Member postings for Peter Cook 6

If you use Edge as the browser, you can set Google as the default search engine. But having done so you need to search from the bar at the top, not use the search bar in the centre of the New Tab screen. That defaults to Bing (Microsoft's search engine) and I have not found any way of turning off that behaviour.

I have a manual lathe (Taig), a manual mill (SX1LP) and a 3D printer. I have never learned technical drawing. Things I want to make, I usually design using CAD (MOI). If they need to be metal, I print 2D sketches from the 3D models and manually produce the components on the lathe and mill.

If plastic will suffice, I print direct from the CAD model.

My emphasis. I think Martin is correct, but with the high thermal inertia of well insulated rooms and fairly short (a few hours?) off periods I suspect as he suggest the difference in total heat input will be fairly close to zero. The savings will be nothing like enough to offset the £50/unit for the valves.

Howard - Lighting is different - there is no inertial effect so any off period is a saving.

Phil - search for electrically heated clothes - lots to choose from.

On a related conundrum - I am told that turning off devices left on standby will save me money. True in the summer when I don't need heating, but in the winter all the standby power converts to heat. If I turn off the standby devices, do I simply replace the losses with (more expensive?) heat from the boiler?

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 04/04/2022 12:32:17

Given the cost or energy, the newspapers and internet are full of ideas (and gadgets) to save energy & money.

One I saw today was proposing a thermostatic valve head that detected movement in the room and when the room was empty would turn down the radiator. There are similar smart phone linked devices that serve the same purpose.

It seems like a "common sense" option, however applying a bit of logic made me wonder. Does it actually save much energy - unless the room is unused for long periods.

A room loses heat depending on the difference between the internal and external temperatures and the room's heat loss coefficient. The heating system reaches an equilibrium where the heat input equals the heat loss and the room temperature stabilises.

If you turn off the heating in an empty room, the room still loses heat at a (fairly constant?) rate until the internal temperature gets appreciably closer to the external.

However when you re-enter the room and the heating kicks back on, then to re-establish equilibrium you need to pump back the amount of heat lost while the heating was off plus the steady state amount.

If the room is unoccupied for long periods I can see the savings, but in a normal household where rooms probably go unoccupied for only hours at a time, its not that clear where the savings come from.

At £50/valve head it would need to be significant - even at today's prices.

I am not a lawyer, but am aware ( from my days in academia) that there is a doctrine of "Fair Use" in copyright law which allows use of copyright material for a number of purposes including criticism, teaching, research, and study amongst other things - one of the criteria for many of the uses is that it should be non-commercial.

I am not aware that there is any similar defence in Patent law, but it is far from clear to me whether publishing a design is copyright law or patent law.

I would have thought ( and my view would be) that publishing the drawing on a forum such as this for feedback and criticism from other "experts" would have a valid defence under fair use non-commercial use.

Publishing the same thing on a Youtube channel in the expectation of creating income from the channel would probably fail the non-commercial test and therefore fall foul of copyright law. Where patent law applies I don't know.

With higher tooth count gears there is also the option of making your own rack style cutters which for high tooth count gears are supposed to give good results.

Details of the method are available online - see

Gear cutting with a rack form multi-tooth cutter (jeffree.co.uk)

and

Gear Cutting with a Homemade Gear Cutter (helicron.net)

Disclaimer - I have never done it, but the method looks easier than making involute cutters using Ivan Laws button method. It is on my to do list.

The two 120 tooth gears should work fine if cut by the same cutter, the other gears are meshing with what I assume are lantern pinions and should be OK, although you will need to do some math on the correct diameter of the pins and the carriers.

PS good luck with the Congreve - I own a small commercially made one (Dent). Getting it set up correctly and keeping it running is a nightmare!! They do not keep good time - but are hypnotic to watch.

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 01/04/2022 18:16:04

My cutters of choice for my SX1LP are the HSS 8% Cobalt cutters from shop-apt.co.uk. I use their 2 flute uncoated on Aluminium and 3 flute coated on steel. Very sharp, and cut just fine if you keep the speeds up - just don't think about the speeds APT quote ( 7000rpm for a 6mm cutter in aluminium!)

My guess is that the constant red when the motor is stopped is expected behaviour and nothing to worry about.

I have a WS55-220 BLDC controller. Different function, but it looks similar. On mine when the motor is running the "alarm" light goes green. When stopped it goes red.

Dibber for planting out and thinning out seedlings in the potting shed.

To distinguish them from slot drills which will plunge cut. The end can only be used for milling hence end mill

Thanks again. I think I have my head around lathe tool angles, milling cutters are consumables - but boring head cutters are still giving me a headache!

Thanks, Out with the grinder and treat them as blanks. It's just that I couldn't find sharpening information for that shape tool, either in my books or on the internet.

Agree on the physics, but the key factor is the sunshine which drives the ventilator. On sunny days the air is likely to be drier. Warm damp (rainy!) days tend to be dull and overcast - and the ventilator doesn't draw that air in nearly as enthusiastically.

