Member postings for John Paton 1

+1 for Pete Rimmers plasma cutter - so quick and easy. Second choice discs. Thin ss simply mullers the teeth on saws.

Nick / Dave

i have just been searching for info on the Centec dividing (indexing) head and see this thread. The link however doesn’t open - presumably now out of date.

Do you recall what the dividing head sold for?

John

Another 'local' story relates to their Tiger Tank (The only operational one in the world!)

after years of careful restoration by museum engineers to get it going it was taken up to London to take part in a military parade (for the Queen I think) and was being driven by a 'squaddie'.

He did not know how to drive it and apparently failed to follow the correct gear change procedure which I gather caused the engine to wildly over rev and promptly blew up.

They tried to obtain a brand new engine from a museum in France but to no avail.

I believe the cost of making replacement parts and rebuilding the engine was eye watering compared to the original restoration job.

This was relayed to me by a tank engineer friend of mine , now sadly deceased, who worked at the Museum workshops. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of tank components and must be greatly missed by the museum.

Hi Andy, been there and know the challenge. Obviously space will be an issue and you will need to prioritise what you have in there but it is surprising what you can shoehorn in with carefully arranged storage.

If you have a decent vice and bench you could store a small lathe under the bench and lift it into place when needing to use it. I run a Unimat SL on the kitchen table - it is pretty the much the same footprint (and power) as a sewing machine, just the ‘trimmings’ are rather dirtier.

In a space that small I would not worry about a great thickness of insulation and would try using a dehumidifier as that will give a degree of background heat as a by product while controlling condensation (which is your real enemy)

Could you apply some insulation externally?

John

Martin, have you tried phoning Meddings (Ivybridge, Devon)? I have found them very helpful although their knowledge of early machines is a bit hot and mess as the older workforce have now retired.

Of the early drills I have seen the larger ones had a MT internal taper with slot through the quill for use of a freeing wedge. The medium and smaller drills had male Jacobs tapers and require shallow tapered folding wedges to spring the chuck off ( drive them together hard then tap the chuck and the shock will release its grip on the taper) as Hopper has advised.

I am not sure what arrangement the more recent Meddings drills have but suspect it is still a Jacobs taper.

hope this helps

John

You were spot on Clive, it took two flushes and 20 mins of running to clear the old sludge but she now has nice clean Mattei oil in.

Just Hope I don’t have to drain it again if and when I renew the oil separator and return valve as you recommend.

search now on to try and ID the model and get some sort of manual for it showing where those bits live.

Thanks Noel - may suffice for my level of use then, especially if oil has already been neglected.

I have some hydraulic oil that I use for the 4 post lift so I think I will use that for initial flushing before putting in the ‘gold dust Mattei oil.

Do you get condensate problems if running for shorter periods or do you ensure it is always run up to operating temperature before closing down?

Thanks Clive

Sounds worrying given that the oil has clearly been neglected by the last owner and I wonder if this means it might not be worth worrying now if major damage will already have been incurred. Cost of oil changes will be eye watering if I have to do 4 changes! Perhaps I can use a cheaper unbranded oil for the first 3 changes and save the costly Mattei oil for the final fill.

I will redouble my efforts to find a manual then as there are two items in the service kit whose function / location is unclear to me and it is not obvious why they should need replacement as part of a routine service.

One is a ‘separator’ and the other the ‘oil return valve’.

All this shows how woefully ignorant I am on the workings of this type of compressor.

regards

John

Edited By John Paton 1 on 29/01/2022 15:52:03

I have just bought a nice 3hp Mattei vane compressor. I cannot find a plate on it but it seems to be an earlier model of their Blade compressor but has been mounted on a more recent Mattei receiver.

I bought it having been told it weeps a bit of oil from the air filter housing but it runs OK and gives good air pressure ( cut off at 150psi). It’s main delight is that it is so much quieter than my old compressor which is good as my workshop is quite close to the back of our neighbours’ house.

However, the air filter is missing and the oil appears to be horribly overfilled, extraordinarily gloopy, gunky and emulsified. When draining it down the first draw off was almost pure water and the total content appeared to be about twice that which would bring oil level to the top of the ‘sight window’.

1. Should I flush with heating oil or maybe automotive flushing oil before I refill with the proper Mattei vane compressor oil?

2. Can anyone help regarding identification / sourcing a manual /sourcing a filter?

3. Do I really need to buy a full ‘service kit’ (£95!) which includes some special bits or do I only need to replace the filter?

This compressor will only get occasional light use but I would like to look after it as it seems very well engineered.

I have placed a photo of the compressor unit in my Mattei album.

Hopefully one or more of our members will have knowledge of these compressors.

TIA, John

Edited By John Paton 1 on 29/01/2022 14:35:47

Please can Steve Taylor check his mail box as I have sent a couple of messages!

I now have all the sleeves back from the engineers and am sending them out today /tomorrow so looking good.

There are a couple remaining and I will pop those on Ebay once the ones I have sent out to the 'early bird takers' have safely received theirs.

Thanks to all those who pitched in to support this 'procurement exercise' and sorry for the interminable wait for the engineer to machine them.

We got there in the end and the engineer kindly held his cost to budget despite having to do an additional tweak to get the sleeves to register in the lathe spindle correctly ( there was a shoulder that came out a bit too close to the spindle nose for comfort!)

John

For scribing graduation lines on feedscrew dials?

For scribing graduation lines on feedscrew dials?

