Member postings for Bill Phinn

Thanks for your reply, Pat.

Your comments have slightly mellowed my prejudice against likes; I can appreciate that people may want to give and receive them for a variety of reasons.

But only if it’s positive feedback, in your view?

I can’t see myself using a “like” button if there is one, nor will I want one using on me. Leave such things, I say, to the people who haunt social media, for whom emotion routinely trumps rational discourse.

It's not just Wera products they're trying to make up market but unbranded, common or garden basics as well.

E.g.:

BZP grade 4.8 threaded rod, M12x1m: RS: £7.25; Zoro: £2.49

A4 threaded rod, M10x1m: RS: £20.17; Zoro: £6.49

A2 threaded rod, M5x1m: RS: £6.27; Zoro: £2.05

These examples were picked at random.

Maybe RS's threaded rods come very highly polished, or in presentation cases - or something.

Some of those RS price-tags for Wera stuff are absurdly high.

Current prices:

Part no. 05018110001 - £155.74 at RS; £74.40 at Amazon.

Part no. 05075832001 - £510.78 at RS; £245.63 at Amazon.

Part no. 05075830001 - £454.14 at RS; £203.15 at Amazon.

I've got an AMABL210D with 38mm spindle bore and DRO.

I was aiming for a bigger lathe but don't currently have the time or space to accommodate it.

I'm pleased with its performance so far, though I've had little chance to test it thoroughly.

It has surprisingly good low speed torque, what appears to be a genuinely hardened bed, and a decent 125mm scroll chuck. It also comes with travelling and fixed steadies, MT5 adaptor, MT3 and MT2 dead centres et al. - things not mentioned in the lathe's sales blurb.

The 38mm spindle bore has already been useful.

It was well packaged and presented on arrival: no rust, no transit damage. Most things were already well adjusted too. Only issue so far was tailstock T nut, which was functional but somewhat crudely made. I made a new one.

Yes, I've got one fitted around my Warco WM18 spindle.

TBH, I hardly use it because it sheds an unpleasant greenish light that isn't very bright anyway. I mostly just use the two anglepoise lights I have on the bench on either side of the machine.

The good news is I suspect AI will soon understand the way clothes lines work, if it doesn’t already.

Seeking a little light relief from this thread, I stumbled across this recent interview. I found it very entertaining.

Reassuringly, it looks like the people in charge at Hanson Robotics are basically benign in the way they are developing their version of AI. I’m not too confident all other developers of AI around the world intend to follow suit.

But not, crucially, in the question.

There is simply not enough information in the protasis of the question for any circumspect and experienced answerer of riddles, trick questions, and just plain unsatisfactory questions like this one, to give a safe answer.

Don't take my word for it; there are clearly many people out there who view this question the same way.

It should, nonetheless, be considered, by careful respondents at least, in forming an answer.

I would say the ChatGPT answer is not wrong. However, the reasoning it gives for its answer [screenshotted in the video] would not gain it much, if any, credit in an exam.

It comes across to me as both sycophantic and patronising in the same breath - a reflection of the attitudes of its human inventors towards people generally, perhaps.

Thanks for the link, Michael!

A real eye-opener. Clearly not Huxley’s finest hour.

Because we know zombies don’t exist, but belong to the realms of the supernatural.

If something contributing regularly to an internet forum appears intelligent and conscious but is not actually a human being, then it’s either an alien from outerspace or, far more probably, a lifeless creation of human ingenuity.

I exercised my spectacles-free eyes on close work (8 inches and less) virtually every day for nearly twenty years. Presbyopia struck nonetheless. To effectively see at all at close distances (anything under three feet) I now need about four pairs of different strength reading glasses (and or Optivisors) depending on the distance I’m working at.

It sounds like your own presbyopia is relatively mild if you can force your eyes to focus on everything but close-up, very tiny print.

I don't think there is much agreement or evidence that, once the rot has set in, exercising your eyes can significantly prevent them from losing their ability to focus on close work.

It strikes me that Margaret is largely blameless in all of this, and the info given out by ARC is partly responsible for her confusion.

