Member postings for Calum Galleitch

They are probably paid a bit higher than you'd expect, but on the other hand it isn't just drive in the right direction and follow the signs, and you can easily be responsible for 1000+ pax. With jobs like that, a big element of the pay is to make sure that you can eliminate financial stresses and strains in your private life, so you don't turn up at work with steam coming out your ears because you've been fighting with your SO about childcare and who does the hoovering.

Keyed shaft, that should read 🙄

Thank you John for those notes - those MEW references are especially helpful, as they are all of interest.

The gears are indeed on a spline, but the spline itself - at least on the gears I removed - is a separate piece and simply fits on a geared shaft on my lathe, so with any luck no need to remake it and I can just bore a hole and keyway. I'm also havering about an electronic leadscrew to learn something of the electronics etc before considering a full CNC conversion down the road, so maybe I can live permanently without the extra gears.

Sorry Howard, I was a bit vague - I've got the charts on the front of the lathe - what puzzles me slightly is that the combination of wheels I have isn't actually one of the listed combinations.

For new changewheels, are Warco/Chester likely to stock stuff like this as parts? Or is it a case of buying a module cutter and dividing head and getting on with it?!

The other thing I forgot to mention is the footbrake doesn't activate the emergency stop, which is obviously less than ideal. I'm not inclined to worry too much about it - the control lever is right there anyway. One for the snagging list!

Well, turns out it was indeed simple. Once I got it away from the wall and the panel open, I noticed a couple of breakers inside, one for the main circuit and one for the control circuit. The control circuit was on but the main circuit was not. Pressed the button, turned the isolator switch on and we have life!

Having pressed all the buttons and turned all the knobs everything seems to be there that should be. The gearbox is a bit fussy, requiring a bit of pushing or prodding or working out you need to come from the left or right to successfully engage a particular gear. I can't seem to find all the screwcutting gears, but that's not a major priority right now.

I got the changewheels off, and I've got a 26, 27, 28, 30, and a 36, so I'll need to acquire the rest at some point. Again, not a major issue. Odd thing is that doesn't seem to be a listed combination for anything on the front panel charts!

Next up is an oil change. On that front I see lots of people on Youtube using some sort of blue tape for rigging up drains and so forth - is there something people would recommend that's oil-resistant and suitable for the job?

I'm also going to start putting together a small set of tools to keep handy for routine operation - spanner for changewheels, spanner for the compound slide clamping nuts (which themselves need renewed, as one at least is stripped). I also measured the camlock key which needs an 11mm square drive.

I thought I posted this yesterday, but it's clearly failed to take: Home and Workshop, in Sidcup (usually on the back cover of MEW) have several mills at the moment that seem to fit your requirements.

Quite right George, thank you. My keyboarding is becoming more divorced from my brain day by day!

Thanks Emgee, I do have a couple more wiring diagrams though the quality is quite poor, so I'll hold off posting them for now, I don't want to cause anyone to try and pore through them with a magnifying glass unless I have to!

Dave, if you highlight the entire table before turning on the sort/filter tool (or off and on again), it should keep all the rows in order. Let me know if you're struggling and I'll see if I can sort it out for you.

The original scale was 1:100 'toises', one toise being 72 poises or 864 lignes...I'm not sure about the lopping heads off bit, but those Revolutionaries certainly had a point when it came to metrology. A toise was about 2 metres.

Thanks Dave, I did check that but that's entirely the level of suggestion that I'm looking for, as I'm hoping it's something that simple! Warco did assure me it was running, so hopefully it's nowt tricky.

Aye Howard, it's not a small lump of metal! Fortunately I'm a fairly big lump myself, but I might find myself making up one of Harold Hall's simple combination carrier and ways protector, and build it up a little so it's a short lift. At least with the camlock I can use both hands to get the thing in place.

Well, the electrics are now hooked up, but the machine does not go brrrrr. I have gotten the multimeter out and checked there is indeed the vital electric juice running as far as the socket. I haven't tried the plug yet as I can't figure out how to dismantle it: it clearly requires a bit of force but I'm not sure where to apply it, and even I can't screw up wiring a plug that badly...

