Member postings for Edward Crouch

Helicopter: a million parts rotating rapidly around an oil leak, waiting for metal fatigue to set in.

I don't *think* the pipes are Stainless.

Maybe they are? The existing one is covered in Matt black enamel, I guess to keep the flue gases nice and hot (buoyant).

So they're either Stainless or there's some marketing/environmentalism going on...

Similar to the nitro-cellulose thinners I saw for sale the other day. Made me look twice and then google it I must admit!

Evening all. I really like my wood burning stove. It's lovely. I could do with getting it to sit further out in the room perhaps, so I've looked at buying an offset pipe.

Now, all the pipes I see are proudly made of laser welded 'zero carbon steel'.

Whilst I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool metallurgist, I'm slowly becoming one and I hang around with people with PhDs in metallurgy. We don't know about this zero carbon steel.

What on earth is zero carbon steel, other than iron?

Thank you...!

Ed.

Civil airworthiness requirements are 1*10^-9 catastrophic failures per fleet flying hour. MIL is 10^-6.

So, 1*10^9 hours is the fleet safe life, divide by fleet numbers, divide by hours flown per year, gives you a rough guess at the maximum fleet life in years from that perspective. There are many many many other considerations though, dual redundant load paths, redundant systems, preventative maintenance (particularly D-check) fail safe and rip-stop construction all play a major role.

I've got a few Chinese/Indian chucks. I'm happy with them. I'll never ever trust a chuck for concentricity anyway. Imho independent chucks are the way to go cos you can clock em in. I've stripped and rebuilt mine, and that is well worth doing even brand new because sometimes the assembly cleanliness isn't great, and there are a lot of burrs. Strip, degrease, deburr with a small DMT stone, reassemble with quality grease, and they're fine. My 3jaw SS that came with my Warco 250 is very good actually. Interestingly I wouldn't trust the front face for flatness. When the castings are machined it seems to relieve a fair amount of residual stress and sometimes the front face of the chuck can vary by a tenth or so.

Well, that is my admittedly limited experience. YMMV.

Another thumb for ACF50. Keeps all sorts of things including the old motorbike corrosion free. It isn't cheap, but it DOES work. If it's going to be laid up for a long time, waxoyl or one of Dinitrol's products are also really good.

Has anyone tried screwing a lump of Mg to their lathe!?!? Im not sure if that would work in a non-submersed application. Even my garage ain't that damp...

This is my boringly reliable machine. Thing is, it's anything but boring!!! I'd just got back from a weekend in Germany. Love my old VFR.

I've got some Kennametal VBMTxxxxxx and they are fabulous for most materials. Great finish, can be thrashed, and they last, even on nasty metals.

I've had a WM-18 for about 6 years. Good mill. To be honest I haven't really done the usual model engineering things with it, more automotive repairs I guess, but it has been perfectly capable.

Sure, there are one or two areas where it could be better, but where it needs to be accurate, it is.

I was erring between that and the 16, but the extra heft, bulk, rigidity of the 18 is so worth it.

I don't think you'll regret it!

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=7187.0

Seems folk do two things to that model of mill - add two more bolts to the head swivel assy, which may well be where my recently discovered out-of-tram lives, or I might need to, yikes, shim/epoxy the column!!

Time for some heavy lifting?

Edited By Edward Crouch on 28/01/2017 17:23:30

Aye, tis me, Rod. Me with a wonky column by the sounds of it...

Yeh I have been known to land with fewer onboard than I took off with. Jump flying is incredibly tough, but it is also very rewarding!

Ed.

Wow - much advice. Thank you.

Sooooo, she's a bit wonky...

I did see a video of a chap using steel-impregnated epoxy to set the column of a very similar machine vertical. Is this an acceptable practice, or would I need to go scraping?

I must at this point say in Warco's defence that I could be measuring the tram incorrectly. I shall do more investigation and report back. How would I check column perpendicularity? I guess I'll need a huuuuuuge engineer's square and my most trusted DTI??

Similar to mountain wave or lenticularis.

Forms downwind of an obstruction and only in a stable atmosphere (shallow temperature lapse rate).

in UK our climate is normally one with unstable atmosphere - when a cloud forms the top keeps rising until it runs out of moisture because the condensation process releases latent heat and keeps the air mass buoyant . If the atmos is stable due to prevailing conditions (even possibly an inversion) then a mass of air pushed up by land features (orographic uplift) will sink back to its undisturbed altitude, but may oscillate around that level, and can do for a hundred or two miles. Should that oscillatory movement of air happen at around the dew point of the air mass, clouds as seen will form. The water molecules forming those ridges of cloud are actually travelling through them, evaporating in the descent and recondensing in the climb.

It's a beautiful world!

Edited By Edward Crouch on 28/01/2017 09:02:55

Hi all.

I trammed up the old mill head properly for (sheepishly) the first time this evening.

It's a Warco WM-18.

Side to side, over a 160mm diameter, I got it to a difference of 20 micron on the DTI. Good!

Fore-aft, not so easy to adjust (!), it is a total of 100 microns out over the 160mm diameter of the DTI swing.

Umm, I think that's pretty good??!

Any thoughts/comparisons?

Thank you.

Ed.

Evening, all.

I've been a lurker for a while so I thought I should sign up! My interests are pretty varied. Everything from steam to gas turbines to making tooling and parts for vehicles.

i guess the only thing I don't really do is small.

Im growing my workshop, buying all sorts of kit. My main machines are a Warco WM-250 lathe and a WM-18 mill. Very happy with them. Sure, there's more bog in the castings than you'd see on a Myford, but I've made valve guides for an Ariel NH350, all sorts of stuff and the machines work great!

Latest purchases are a sine bar and some Russian(!!) slip gauges.

Ed.