Member postings for Reman

Don't know what CMM means, But WEEE = "Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment". All that stuff has to be recycled these days. No more dumping your burnt out toasters in the bin and all that.

If the choice is a belt slipping or having to replace shear pins every time I do something silly, Personally, I think I'll stick with the belt if it's all the same. 

As I said though, The belt doesn't slip unless I do something that would (If the torque DIDN'T have this easier escape route) probably result in damage to the tool and/or lathe.

Anyway, As I said at the beginning, This idea was only really me pondering aloud. I've actually got some 1" thick aluminium discs kicking about here somewhere that I could use, But before using up 30 or so quid worth of metal (That could be used for something else) on this I was wondering if I could get away with doing it on the cheap using the fiberglass filler that probably won't get used on another project.

I know some hobby lathes use molded glass impregnated nylon change gears, So the thought of a fiberglass flat stepped pulley didn't really seem that big a leap of imagination.

Edited By Reman on 06/10/2019 17:29:02

That was actually the original plan, But I've got to quite like having the "Weak link" of a flat belt running the spindle. Under normal conditions it's fine with no slip, But if I do something stupid it WILL slip and allow the chuck to stop dead without the kinetic thump of it also stalking the rest of the drivetrain and motor.

Posted by Dave Halford on 06/10/2019 10:37:24:

Barbell weights would be a better option, the chances of a pulley made from short chopped strand coming apart as big sharp chunks underload load and at speed isn't a chance I would personally take.

The idea did occur to me. I was thinking that for a belts and braces approach I could twist up some stainless wire  into several hoops that I could embed in the filler around 1/2" under the pulley surfaces. They probably wouldn't stop the pulley breaking if that's what would have happened anyway, but they should hold the bits together long enough for me to shut the lathe off, And it would limit how big a chunk could come flying off it it did disintegrate.

Edited By Reman on 06/10/2019 11:32:49

I'm guessing they weigh in the scrap and don't want potential money walking out the door. Either that or someone in managements already making a mint flogging offcuts and bar ends on eBay.

I'd be asking management what they get per KG from the scrap dealer, then offer slightly more per KG for the odd 10 or 20kg box.

It's possible they'll say "NO" though just because managers tend to think the worst of their staff and they might assume that if they let you have cheap materials you're going to use them to poach precision engineering contracts off them using nothing more than a Chinese mini lathe, An old 3" Record vise, and a hacksaw !!!!! LOL !

Just sort of thinking allowed here,

I need to have a 3 step flat belt pulley at some point in the future. The dimensions I need are a bit odd (1" wide steps, with diameters of.4.25", 3.25" and 2.25", Plus it needs to be bored for a 3/4" shaft) so eBay hasn't popped anything near the right sizes in all the time I've been looking,

I'm resigned to the fact that I'm most likely going to have to make it myself, and I'm gonna need a pretty big/expensive slug of steel or aluminum to do it......... But am I?

I played with the idea of laminating several ply discs together and turning them to the right size steps, But making a part to use with a metal lathe out of wood just feels all kinds of wrong to me, So I started thinking about what other materials I could use.

Due to me wildly overestimating quantities needed for a little project last year, I've still got one and a half large (2kg?) tins of Isopon P40 glass fiber filler doing nothing in the garage.

I'm thinking I could make a slightly oversized mold that would also hold a thick walled 3/4"id steel pipe squarely down the center, pack around it with glass fiber filler, then turned it to size (While wearing every item of PPE I own to keep glass strands out of my eye's, lungs and skin. ). Balancing it up shouldn't be too difficult, But I'm wondering what the chances are of it surviving the 400 or so RPM it would see in use when running flat out?

I'm pretty sure it would hold together for the long term (Despite all the vibration and shock loading when I do something stupid with the cutting depth), and if it would work it would pretty much cost nothing to make because if not used, in several years time the filler would probably end up in the bin when the tins turned to rust), But there's still that little voice in the back of my mind saying "If this was a good idea there'd already be GRP pulleys on every cheap machine out there".

So, What am I missing here?