This light, helpfully labelled "HL" on the panel: am I right in thinking that should illuminate when the machine is turned on?

There is an isolator switch on the side of the machine, which I have remembered to turn on!

I have looked at the microswitches on the guards and all seem to be in their working positions: have I missed any? I know about the chuck guard, change wheel cover, and footbrake. Are there any other ones I should check?

Next step, I guess, is to open the electrics panel do a visual inspection, and start testing for the presence of electric juice within the box. I suppose there is a fair chance something has rattled loose in transit, though I hope not. I am hoping there is something daft I am overlooking, as opening the panel means moving the b***** thing again!

Speaking of moving heavy things, the 10" 4 jaw has arrived. A little foxed, it would be fair to say, but it seems in decent nick. No key, but a half inch Allan key will fit.

The term 'fractal' was first used by mathematicians to explore the idea that between the common concepts of one, two, and three dimensional spaces, there could be other, in-between fractal dimensions. This gives rise to things like shapes with infinite perimeters yet finite area, or bounded lines of infinite length. Self-similarity isn't a necessary condition, but it's easy to come up with rules to create fractals that are self-similar and mathematically tractable. Discovering non-similar fractals is a trickier enterprise. It turns out that generalising the concept of 'fractal' to a usable, precise mathematical definition isn't especially useful, so nowadays fractal is more of "I know it when I see it" term.

The only evidence of use I can find is some bits of swarf in the suds drain plate. Other than that, no, it looks disconcertingly original. I suspect the run time can be measured in minutes; there is some rust spotting and whatnot if you get close up but nothing looks used as such. Next job is to get the electrics all hooked up so we can make it go brrrrr. Thanks Emgee, yes, we're on what used to be a working farm so we've three phase on site, and it turned out a spur already ran within a few metres of the lathe.

I mentioned a while back there was a 10" D1-5 4 jaw chuck going on eBay for £150 - last night I noticed it had been knocked down to £120 so I grabbed it. It will be a big old thing but the price of new D1-5 chucks is, well, phew. It'll be a while before I add a 4 jaw self-centring chuck to the setup.

Thanks Chris, yes, it was definitely one of those operations that I would not repeat in that way! I should have done exactly what I had at the headstock end, which was very solid with the blocks straddling the rails and would have been easier and quicker too. As for levelling it, I've got some feet on the way, though the concrete it stands on is more like a hill than a floor, so the bits of timber at the left will probably stay.

Pete, I'm happy to say in the immediate future, not much! The first priority will be to get the lathe tooled up - it came with practically no accessories; it has a 3 jaw chuck and key, but not the key for the D1-5 spindle. I'm not sure if it even has a full set of changewheels. No rests, no 4 jaw, no faceplate, no centres, no cutting tools. Even the handle from the tailstock wheel is MIA! Something I will need to produce for what I want to do is a taper attachment.

I've got two immediate problems:

1. The chuck has been on the spindle for probably fifteen years or more. I need to get a spindle key that fits properly (the chuck key is a bit small), but even so it feels like the cams are seized pretty solid. I've put a bit of welly into all six and none show any interest in moving. I don't want to put any more force on till I get a suitable key.

2. The electric lead into the machine has four cores, for three phase and earth. But...all three conductors are black, and I can't trace where the incoming conductors go in the electrics panel without undoing screws. Am I risking magic smoke if the machine ends up getting fed the wrong rotation? Or will it just go backwards? I have a very basic schematic of the electrics, which suggests nothing should go bang:

The next morning's work was rather easier: I neglected to take pictures, but I had put together some dollies that I was confident could carry the weight safely, and while blocking it up, moving it, and dropping it down again was frankly a pest - it's been a while since I've had to work so hard! - the process was much less of a struggle. For now it's sitting on some bits of timber which have got it surprisingly close to level:

Well, after much twiddling of thumbs, last Thursday I got a call asking when I would like to take delivery: well, no point owning a lathe sitting several hundred miles away, so on Monday I got another call from a jovial delivery driver intimating he was fifteen minutes away and would I put the kettle on. Gladly.

He took one look at the narrow space between my workshop and the garden wall: "aye, nae bother", and proceeded to reverse a 12-tonne truck in as if it were a Mini into the Bay of Biscay.

