Member postings for Robin

Many years ago I was told, "Any file will do for brass, but your brass files never touch steel"

I might have mentioned that I just bought my first ever broach to try, but that now seems so totally pathetic I probably didn't buy one after all

Glorious. Do you have a use for it or was there simply no good reason not to buy it?

OMG you are all so old, I remember round pin sockets but not everyone was lucky enough to have one.

I was born and raised in 1950's Oxford. There were a lot of students in bedsits. It was amazing how many of those Bakelite Y adapters they could daisy chain in to one light socket without the ceiling catching fire

I thought that "Carbide" was just the new Chinese word for "High carbon steel" because they had quite worn that one out with cheap taps and stuff that shattered the moment you applied any real pressure

I must admit I have no trouble with the ER32's on my big mill and my lathe, but while investigating this problem I dug out an old ER11A nut to see if the new collets would fit that. It went in but it was a pig to get out. Maybe I just need more practice on the smaller sizes

I did try screwing the nut on over a collet to see if it might close down enough to snap in to place but all the slots closed tight and then it laughed at me

I had the Dickens of a job finding a straight sided collet chuck 12mm round and 180 mm long in the shank. There was not a lot of choice, hence ER11M.

Edited By Robin on 02/11/2017 16:43:59

So I won't look like a right twit when I complain. A free replacement would be nice.

Maybe I should buy another nut to try out first, just to be sure.

Actually I am quite tempted to buy one nut for each collet in the set, could save vast amounts of faffing about, cursing swearing, stabbing fingers with screwdrivers etc trying to prise the damned things out

I didn't think I was a beginner but I may have gone bonkers and reverted to my caterpillar origins. This could be a really stupid question.

I just bought an ER11M nut, on the right, ER11A nut on the left. I cannot get a collet in to the blessed thing. It doesn't seem to have the off centre cut away to hook it in.

Does the ER11M have some clever wrinkle that I am unaware of, or have I been sold a pup?

Robin

I suppose it depends on your application and the forces involved. You don't have to go the full Belleville if a few pounds force is all it needs.

To get a constant force, how about lifting a weight over a pulley? Newton still beats Hook if you avoid major accelerations.

I did a packing bench with hospital grade linoleum, had to stand a lot of Stanley knife on brown paper action. I just went into town and bought the lino. Mind you that was 30 years ago

I do get a bit carried away and I will confess to being an opinionated old git. If I transgress it is quite okay to tell me to shut up. I am quite used to that so I probably won't shut up, but you might feel better for doing it

I like the red white and blue colour scheme, very patriotic

I agree, I like tight tolerance but officially M12 clearance is 13.5mm

Now all the knowledgeable people have finished I would like one small rant...

Cutting speeds in ft/minute are all well and good until you do the sums and discover that you need a budzillion rpm while your poor old mill is flat out at 2000 and doesn't sound good much above 1500.

Also those monster feed rates suggested for tiny tooling, a person has to wonder how many Watts the tool shank can actually carry to the tip before catastrophic failure is inevitable. If you reduce the cut depth the tip goes blunt before you know it.

Do I really want to buy a 3kW water cooled 24,000 rpm "milling" spindle c/w a hopeful can of WD40 to lube it while it chews it's reluctant way though great billets of aluminium alloy? I think not.

Oops! Have to go, apparently the cat's bowl is empty

I just drove over to my workshop, tape measure and writing stick in hand. I wiped away the grime of ages to reveal two name plates. There was no blade size so I also measured wheel diameter and separation...

It is a Sealey SM35CEv4 300mm band saw.

The blade size is 93" x 3/4" x 0.81mm so my estimate was a bit dodgy but whaddya do?

In my absence the local denizens have been using it minus the top blade guide and assure me the blade stays on fine and dandy. As the top wheel is currently carrying the blade on it's outside rim, gasp, I rather doubt this is actually the case.

The wheels have a 16.2mm wide flat to support the blade. The strange groove (anomalocanalis?) would accommodate the teeth on a 3/8" blade width

I am starting to feel almost hopeful...

The blade is about an inch wide, it overhangs the entire face of the wheel and the suspicious groove. I have ordered a can of gunk I am going to clean the groove out and the wheel face

The blade tension is set 700-900 kg. They don't say if this is the blade tension or the pull on the wheel. Luckily you do it by taking up the slack then adding 2 full turns. This after 2-3 minutes run time at one and a half turns which they estimate as 800 kg.

Clear as mud, one and a half turns is 800, two turns is 700-900 kg. At 0.9 metric tons I would estimate the musical note to be in the high ping range

Does this look excessively greasy?

I have no faith in pulley separation calculators. I use one for a rough estimate then draw the two PCD's in AutoCAD. I add two tangential lines, trim, list and tally. I then adjust the separation and try again until it is right. A terrible palaver but my belts fit a treat

I just bought a set of 13 ER11's and once I saw 0.008mm advertised ​I just had to have them. There was a suggestion they cut them out of silver steel rather than boring old HC but I would never know. I am a total sucker, I used to fight it but now I give in to temptation and I have to admit it feels all warm and glowy