Member postings for Jelly

That sounds very do-able and quite neat.

You can buy replacement spindles for Taylor-Hobson pantographs which will take straight shank cutters up to about 8mm, about £700 and good to 30k RPM.

They're a sealed cartridge design intended to be modular, and come with three speed pulleys for round PU belting machined into the spindle.

The cartridge is slightly too long to fit inside a the body of a BT30 taper, and leave room for a drawbar thread (pull stud would be ok if machined from solid), but the shell is rigid enough that you could clamp one in an ER32 collet without any drama, only losing about 1" of headroom for the pulley.

Add a brushless motor in a bracket which clamps to the spindle nose and you'd have a *very* good high speed spindle from commercial off the shelf parts!

That said when I last needed a spindle like that, I made my own with a high precision ER11 straight shank holder from APT, some bearings from Accu, and a shell and pulley I machined myself.

I still have the drawings and cad files somewhere if anyone wants to adapt them (the obvious thing to do would be buy a blank BT30 taper and bore that out as the shell of the spindle).

Edited By Jelly on 08/02/2023 17:23:41

With respect to Zoro, it does to remember that they're a clearing house for a large number of engineers merchant's and the like (Cromwell, Erik's, etc.) Like a reverse purchasing organisation of sorts.

So their stock, especially on items which are competitively priced or seem a bit bizzare is often things which aren't moving regularly enough for a supplier and they want to de-stock.

In that vein, it seems likely that your 10.8 BSF bolts were a special item stocked by one of their partner organizations who are no longer selling them (say because a customer stopped making the product they were used in).

Sellers can choose to disable PayPal or credit/debit card payment options for a listing as they choose.... But they cannot insist on "cash on collection" only and must offer at least one form of "approved electronic payment".

Interestingly though, direct bank transfer is acceptable as an electronic payment method payment for certain categories of listing only... Including Vehicles and (of particular interest to us) "Business Office and Industrial", in recognition that people sell some really very expensive things on there and theres a decent amount of B2B selling activity where card payment isn't a practical option.

(A business I worked with on a project once bought a second-hand warehouse on eBay and got a subby steel erector to collect and catalogue it, then bring it back and put it up on a concrete pad, try putting that through on your expenses!)

Given the choice to do so this would definitely be my strong preference.

I didn't really have a choice when it came to lifting my TOS as it's all one huge casting, but hopefully the photo demonstrates that it a convenient and secure way to lift.

Having seen it by done on a DSG 17"×180" (using a spreader bar and a 20T rail crane) I can attest it works even for seriously big lathes, you just need a thicker bar.

Edited By Jelly on 07/02/2023 17:25:09

I put a lot of advice and context around the practical considerations of selling a lathe like the Harrison second hand in this thread which may be of use to you.

In a nutshell, the price you get will be shaped as much (if not more) by how easy or hard it is for the buyer to collect/have collected (both moving the machine and where you are in the country), as it is by the machine itself.

​

IMO listing it on eBay as a buy it now and slowly reducing the price is the best method to recover the value in full...

If you're located centrally in the country and would be willing to get a quote from a suitable transport firm for delivery within a certain radius so you can offer a price delivered then you can charge a price premium on the machine as well.

​

Two cautionary notes on eBay selling for large items:

1. if you don't want the buyer to pay by PayPal ensure you remove it as an option on the listing when you're setting it up, and
2. If you do choose to accept PayPal ensure you tell the buyer to bring a collection code with them, and refuse to let them start loading until they give you/show you the collection code, this will prevent them trying to reverse the charges later (a common scam).

I do keep looking out for alternators or motor-generators on eBay etc, although they don't seem to:

1. come up very often,
2. be well described when they do.

As it would be useful to have a decent gen-set and they're a fortune to buy even second hand, high hours and absolutely ragged.

The additional challenge today would be getting a sufficiently uncomplicated engine that I don't have to reverse engineer the ECU of a car into the bargain... good condition mechanically controlled diesel lumps are getting increasingly rare on the ground.

If i'm ever successful finding an alternator I may have to pick your brains on how you went about setting up the rest of the genny.