I am still struggling to get boring to work well on the mill (SX1LP). I have a 30mm (ARC) boring head which came with a couple of tools.

The HSS tool which has a "square" profile works fine (apologies for the poor focus).

In search of a slightly longer tool to bore deeper, I acquired a few "German type" HSS boring tools. These have a semi-circular profile.

I am struggling to get them to work. They do not appear to have any side clearance, other than the curve of the basic shape. I am setting them with the top face parallel to the boring head dovetails.

I tried stoning the top rake and front clearance ( on another tool, but that snapped!) to see if it was simply a question of sharpness, but it didn't help.

Are they simply not properly ground, and I need to treat them as blanks and add appropriate front clearance, or am I misunderstanding the appropriate way to use them

I used a pair of Activents (Activent Ventilation Solutions for Sheds - Condensation Solutions). They needed a 60mm hole in the wall, but have a cowl to keep out rain and an insect screen to keep out bugs (the gap under the door is however still available to them!).

Not sure if its the passive vents or the solar extractor that does the most good. The solar unit drags fresh air in most enthusiastically when the sun is shining and the air is fairly warm and dry, less so on dull damp days and not at all at night when the air is coldest.

My little 6 x 4 shed (used to store the mower, shredder and other potentially useful junk) used to get damp. I installed a couple of passive vents, one low at the back, one High at the front and a cheap solar powered vent in the door. That has kept it dry ever since.

The slot drills should be, the end mills may or may not.

Look at the ends, if the cutting edges extend right across the face, then they should be capable of plunge cutting. If the cutting edges leave a gap in the centre ( end mills) then they won't plunge cut. Many of the small end mills 3 and 4 flute ) I have do centre cut and will plunge.

One trick I have learned when milling a slot like the one you describe, is to plunge cut ( or drill with a suitable size drill bit) to your target depth at each end. Then position the cutter in one of the holes to a reasonable cutting depth, then mill the slot across to the other hole using several passes.

I find it easier to get the end position of the slots accurate this way than trying to hit the same end point for each pass of the mill on the handwheels. A DRO would probably help.

Sorry the others got there while I was typing.

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 16/03/2022 12:57:20

DOC is an issue on small lathes, but the Taig (and I would guess the Sherline) are quite capable. I was taking 1mm DOC in EN1A mild steel today on my Taig with absolutely no protest.

Which comes down to your motivation for starting. Do you principally want to build models, with the PM #3 as the next in the line - and want a lathe to facilitate that goal? Or do you want to make "stuff" on the lathe and the PM #3 is simply an interesting example?

Do you see the future as a "collector/maker of well engineered models", or a time where you "enjoyed your time making ...". If the former, then probably skip the Taig because you will end up spending more time building add-ons and tooling - although that will happen to some extent in either use case.

I wanted to fix clocks, and needed a lathe to do so, but I have migrated to the second position. I enjoy making/creating useful "stuff". So modifying and enhancing the lathe is as good an outcome as any other. The Taig is probably the best platform for that.

I have a Taig lathe, but don't build engines so I can't help with the detail of the build. In my view Taigs are very capable and very reasonably priced, but they are the basis for creating what you want rather than ready to run out of the box. A Sherline or a Chinese mini lathe would be better out of the box.

Look at John Bentley's  modelengines.info  website to see what can be done on a Taig

The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine (cartertools.com) has lots of information on how people use and modify the Taig.

I opted for the ER16 collet spindle and am very glad I did. As John says 5C has the disadvantage that the collets are expensive and only hold one size while ER collets hold a 1mm range of sizes. (You can actually get 11 and 12mm ER16 collets from Gloster Tooling). I have a 12mm one and it works well.

Taig supply 3 & 4 jaw chucks which screw directly onto the M22 x 1.5 ER spindle nose so no need for a backplate. The sherline 3 jaw M22 x 1.5 threaded chuck also fits ( but is considerably more expensive than the Taig soft jaw version). I have swung 4" diameter on the lathe (nominally it will turn 4.5", and they also do a riser block that adds another 1" of clearance to the bed (albeit with some loss of rigidity) so up to 6.5" is possible.

As Francis says the recommended induction motor is very heavy, bulky and in my view very limited as the minimum spindle speed is about 450rpm which is a bit fast for turning cast iron. A variable speed DC motor is a much better choice. Mine is currently fitted with a BLDC 220W DC motor on a home made mount. which gives me 75-10,000 rpm at the spindle.

I bought the vertical slide and milling vice with the Taig. I have successfully used it to do small scale milling, but the setup is such a faff that I eventually bought a Sieg SX1LP mill.

Mine like Francis' and all standard Taigs doesn't have a leadscrew. I don't find the rack feed much of an issue. It is quick to move, but does provide accurate positioning. I plan to add a motor driven leadscrew and power feed when I get round to it.

Typos!

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 07/03/2022 17:48:46