Member postings for Jonathan Richards

Hi Taf

I'm sorry I haven't yet worked out how to select text from previous postings in order to generate a specific reply. In response to your queries, the bottle stand area on my trolley is just over 10" by 11" and the bottle retaining chains are much longer than I need for my 8.5" diameter cylinder. The wheels are moulded plastic retained by washers and split pins on a steel bar axle.

I hope that helps!

Jonathan

I bought one of the cheap versions I think you are referring to. Less than £40 including delivery from eBay 2 months ago. On arrival and unpacking I thought the components were simply too flimsy to make a useful structure.

However, once assembled it was surprisingly rigid. I had to extend the top shelf with a plywood surface to mount an R-Tech 180 MIG satisfactorily but the trolley copes with the 19kg weight of the welder plus a new full 20l hobbyweld cylinder and a cheap and small plasma cutter on the bottom shelf with no issues at all. It rolls and manoeuvres reasonably well on a smooth concrete floor but I suspect it would be less happy on a rougher surface.

I thought when ordering it that I would need to beef up the metal work but I have since seen no need. If you give one a go, you might be pleasantly surprised!

JR

Thanks to all for the continuing input and advice. This is just a holding update because I haven’t had chance to progress matters as I had planned.

I have, however, established that a ‘shim’ cut from ordinary typing paper reduces the run out to 4 thou at 4 inches from the chuck, which is very much better than previously.

I need to try Hopper’s jaws/taper concentricity test next. Unless that throws up a major anomaly, perhaps unlikely given the paper shim result, I am going to try easing the taper slightly as suggested.

I don’t think I’m adept enough with a bearing scraper to risk that approach so I’m going to see if I can make a lap, as Macolm advises. I’ve never yet cut a taper on the lathe [at least not intentionally] so that should be a good learning exercise.

I’ll post again once I have some progress to report.

JR

Apologies, particularly to Hopper.

There is a decimal place error in my last post. I meant 0.1mm and 0.05mm in relation to the feeler gauge. I think that makes Macolm's paper trial suggestion even more attractive.

Also for Hopper, in your penultimate paragraph, did you mean 'four jaw OR the faceplate' rather than "on the faceplate"? If not, I'm struggling to follow this step, I'm afraid.

I'm told that domestic maintenance tasks are required for the rest of the week but I will be raiding the stationary stores at the weekend and trying the cam lock tweeks Hopper suggests, before if need be tackling the further concentricity tests [assuming I understand them correctly].

Thanks for keeping on with this thread. I do appreciate the help.

JR

CONT

I will need to get some plastigauge and some more suitable shim materials before experimenting further, so there will be a bit of a hiatus in the thread, I’m afraid.

However, if I do find that shimming with, say, 5 thou shim improves the run out and therefore want to glue a proper ring of shim to the chuck back as Hopper suggests, would I be better off with brass or steel shim for that modification?

Thanks

JR

Thanks to all for the further suggestions and advice. I will have to split this response again, I'm afraid.

I don’t have any Plastigauge [which I’d not come across before] and I could only find a metric feeler gauge and single piece of shim material which measures up at about 2 thou.

With the PB chuck in place I can get a 0.01mm feeler to go in into two of the interpin spaces and a 0.005mm feeler into the third space, the latter with some ease. This remained the case in all 3 possible pin positions, with some minor changes in feel.

With the old Bison chuck in place I can get the 2 thou shim into one of the 3 inter pin positions but not the other two.

The faceplate, 4-jaw chuck and a backplate I bought to fit to an ER32 Collet chuck all now fit snugly and none will admit the 2 thou shim at any of the 3 inter pin positions. That finding, and the helpful Mr Crispin video Rob pointed to, have assuaged my previously growing concern that there might be a problem with the spindle nose. The nose actually looks very good, with no sign of burring or swarf damage, despite being an ex-school machine.