The advice I have had from Transwave on running welding equipment was that as long as the demand from the welder does not exceed the rated kVA output of the RPC all is well, but that I should definitely have an appropriately rated MCB with a B trip curve (not the C or D one would usually use for a welder) between the RPC and the welder to prevent it creating an accidental overload causing damage.

In theory this does rather hobble it, as at full power it will draw an eye-watering 34 kVA, but for most of my normal uses, running around 2-6kVA which is well within the capacity of the converter will do fine.

I'm curious about your generator build though, where did you source the alternator, and did you include any voltage and/or frequency regulation feedback mechanism to the throttle or just set it up for manual control?

Collected a new welder this weekend, an auction find coming from a shipyard with no warranty and assumed to need some repair work, but still an absolute steal for the price.

Whilst I won't be able to run it at the full 550A off my RPC, there's quite a few nice features which make it a major upgrade over my current machine:

• Latching trigger for reduced fatigue during long runs.
• Fully programmable pulse welding for sheet metal and aluminium.
• Pre-set "synergistic" modes for most gas mixes and filler wires.
• Compatibility with push-pull guns for aluminium, stainless and other awkward wire types.
• 4-roll feeder suitable for running flux/metal-core and dual shield.
• Water cooled gun (not strictly necessary for most of what I do, but is a nice to have even at lower power settings).

The first challenge was how to safely lower a 340kg item from the back ofy pickup, I briefly considered taking the top off and using my neighbor's gantry, but settled on using a ramp and a climbing belay plate in "guide mode".

All in all, it went pretty smoothly, although partway through it locked up sufficiently tightly that my erstwhile long suffering partner wasn't quite strong enough to release the auto-block and we had to trade places with her guiding it down the ramp and me operating the belay plate.

My ramp cobbled together from two layers of 2½" by 11" timbers salvaged from a neighbour's roof renovation performed like a champ, at one point holding 340kg of MIG welder and 120kg of foolhardy human with minimal bending.

Once in the workshop I assembled the feed unit on top using a length of broomstick as I had no steel bars the right diameter and the original spigot being long gone (the shipyard having put it on wheels and long leads to extend the range from power unit to weld), and snapped a pic with the missus for a sense of scale (She's 5'4”, the welder is 5" tall).

I'm planning to document the process of cajoling it back to life, fault finding, and fettling it up here, for general interest and as encouragment to others who might be tempted to buy welding equipment to match the other "big old iron" many (but not all) forumites are fond of.

Of course, it might be just fine making for a really boring thread... But after 15 years in a shipyard and 5 years in mothballs before being auctioned off, it's safe to assume it will have some faults (it's missing one of its four earth-lead lugs for one thing).

Edited By Jelly on 06/02/2023 21:26:40

I recently did... but my plasma will "only" cut upto about 12mm cleanly. I could achieve a "severance cut" in 20mm plate but it would be a much worse quality cut than doing a good job with the gas torch.

I probably don't need to use 20mm thick steel for the job, but I'm working on the assumption that using steel rather than C.I. is going to increase the potential for vibration so I want to maximize mass and rigidity to compensate.

Finally got round to fitting new drive belts on the Harrison mill I picked up for a pittance, substituting the awkward "release tension on the motor" step for brute force and ignorance, which sped the job up considerably.

With the new (and crucially not perished) belts it no longer creates an ear splitting din.

Followed up by getting the coolant pump working, and freshening up the gearbox oil... The power feed motor is still kaput, but I quite want to fit a reversing switch for that anyway, so no biggie for now.

.

I also worked out a solid plan for how to adapt the vertical heat I bought to fit the mill, it's a lot more involved than I wanted it to be requiring me to re-machine a rather large and awkwardly shaped casting, and make a fairly substantial weldment, with a parallellism between an inside and outside face...

But, doing it that way will allow me to both maximise the working envelope and achieve much greater rigidity.

My final debate is whether to cut the parts of the weldment myself with the cutting torch, or to send out to the profiler who could water jet them accurately ready for welding, I am leaning towards DIY as I have a suitable piece of 20mm S355 just sat there, but it will be much more effort to get the desired result.

Ady1 is bang on the money suggesting spot drills, I would suggest Cobalt as a minimum, if not Carbide just to break through the skin of material which is in the laser's HAZ (Heat Affected Zone).