Scott.

I did think they'd be some kind of high tensile steel, But it didn't even cross my mind that they might also be heat treated.any more than to relieve manufacturing stresses.

So that's one idea out the window. Anyone got more ?

Never heard about that one before. Not a bad tip.

I agree that having nice rust free and "Known" materials to work with is always a big bonus, But having ANY useable material available is handy when you suddenly realize you need something like a spacer or bracket to finish a project late on a Sunday afternoon.

It's also handy to have cheap "Disposable" material kicking about for when you want to give something a go but don't necessarily know if the finished result are going to work. No point spending a fist full of folding money on materials to scratch build your latest new fangled contraption only to find out that "Part A" and "Part C" really should have been 50% thicker to prevent the whole doodad from flapping like a flag in a strong wind.

Filter locations on modern cars is bloody ridiculous !!!

My previous car was a Mk1 MX5 (OK, Not THAT modern) and the filter was best approached from underneath, through the wheel arch....... By someone with two elbows in their arm !

I think it was just before I did the 3rd oil change I cracked and bought a remote filter kit for it. After that it was a breeze to swap the filter as it was bolted to the bulkhead with plenty of hand room around it.

It seems that car manufacturers go out of their way to make cars hard to work on now. It's probably so we all get out of the habit of maintaining them ourselves and return to the main dealer to pay for every little thing that needs doing.

There's even cars out there now that need the front bumper removing to change the s0ddin' headlight bulbs !?!?!?! WTF !!!!! If I was in charge of a car design studio and one of the staff brought a design to me that would require BODY PANELS to be removed to change a damn bulb, Their desk drawers would have been emptied before security had even finished kicking (Physically not metaphorically) them out of the building !

Hi all,

I've been trying to get together a stockpile of useful aluminium/steel bar offcuts, and lumps of thick plate to keep handy so I don't have to buy materials (Then wait for it to arrive) whenever I have an idea for something I want to make..... Trouble is, Ordering multiple offcuts and bar ends on the off chance they'll be handy one day get's expensive REALLY quickly !!!

So I've been trying to think about alternative and cheaper sources for handy "Used" materials.

So far I've been thinking that FWD car drive shafts could be useful for inch or so diameter round bars, And in a few of Steve Jordan's videos he mentions old weightlifting bars and cast iron weights as a pretty good source of bar stock and iron slugs. I've seen some solid bolt on rear stub axles (From FWD cars) that you could get up to a 2"x3" cylinder of steel out of, And for chunks of steel sheet there's possibly the scrap bins at the local structural metalwork shop (If they don't start asking silly money for small bits).

Because larger billets of aluminium seem to be disproportionately expensive I've even been toying with the idea of cobbling together a propane bucket forge to melt down scrap ally and pouring it into coffee can "Molds". This probabbly won't happen, But just for the "Would be fun to give it a try" value the idea keeps surfacing in my mind.

So I'm wondering, What other cheap and cheerful sources of raw materials have people on here have come up with? Anyone got any epicly obvious metal "Recycling" ideas that'll make the rest of us go "JESUS !!! Why the hell didn't I think of that ?!?!?". Has anyone stumbled across a particular scrap item that yielded a disproportionate amount of usable material in it?

I'm sure it would be interesting to hear what other folks here are busy squirreling away to use.

Scott.

Yeah mate. I stumbled across Lathes.co.uk about a month ago, just after I got the "Ideal". I've since lost several interesting hours randomly reading about the history and specs of the various lathes I've blagged time on over the last 20 odd years, Plus a fair few I've seen advertised over the years and toyed with getting.

This may be the first lathe I've actually owned, But I've usually been on good enough terms with at least one or two people who are jobbing engineering with their own workshop or keen hobbyists with a lathe or vertical mill.

Thing is, There's only so many times you can blag machine time in a mates shop before you start wondering if you might be holding them up when they should be using them to do paid work, But they're too polite to kick you out. Don't want to lose a friend over something like that, So I finally decided that even if I only get a small lathe, It would probably be good enough for about 90% of the stuff I'd want it for.

