Member postings for Simon Williams 3

Spend the money on a three phase conversion and a VSD, I know it looks expensive, but it transforms the machine and you'll only wonder why you didn't do it long since.

Goo d luck, do please keep us posted

Rgds Simon

Can you borrow a current clamp meter? The running current might be excessive, which might indicate a winding fault (shorted turn). If so the fault is terminal (excuse the pun). I'd be suspicious at this point that the "Vesuvius" complex you describe is the effect rather than the cause.

One might expect to have a smell of cookery to accompany the diagnosis, but maybe not (yet!)

Are you on a RCD? Might be prudent - if the windings flash to earth it would be better switched off sooner rather than later. Just check the plug top earth pin makes a good contact to building earth (guess what I got caught by!)

I' m assuming being single phase it is not variable speed? If it is there's another can o' worms.

Let us know how you get on.

It'd be nice to think Michael's theory of the empty bottle was wrong......

My first thought was that the fault is with the regulator opening the valve on the top of the bottle. Here's a picture of the interface between the bottle and the reg'

You can see there is a small peg poking out of the middle of the female thread, this lifts a corresponding peg in the centre of the male thread on the top of the bottle. Without both pegs the valve will stay shut.

That peg sticks out maybe 3 mm beyond the O ring mating surface. It's fixed in place - it's the one in the top of the bottle that moves.

You can tell if the bottle has got anything in it by pressing the valve stem - the centre portion about 4 mm dia - with a suitable prodder. Onn the bottle I've just tried I had to push really hard to move the valve stem.

HTH Simon

Edited for a couple of silly typo's

PS I assume you've realised you need to turn the dial on top  of the regulator to something other that zero?

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 15/05/2021 15:27:35

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 15/05/2021 15:30:31

It's all very well exhorting the OP to go faster, but my S7 wouldn't drill from 12 mm to 16 mm in direct speed in 316, simply from lack of torque. If you just feathered the drill so the spindle didn't stall you get into the work-hardened nightmare in a very short order, as it would be doing little more than scraping the surface.

Agreed back gear is too slow but at least you can get a cut on.

I feel the boring bar suggestion is a better bet, though putting something stiff enough to be useful down a 12 mm pilot bore 50 mm deep is a bit of a contradiction in terms.

This is more difficult than it seems, within the limitations of an S7.

Persuade your friend that the storage cupboard you make is better for his purposes, and swap it for the real thing?

I've played with a square broach, and that follows the lead of the round pilot hole. The broach cuts equally (provided it enters straight) so the hole ends up on the same axis as the pilot hole.

But this "D" broach is a different animal. How do you determine that the circular segment of the finished hole is co-axial with the OD of the work piece? On the face of it the flat surface of the "D" doesn't cut, so the material removed is one sided, as shown by the swarf. That means that the centre of the "D" moves sideways as the broach enlarges the circular segment.

Or have I got it wrong, and it's actually very simple?

+1 for Robert's explanation above.

As far as I can see, no-one has explained that the function of the on/off switch is to short-circuit the magnetic flux in the OFF position, and to remove that short circuit in the ON position. So the "switch" function is analagous to that of a parallel shunt in an electric current circuit. The magnetic flux never goes away, the off position of the "switch" just routes it internally so it doesn't pass through an external object. The switch routes the flux internally in the off position, and routes it externally via the pole pieces in the on position.

Of course the statement that the flux never goes away is a bit of an assumption, and this goes to the heart of the original question. Magnets not made with rare-earth compounds are prone to losing their flux intensity (de-magnetising) if they are left open circuit ("ON" in this application) and without a keeper (Old Mart's bit of steel stanchion). But that goes back to the dark ages, and any magnetic stand made in the last (say) 60 years is not going to be made of materials with such a significant design weakness.

And Robert is also right about the safety aspect of this. Getting your finger pinched in the (reducing) gap between the magnet and its attraction hurts. A lot. With modern rare earth magnets the attraction force at close range can be more than your skin can support, at which point it becomes an amputation. Ouch!

