Member postings for Green Techie

What type of preservative was it? Is there a chance it reacted with the laminating glue?

Apologies if I'm stating the obvious to you, but worth mentioning to any reading this who are interested in making nest boxes. General guidance on nest boxes and preservative is: "Any rough wood, planking or exterior ply wood will be suitable. Try to use at least 15mm thick wood, to ensure better insulation. You can protect the exterior of the box with water-based wood stain, but do not use any wood stains or preservative inside the box or round the entrance hole. Fenceguard and Sadolin Classic (a wood stain, not a preservative) are recommended by the manufacturers as being suitable products for use on nest boxes. Cuprinol TimberCare (for use on rough sawn timber) is also safe to birds when dry. As with any preservative, do not paint the inside of the nest box or around the entrance hole."

Good to see the photos (with any rotation). Those sizes look like a good fit.

The power lift isn't what I was expecting, although I now see what you meant now about some possible drag.

I just went to go back to my AliExpress basket and the kit has gone up since I added it. It was about £176 when Olly bought his. I think you said yours was about £180 and it's now £261.47.

Thanks again, that's good to know. I'll probably go down the same route.

Thanks. I'll look out for the new thread.

I don't know if I'll go as far as Y & Z (or cnc) but I can see how I may start craving an X motor.

Thanks Rob! I've been so short on time since mine arrived that I haven't even been able to clean it properly yet.

I'm pleased that you're pleased with the mill. Bodes well for my own future experience. I'm looking forward to making some use of it!

I have several Arduinos not currently in use, so that route might be worth pursuing. Can you recommend a good source for the stepper motors? What was the name of the YouTube channel?

I see that this chap has made a spindle lock :-
**LINK**

I'll have to test my tapping buttons. I've not tried them yet.

Not sure which bit was waffle. It was all interesting and/or useful to me!

That was quicker than I expected. No customs charges then?

Well done for getting it fitted so quickly. I've had no time to spend on mine recently. Glad the DRO seems up to the job. Were the 250mm, 450mm, 400mm scales the best sizes to order?

It would be great if you could post some pictures.

It sounds like your toy collection is coming on nicely! The shell mills look very effective.

Is the power feed from Arc? I don't see a power lift on their site.

I've finally found it! I was going to the forums homepage, not the homepage for the whole site. I had never scrolled down the homepage of the site itself, so I hadn't seen that search box. It would be good if the search box at the top had a tick for "whole site", or even the one on the forum homepage.

OK, I'm baffled. Are we talking about the little white box at the top of the forum home page with a "GO" button next to it? I've tried three different browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Brave) on Linux and Windows and I get "no exact matches" each time! "Forum Threads" and "Articles" are ticked. Or is "homepage search" a reference to Google's homepage? I tend to forget about that, as all my browsers are set to "blank page".

Hi Jason, I tried the search box with the default settings but I got "There were no exact matches for the phrase 'sx2.7 vice'".

I think part of the reason I prefer the dial (apart from being quicker) is that as a software developer I'm stuck pushing buttons most of the day!

Thanks Rob, I will be very keen to know what you make of the DRO and how the sizes match up with the SX2.7.

I only recently got my mill and went through the same SX3/SX2.7 dilemma. I still have nagging doubts, especially as Jason recommended in this thread to go for the SX3 if funds allow. One way or another it seems you can always spend more. I hope to take some consolation from using the funds saved to add useful features, like DRO.

I do like the recent change to the SX2.7 of the speed dial, instead of buttons. My intended uses/requirements are largely crystal ball gazing. I mainly want it to make/modify what I anticipate (and now hope!) will be fairly small metal parts for repairs/improvements. More maintaining/mending than model making.

I purchased the “SX2.7 Mill Starter Set 2” with mine, so I have the 80mm vice.

My first intended project is probably at the upper end of what I expect to grip in the vice. Which is to modify the tool post of my lathe, which is currently a 90mm x 90mm x 70mm steel block with a single tool slot. The current slot is too high to take some of the tooling the (Kerry AG) lathe came with, which seems odd. There is a one inch slot but the centre height limits the tooling to 12mm.

I’m still wondering about getting a QCTP. As an aside I find it a little frustrating the when you look at QCTP specs they always describe the post as being suitable for X” swing, when the key measurement is distance from the (in my case) compound slide to centre height. Mine is 34mm, which is probably a T2 or “250 111” for Chinese imports. The specs also sometimes fail to give the vertical travel of the tool holder, required to calculate the maximum tool size for a given centre height.

Btw, thank you Jason for the videos and vice comparison photos, amongst all the other information you have provided. When you said “We have covered vice sizes on this mill in several threads” I went looking for them, but I couldn’t find them with the forum search facility, as it only searches the subject title. Is there an “advanced search” option that I’m failing to see? I found them with DuckDuckGo using: +"sx2.7" +"vice" site:www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums

I'm thinking of getting the same one for my SX2.7. I've not fitted a DRO before, but the set looks very good value for money. I was previously wondering about using TouchDRO.

You've now made me wonder about getting the Coaxial Centering Indicator Set and I was already looking at the parallel bar set. They're expensive pets are these machine tools!

