Member postings for Alistair Robertson 1

I have recently installeed an M300 for a friend and I can confirm that although the motor is marked 380/440 AC volts it is in fact dual voltage. The six terminals are connected in a "star" point configuration but if you remove the brass links there are in fact three linking bars allowing you to configure the motor in "delta" mode.

We did connect a vfd and it worked fine although we didn't fully configure it as we bought a Clarke 60 phase converter for powering a mill as well. You have to remember that connecting in "delta" does reduce the available output power but unless you are really taking big cuts and trying to drill a 25mm hole in a "oner" you will not notice the difference. What you will notice if you fit a single phase motor is a reduction in smoothness of cut and of finish.

A few years ago we made some special gearboxes for the MOD. A simple bevel gearbox with one input shaft and one double ended output shaft, simple!

The MOD fley an "expert" up from London to check them out and sign the acceptance paperwork. Well I never saw such an incompetent person. He checked the specification from his paperwork and couldn't work out the ratio of input turns to output turns. We had assigned him an apprentice to help him and after about half an hour the apprentice came to me and said "That guy is a complete *********!***** I went to see what was going on and had to agree as the guy was measuring the turns of one of the output shafts and could not get it to agree with the other end of the same shaft!!

I was able to put up with this for about 30 minutes when I lost the plot and ordered the guy from the premises, he had used a taxi from the airport 30 miles away and the taxi was supposed to wait for him all day if needed.

I phoned his boss in the MOD and said I had never seen such incompetence and I was told he was the best guy they had! I said "well I wouldn't like to meet your worst"

I told them I would not supply the gearboxes and cancelled the order there and then. Well! all hell broke loose and they said "You can't do that as we are desperate for those boxes" My reply was "I will see you in Court!"

Next day a very nice phone call from the MOD big cheese pacified me and that afternoon four senior engineers flew up and checked out the boxes, in about 30 minutes they were checked and the paperwork signed.

On asking about the first engineer I was told he was their boss and did not have a clue about engineering!

Sometimes you wonder how the world has survived when people like that are in charge!

Thanks for all the info and yes Plansee was the name I was looking for!

There was also an American supplier but that was many years ago!

Just got to find a supplier but at least I can now search for something.

Thanks to all!

I wonder if anyone can help me with a source for HSS TCMT 1603 replacement tips? I worked for a company about 20 years ago and they had various types of tips in High Speed Steel.

The supplier was a common supplier of tips at the time but the name totally escapes me. Can anyone remember and if they are still available?

Many years ago a workmate had a set of taps for AF thread (American Fine, the same as UNF) on some the drill size was marked in 128ths of an inch!! I think it may have been made by Greenfield Tap and Die Co. Greenfield. Mass. but I could be wrong in that, it just came in to my mind and seems to have stuck.

We had a Colchester 500 which was supplied with a "Skyhook" when it was new. It mounted directly in the Dickson toolpost. It had been used for years with no problem but the safety officer wanted a certificate of suitability or something before he would allow us to continue using it. We contacted the manufacturer in the US and they returned a very impressive document folder with full certification for use on the Clausing version of the 600 group lathe complete with CE certification for use on european supplied machines. The safety officer deferred to the weight of paperwork! Ironically we never used it again as the lathe was moved to an area covered by an overhead crane.

I remember our Safety Officer getting very upset at contractors who applied a PAT test to fixed heaters.

They said they were correct but as he said if you need a tool of any kind to assemble the connection/supply then it is not portable! The only tool you can use to connect/disconnect is your hands!

I've just had a thought. Many years ago we got a call to look at a piston type hydraulic motor, I think it was a Dunlop/Dowty type. It consisted of I think 7 radial pistons bearing on an eccentric central shaft/cam. The guide plates at each side had broken. We managed to get or make replacements and when we looked for a cause it was a sticky valve that was restricting the return flow and creating over pressure in the system. Whatever we did must have worked as we were never called in again and the company was only a few hundred yards down the road and we did lots of other work for them.

Hi, Chris.

There are multiple types and makes of hydraulic motor but they almost all do the same job. They take hydraullic flow and pressure and convert it in to rotary motion which does the work required. Get the make of the motor and any numbers and I am sure an equivelent can be found that will work. You mention pistons and huge cost, perhaps it is a Hagglands motor as these two things go together when mentioning them!

When my company was having some research undertaken by a local University we checked on the various experiments every day just to make sure that proper procedures were being followed and thing were going in the right direction. I went in one morning and there was a strange smell hanging around. Everything was fine with our research but I thought the smell was getting stronger and following my nose I moved to the next door Lab. Well somebody had left some concoction in a stainless sink about 2 inches deep and it was fuming. We called out the fire service who called out de-contamination experts and the lab was closed for more than a week until it was made safe. When the sink was removed it was found to be only about 20% of its original thickness and absolutely brown with rust and this was a proper laboratory sink.

I don't know what was in the sink but I have never seen anything like it defore or since. I have seen powerful acid in a stainless container and that just leaves a slight gum. They were very lucky it didn't go down the drain or who knows what damage it would have done.