The frames were almost certainly marked with the laser used for cutting, but at a lower power factor, (or higher speed, or rastered, not that the precise detail matters in practical terms); this will inevitably have caused localised heating to the surface, which if it's a carbon steel will have hardened it, hence the need for sharp, hard and rigid drills.

An 1И611П  (Pronounced: "a'deen Ee shest'sot odinnadtsat' Pe") produced by IZH in Izhevsk.

In the UK and west more generally they would be branded Stanko or StankoImport, so it was originally sold behind the iron curtain; you can see a familial resemblance in the pictures of the much larger Stanko 1K62 on Lathes.co.uk

IZH is the USSR's internal branding of the machine tools from IZhMASh (Izhévsky mashinostroítelny Zavod), which is now part of the Kalashnikov Concern defence conglomerate.

As far as I can tell, they have been making machine tools since their inception in the early 1800's (it was originally a government arsenal under the Tsar's, and the principles of building accurate metal lathes derived 50 years prior by Andrey Nartov in St. Petersburg being well known in russia by then)...

But, machine tools are only a means to an end for them, with the main output of the factory being ten's of millions of different types of small arms, naval autocannon's in air-defense mounts, naval guns, and even various types of 8x8 and 10x10 trucks.

Looks like they're pretty well documented and supported... if you speak fluent russian with technical vocabulary

Edited By Jelly on 26/01/2023 11:58:58

IMO there's no "better" or "worse", just appropriate for the use case...

People should select the approach which suits their budget, aspirations and equipment best, which will be different for each user.

​

For you, the VFD's are the best option.

For my investment in a single converter I can run the Lathe, Mill, Drill and Grinders which would all have required one or more VFD's, and I didn't have to re-wire the Lathe to get it to work properly (because the electrical and mechanical controls are closely intermeshed, and some functions would be lost if the switches buried in the mechanism weren't connected to the VFD)...

I can also run my Migatronic 500 Mig Welder, Oxford Welder (doesn't need 3-phase but the arc is smoother when running on it) and the recently acquired Plasma Cutter;

Running welders is something which can only be done on a Rotary Phase Convertor (and then only with a specific option fitted).

​

So for about £400 outlay, I'm running 7 machines or about £57 per machine, before you consider that 3 of those machines can't be VFD converted at all so I just wouldn't be able to have them at home.

Had I bought the RPC brand new, the price would be closer to £200 per machine, which given that for two of the machines I wouldn't have seen much change from £300 per machine buying VFD's for them still makes it look economic in the long run.

If I was running smaller machines, or machines which had motors which were more easily adapted to running on 240V 3-phase, then the economics would stack up for VFD's instead, but I wouldn't be able to run such nice welding gear then.

This is one of the reasons that I have chosen to avoid doing any unnecessary VFD conversions to machines and to stick with a convertor running the whole workshop.

The effort required to power the ancillaries on, and replicate the relay logic of a well appointed manual machine tool can be substantial, and I have seen more than one mechanically sound machine end up inoperable and being sold as a project/for parts after someone got in over their head trying to convert it.

It's not usually hard to do, so much as it is awkward, time consuming and head scratching.

There's a reason that you rarely if ever see manual machine tools in industry retro-fitted with a VFD for speed control of the motor, even if they have had to have upgraded control circuits for PUWER98 or just because the old circuits failed after 50+ years service.

If you ring in before 12:00 you can usually get same day delivery on car parts from Euro Car Parts and sometimes GSF too.

I have previously had them deliver a battery and alternator to "the obvious broken down car behind Cotswold Outdoors in Betws" at about 15:30 on a Thursday, having ordered it just before lunchtime... Was a lot cheaper than a hotel.

Posted by vincent bamber on 19/01/2023 12:47:26:

It's a mostly adequate lathe, an awkward to use undersized drill, and a downright inadequate mill.

If you buy second hand, you will be able to get three separate machines each with a larger capacity than the centurion for less money and better performance.

I wouldn't worry about not having 3-phase, there are a number of different solutions available using either VFD's/Inverters or Rotary Phase Convertors; aach approach has benefits and downsides which I won't get into here....

But the practical upshot is often as not you can buy a Three-Phase Machine and the kit to run it from single phase for less than you can buy a much smaller single phase machine (let lone considering prices to buy new).

