Member postings for John Doe 2

Yep. That's it.

They (RS), don't deserve our custom any more. A great pity.

I use Shapr3D and Cura slicer with my Anycubic Mega S.

When I was deciding which to go for; not many CAD programs worked on Apple devices, but Shapr3D does, and you can turn off the cloud part and keep your designs locally. I have a paid copy and they keep developing and adding features, rather than taking them away. You can also directly email the designers, who will reply, which is great. They ask for feedback and do consider suggestions. One time, a designer made and sent me an animated video of how to do a certain thing, which was terrific service.

Any CAD program will take time to learn - like transferring to a different airliner type - you have to spend several weeks learning how the new one works and how to operate it, even though the basics of what they do are the same.

Shapr3D has a discrete little banner for every function, so if you have a design open and click on a function, e.g. shell, you could if you want, click on the little banner to watch a short animated video of how that function works and how to operate it - without having to leave your design and go down a rabbit hole to learn how to use the function. This is a great feature.

Start with very simple projects and prints to learn how it all works. e.g. simple one-piece brackets or spacers.

PS, put your printer somewhere where it will not keep you awake during an overnight print, and "feed" it with an SD card. Don't use the Ethernet link to your computer - when I did that my printer would pause when the computer screen saver came on, which compromised the prints !

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 04/10/2023 11:30:40

I think it is RS who are getting expensive.

They have always been my go-to supplier but they are pricing themselves out of my pocket these days. e.g. £7.99 for a 300ml can of compressed air !!! (for blow cleaning keyboards etc). RS seem to have decided to move away from the individual engineer or the small engineering team, towards large companies and construction. Nuts and bolts now only available in quantities of 100, 500 or 1,000 for example, which used to be available in 1's, 5's and 10's.

RS used to the the gold standard in the days before the internet, because of their hugely impressive and well organised stock control and distribution system; which would enable an order to be placed and posted to arrive the next working day. And I bet we all remember the equally impressive RS (paper) catalogues, which were so fascinating to read through !

Luckily, now we have the internet; and there are many other companies around who do an equal - or far better job - of supplying components. We just have to find them.

Rutland and GSProducts are two that have impressed me.

Thanks, all.

The reason I asked was because I went onto the Geeetech (sic) website and they were quoting £9.95 for 1 kg reels of PLA.

I have used Geeetech filament, and it seems to be OK, hence my query. Their prices seem to be updated daily though, and they are now quoting £11.95, or out of stock, depending on the colour. I should have jumped in when I had the chance !

I am just coming to the end of the reels my son gave me when he gave me his 3D printer, so this is the first time I have had to look at buying filament.

Strewth. Why are people such sh*ts these days? There is organised pilfering too, where people just go behind the tills at shops and take fags and booze - threatening staff if they try to prevent them.

Stop the World - I want to get off !

It would seem difficult to run a wire through every little component. I guess that exhibitors will have to build perspex boxes over their displays, and serve customers like they used to in shops; from display cabinets only open to the inside of the stand.

What an extremely helpful reply, NOT.

I suspect the same, but where, that is the question.

I am curious, (and have obviously led a sheltered life !), What sort of a display would need this sort of protection, and are the displays often left unattended by the owner/stall holder? (toilet breaks, I suppose).

What sort of things do people steal? do they really steal things like tiny model spades etc ?

Having an alarm implies that the stall owner will not be standing next to the display, so how will they catch a thief even when the thief sets off the alarm - surely by the time the owner has returned to the stand, the thief will have mingled into the crowd?

What a sad World.

Obviously, any device using electrical or electronic detection, must send current through the wire, otherwise it cannot detect if the wire is cut - (unless the "wire" is an optical fibre).

With electronic detection, the current only need be a few milliamps - the amount required to hold a gate or a transistor on/off.

With an electrical system, the current will need to be more to hold a mechanical relay on/off, but still only milliamps.

Morning folks. I am seeing prices from £21, down to £9.95 for a 1 kg reel of PLA, for example depending which supplier I look at.

What is the general price folk are paying in UK? Is £21 too much ?

Thanks

Another idea might be not to bother building a device with electronics/electrics, but just thread through everything a few meters of thin chain, cut in a couple of places and held together with small padlocks, assuming a thin chain would fit through all the items you have.

If not, maybe some thin rigging wire (not electrical cable), but that would not be as easy to secure and have removable breaks in the loop.

Very quick and simple to build - with items bought from a DIY store. And secure enough to prevent pilfering - or at least warn of an attempt happening. The chain with a padlock every couple of meters would enable items to be released quite easily and the chain then re-secured.