TBC

Edited By Jonathan Richards on 22/11/2022 17:43:53

CONT

However, I got exactly the same result when I repeated the exercise with the older Bison 3-jaw and the used PB 4-jaw that I bought from eBay many years ago and have never actually used.

I do have a genuine 254+ faceplate, again from eBay but in excellent, unmarked and likely unused condition. Mounting that on the spindle after cleaning etc I did manage to transfer some micrometer blue to the flats between the pins but it was only a partial take, which I could not see as being down to any burring or the like in the unblued areas.

As to the camlock mechanism, and responding particularly to DC31k, the ‘new’ chuck did not come with an alignment mark, thus my trying each pin in turn closest to the line on the spindle. All 3 pins were fitted in the chuck by turning hand tight and then loosened so that the circumferential line inscribed on each pin lined up with the chuck body and the relief for the locking screw lined up properly. All 3 appear to be inserted to the same depth in the back of the chuck, and indeed the projection of each pin from the chuck body appears to be the same as that displayed by the other chucks and faceplate.

All 3 cams close smoothly on the pins clockwise within the 90 degrees ‘window’ marked on the spindle with > <; this is reproducible every time, regardless of which chuck pin is inserted nearest the spindle mark. As far as I can see then, the locking mechanism per se is working satisfactorily, or am I missing something more subtle?

All that said, if I release the cams and tap the chuck to free it with the test bar still in place before immediately remounting the chuck in the same orientation, I find the run out on the bar changes significantly. I have only done this once so far but the run out close to chuck changed from 5.5 thou to 12-13 thou.

I note the comments that run out doesn’t matter and I see the rationale behind them. However, the instructions that came with the NOS PB 3-jaw claim that it is a precision instrument so I do feel there is something wrong here.

Any further advice/suggestions would be very welcome.

Thanks

JR

Edited By Jonathan Richards on 18/11/2022 17:40:41

Edited By Jonathan Richards on 18/11/2022 17:43:22

Thank you again to all who have responded so far. I have some further feedback, which I’m afraid may need to spread over more than one post:

First, using a good straight edge and a bright light source, I couldn’t see any hint of distortion in the front surface of the chuck.

Thereafter, things get more complicated:

I have tried bluing the cam lock mount, both the short taper and the vertical faces. I then tightened the cams to draw on the chuck and seat it. The result was a good even transfer of blueing onto the taper section of the integral chuck backplate, but none at all onto the flat back of the chuck between the pins or, perhaps less surprisingly, onto the flat bottom of the taper recess.

TBC

Dear All

Apologies for the delay in feedback; I was unwell last week.

The chuck went back together nicely today and the scroll/jaw action felt excellent. Unfortunately, however, the concerns expressed by Dave [SOD] have proved to be somewhat prescient.

There is the merest flicker of run out at the spindle nose, as seen with a 0.0005” dti. Measured at the rear of the chuck runout is at most 0.001” but this rises to 0.004-5” just behind the chuck jaws. With a 1” ground steel test bar, runout close to the jaws is 0.006”, rising to 0.012” at 3 inches from the jaws.

These are the very best figures I could manage, after thorough cleaning of the spindle nose and chuck recess, careful placement of the bar and trying the 3 different possible chuck mountings. In the ‘wrong’ mounting positions, run out on the bar is more than doubled. The old Bison chuck gives much better readings.

Any further advice would be welcome, even if it is “best start saving for a ‘new new stock’ replacement”!

JR

By way of update:

First, thank you to all who responded to my query. That so many people felt able to give me the benefit of their knowledge/experience/perspective demonstrates both the strengths of the membership and the basic ethos of this forum.

Second, I have now made some progress, with at least the inside jaws. Further cleaning with different agents did not help but using marker ink suggested some areas of unwanted contact.

I proceeded with very gentle and incremental stoning, mainly of the sharp corners, and there began a slow but progressive improvement. I can now slide both numbers 1 & 3 jaws in and out of their slots cleanly by hand. They are not yet quite as smooth sliding as the number 2 jaw is in its own slot but I don’t want to go too far and I see the logic of DC31k’s point on future wear.