Put simply, DROs on my lathe and mill have enabled me to achieve levels of accuracy and consistency that previously I could only dream of.

However just this week I needed to check the taper in my lathe mandrel to ensure it actually is 4.5MT. I made a lash up ‘test probe’ by mounting a boring bar in heat shrink tubing as an insulator and then fixing wires to the tool bit and the mandrel with a little buzzer. Using this at one end of the taper, zeroing when the buzzer sounded and then taking readings at the other end of the taper gave co-ordinates that were input into a precision machining centre. the plug produced was an absolute fit in the taper with and even film of Micrometer engineers blue across the entire surface. I do not think it could be any more accurate. Stunning really and a use of DRO I had never thought of.

I don’t think I could have accurately taken dimensions off an internal taper using other instruments and would probably have had to make ‘no go’ plug gauges and measured how far they entered the taper, then doing the sums to work out CAD coordinates or angle.

I empathise entirely with you on this having spent best part of a week trying to arrange Covid booster for my 96 year old mother.

I am having similar problems with energy companies where they want you to do everything online but you cannot if you are trying to deal with more than one property or account from a given email address. It is mad and their call centres appear totally incapable of directing your call to someone competent to resolve the problem.

I have three such problems currently in train involving two different supply companies.

We are all being forced to use systems that quite simply do not work and regulatory systems are similarly ineffective.

See if you can get delivery with a Moffatt handler - you pay a bit more but they are incredibly agile and can run over gravel etc. These are the three wheel forklifts with bigger wheels that you see strapped top back of lorries. Their wheels articulate independently through 360 degrees meaning it can go in any direction or rotate on the spot.

I had a 4 post car lift delivered off a narrow lane and through an even narrower gate entrance and then up our inclined gravel drive.

The driver twice moved the load round through 90 degrees and placed it with a margin of a couple of inches. He reckoned it was easy but I suspect he was skilled!!

John

I am in the same locality as Nigel and the situation is nothing short of shocking.

My 95 year old mother (limited mobility, lives alone) was in the first tranche of vaccines and expected to get her call for a jab in September.

When she heard nothing she has twice contacted her GP surgery who said 'await your call'.

When my wife got her call (with appointment associated, 35 years younger and in good health) in Weymouth this week I contacted Mother's GP and was again told my mother should wait.

I have spent four days trying online and calling 119 (literally hours on the phone and conformed 'no appointments available in Dorset' !) and finally at 11.30 last night I went got an appointment booked online in Bournemouth. That will be a 2.5hr round trip for me to collect my mother and take her there.

The local pharmacy Nigel refers to is clearly swamped and we have no walk in centres offered in Dorset.

The first round of vaccinations, arranged at pace and run by volunteers worked a dream, so more time appears only to have allowed bureaucracy and muddle to develop.

So much for Climate Emergency and saving fuel if we are all doing this LoL.

A delightful model and well worth the effort to bring back into showroom condition - I think I have the original articles on Lady Stephanie - Engineering in Miniature I seem to recall?

I guess we all have our favourite cleaning compounds - in my case what I have 'lying around at the time'!)

I tend to head initially towards WD40 and strips of Sotchbright to clean up such gunge or heating oil , diesel etc for larger components.

Probably best to avoid 'lighter fraction' solvents initially when working on painted parts as it will soften the paint and allow it to be scratched. I would use IPA sparingly just as a final wipe over if needing to degrease it fully (such a prior to painting).

I too find the citrus degreasers remarkably good but won't you end up re-oiling the parts to avoid rust?

Obviously it is not easy to get Scotchbright right into nooks and crannies and I tend to use a fibreglass 'pencil' for such areas. You can get fine ones which fit in the old style clutch grip propelling pencils. A really fine 'doofer' helps pick into the very tightest corners.

I have also used commercial oven cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide I think?) on steel parts but not on painted bits. Not sure how brass gets on with it though, it certainly makes aluminium look strange. MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone?) is another strong degreasing cleaner but to be used with caution. I have used it to decrud model Diesel engines which suffer a hard lacquer from the castor oil, but again it will demolish paint.

Hopefully your gunge will not prove too be so obstinate that it needs highly aggressive chemicals.

It is possible that 'Steve' and 'Peter Cook 7' may be from members who have been in touch under other names.

In any case if I have not been able to ascertain otherwise by close of play tomorrow there may be a couple of sleeves available for anyone else who needs one!

1. Not so sure Artful  and Michael - my 95 year old mother had a meter reader call, no uniform, no ID offered and no COVID introduction / precautions. He didn’t have a clue where the meters were and could not apparently recognise the gas meter box by the front door. She did let him in and he had a good look around including at the boiler in the utility room.

Mother has a smart meter and prior to that I took all her readings for her so we smelt a rat and reported the event to the police and the supply company. The company had on their records that she was elderly / hard of hearing and that I submitted her meter readings and managed communications on her behalf.

It took nearly a week to investigate but turned out it was their meter reader, they agreed a reading was not necessary and undertook to terminate the meter reading arrangement (which did not exist before we had a smart meter installed)

Two weeks later we got another letter saying they needed to take a meter reading and had tried unsuccessfully several times recently.

The next week another letter arrived to say the supply company had folded.

You couldn’t make it up but with activity like that it is easy for scammers to look more credible than the real thing!

John

Edited By John Paton 1 on 28/10/2021 20:31:30

Edited By John Paton 1 on 28/10/2021 20:32:05