Member postings for HOWARDT

When applying any force on a cast iron, or any material really, support the area adjacent to were the force is being applied through. The worst you will do then is cause a bruise onto the surface. The further you support the part from where the force is applied the greater the deformation (bending) and therefore the chance of breaking.

I have always. Clean both parts, place and wring the two pieces together, then holding the assembly chuck up strike the end of the arbor on a wooden bench top.

I also burnt my motor out about three years ago, replaced with a o.5 hp 1380rpm motor from Bearing Boys. Also fitted new pulleys and a clogged belt to give me a cutting speed nearer to what Tuff Saws recommend for cutting steel. No real need for the stepped pulls speed change as I rarely cut softer metals and speed is still adequate when I do. Now I don’t leave the cut unattended.

I did a year under EITB in 1967/8 at Hinckley near Leicester. Early days I believe for this type of training. We didn’t get a manual just a drawing for what we had to make, still have most of the items and using some. Initial workshop over the winter was in a wooden hut before we moved into a new dedicated workshop built onto the college building. Enjoyable days with a good grounding for workshop practice.

I did a year under EITB in 1967/8 at Hinckley near Leicester. Early days I believe for this type of training. We didn’t get a manual just a drawing for what we had to make, still have most of the items and using some. Initial workshop over the winter was in a wooden hut before we moved into a new dedicated workshop built onto the college building. Enjoyable days with a good grounding for workshop practice.

EN24T - 34CrNiMo6, can be bought in rectangular bar, find some one who can waterjet it. Harden and temper, in the past all the gears I had made were induction hardened 40-45Rc.

I produced ten steel wheels of 3 3/4 inch on my mini lathe by not using a form tool. Unless you really want to produce the form there is little to be gained by being too picky in my opinion. But if you do want to use a form tool only use it to do the final finishing.

Peter Millard has done some videos on YouTube you may find interesting on various chip and dust machines. I did.

Always have a good look round before opening the door, not only to the rear, you don’t know wether anything coming from your front may come close as well.

How many dog owners restrain there animal in the back of the car, not a new law.

Commercial foundries have to make a profit. Traditional pattern and casting methods are time consuming, more so for small parts. Looking at a small static engine part there may be only pennies worth of material in it but many minutes of labour time, plus all the energy costs, and we know those only too well. When you compare that to continuously cast bar where many metres are produced in the same time. If you look at a simple static engine and take away all the fancy bits the actual bar material cost is far less than a bought set of castings. Some larger parts may need a bit of sideways thinking in order to machine them in the garage workshop, but that just adds to the experience. As an example I have a mini lathe and find it is a little shy of power when turning 5” wheels, so once roughed on one side and bored I mounted them on an arbor and used the mill to turn finish turn them.

Have a smart meter on gas and another on electric, different suppliers. Before the electric meter was fitted about ten years ago, I had an aborted fitting attempt, probably three years before that. On the first attempt two fitters turned up and spent about four hours trying to get the meter to connect with their system, numerous phone calls and resets before they refitted the old meter. Talking with the gas fitter he said the meters had changed a lot since that first attempt when they were evaluating a number of manufactures. I have no problem with the meters but don’t bother with the remote reader, why use more electric to tell me how much I am using. As has been said, I am also from the closed doors and lights off brigade, obviously unless I am in the work shop where I use kilowatts per hour with gay abandon.

H. Robert’s in Leicester do repairs, may well have spares.

I am of the opinion that castings for this hobby will become less affordable. As years go ny there are less of us so buying less, and the only way the prices can be kept down is volume sales and the equivalent production. Without the sales they cannot cast in volume as it just becomes expensive door stops.

At the moment I am building a Super Simplex. Cylinder assemblies and all the wheels have been manually machined from solid Ci bar. Much cheaper to buy bar than castings, alright there is more machining to be done but once you think of the process it is not too bad and forget the little imperfections (cock ups) after all it is a running model not an exhibition piece.

As has been said there used to ge foundries in most towns supporting the local industries. In my early design days I used to work with four foundries locally, ferrous and non. They all went to the wall with the introduction of health and safety requirements for clean air, non could afford a million pound investment, probably the early nineties. The place I was working at moved over to fabrication and machine from solid instead of castings. It was cheaper to machine on the big cnc mill than wait for six months for a casting. At one time the factory had its own pattern shop, probably with half a dozen pattern makers, all of whom got made redundant at the same time.

Yes, I have used one with the light for about five years and works for me when I need to get close up. Also have a Russian made on with single lens fitted, had about thirty years and still use in it in the office.

Have you looked at buying metal inlay strips. Would be a lot easier in the long run than all the cutting, deburing, and flattening.

Depends on the loading on the rollers, surface finish, lubrication, speed, etc. Steel is the usual contact face, a smooth surface allows the roller to stay separated from it by an oil film.

I have a Rexon pillar drill, bought about thirty five years ago, I think from Axminster at a wood working show that used to run at the Warwickshire Event Centre. It probably cost around £75 then and it is still used today. My philosophy is unless you are going to be on a machine for an extended time there is little use throwing money at it. If you are worried about accuracy then a pillar drill is not the tool to use unless it is used with jigs and fixtures,

I spent a good deal of my draughting life designing machine tools. Over the period of about twenty years we moved from dovetail, cast iron square ways on hardened rectangular rails, then using Turcite and finally Moglice before using linear rails. If you look at a catalogue for linear rails such as Hiwin or whatever they are these days it will give you a good idea on the selection and mounting design for the rails. While smaller rails may be adequate for your intended use larger ones can work with quite large mounting tolerances. What you have to remember is that you may be using quite a small length of rail during your actual working cutting stroke, so minimising positional errors. Alright you have to achieve a reasonable geometric tolerance on the mountings but with some thought you can achieve it, you just need a machine big enough to do the machining. Most of our mounting faces were only a good milled surface with both rail seats milled in one setting. The likely hood of a damaging crash to the rails is unlikely with the sort of power you will be using on the spindle, serious cnc mills are using high kw integral spindle motors, not a VFD. Over the years the only machines I heard of in need of rail replacement were high power mills and lathes, most of the machines I designed were in the 2 to 20kw range and upto 20 axes. We did occasionally do a refit after a few years because of component change and replaced rails as a matter of course but never found a problem with them, even after running more or less continuously for five years or more.

Good luck, you have a lot to do.

Usual way to remove the key if you don't want to destroy it is to drill and tap a hole in it and jack it out with a screw. If the key is long put one in towards each end.

If the spacer is metal, perhaps a little heat applied to it will allow it to drop off. Otherwise putting the shaft into a tube supporting the spacer and hitting the end with suitable protection.

With metric threads I have always subtracted the pitch from the diameter to give the tapping size rounded up to the nearest 0.1. Works fine for most materials with the accuracy of small drills generally giving, at least me, a slightly bigger hole, with harder materials I do increase the diameter slightly.