Decent idea Pete, But unfortunately the hangers on the "Ideal" are handed so they're not interchangeable. And the bed on the other side of the gap is just a flat area to mount the head onto and isn't the same height as the bed.

Your reply HAS made me think though. I didn't even consider that the bearing carriers could be twisted. I'm pretty sure the bearings in them will be 3/4", And I've got some 3/4" shafting handy to make a countershaft for this, So I could thread them both into that side by side and visually check for any distortion in them. If nether are obviously twisted I could clamp them together on the middle of the shaft and lightly sand them on a sheet of fine emery paper glued to some 1" thick MDF (That stuff usually has a pretty flat surface). If I only got sanding marks down one side of one of the clamps it would pretty much prove it to be the culprit. If Both sand evenly across their surface it's the mounting surfaces on the bed that are twisted. 8(......... It's strange that I'm now hoping that the pretty much irreplaceable bearing housings are the reason for this binding, Rather than it being a warped and useless irreplaceable bed !

In theory, I could even sand both clamps flat and parallel enough that way by putting something of the right height under either ends of the shaft to stop me sanding an angle on them. Worst case would be me needing to take off so much metal that I still needed to shim them out, But in that case they would at least only need to be flat shim plates.

I suppose if all else fails I could knock out the original plain bearings, sand the mounting face of the clamps flat and to have the same height to the shaft centre line, clout in fresh bearing material, bolt both clamps side by side and in line on an angle plate, then slap a ream through them both.

First post so please be gentle.

I was trained as a general machinist almost 30 years ago, But since then I haven't really had much to do with the industry, so forgive me if I get any of the terminology wrong.

Anyway, I've wanted an old hobby lathe for ages, So about a month ago I found a pretty little "Willimott Ideal" as a restoration project. It hadn't been used in a very long time, and looked a bit of a mess on the eBay listing, but it was reasonably compleat and I decided that it had potential. When I went to see it I found that what looked like reasonably heavy rust on everything in the pictures was in fact a thick layer of gunky old oil that had got saturated with dust. Underneath it all seems to be in pretty good condition (For it's age), So it's now it's going to be less of a restoration and more of a recommissioning until I strip it again to repaint it.

I've been going through it bit by bit when I get an hour here and there, stripping down sections, cleaning, oiling, and reassembling, Last night I decided to investigate the binding leadscrew. I thought the plain bearings may have got gummed up with congealed oil, so I soaked them with WD40 and reoiled. That didn't work, So I removed the leadscrew assembly to investigate further. Once off the lathe bed the bearings feel silky smooth, so it seems the bearing blocks aren't aligned. It's got single bolt bearing hangers, so I spent a while messing about thinking they must be rotating about the bolt while tightening, I've now come to the conclusion that it's actually the mounting faces on the bed that aren't exactly square to each other. It feels like when I tighten down the hangers bolt it torques up at least one of the the bearing hangers enough to try to push the other end of the leadscrew closer to the bed.

As I never took up engineering as a trade, and only really dabbled with it as a hobby, I haven't got any long straight edges I could check the trueness of the bearing mounting points with, So I'm intending to confirm this is definitely the problem by shimming around the edges of the bearing blocks with feeler gauges until it all turns smoothly (Or not), But then what? Like everyone else, I don't want to spend a fortune fixing this problem.

If it's definitely the mounting points, and I can work out how far out they are with the feeler gauge shims, I could permanently shim them with some 2mm alloy plate sanded to get it close enough to the right angles. Or I could sand the bearing clamps mating faces to get the same results (There's plenty of adjustment on the apron so the half nuts will still be able to line up), Or I could get a bit "Ghetto" with it by thoroughly greasing up the bearing blocks mating face and bolt, then skimming the area in JB Weld, then tighten up the clamps almost to the point where they bind and letting it set. Once done, And as long as I hadn't actually glued the clamps to the bed, it would just be a quick cleanup job to make it look presentable.

Before I choose one option though, I'm wondering if anyone's got better suggestions?