He drank his tea, apologised for not having anything to lift the lathe off the pallet "or I'd get that in there nae bother", jumped in his truck and zoomed off, leaving this:

Gulp. I finished my tea and set to work. I hadn't planned on that big ol' sheet of ply being in the way of getting the cabinet jacked up, so plan B was hastily developed.

I laid down the rails for the machine to slide on (ominous foreshadowing alert), plaved blocks for the headstock end to repose on, and began jacking the machine up. I had made a lot of wedges from goodness knows what bit of 6x2 construction lumber, and this was the first thing I learnt: it's worth making wedges out of a decent hardwood, and making them a decent size. Wedges twice the size would have made life so much easier.

The machine rolled forward using a bit of random aluminium tubing. Now the tailstock end was a problem: how to support it so I could get the pallet out? After some guesstimation, I was fairly confident a bit of C16 timber would take the weight. It didn't look so scary like this:

But after carefully dragging the pallet out and seeing this:

Well, to my simple mind, lathes should be on the ground, not levitating up in the air. (By the way, Clive mention a removable suds tray. It can indeed be removed, but only from the back. It was only just before I finally parked it for good I realised it had been put back in the wrong way round, explaining why the drain hose is attempting to cool the motor rather than draining to the suds pump visible on the left).

Getting it back down was precarious. I should have been a lot more careful about blocking it up, as you can see here:

As we worked down, that pile of blocks next to the footbrake ended up getting pushed over as the lathe tried to move sideways from the repeated lifting and setting down. About half way down, the pile gave way - fortunately it moved all of a centimetre before landing on my pry-bar blocks. It wasn't until I saw this photo in retrospect that I realised quite how careless I was being with the height I had raised the lathe. Incidentally, another thing I learnt doing this was that saving a tenner on a pry bar seems like a false economy when halfway through a move you reflect that if it breaks, it has 500kg of lathe on one end and a bag of flesh (mine) on the other. That said, the adjustable pry-bar was really helpful, and I'm glad I didn't just have a plain one. FInally, however, I had it down on the rails:

At this point, I had somewhat optimistically expected that the lathe might glide upon the rails as a swan upon the lake, perhaps with me providing a gentle hand to steer it. Nope. I put my shoulder down and pushed. Nope. I roped in my mother, more in hope than expectation given that she weighs about the same as a dormouse and could do with two new hips and a lung transplant. Our combined efforts moved it a good half inch before we called a halt. Plans C, D, E, and F were quickly drawn up and discarded before we returned to the wisdom of the ancients, specifically Archimedes. If one inserts a pry-bar between the base and the ground, and then lifts up, the lathe moves forwards 2-3cm each time. As a form of locomotion it leaves much to be desired, but a few hours later, it was inside the workshop, the door could be locked, and I retreated inside for a most necessary libation.

Another vote for OnShape - I have just finished using it to model Harold Hall's QCTP design, a simple enough project but very doable and while there were a few "how do I do this moments" it was all very manageable.

One point easily overlooked, I think, is cost and availability, or ease of manufacture, of accessories and tooling. If you buy a common lathe which is or was sold by the hundred, finding a chuck or a milling slide or a design for a taper attachment is straightforward. Something a bit rarer may be the ideal price and size and so forth as a lathe, but you may find yourself taken aback when you discover how much more expensive and rare D1-5 chucks are compared to their D1-4 cousins, say.

All you can really do though, is work through what you want to do, identify what will be necessary, and then get something a bit bigger if you realistically can.

Then the other topic, which I haven't yet planned in detail, is levelling the machine. Unfortunately, the concrete floor is anything but flat. A rough measurement suggests the floor is 2" lower on the left than on the right. This is big enough that I'm thinking maybe the best thing to do is install a concrete pad for it to sit on so the two cabinet feet are both sitting on a flat surface.

When it comes to levelling itself, what do I need in terms of measuring level? A Starret 4" level is £90; but the quoted accuracy is 4-5 minutes of arc, not much better than a digital box that can resolve 0.1 degree. Or there are the Chinese made ones that claim 0.02mm over 200mm, which is less than a hundredth of a degree - hmm!