Member postings for Bill Phinn

You can certainly get away with only two, but I'd go for all three if I had my time over again.

I bought my Warco WM18 with a 2 axis (saving about £180 over the 3-axis) but I felt the need for a Z axis DRO at a later date, for most of the reasons mentioned by Jason.

This meant I faced a choice between buying an additional glass scale and a new display [rendering the 2-axis display redundant] at a cost of nearly £300 or just buying a standalone DRO with remote display for around £50.

I chose the latter, but the labour involved in upending the garage to fit the Z axis scale meant I really should have just gone for the 3 axis originally.

There is, however, one slight advantage in choosing the type of DRO I've got on my Z axis: it holds an absolute reading even when powered off, unlike the DRO supplied with the mill.This can be an advantage if you move the head when everything is powered off but want to get back to a previous position infallibly.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 25/02/2021 20:33:34

A Sylvac digital caliper from a reputable seller at £55 would tempt me.

Sadly, the lowest priced Sylvac offering at the moment from M-DRO/Allendale [the 30-810-14 S_Cal EVO] is £96 [or a little over £91 when including the standard 5% discount]. I have not found it elsewhere for anything like £55.

Academic for you, Steve, since you've made your choice, but one advantage of the Type 2 Precision vices is that, because of the absence of a screw running down the centre of the vice, you can hold relatively long and thin pieces of work upright in the vice with much less projection of the piece above the jaws than would be the case with conventional screw vices.

This might sound like an unlikely advantage, but it's been absolutely indispensable for the work I've been doing.

1. Insert transfer screws into the holes, rest a piece of brass or aluminium on the protruding points and tap down lightly with a hammer without letting the piece of metal move. Measure the distance between the punch marks.

2. In the absence of transfer screws, using a caliper first measure the distance between the near edges of the holes and then measure the distance between the furthest edges. Calculate the centres of the screw holes accordingly.

3. Find a drill bit exactly the diameter of the holes, place it in the drill chuck of a mill and find your way into the holes using the quill. Having a DRO will let you work out the distance very quickly.

Ideally, Brian, you'd use a high spindle speed and have good stiffness in the set-up.

Jewellery-makers working free-hand tend to use micromotors to drill very small holes, though the metals drilled tend to be softer than steel.

I would probably attempt your job with either one of my micromotors (Foredom and Saeyang) or my Proxxon MF70.

I forgot to ask: how deep is the hole to be drilled?

Edited By Bill Phinn on 20/02/2021 15:11:37

Brian, don't you mean 0.3mm?

Having been a mod on an unrelated forum for ten years I have to say it's a pretty thankless task, and on a busy forum involves more vigilance, labour and tact than most people think. Making at least some people unhappy is, sadly, an inevitable part of the job.

While we're at it, since we have a thread here publicly discussing moderators, maybe it would be fair to invite the moderators to start a public thread entitled "members".

That's interesting, Michael.

I found it interesting also to find the following there, which suggests there are at least some interludes of discord amidst the prevailing harmony:

https://www.physicsforums.com/members/mebigguy.391788/#profile-post-comment-98

I can think of many advances in technology, Andrew, that not just engineers but all kinds of people have been reluctant to appreciate.

Very often this has been due to the existence of certain undesirable aspects in the new technology or the way it has been applied, and arguably a sign of failure not in the advance's detractors but in the originators or proponents of it, who have evidently not very thoroughly considered how or why this particular advance might not meet with the level of acceptance they would wish for it.

What sort of reaction do you have in mind, Andrew?

Personally, I've nothing against the culture itself, but the first-named company [and, some suggest, the second] has been complicit in serious human rights violations, particularly against Chinese citizens and other people of Chinese ethnicity overseas.

Looking at the bigger picture, i.e. the majority of Zoom users, it's fairly safe to say that a belief that content transmitted by these two companies will have any meaningful encryption is ill-founded.

Can we take it you mean the example of a Warco WM16 you own is rubbish, not that all Warco WM16s are rubbish?

I too would welcome some recommendations on that score for doing deep and intricate relief engraving on small [max. one inch square] brass plate.

I did find that, Jim, but it only contains the one countersink [the BC1041], unfortunately, not three as you suggest.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 09/02/2021 18:47:08

Interesting photos, Joseph. The 007 kit seems popular with others besides yourself, Quinn Dunki being one of them.

If I'm not machine-countersinking I also use either a three flute or single flute countersink held in either a hand chuck or a combi drill for deburring and minor countersinking jobs - at the moment.

I wonder has anyone here tried the Shaviv ratcheting handle as an alternative to the rotodrive solution illustrated in the opening post?

I'm not seeing these, Jimmy, on the UK site. Perhaps you'd be good enough to provide a link.

A "thanks" button would be a useful feature, I think, [though I'm happy to thank people using words myself] but I do hope the forum doesn't opt to have a "like" button enabled for any of its topics.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having felt no need for the presence of a like button in order to identify quite early on which forum members knew their stuff and/or frequently made positive contributions.

The main problem with like buttons is that they have a tendency, at least on other forums I know, to be used for the wrong reasons [e.g. to take sides in a disagreement] as often as they're used for the right ones. The net result can be increased discord without any greater clarity than existed already as to who does or doesn't routinely make positive contributions.

Posted by geoff walker 1 on 02/02/2021 12:49:03o you could/can book before receiving an invite?

Geoff

Yes you can, Geoff.

See my post here.

Unless they've very recently changed policy, the key is eligibility, not receiving an invite.

It's hard for me to be positive about my experience of taking two parents with advanced dementia for their vaccinations a fortnight ago.

My mother was refused admission by three separate staff members because she was not wearing a mask [they insisted we try putting one on her; it stayed on for two seconds, as we said it would].

A supervisor finally allowed us to enter but my mother was immediately wheeled off for treatment in a separate area because she was unmasked. This was in spite of our telling them it was almost certain they'd be unable to get her to understand any of their questions or instructions.

Inevitably, ten minutes later they wheeled her back still unvaccinated and asked us to intervene to persuade her to disrobe. You can't persuade her to disrobe; you have to do it for her. They stood by as we did so.

We warned them it would need at least one of us to restrain my mother while the jab was administered but they said restraint was unethical and they couldn't allow it. This then started a long discussion about "consent" and whether the jabs could go ahead at all because neither parent was able to give informed consent. [My father had already got things off to a bad start when, on being asked "when is your birthday" by a nurse whose first language was not English, he wished her "happy birthday!" in reply.]

We finally got them to see that sometimes consent should play second fiddle to what is in the patient's best interests.

At last they started to give my mother the jab, but had to stop half way through, leaving the needle still sticking out of her arm while she flailed it indignantly in the air; this was the inevitable outcome of them refusing our offer to provide restraint.

So my mother ended up having not one but one and a half doses of the vaccine, and she ended up being restrained after all.

Though this was one of the biggest vaccination centres in the country, I can only conclude from the obvious bewilderment of most of the staff that patients in an advanced state of dementia are not typically going to vaccination centres for their jabs at all, but having them in the more dementia-sensitive environment of care homes.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 01/02/2021 18:39:55

I think all of us take it as read that our ancestors would have been amazed to see some of our present-day technology. I didn't think I could be equally amazed looking back at an example of theirs.

Would you mind telling us where Regofix products are to be had in the UK, Neil, assuming they are?

Thanks.