Member postings for old mart

Just shows what some people value things at. It reminds me of the line from the song by Del Amitri, Nothing ever happens. "While American buisinessmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing".

You could bore the diestock to about 0.1mm larger and try that. Even if the die cracked, it would still work. As already mentioned, there are many different grades of aluminium and some take threads better than others. Make sure you use cutting oil. Measured male threads are commonly smaller than the theoretical, and the only way to be sure of the size is to singlepoint on a lathe, using the mating part as a gauge.

Edited By old mart on 27/06/2023 16:26:48

Edited By old mart on 27/06/2023 16:30:07

Most HSS is milled in the softer state, then hardened and ground. Turning is easy with hard HSS if you use a CBN tipped insert, but I don't know of milling inserts with this feature. APT do list endmills rated to 65HRC.

Edited By old mart on 27/06/2023 14:36:25

You will probably get the most use out of an er32 to MT3 collet holder. The only drawback will be the limited maximum rpm. If the horizontal spindle size is ISO or BT40, er 32 tooling is also readily available, so you have capacity for up to 20mm cutters. Any bigger and shell mills are the easy option. Full horizontal cutting of slab materials will be used rarely by hobbyists, but having a few sharp cutters just in case will be useful from time to time.

Most of my imperial micrometers read in tenths of a thou, but I have never had any difficulty in splitting the 0.001" divisions by eye, so the vernier scale is redundent for my purposes. You can try tests to find how accurately you can split the divisions on your cross slide using a DTI and a piece of ground stock in the chuck, a MT socket or new drill shank. Actually cutting this finely gets difficult, which accounts for the advice on lapping. I can cut 0.0005" with steel using carbide inserts intended for aluminium.

The larger HSS endmills cost quite a lot new, and if you can find a firm which can regrind them for you, then go ahead. There is a firm that I know of, Horley Tools from near Gatwick airport which are recommended. For hobby use, the exact size will not be important and telling the cutter grinder should result in a slightly reduced cost.

 By the way, welcome to the forum.

Edited By old mart on 26/06/2023 20:06:38

I have always used TIR, total indicator runout which would mean that a shaft eccentricity of 1 unit TIR would be running 1/2 a unit away from zero. As for claims by sellers, I suspect that the quality ones use TIR, but who knows what the cheapies do. If you want to buy er collets, then check out APT, they sell 4 different grades and you can choose which to invest in.

Edited By old mart on 25/06/2023 20:02:17

Edited By old mart on 25/06/2023 20:02:51

Edited By old mart on 25/06/2023 20:09:02

60's is vintage, but not as vintage as me. I'm in my 9th decade when you count up the decades starting with 1949. Only the other day, I tapped two holes for 4BA screws as there were plenty of countersunk ones within easy reach. And they are in the new Atlas 12 x 24 cross slide which has now got threads of 1/2UNF, 4, 5 and 6mm plus the 4BA's in it.

Edited By old mart on 25/06/2023 19:53:31

I would plump for the 5/16 x 26. When I bought the present house, there was a poor looking old vise in the garage. It turned out to be a 5" Record steel bodied model. The jaws were scrap and I had great difficulty getting the screws undone and the threads were 5/16 26 BSC. I made some new jaws and got a couple of suitable screws on ebay, cleaned up the leadscrew and the jaws are parallel to within 0.002". That makes up for my mistake in leaving my 4 1/2" Paramo behind when I sold my bungalow.

I don't think I have come across a plug like that, but can see one advantage, when used with a DVD player or TV, when the wall socket is behind them, the wiring does not have to loop back up.

Vic, are you connecting the work cathodically or anodically? What do you use for the other electrode?

The easiest option would be to drill for a sliding fit and assemble with some RTV silicone sealant. That should take care of any sealing against moisture.

I see, the possibility of some sort of interference rather than a domestic voltage lower than 230V is what Lidl are trying to avoid possible litigation over.

When I bought the VFD to use on the Tom Senior mill that was being restored for the museum, I made sure it had interference filters built in to reduce any problems and it certainly does not seem to affect radios being on in the workshop.

Always a great watch, my favourite you tube subject. The dog is a star, I saw a recent episode where a parcel of dog treats was received from the USA from an admirer.

I thought that the single phase voltage throughout the UK is 230V. But I have just been reading about a Lidl welder which uses flux cored wire on their website which mentions it being unsuitable for use in some low voltage areas.

It says: "not intended for use in residential areas where the power is supplied via a public low-voltage supply system".

Please explain what this means.

Maximum rigidity helps a lot, plus I always lock the saddle. Rear inverted parting blades fixed directly to the cross slide are best and gravity helps with swarf removal. If using blades with carbide tips, you may be able to get different grades of insert, and they like to cut and not rub. I have had better results with a bold approach, the main difficulty is keeping some lubrication in the cut while still advancing the tip.

I always advise R8, "IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE", and that does not always happen, rather like the colour of a second hand car, I wanted a red one, but had to have dark grey. I have a plastic duck head on the aerial so I can find it more easily in car parks.

I have just had a similar problem, and it makes no difference how far apart the nuts are. I have been making an improved cross slide for the Atlas 12 x 24 using a new leadscrew and a new genuine Atlas nut, plus the nut that came with the leadscrew. The original nut is fixed and the new one has a small ammount of adjustability for antibacklash. The way to get the spacing correct is to screw the nuts on with a gap between them and measure their fixing points. Those dimensions were transfered to the cross slide. The nuts both had to be marked as only keeping the original directions would ensure that the threads would still line up when they were fixed in place. If the adjustable nut had a lot of axial movement that would not matter, but I only wanted the minimum of allowed movement. It would be possible to adjust nuts length so that the start of the thread was matched both ends, relative to their fixing points, but that is more bother than simply marking their direction, as Robert advises.

Edited By old mart on 23/06/2023 16:34:08

Now you have got the MT3 just be careful to not overtighten the drawbar. I expect the same price offer did not include the R8 model, so there should be more funds available for tooling. Many people keep an er32 collet chuck permanently attached and use it for drills as well as milling cutters. You can buy MT3 socket cleaners which will keep the taper pristine and tooling should be wiped with a clean, but very slightly oily tissue or cloth prior to fitting. There may be recommended drawbar torque figures available, and small torque wrenches are not expensive.

Hopper, the S & B model A is a very different beast from a hobby lathe like a Myford, the makers recommended 5/8" tooling, which would need shimming of about 0.100" even with a new lathe. The Atlas will be able to use the less agressive tooling.

Edited By old mart on 18/06/2023 17:46:40