Next job is to properly clean the unused outside jaws and then retry them. Hopefully I will have the chuck built up again next week.

JR

Thanks for all the helpful responses. To answer the specific points raised:

Clive: it's a standard cast iron body with the slots directly machined, but thank you for the kind offer;

Diogenes: I bought the chuck years ago from a reputable dealer as 'new old stock' but put it aside when I discovered how stiff it was in operation. I assumed the stiffness was disuse/congealed grease but I was too busy professionally to investigate further. Last year year, having by then retired and having researched how to open a 'native' D1-3 chuck, I stripped, cleaned [inc ultrasonic cleaning] and reassembled it. No better, so I put it aside again in frustration until today.

Taking onboard all the other suggestions on cleaning and stoning, albeit that I can't see or feel any burring, I will attack it again over the weekend and report back.

Thanks to all. JR

Dear All,

I have a ‘new old stock’ PB 125mm 3 jaw with an inbuilt D1-3 mounting. It was far too stiff to use. After stripping, cleaning and drying, and without the scroll in place, the number 2 jaw slides nicely into its own and the other 2 slots. Jaws number 1 & 3 jam at the half-way point in their slots and need to be tapped with a nylon hammer to move them further and/or to get them out. The outside jaws show exactly the same problem.

I can’t measure any difference in the jaw or slot widths and am stumped by this. The chuck is unusable in its present state. As an engineering novice, any pointers on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks

JR

Re "Why would she do that when the drawings are freely available on the internet

The written commentary to the first blondihacks video in the vise construction series provides open links to the same public domain drawings, as the underlying basis for her build, and to the MrPete videos.

JR

There is a very helpful guide to rebuilding the milling head in MEW 258, which I relied on when I tackled a bearing change on mine. I can't recall much of the process now but I think the spindle does comes out downwards. I do know that I had to find an internal puller with small arms in order to shift the bearings that Andrew refers to above, because on mine the spacer tube precluded driving the bearings out from the opposite end(s). However, I believe that there are some alterations in the spindle assembly make up over the production life of the E-Type head, which may account for this discrepancy. Ultimately the new bearings made a substantial difference to the machine performance, so it was worth persevering. JR

Thank you both. I had indeed not spotted the server changeover thread. I'll repeat my posting on the tom senior thread now. JR

Hello. I am new to this forum, having only posted once before in the new members section [01/01/22]. Earlier today I posted a response to a new thread [tom senior spindle disassembly]; my response was simply to refer the OP to a relevant MEW article. I cannot imagine that there was anything contentious about my posting but it now seems to have disappeared. Can anyone enlighten me as to what I did wrong? Thanks JR

Happy New Year to all.

To introduce myself, I brought down the curtain on my second career in early 2020 and am now finally looking forward to an active retirement. I have always enjoyed playing with old cars but have never done any engineering per se. I discovered model engineering some years ago, via a detour into model railways, which had been a childhood interest.

Whilst still working I built a workshop, bought some old British machine tools and joined my local ME club. However, to date I haven’t done much beyond trying to ‘improve’ my lathe [Myford 254+] and mill [Tom Senior E-Type].

I have fitted DROs and VFD controlled 3-phase motors to both the 254 and the E-Type. Both machines also now have Hall effect tachometers, and I was able to renew the mill spindle bearings by following Glenn Bunt’s guidance in MEW 258.

My next goal is a stepper motor power feed for the mill x-axis and I also hope to start properly on the ubiquitous Stuart 10v before too long. Ultimately, I plan to attempt some modifications to the cylinders, pistons and valves of a rather asthmatic second hand 5-inch gauge loco. Given my lack of relevant experience I’m afraid that all of these aspirations are likely to generate questions for other members of these forums ….

Jonathan Richards