut accurately.

A design is basically imperial or metric, not both. While you can use threads of one in the other, where I use metric fasteners in my imperial engine builds, you shouldn’t convert dimensions unless you merely want to use measuring devices in the other standard. Trying to round dimension or use material sizes will create all sorts of problems with fits and clearances. Metrication or imperialisation needs to be applied creating a complete set of new working drawings with all the fits and clearances worked out to ensure a working model.

Is the force you need for the spring or the spring details?
Spring manufacturers have online calculators these days but I use an old book which relates wire diameter to spring force in a table, so quite easy to look up with a quick calculation.

Just switched from BT to a broadband provider on local fibre network for half the cost and eight times the speed. Decided to ditch the landline phone as it is hardly used other than scam callers. When I rang BT to cancel the woman agreed that there was no fibre for BT network to our property. We have two fibre lines down our street one is Virgin and the other City Fibre but BT doesn’t have access to either. BT are saying we will get voip within the next year but as far as I can see no fibre installations are being undertaken by them or Openreach locally, so I don’t know who they will connecting through. The one thing on price at least with my provider is they say no price increase while I am with them even after the initial 24 month term, unlike BT with yearly increases.

Mine is a tenth edition, 1941. I use it very infrequently, both when I worked in a design office and now in a hobby workshop. As others have said Zeus or similar are more useable on a day to day basis. I suppose to an extent it depends on what you are looking to find as the original editions are all imperial, I don't know when they started including more metric. Interesting reading the preface, number of pages increased from the ninth edition by 224 pages to 1816, but they had to be selective about what they left out. It is really a book for the desktop rather than the bench top.

Looking in an old book on the corrosion of metals it says that the difference in electro motive force between two mating metals should be kept below 0.25v. In the accompanying table steels have a potential of 0.7-0.78 and phosphor bronze 0.22 (nothing for silicon bronze). So with those figures there is a potential for rusting, and it gets worse when salt is added, as in winter road spray.

The one in you hand has M10 on it, are they threaded for mounting?

Thread insert tools? Can’t quite work out with the numbers on the one I can see, first ought they may be insert tools or tang break off but the length doesn’t equate or the long grooves on the diameter.

Place I worked at in the eighties had tracers specifically employed to create exploded views for technical manuals as well as images for advertising. They were the first to be made redundant when the decline took hold, then draughtsmen were expected to do something similar. Eventually 3D cad systems enabled it to be almost automatic, but it still takes some thought and skill to get the right look and pairing of parts. While the cad systems I worked with would separate parts you had to move them manually to the side as needed. To me if you can read a drawing an exploded view is unnecessary it is most useful for the spare part suppliers who you wouldn’t expect to be able to read a drawing.

Abtec provide all types and sizes of disc and belt. I have used them for my 1” belt and disc sander, but I also have a 6” wide and 9” dia belt and disc sander which at the moment is running through my older stock of coarser wood belts. When I can I will get some finer 6” belts but most of what i do is adequately handled on the 1”.

If you do a bit of research you will find all the formulae for thread dimensions. It is not as simple as deducting the pitch from the diameter as root and crown radii are involved. Even after calculating and having the right radius tool. You will need to machine it until it fits, this is where thread gauges come in but the expense is outside of our remit.

I hammer the sheet over a smaller diameter former. At the moment I have completed one for a 3 1/2 inch loco and partly finished one for a 5 inch in 3mm steel, just need to join up the ends. Prior to silver soldering I put a joint plate over the joint and screw it together.

Use a tip with the larger radius. Surface finish is a function of the tip radius, feed rate and depth of cut. Getting the speed and feeds right for the material being cut can be a challenge sometimes with unknown materials, you cannot be sure that the steel is tough or free cutting, brass and soft materials cut better with different edge geometries. There is a lot of science in machining.

I would as others say do a test before committing. Do the test with different hardening times of the base paint. With enough curing time most paints will be sufficiently hard to not react with most other paints, it is the amount of time the solvent lays on the sub surface resulting in softening. I tend to prime my steel parts as soon as they are finished to prevent rusting then it may be months before any subsequent paint is added, which means nothing other than abrasives will remove it.

Politicians make their mistakes based on the mistakes they learned that previous governments made. There is little new thinking if in fact there is such a thing.

Not something I have come across in the past forty odd years. The nearest you can get are combined thrust and axial bearings. You may find components in the usual engineering part suppliers which would allow you to assemble something like you want.

Have a Sieg SC3, been in use for about seven years, despite some larger diameter cutting resulting n stalls and blowing the main fuse once and a few new drive belts all has been good, relatively. Now have a GH600 sitting on its pallet waiting for the arrival of an engine lift before being put to use. Will retain the Sieg for small diameter work for the time being, it is ideal for upto 25mm diameter but struggles a bit on thing larger in steel, although I have cut upto it’s 175mm limit all be it slowly. Choice is really on how quick you want to remove metal and level of competence. As a life long engineer I would have no problems with most manual machines, but space is the main prevailing factor in my workshop.