Member postings for andrew lyner

Hi Martin

Thanks. That makes sense. No problems for me in they case but a 'proper job' needs a good supplier. I'll see what the rest of that bar holds for me. The other end may be fine.

Andrew

"Inclusions". I know that term from jewellery.

On the subject of pulleys, I've just turned a couple of pulleys, about 30mm diameter and picked out a bar of 30mm 'aluminium' from my box of bits. I don't remember where I got it or the spec. I tried to clean up the end of the bar with it centred up and I kept getting that chi, ch, ch noise every rev - just like it was off centre. I carried turning down and couldn't;t get rid of a patch of crystalline looking stuff. Looking at the end of the rod, that whitish region went down several mm. I tried different tools but same result.

Is this a common problem? It's of no consequence for my inconsequential project but it was interesting. I guess you'll all tell me to use Metal For U to source my stuff. fair enough but eBay is a convenient source of one-off bits with no postage and the pukkah sources have a minimum quantity etc. etc.

Same problem with some cheap steel plate; drilling one particular hole gave graunchy noises and chewed up the drill ends. Snatched at the pilot drill and I feared it would break. Seven other holes were no prob. (I used cutting oil, a pilot and fast speed).

That's basically what I've ended up with - a short length of the concertina on the cross-slide. It's always in the best place to catch most ofd the swarf. I reckon it's definitely better than nothing so I'll stick with it.

As always, I appreciate the various views that ME always gives me.

Andrew

PS you can't even put multiple quotes (it seems) on a post. Another drop-off. I'm amazed that ME members, of all people, aren't constantly bleating about the inadequacies of the forum mechanism. In a 'mechanical' context, they are all keen on making improvements but they are very conservative when it comes to software.

Some while ago, I looked for and bought some 'accordion' strip to cover my mini lathe ways. It has never been satisfactory because it is too stiff and too light so it will not stretch / compress enough, whatever length I choose for it. It just rides up and the chuck hits it.

I have read that some people are over the moon with what they have bought and I need to source 'what they're having'. There's a lot of stuff available from China at a reasonable price but, from the images, it seems to be the same woven structure that I have already. If it is a bit flimsy, that doesn't matter as I can replace it every so often.

I'm sure some ME members must have the right stuff. Where did you all get it?

Cheers

Andrew

Richard

I'm wondering about one of those. I can always sell it on if it's really bad but I won't be making high speed IC engines so accuracy may not matter too much and I do have 'abrasive' facilities if the finish is not good enough for me.

Any more comments about your purchase, after these few years/

Andrew

Just to tie this up: The belt drive now2 works. I had to modify pretty well everything;

All eight hole spacings in the plates were wrong, the spindle diameter was a tad too big (easy to sort that out) but the pulley needed shortening to get the top nut on the spindle. The motor shaft is pretty short and undersized but I made up a steel sleeve with a key sized slot and a a hole on the other side for the grub screw. Then the stub needed shortening to get the belt lined up but the pulley seems pretty firm on the shaft with no rattling.

After all that fiddling and cussing, there was silence . . . . . just the sound of the cutting tool on the fly cutter, tearing through aluminium. No slapping, jangling or graunching noises and the tool just stopped when overloaded, leaving no nasty groove. Just like the book describes. I can't help feeling that the spindle had been jumping up and down a small amount, generating all those previous noises.

One day I'll make two plates with the right hole spacings and even be bothered to paint the danged thing. Thanks for the positive and useful comments chaps.

I have to ask why the original design didn't use a belt and pulleys. Bench drills all use them.

Andrew

Edited By andrew lyner on 04/05/2023 21:49:58

John

No worries about the shaft length. I think I need to get things into (engineering) perspective. Those massive bearings on the spindle need to handle some serious forces but the motor shaft is pretty much decoupled from the cutting tool and those forces. I will need to fit the new 10mm pulley onto a 9mm shaft and I can open the pulley bore a bit and use a long steel sleeve to protect the soft alloy bore.

All the rest of the 'fitting' is normal bodgery. The plates are nice and substantial on the amadeal kit, Black steel and not the shiny stuff on the lms version but well beefy enough for 1/2hp motor.

No rush on the pdf; I'm tied up on other things for a few days - I was messing about with home lighting fittings. They are seriously sub standard, even on very expensive (John Lewis) ceiling lamps.

Andrew

Thanks for the offer but I have all the parts. But some drawings could be handy. I'll PM.

That looks like the present little machine shop version. I have the parts of the amadeal one and, from the blurb on las site, it's still not compatible so, in the absence of a Sealy Special, I think I'll modify the plates with different fixing holes. Scheme I don't have a working mill or I could fill the existing holes with weld and drill four more, in the right places. But I have a work around in mind and there's plenty of room up there for another thickness of steel for fat washers.

Question for you: how long was the motor shaft on your conversion? Did it go far into the pulley?

I took delivery of a belt conversion kit from Amadeal, realising that I would need to do some 'adjustment' to make it fit properly. The pulley bores are wrong but that's not a problem, however, the fixing hole positions in the two plates are not quite right either. Also, it strikes me that the length of the standard motor shaft is just right for the original gear but there is a lot of overhang for the belt pulley and nothing to support it. I could foresee problems with the shaft chewing the alloy pulley bore.