The mathematics of this are simple. For a simple magnetic circuit, the closing force (force of attraction) rises as the inverse cube of the separation. So magnetism is a short range force, and the cartoon characters being sucked onto a magnet over inter-stellar distances weren't paying attention in school physics lessons.

Rgds to all

Simon

Edit - to be fair to Neil his post (while I was typing mine) introduces the magnetic "shortcircuit" concept, so my apologies for saying no-one had explained... etc.  As ever, someone was typing a more succinct and elegant answer while I was still en route.

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 04/04/2021 00:25:59

Apologies to the OP for butting in, but :

Old Mart, could you possibly point me at the reference you found for a factory reset?

I have two of these units (Altivar 11) I bought from Germany, but they have been programmed and locked with remote software and I have failed to connect to them, let alone guess the password. I'd love to try a factory reset. Both of them work OK but not at the settings I want to use.

Many thanks in anticipation and excitement (it doesn't take much these days!)

Best rgds to everyone, hope your Easter Egg chocolate weekend goes well.

Simon

Nice looking model of an Allchin TE has made the cut in the "News in Pictures" section of todays Times.

Not too sure about the copyright implications of linking to it here, but it's easy to find though you may need to be a subscriber to access the inner workings of the paper.

If I may suggest -

Give some thought to the buyer's constraints on collection. Something of this ilk is actually pretty fragile (woe to the carrier who drops one of these!) and would normally be best served by "collection in person only"

But present constraints on travel and meeting etc curtail such. I have dipped out of several such transactions over the last few months for not being able to "collect in person". Quite apart from the restrictions (and cost) of travel I don't think I can justify the journey.

The restrictions relax shortly, but the idea of two people trying to load this into a van while maintaining the rigours of social distancing is a cartoon waiting to be writ.

There isn't really an easy answer at the moment, but hopefully these tribulations will pass ere long.

Good luck

If you append two zeros onto the number stamped on the end you get the nominal temperature in fahrenheit to which the temperature control operates.

So 7 - 700F = fairly normal for 60/40 solder or its more modern lead free equivalent

8 = 800F = blooming hot

FWIW twisting (crossing) the flat belt coming off a traction engine or a portable engine has nothing to do with reversing the drive, and everything to do with keeping the belt on the drum.

The friction face to face of the cross-over damps much of the vibration in the belt and helps control the amount it whangs up and down with the torque impulses from the engine. The engine, of course, runs equally well in either direction.

All the best,

Simon

pgk -

A fascinating chance observation about feline dysautonomia

In 1987 or thereabouts we lost two cats to what the vet determined was Key-Gaskel Syndrome. Both were DSH about 3 yrs old. If I've understood you correctly this is the same condition you have described above.

I put it down to overdosing them with an organo-phosphate based flea spray, but your comments lead me to wonder if that was not the explanation.

Whether it was or no, they didn't make it.

If you would like to know more PM me.

It's a mistake that all the journalist make to assume that the statistical figures quoted mean anything useful when applied to one individual. It's a mistake to particularise from statistics.

Whether you (as an individual) contract the disease is controlled more by the "hands, face, space" concept, together with the local prevalence of infected and infectious candidates.

The 67% protection figure simply means that the number of infections in a sufficiently large sample group will reduce by 67%, it doesn't follow that any one person's chances of getting infected are reduced the same. Either you get it or you don't. It does however seem to mean that the whole group (i.e. a group of a statistically significant size) is protected to a large extent from acquiring a potentially fatal illness.

Remember that the vaccination program isn't about protecting individuals. It seems to be achieving that but it's incidental. The point of the vaccination program is to change the statistics of hospitalisation, severe illness, death. On a country wide scale - a statistical sample of about 65 million individuals - even quite low effectiveness percentages give wholesale benefit to the population.

Given enough vaccination recipients, the concept of herd immunity starts to affect the mathematics, and (hopefully) our present constraints on our way of living become irrelevant. The "R" index is controlled not by physical distancing (social distancing) and precautionary measures such as shielding, but by a natural mass immunity and the consequent reduction in the number of carriers (infectors).