My first employer had a big collection of taps and dies in wooden boxes all ex War Department and US Army.

Although we used most of them there were a few boxes of large pipe taps and dies i.e up to 6" Whitworth Pipe. We never really looked in to them until the time came to clear them out with the metal going to the scrappy and the boxes were used for home projects. One of the tap boxes was built from 4" thick by about 18" wide by 36" long bits of wood hinged together to make it 8" thick! There were a couple of boxes of tap and die holders about 7 foot long and it wasn't until we were scrapping them that we realised that there were extensions to go on each end of these die-stocks. The total length of the die handle must have been nearly 20 feet! Needless to say they were still in the protective grease and had never been used. There was a ratchet system on the die holder to allow a back and forth action to cut threads in situ.

It made you wonder at the sanity of someone who organised to get these made at what must have been enormous expense when the money would have been better spent on armaments or even food imports. They were obviously not engineers. One of my old workmates had a workshop bench for many years made from one of the boxes and another had a very robust kennel that outlived a few of his dogs!

2 Speed , 3 phase motors are basically a 4 pole motor with a switch to cut out two of the pole windings. So you can have 1440 or 2880 rpm from the motor. I have seen a motor with low, medium and high speed settings on a horizizontal borer. You were supposed to stop the motor to change the speed settings but I remember one man who switched the speed on the fly until one day there was the most awful bang and the dust shield on the end of the motor flew about 6 feet along the bed of the lathe! He never did it again!

The Pinnacle lathe would have been sold by this company https://www.excelmachinetools.co.uk/manual-lathes

I used to buy machines from them and I found that they were excellent for support and spares. We didn't need many spares but the always arrived quickly and they fitted!

The saga continues on Facebook location. Following Neil's advice I thought OK I will try London as my home.

Entered London and it gave me the option of London UK, but when I select it from the displayed list I get "This location is illegal"

I don't think I am going to pursue it any further, I just thought it would be good to show that I was local to the village in Facebook but those things are sent to try us!

Hi, all.

And thanks for the advice. I really wanted to show that I was resident in the village I was speaking about.

I am not sure about DNS but my IP address is pretty close to my location.

My ISP can see nothing wrong on their side but they have had queries from folks with the same problem.

Hi, John.

Thanks for the advice.

I am definately logged in on en-gb.facebook.com which is why I cannot understand why I cannot add a UK address.

My neighbor uses the same login with just a different identification number.

Very off topic but someone may know. I have very recently joined Facebook as we now have a village memories page and I have lived here all my life and can help answer some questions.

The thing is that I cannot list my location anywhere in Britain let alone my own village. When I try and enter it as my "Home" town I get the response that "address is invalid please choose" and I can only pick US addresses.

My neighbour thought he could help and he came round with his tablet which has the correct "Home" town listed but try as he could mine was US addresses only! He then set up a new Facebook account for his wife as an experiment and was able to pick the correct "Home" location even though the tablets were side by side! We then went through all his settings and everything was basically the same except he could pick a UK address!

We gave up! Facebook do not respond other than point to the location page which doesn't list my problem.

Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong?

A few years ago I got cut-offs of Corian which were perfect for the tops of my benches made from 30mm thick beech boards about 125mm wide. I got them from a local supplier who cut them out of bigger sheets as part of some contract they had which left about 250mm all around with the 1.5 meter x 2 meter dimensions.

I got the off-cuts for about 10% of the price of a virgin bit of material but I was probably in the right place at the right time and the Corian has been my bench surface for about 15 years and is still in very good condition.

I see John has bought a couple of sets of Cleveland drills, probably made in Brazil and for the money perfectly adequate but Cleveland Drills etc, used to be made in Peterhead, Scotland, 15 miles from me. I still have some smaller sized drills but the biggest I now have is 1 1/32".

I had some up to 2" although hardly ever used and about 10 years ago I put out the word that I was clearing my stores. Well within the week I had four engineers from the oil industry looking over my stock and every drill (about 125) I was selling was gone and at about 6 to 10 times the price I had bought them for! I bought a new car and took the good lady on a holiday to Jersey on the proceeds! One drill went for more than £500 and the guy said that they were the only drills that would work on some of the exotics the were using for their products.

Sadly production ceased in the late 1980's. A lot of financial shenanigans that went on was the principal cause.

A company that I worked for about 20 years ago manufactured aluminium cylinder heads etc. for a very well known engine maker. After they were made and tested they were finished with powder coating but it was not a simple process with at least four processes (or maybe more as I wasn't really involved) where they were blasted, dipped, painted, heat-treated and then the whole process was gone through time and again.

They were powder coated as a final process and I remember one of the managers saying that the painting/coating process was more expensive than the machining!

I was never in a position to afford one of these engines but a couple of years ago I came across one of them in the storage area of a motorsport company and when we blew of the accumulated dust the powder coating was as good as the day it left our factory.

So it seems it is not a case of simply applying some powder coating and hoping for the best. Proper preparation is absolutely critical.