Edited By JasonB on 16/04/2021 07:12:34

Sorry about that. I asked a mate to help me out with a parking ticket, but they accidentally pressed Ctrl+A before Ctrl+X. Looks like I'll have to tell them that someone's noticed.

Interesting question. Although the underlying OS hasn't changed as obviously as the many GUI's now available what has changed, certainly since the first Linux I tried installing on a home PC (probably around 1993), is how much can be accomplished without resorting to the command line. I reckon even in the last 10 years the number of times I have had to use the command line has dropped significantly. I installed Linux on my partner's PC and my kids laptops. The laptops had were older models and I used the command line to install an updated WiFi driver, but otherwise it hasn't been required.

Many users with simple needs (web, office apps and games from the software manager) would probably never need to use the command line. Also, if problems occur there are many web pages with solutions that be can cut/pasted into a command prompt to fix common issues.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm in IT. Paranoia is part of the job description. Jokes are optional, although humour is forbidden.

Modern Linux versions have a much lower threshold for easy of use than older ones. Linux Mint Mate/Cinnamon look and behave in a very similar way to Windows (somewhere between 7 and 10).

The obscure/random passwords are good. It's especially important not to use the same ones for insecure sites as secure ones (like banks!). There was a site set up some years ago with a vast archive of football match results and statistics. It was free to join, but you had to create a username and password. The site was set up by scammers who were harvesting the usernames and password to test against secure sites.

One thing to bear in mind is that passwords are not (or should not) be stored as the text you type but as a "hash" of the original password. This is the reason why you are encouraged to use mixed case and numbers/punctuation. It increases the size of the hash stored, making it less likely to match a guessed password. You can have a very long password with only a few different letters and the resulting hash number can be quite small and may match other simple passwords. Add some numbers and punctuation and the complexity of the stored number can grow rapidly!

Just my two pence worth, but if you are concerned that a mobile is listening to what you are saying (especially not during a phone conversation) then remember that it would need to send that information somewhere. Any processing would be unlikely to happen on the phone and to upload audio would take detectable bandwidth, by which I mean you could see that the phone was using data (more obvious on a limited data plan). So if your mobile data and WiFi is off then there is nowhere for it to go. It could be recorded and uploaded later, but you could test that more easily by watching for an effect when you enable data again. Of course it could be covertly uploading data when data is not enabled, but that would take a special agreement with every mobile operator for specially marked unbilled data usage. It seems that a lot of people would have to be kept quiet if that is happening.

As regards the comment that what one person does on their device affects the ads seen on a different device; if they are on the same WiFi connection they are sharing the same IP address so that could explain the link.

Thinking about what Dave said about whether the lathe is in "reasonable condition" I have uploaded a few photos of the ways to my "Kerry AG" album, in case that might be any sort of guide to the lathe's past history. There are many, mostly small, marks but I don't know what is typical for a lathe of this age. So perhaps these marks indicate training or educational use by inexperienced users, or are they signs of heavy industrial use?

I've uploaded some photos from the original ad, which described the lathe as having "noisy screw cutting but probably an easy fix!". They are all in a new public album.

One other thing I would welcome advice on, or suggestions on websites or other resources which give advice is how to care for the lathe and not damage it.

I purchased the "full set" of documentation for the AG from lathes.co.uk but there is not a lot to guide me on looking after the lathe. Certainly no diagram with arrows saying "oil all these places". It does make it clear to use oil, not grease. I assume the lack of "idiot instructions" is because anyone using one of these machines would have known what to do. Like Dave said, these would have been used by skilled people.

I found this page on Leeds Hack Space: **LINK**

... with advice on using their Kerry AG. They are using "50 SAE yellow metal safe" oil. They also give some guidance on oiling.

They also say "When using the lathe in 1500 rpm speeds on the left hand tumbler only power feeds E, F and G only should be used in order to protect the gearbox. With the left hand tumbler in positions A or B the spindle RPM must not exceed 36rpm." - this would not have been obvious to me and I want to avoid causing accidental damage!

Hi Dave, your comment came in just as I hit "post" on mine. Yes, a big jump indeed, the Super Adept would sit nicely on the compound slide of the Kerry!

That's a very interesting historical insight and really puts things in perspective, thank you. As to the condition of the lathe I can't yet say (hence my request for comments on my photos of the gears). It "seems" in reasonable/good condition, but I am not qualified to judge. I have already discovered that parts are expensive! Having paid less for the lathe than some of the Chinese machines I was looking at I quickly exceeded my initial outlay on purchasing a 9" 4 jaw chuck, fixed steady and a collet set.

I have a 750W 4-pole three phase motor and inverter, which I was using with the Super Adept, knowing it was total overkill and intending to fit it to a later, larger lathe. It looks like it should be possible to fit it to the Kerry, which would give me variable speed in the different gear ranges.

Any suggestions as to things to check/look for to judge the condition of the Kerry would be appreciated. I'll post a couple of photos of the overall condition. I don't know if it's a good sign, but the front plate which shows the threading settings in still fully legible, whereas others I have seen pictured are often polished smooth (as it appears is Steve's at the start of this thread).