But (unfortunately) no-one's told the virus to play fair. We could be here some while yet.

Agreed.

However there is a complication which confuses things, particularly with significant differences between driver and driver (correction driven) diameters.

The actual running ratio of flat pulleys is properly calculated using the effective neutral radius of the belt wrapped round the pulley. That means that the smaller pulley in the drive (the driven pulley in the second stage, the driver pulley in the first stage) is effectively BIGGER than it's outside diameter. The same is true of the bigger pulley, but this has a smaller effect.

In this example you got two corrections which must nearly cancel each other. But don't be too surprised if the calculated speed isn't spot on with the reality.

I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to seeing how the results turn out in due course. Do let us know.

Your comments about needing double pulleys for the first stage are right, at least to maintain approximately the same centre distance of the pulleys. But with flat belts this will make the whole arrangement bigger and bulkier.

Edit - typo in italics

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 14/02/2021 15:43:12

Based on your declared pulley diameters the final spindle speed works out to be 605 RPM. Which begs the question of why 874 rpm was ever mooted, but it is what it is.

Still everything points to the choice of 2.25 ins dia as the motor driving pulley. Go for it!

Chris -

No point in worrying about 840 or 874, I rather doubt if this exercise is that accurate!

On the basis of 1425 rpm in, step down is presently 1.75/8.25, so countershaft speed would be 302 rpm. There are several approximations in this calculation, so achieving 285 rpm as you have measured is within the realms of believability. Motor should be running a bit faster than the rated full load speed anyway.

To change the top speed, as discussed before the answer we've come up is go for the 2.25 inch option. By my arithmetic you should should end up with 600 x 2.25/1.75 = 771 rpm (ish).

But we still haven't understood why your present top speed is so far awry. If you could advise the outside dia's of the two pulleys making up the second stage drive we can follow the logic.

Edit:

Sorry, hadn't seen you had added that info when I pressed the button to post.

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 14/02/2021 15:02:13

I'm assuming there is another second stage step down (actually step up), and the OP is simply considering an alteration to the first stage drive from the motor to the countershaft.

I'm just wondering if one of these stages is actually slipping, hence my wondering if a flat belt is in the mix.

So a list of the pulley train diameters and a measurement of the input speed would allow us to model the behaviour and see if it makes sense.

Edited to add "Step up\"

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 14/02/2021 14:23:35

As Hollowpoint says, 2.25 is the better option on the face of it. The arithmetic says 2.45 ins PCD is needed, so 3.25 is a step too far.

The arithmetic is simple enough - new pulley dia = 1.75 x 840/600 = 2.45

But I'm profoundly suspicious that all is not that simple for the speed to be that far off the mark. Lathes.co.uk says 874 rpm is the top speed, and 600 rpm is the next speed down. Seems a bit basic, but are we missing a trick here?

What speed is the input motor actually doing? If you can check the spindle speed can you check what the motor is doing?

Is this a flat belt final drive?

I hesitate to be the party pooper, but please take into account that introducing oil or penetrating oil into the public water supply (even if it is only your own individual supply) is illegal, and carries quite stiff penalties. It's not just jobsworth pedanticosity, even small quantities of hydrocarbons will taint your supply and you will taste them.

Materials in contact with drinking water must have passed through the Water Research Council approval program and be WRc approved.

There are food grade lubricants about - Rocol make one called Foodlube which can be bought in an toothpaste tube, but to the best of my knowledge it doesn't have WRc certification.

The materials used by the water companies have to be DWI (Drinking Water Inspectorate) approved, which is even more stringent to ensure that even small traces of deleterious substances are kept away from the public water supply.

Best answer by far is as suggested - get your local Water Supply Authority to check over their stopcock, so you or they can isolate your supply. Then remove and replace the offending consumer side valve.

You may have difficulty retaining command of whether a water meter is fitted or not, depending on the local policy.

Good luck!