Member postings for HOWARDT

There are gauge suppliers n the UK, a simple search will tell you. It is best to have a word with a knowledgable seller and go with their recommendation. Gauges are supplied to work with different media and flammable gases are just one. Correct pressure range s vital and I believe the working pressure should never be above 3/4 of the gauge range. Usual threads are BSP and NPT, but gas tight adaptors can be supplied were needed.

Head height is going to be the restricting factor as well as the floor flex. Any floor standing mill really requires a concrete floor unless you can make a rigid structure to spread the load, as the feet tend to be fairly close together. I have a Warco GH Universal and find it good for what I use it for but wouldn’t want to use it in my shed with wooden floor.

Looking on the net at rotarybroaching.com they give maximum possible dimensions. One is a difference of no more than 0.040” between material diameter and finished depth of cut. I think that you would need a pretty heavy lathe for it to work comfortably.

I think I bought my Vernier caliper from Axminster about 18 years ago. Other than stripping it down once to clean the contact faces it has behaved and not ate batteries. Watching Clough42 on the tube a while back, he was querying battery drain on some of the cheaper brands. The easy choice is one of the named brands if you worry about your choices all the while.

I have not looked but assume if you looked at lathe tool manufacturers ie Sandvik etc you will find some answers. Obviously cutting edge technology plays a significant part in the multitude of forces but what you are trying to achieve is the lowest force to shear the material. That is why there are so many different carbide tip geometries to suit different materials and their conditions. Obviously this will also apply to HSS or any other material you may want to use, but with differences in angles and material removed. In industrial production applications tooling is developed over time to produce the lowest cost per part and can vary from machine to machine. So see what works for your application and don’t rely too much on others.

Interesting piece on the news this morning, electric HGV needs, I think they said, 340kW charger connection. Can you imagine the drain on the local grid when they all settle down for the night.

We had tracers who copied standard machine drawings onto linen using pens. When copying became available they were all transferred to aperture cards and microfilm. Copying was done by a local copy and print firm. No real use in keeping old fragile drawings, an easy way to copy is use a digital camera in daylight.

As has been said all the information of what is intended use is really required. I used to drill or slot holes in the corners, actual placement of the holes depends on which sides your are trying to make a tolerances fit. By positioning the hole centres on the corners you shorten the contact lengths dependant on cutter size. If you align the radius of the cutter outside the rectangle you can produce a size slot on all sides. Clearing the corners like this allows you to use say a 8mm diameter cutter to finish all sides and give you a chance with the depth.

Have a look at the Gerstner web site. They have been in the business of making tool boxes for a lot of years and appear to make them in most hardwoods.

Almost certainly alphabet related, a friend B had his a couple of months ago, still waiting for mine under S. Checking previous years have arrived one or two weeks before now, so maybe this coming week.

Ideally from a strength point of view, particularly on a 5” or larger chuck, I would prefer steel nuts. Stainless nuts tend to have a lower yield, having said that I use M6 on my flange mounted chucks but only 100mmm. Also use plain flanged nuts if you want not the locking nuts shown in your photo, those will chew up the face with repeated release.

I always start with a block and remove volumes from it in a logical manner to create a machinable part. I have seen too many times parts with feature that cannot be machined, this is normally where a part has been built up using features. Working logically is always best using the knowledge of a Machining process you have, particularly if you are a beginner at machining.

H. Robert’s read their story, sixty years of selling top name equipment in metrology, so I would say reputable.

Have a look here, H Roberts. Local to me but no association, give then a ring though to check wether in stock or delivery time.

Isn’t the simple answer the drawings were created in the imperial age and being copyright they cannot be metricated. I assume most of the original designers are long gone, of not all. Modern day designers would I expect, at least in Europe and Australasia, create them in metric. Most Americans I think use imperial thought industry is shifting to the metric system. If you want to see more metric then create some new designs.

It doesn't matter, When the item has been made no one knows wether you used chains or microns. The fact the drawing used a set of numbers relating to imperial or metric systems only the drawing reader needs to know so they can interpret it to create the part. Converting between the two is simple enough for most engineers, it is just a number. Threads can be converted between the two quite easily, some special threads need a little thought as to why it is used before coming up with an alternative. Just for the record i am mainly metric, but use imperial for when connections are required to purchased pipe fittings.

I don't think a book would help you. Being a designer all my working life in a few different fields you start with what you know, ie your power unit as you seem to know what you want to use, and work out from there. Use photographs to give you the exterior outline ideas then work out what goes in between. Design is all about working things out to give you an end result, the mathematics of scale is all part of it. You start with a sketch or series of sketches outlining what you want and work in from there. The cad system you are using is just a tool to create working drawings so the system you use doesn't matter so long as you are confident in it. The drawing time can be a long process, especially if you are only working on it a couple of hours here and there.

Not from a production shop floor, most likely a development shop as they are the only ones with enough time to wash it, production stirrers are usually brown in colour.

I have a Sieg SC3 which has been in use for seven years and in that time I have done three main modifications. The first was to make a banjo for the feed gear train, it was a copy of someone else's and I think the gear spacing was for a total gear tooth of 100 across the two gears. The second was as mentioned increasing the cross travel so I could just exceed the maximum diameter of the machine. The third was to fit taper gibs to the main slide and get rid of the crap retaining plates, this again was a copy of something done on an American site some years ago. I have only replaced the headstock bearings once and that was like for like although maybe the bearings I bought had less clearance than those initially fitted. Nearly forgot also made brass gibs for cross slide.

I run a GH Universal with a removable shank 50mm boring head with no troubles. The shanks have a large flange which the body is screwed up to, thus forming a very rigid assembly. Manufacturers make them like this as it is more cost effective and mine was originally a 3MT mount for my previous mill. More important is the cutting bits you use and the grind on them, the bits supplied with most of these heads are pretty poor our of the box.