Our electricity consumption for the last month was £55.89, including the daily charge, (useful things, smart meters!), for the same usage as yours, for two adults - except our shower uses gas heated water from the tank. So I might be looking carefully at other providers soon, since we are obviously paying a little too much !

Your comment about heat pumps is possibly valid today - and puts me off as well - but will we think the same when the price of gas or oil has gone up 3 fold or whatever, as governments around the World attempt to wean us off fossil fuels to meet emissions requirements ?

I think part of the very high price of heat pumps is that those quotes assume that not only the boiler is changed - the entire heating system is ripped out and new 'everything' is installed:- underfloor heating, or larger radiators, larger super-insulated hot water storage tank etc. I heard that tanks in the loft also need to be put back in, many having been taken out when converting to condensing boilers, but am not sure why this would be.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 27/09/2023 14:49:12

You can get "Evaporust" in gel form: I have seen it used on Hand Tool Rescue on Youtube.

Alternatively, the oxide removal solution supplied by the Allendale Group, for their ultrasonic cleaners seems to do a very similar job to Evaporust. I have used this solution by itself - to remove rust without the ultrasonic cleaner - and it is almost magical how you can place a rusted piece of metal in the solution, and a day later, it comes out completely rust free, and smooth, and in some cases as good as new.

Much easier than laborious scraping, grinding, or brushing off the rust - wire brushing can simply polish rust rather than remove it, and you are going to have a very difficult job to get rust out of that thread manually without damaging the thread walls or profile, and introducing lots of random irregularities.

Chemicals are the answer in this instance, I reckon.

About 30 years ago I noticed a slight deterioration of my eye sight - I realised that I could no longer see fine detail in the leaves on distant trees. I thought, oh well, here we go, time to get some glasses.

So I went to the optometrist who measured everything and said, well if you really want glasses I can prescribe them, but they will be the very smallest correction I can do. I went ahead and bought the (expensive) glasses anyway, and the distant fine detail was restored.

But then I thought about what I was doing, and did some reading into the subject and stopped using the glasses, instead forcing my eye muscles to stay strong and focus. The muscles do change the shape of the eyeball as well as the lens to assist focus, and this is important as our internal lenses become less pliable with age.

One useful exercise is to focus on something very distant, wait until the eye has fully focussed, then change to something very close, wait to refocus, and so on, back and forth, focussing between the two. I do this 10 times for each eye when I remember to, and this helps exercise the muscles.

30 years later, and having kept those glasses in their case, my uncorrected sight is very good indeed for a person of my age, and I don't need glasses, except for extremely small, fine work. When I read a bed-time book in low lighting, the letters are not completely clear, but I can still read them easily and I persevere to keep my eye muscles strong. I have just checked and I can read, unaided, small print that is just 1mm high - albeit, I need to read it near a window. At a recent airline eye test I was complimented on my visual performance for a pilot of my age and do not need glasses to fly.

Interestingly, my dominant eye has gone longer focus, and my non dominant eye has gone shorter focus, which combine to give me a large focal range. The time it takes for me to change focus from very distant to very near or vice versa, is longer than when I was young.

It is possible that after years of relying on glasses to focus, no amount of practice will bring back atrophied eye focus muscles, but for that reason I avoided and avoid glasses wherever possible, keeping my muscles strong.

For similar reasons to the focussing, I never wear sunglasses, unless it is absolutely unbearably bright, preferring to keep my iris muscles active and fit. And a smaller iris gives you a greater depth of field which aids focus range too.

Obviously, if you need glasses to drive or use machinery etc., you MUST use them !!

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 25/09/2023 10:30:14

The eye focuses through a combination of the cornea; changing the lens shape, and changing the shape of the eyeball.

These shape changes are accomplished by muscles in and around the eye.

Like any muscle in the body; if we don't regularly use them or exercise them; they will weaken. Wearing glasses mean that the eye muscles don't need to do any work to focus on close (or distant) objects, so all the muscles used for focussing will weaken. Having weakened the muscles, it makes it harder to not wear glasses and you enter a spiral of worsening eyesight.

So, as much as possible, I don't wear glasses - I force my eyes to focus by themselves, and although my sight is starting to go, I am in my 6th decade and only need glasses for very very small print and for very very fine jobs, such as marking out very fine detail.

I have regular tests and don't need glasses to drive or watch TV or to read labels at the supermarket. I only need glasses for really tiny small print, and I usually just go to the window for more light or use my phone to read that.