I'd be interested whether anyone has been down this road and how they have found it. It's a case of a bird in the hand etc. but it might have to be a temporary solution. I have to do something because the big gear on the spindle developed a crack and chewed itself up. It had the habit of producing a frightening slapping noise at times after working hard and I think that's been the final result. Replacing it will involve more dismantling as it seems necessary to take it out via the back of the box. (?)

People say that there's a kit from little machine shop. Has anyone tried that? I could certainly do with having a quieter workshop.

I'm sure that some of you will say I should just make one . . . . .

Cheers

Andrew Lyner

The triangle I bought has dimension 11mm and works fine. Cheers for the discussion guys.

Great!!! `Thanks. That's what I needed. I was using the between jaws of a calliper but, allowing around 0.5mm for radius gives a convincing 11mm. I will go ahead and order some from the vast number of 11mm available.

Here's another example of the inadequacy of this website - it seems to be impossible to quote more than one posting at a time. WHYYYY?

A good offer - for some lucky machinist but mine have a hole in them. They must be something like T??T1002. Much smaller.

It looks like I'll have to just use up what cutting points I've got and get something that can be sustainable. I have a boring tool and managed to replace the inserts. I didn't;t believe it till the new inserts fitted and cut as they should.

I guess a tool with a reliable supply of inserts will be pricy and I'll just have to suck that up. The whole business of indexable seems a bit arcane for the beginner.

A few years ago I was starting to get together stuff for my mini lathe. I bought a set of 3/8inch shank indexable tools with triangular inserts. I'm not even sure what the inserts were meant for but I recently found that they work very well on Rebar steel without wearing out too fast. So that could be the answer to that unknown.

Sometimes they work really well but HSS or braised carbide tips sometimes,do better. I saw a YouTube video which helped me to do much better than I thought possible by tiffling my carbide tips (green stone etc)

The inserts are triangular with 0.4inch / 10mm length.

The tools were pretty cheap and they don't owe me anything but it may be worth replacing the inserts if I could get hold of them. I can only find 11mm inserts from my usual sources so it may be better just to cut my losses.

Does anyone know of a source of imperial(?) triangular inserts or should I must bin the tools as they wear out or break?

Supplementary is where to get good value metric indexable turning tools.

Great idea. I think I still have some already so I'll give it a go. Cheers for the idea.

But I can't find any of those multiple times earlier in this thread. Waxoyl was all the rage when I did my own car maintenance. I remember the cans used to rust from the outside.

. . . . . . but no magic stuff to spray on tools and cloths??

or if you told me, you'd have to kill me?

There is a bit of confusion of what constitutes 'moist air'. School Chemistry tells is there are the same number of molecules in a given volume of a mixture of gases (Avagadro's Hypothesis). Water molecules are actually very light (just one Oxygen Atom plus two very light Hydrogen Atoms) that compares with O2 and N2 molecules which both have two heavy Atoms in them. So air that's above its dew point will actually be lighter than air with no H2O. However, when there are water droplets (when air is around its dew point), they will sink.

So it's not straightforward WHY any of the strategies that people use may work, although I believe what folks tell me about their methods.

Since this thread started there have been changes in 1. The opinion about the use of Energy and 2. The cost of it. That alters the situation. There's no way that heating a shed or even running a dehumidifier is an attractive idea now.

Are there any new views about the way to keep exposed tools rust-free? You can buy very expensive paper to wrap things in and that seems to work because most things you buy are not rusty. What's the magic liquid they put on the paper to make it work?.

Edited By andrew lyner on 25/11/2022 17:02:25

A bit more careful examination and I realised that one of the 'repairs' seems to have been done with a cotter pin. I found a tin of old cotter pins which I must have bought in about 1965 and there were some tiny ones in it. I modified the head end by squashing it a bit and turning it down till it looked like the other one. Opening out the start of the end hole and cutting to size and it looks the same as the other guy's effort - pretty good aamof.

Thanks for the ideas guys. SWMBO was grateful, too.

It's not one of those. Such a short pin has to be one piece and the ends need to be flush.

Also, spring pins are no good, for the same reason; the 'cantilevers' would be far too short

Timpson's are pretty good for 'standard jobs' but this is a special (a very short pin). Those guys are not specialists (shoes / keys as well) but they definitely are very helpful.

"I've repaired one of my watch bracelets by turning new pins from stainless welding rod, and loctiting them in place." I need a sleeve for the middle hole - brass would do, there, tho'. I was concerned about the suitability of loctite or araldite but it sounds like a plan.

I'll repeat my comment about this being terrible forum software. It doesn't even seem to be able to handle multiple quotes.

I took this to a local watch mender and he replaced the tube and pin on one side. They fell out and so did the next one he replaced. He didn't seem bothered about it so I thought I'd try to DYI it .The pinns around 1mm diameter and the hole for the tube is about 1.35 and the overall width of the two arms is 7.5mm. (To give an idea of the sizes involved)

I don't want to buy a whole box of 100 assorted bits and only use two of each so I want to try to make up something that's stronger and better. Does it need S/S or could I use mild steel? (I also have some Stirling silver wire which I could harden (?).

From the image, you can see that the faces are not parallel and that's an added nasty.

Would it be worth while using araldite to keep the pin in place?

Any ideas chaps?