I've got a Model 000 toolpost from ARC, which came, as the ARC website suggests, with an M10x1.5mm stud. The page in that link meant to me that the stud supplied was threaded M10x1.5 at both ends, as indeed it is. As expected, it also came with a matching M10x1.5 flange nut for the top end. It fits my lathe fine with no adaptations needed.

Based on this experience of ARC's website's descriptions, if I were buying a Model 100 toolpost I would expect it to come with an M14x1.5mm (both ends) stud and matching nut. Perhaps owners of that toolpost could clarify that this is the case.

Finally, if I were buying a Model 111 toolpost, as Margaret apparently did, I would expect it to come with a 9/16" UNF (both ends) stud, as the link I posted earlier suggests. It seems, however that it too comes with an M14x1.5mm stud and nut, or at least something that is not 9/16" UNF. Perhaps an owner out there could again clarify this.

With the limited thread and diameter measuring capabilities Margaret has, she seems to have gone about things pretty logically. She knew firstly that she needed a stud with an M8 female end to thread on to her lathe's existing old toolpost stud. She then deduced, from Arc's description and the roughly 14mm diameter stud they supplied to her with the Model 111 toolpost, that the nut that came with ARC's toolpost would fit the stud she needed to buy (for its female 8mm thread on one end) from the LMS.

But it didn't, because the stud and the nut that are supplied with ARC's Model 111 toolpost are presumably M14 x 1.5, not 9/16" UNF, as stated, or at least strongly suggested (if my buying experience with the Model 000 is anything to go by) on ARC's site.

Have I got this right, everyone?

And is this a fair representation of how you got to where you are now, Margaret?

I should add that in one thing you are slightly to blame, Margaret: you have visibly marred the unthreaded surface of the LMS stud, presumably by tightening it into the hole with grips? Is this how you went about tightening down the LMS stud?

If so, when you buy your 9/16" UNF nut, buy at least two: you can then lock them together at the top of the stud and turn the top one to tighten the stud down and the bottom one to loosen it.

The source of confusion, I think, Jason is this page, where the clearance diameter of D is given as 14mm and then qualified, in brackets, with the words "9/16" UNF stud" .

I'm afraid I'm not quite clear what bearing this ultimately has on real-life situations such as those I've outlined above where the context for the meaning of a word or words isn't provided by further words, but by non-verbal or non-vocal components.

How successfully can AI currently deal with the non-verbal/vocal aspects of context? My impression is not very well at all. AI that is currently supposed to be able to detect sarcasm, for example, in written communications, apparently does so by looking at "Certain words in specific combinations [that] can be a predictable indicator of sarcasm". This way of proceeding would be hopeless at detecting sarcasm in the playground bully situation I set out above.

I'd say it's not necessarily the connection of words with other words that gives them meaning, but words with context.

When a swimmer is in trouble in the sea and only has enough breath to shout "Help!", or a blaze has started at an ammunition store and someone only has time to shout "Fire!", where are the other words here that you seem to be saying are necessary to provide meaning? The meaning of each of these single words in each of these cases is perfectly clear to any rational human being, thanks to the context, which is itself wholly non-verbal, in which they're uttered.

When a school bully knees a weaker boy in the groin, and the latter, grimacing, says sarcastically, "Thanks, I really appreciated that", how is it the connection between words here that gives the utterance its true meaning, and not the way in which, and the context in which, the words are spoken?

Interestingly, my 40-50 year old Eclipse clamps have M8 coarse threads, just as the modern unbranded counterparts I own have.

Given the only very slightly higher TPI of 5/16” BSF (which I assume is what older British made clamps of this size would have had) compared with M8 coarse, I suspect that the durability of these clamps has more to with build quality and manner of use than with the fineness of the thread pitch. The design of these clamps means that if the jaws are not kept at least close to parallel in use, the threads and clamp bodies can be subject to significant undesirable strain.

Personally, I couldn’t do without tommy bar holes on these sorts of knurled thumbscrew clamps, whatever the thread pitch. The same can be said for tap wrench handles.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 23/09/2023 01:01:37

Here’s an Unbrako knurled A2 skt head cap screw:

All my stainless cap screws, whether knurled or smooth, are metric.