Unless you need a strong correction, or you are doing critical or dangerous work; I would recommend not using glasses whenever possible and building up the strength of your eye muscles. That is what I do. "Straining" your eyes is the same as feeling a bit stiff or achy after the gym - it confirms that you have been working your muscles which is beneficial, and not harmful.

It might take a couple of weeks until your eye muscles gain strength.

Ah yes, I forgot about the frequency.

So how do simple domestic fans - the reciprocating type you have on the office desk - change speeds? Do they have electronics - or just a plain three way switch? How do they achieve three different speeds with an AC motor running on a fixed AC frequency ? The motor in my fan looks like a shaded pole motor - no commutator or brushes. Since the motor - directly connected to the fan - is changing speed, it cannot be staying in step with the mains frequency. 

Would a single phase VFD work for this bandsaw, (or a 3Ph VFD, with two phases feeding dummy loads) ?

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 22/09/2023 10:21:05

Thinking laterally;

1). Use a heat gun to soften the blue plastic coarse thread on that pole, then screw it into the die casting, (assuming the OD and ID are close enough).

2). Coat a suitable release agent onto the threads in the die casting, then insert a rod of smaller OD to the thread ID, and fill the gap with epoxy and hold the rod still until the epoxy has set hard.

3). If you don't need to ever disassemble it; don't use any release agent but just epoxy a suitable pole into the thread 'socket'

3a). Glue a short metal rod with a known thread on the outside end into the die casting, e.g an M12 bolt with the head cut off. Then drill and cut that known thread into the top of the pole you want to mount it on.

Just thinking out loud, and I don't have much motor knowledge, but would a 240V mains lighting dimmer work on a single phase motor, once it had started ? (probably have to be a pro theater lighting dimmer to handle a 750W load).

How do 240VAC domestic cooling fans with, say, three fixed speeds work ? Different, selectable windings in the same motor, or some electronics?

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 21/09/2023 23:11:19

Other thoughts:

Don't take this the wrong way, but were the LED batons a quality make or cheap as chips? One of their power supplies might be ageing prematurely, causing odd currents to flow in odd places, e.g. to earth.

Ditto the light switch - quality make, or cheapest ? Perhaps a bad connection developed in the switch contacts which cleared when you unscrewed the switch plate to check the wiring. Maybe there is a fracture in one of the wires, but held together in contact by the insulation.

The light in my inherited small garage just will not work reliably. I have had the (Old MK) socket in pieces and cleaned the switch contacts with fibreglass cleaning pen and switch cleaner spray, ditto the 13A plug and pin and socket contacts, but the bloody light just will not work reliably. It is at the bottom of my current to-do list though. Rapid current on/offs between faulty contacts can trip a breaker, as can an incandescent bulb when its filament breaks. Sounds like you might have cleared a fault in the switch ?

Ditto the MCBs in your cons unit; quality or cheapest?

Final thought; has your shed or house installation lost its earth ?

Thank you, Bill for the recommendation. I took my wife for a visit this week and we rode on the (Steam) train three times, as well as having sandwiches and cakes in the station restaurant. All the staff were good, and "old school" in terms of service and attention to customers.

One thing we should perhaps say is that the line is not all that long, unfortunately. A there and back trip only takes 32 mins, and that includes the engine disconnecting and reattaching for the return trip.

But a very nicely presented and well run facility. Plenty of free car parking etc. A very pleasant day out - even though it took us 2 and a half hour's drive each way to get there ! We have an afternoon tea booked for another day !

I did quite a bit of research about DHL for a job application, and for what it's worth, DHL are striving to be a good company, and are pouring money into their delivery business Worldwide. A large fleet of Boeing 777 freighters are going into East Midlands to expand their business here.

We had a box thrown over our fence and I took it to the correct address around the corner. Then about 2 weeks later, a DHL chap rang our door and said he had come to collect the errant box. I told him I had already delivered it, and how annoyed we were by someone else's box being thrown over our fence. The DHL guy told me that the other DHL guy who did that had been sacked.

So it might take a while, But I am fairly confident that they will follow this up. They might get things wrong occasionally, but they are not a cheap corner-cutting company.

Good luck.

(I should explain that I didn't get the job - which would have involved flying those freighters - because unfortunately, I screwed up the Simulator test, and you only get one chance. So that's me buggered. But I do respect DHL as a company and I know they are trying to do a good job)

Edited By John Doe 2 on 06/09/2023 15:47:52