The limit I would impose on yourself is "how heavy a machine am I prepared to move around and get into my workshop" either with friends or by hiring movers...

I would reckon anything under 2 tonnes is pretty reasonable if you have a flat(ish) concrete floor to use rollers (scaff pole or proper skates) on and are willing to hire an engine crane or gantry for a day; but opinions differ wildly on this and you will have to decided for yourself.

The student 1800 is a 6.5" center height, so will swing 13"/325mm over the bed (which, incidentally would be a biiiiiiiiiiig brake disk) before you even take the gap out; do you actually need the Student's 19"/480mm swing over gap, because that's pretty huge...

If not there's a huge variety of lathes of that size (12"/13" swing) out there from myriad different manufacturers, and I'd probably buy whatever model of lathe was reasonably priced, conveniently located and in decent condition to come up for sale next.

Edited By Jelly on 19/01/2023 14:30:08

Edited By Jelly on 19/01/2023 14:30:57

Got the diesel heater working.

A certain amount of discovering that the very top connection in the system didn't seal and is now dripping diesel as you prime it then having to cut into a full pipe overhead to fit a new olive was involved... So the sweet sweet smell of success does smell oddly like a diesel soaked hoody.

Once running it's pretty solid, the ducting works well to distribute the heat and the exhaust protection (a duct full of rockwool sealed with fire cement) has proved effective enough, keeping the temperature down to 57 on the outside when the exhaust itself is running at 180-220C.

Will need to tidy up the installation a bit now I know it all works. Clip the cables and microbore tube, etc.

Today was brakes day, noticed a squeal which rapidly progressed into a grinding sound from my back brakes on the focus yesterday, so bought new pads and disks...

Turns out the OEM pads don't have an audible indicator for pads wearing close to being spent, so it went from "feels fine" to "metal on metal" with limited warning (I knew the pads needed doing soon because of pedal travel, but not like that). So got some Brembo ones which do, so I don't have to do the disks when these wear out.

Took the opportunity to teach my missus how to do vehicle breaks, as her MX5 developed a sticky caliper last night, cue much juddering... The IR camera showed the disk heating up to 176°C during the ten minute limp home.

So tomorrow I'll talk her through doing that, and deciding if she needs to replace the disk or not (marginal at that temperature), as she's quite keen on knowing how to maintain and work on her own vehicle (this began when she bought the MX5, and has progressed into wanting to maybe build a Track or Drift Car).

Will definitely have the big propane torpedo heater out with us too, ran that today whilst doing the focus and it working on a car in the gravel much more pleasant on a cold day.

Picked up a new (to me) plasma cutter for a song whilst over in Cumbria on business

So I'm now the proud owner of an ESAB LPH 50...

Which I can't use until I get my Rotary Phase Converter serviced, and fitted with the optional "Hand" switch which allows safe operation of welding equipment by Transwave.

Based on a quick test in the seller's workshop it will cleanly cut up to 15mm, and sever up to about 22mm, pretty happy with that.

Also happy that it's an older transformer type machine rather than an inverter type, as I want it purely for static use, the size and weight tradeoff is totally worth having a machine which is reliable and repairable.

Also my electrical enclosures turned up, so I did some wiring to put a dedicated 12VDC supply in for my heater in the evening.

I'm planning to do the exhaust and tank connections tomorrow when I can get at the outside in the light and should be ready for a test run prior to me wrapping the wiring and then enclosing the wiring and fuel line.

Edited By Jelly on 13/01/2023 15:39:15

I would strongly suggest a pre-hardened alloy steel for long term durability and accuracy.

709M40 (EN19 in old money) is widely available in U condition, and 826M40 (EN26) in W condition. West Yorks Steel will sell you both for delivery, via phone or email.

Those letters refer to the tensile strength and hardness as supplied, you would need to turn them with carbide, but the results are usually very good.

Personally I would be inclined to use 080M15 (EN32), do the threaded elements with an allowance for shrinkage, turn to near finished shape, then heat treat myself over a long soak time so the core normalises and the exterior case hardens to a decent depth, then hard turn the register and taper to final size with a CBN insert.

This, obviously is a more complex undertaking, but certainly not beyond the ken of an enthusiastic amateur; if you're curious I can explain in more detail.

Edited By Jelly on 13/01/2023 11:59:04