Member postings for Tony sacc

The top section of the stand is made from heavy angle iron in an H pattern. There are fine thread bolts welded underneath on each corner, these locate in holes drilled into a flat plate on the top of the lower cabinet and have nut with which to adjust the bed. It is accurate to within 0.02mm over the length of the bed and takes about 10 minutes to true the bed.

The drive is via two belts, one belt for the three lower speeds, the other for the three upper speeds. It has an idler mounted on an arm for adjusting belt tension, however, an Allen key was required to loosen the idler for belt changes which proved too slow, so, I made a spring loaded arm which supplies the tension. To change belts, simply pull the lever, change the belt and let the lever go.

I’ve also added a tray on the tailstock and another on the headstock for storage of tool shims and what not.

I made a canvas bed protector which sits beneath the chuck and is connected to the carriage. The canvas is rolled around a PVC tube riding in bearings. Also rolled around the PVC is a length of cord which is routed over a couple of pulleys to a weight contained within a PVC tube supplying tension for the canvas bed protector.

I make accessories for the lathe, rather than buy them, so far a scissor knurler, a ball turner, some tool holders and a few tangential tool holders.

Edited By Tony sacc on 18/08/2023 00:22:35

Moderator Edit: rotated photos.

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 18/08/2023 12:39:10

This is my lathe.

Branded ‘Impala’, it is actually an Optimum Maschinen, a German manufacturer operating out of China. This is my fifth lathe, I bought my first, 9x20, back in the early 90s.

I’ve made a few mods and bits and pieces for it. It came with the usual sheet metal cabinet which I didn’t like, so, I made another, the stand is in two sections and features an inbuilt bed trueing system and coolant system.

The bottom section is made of 2” round, heavy wall tubing, it has two shelves, a metrology drawer and a small shelf above for small item storage, chuck Jaws, etc. The bottom shelf is for small stock, the upper shelf for chucks, change gears, traveling steadies, etc. On the back wall of the cabinet is a 12 volt, centrifugal coolant pump, the coolant container is mounted on the right hand side.

The pump is gravity fed coolant from the tank and pumps it up through a 12mm tube, then on to a 25mm tube running under the swarf tray then back to the coolant tank. It’s a closed looping system which also aerates the coolant, so, doesn’t smell and there is very little wastage. I think I’ve changed the coolant about 4-5 timess in the 10 years the system has been working.

There are two drains in the swarf tray which dump coolant into the 25mm tube. Between the 25mm tube and the pump is a take off which delivers coolant to two flexible nozzles, one on the cross slide, the other mounted to the rear splash guard. Each nozzle has a small tap to vary coolant flow and there is a larger tap between the take off and the 25 mm tube for pressure control to the take off..

Edited By Tony sacc on 18/08/2023 00:13:33

Edited By Tony sacc on 18/08/2023 00:14:59

That must cost you a bomb. I don't know about prices where you are, but in Oz a 10mm HSS is around $14. Cobalt, which I mostly use, are twice that. That's around £7, £14 for cobalt.

I agree, I'm just lazy, can't be bothered digging it out of the box. Of course I've been hand sharpening drill bits since I was 15, that was 57 years ago, I just find it easier and quicker.

I get bored easy, when I do, I make something I don't need, this is one of those things - a drill sharpening jig.

I normally sharpen drills by hand/eye, but I have used this on occasion to good effect. It's particularly good for sharpening drills when you require an accurately sized hole without resorting to a reamer. When sharpening by hand, no matter how good you think you are, there will always be some discrepancy in the length of the cutting shoulders, so the hole it drills will be equal to twice the length of the longest shoulder, this isn't normally a problem with jigs.

I made the main body from 25mm square stock, machined a V on one side and cut a slot in the bottom of the V. There's a hole through miiddle which contains a 6mm threaded rod. riding on the threaded rod is a nut to which I welded a fin the fin pokes through the slot into the V. The end of the threaded rod has a knurled adjusting knob and a knurled locking nut.

I vaguely remember including an advance rod backlash adjuster, but can't remember how I did it.

On top of the main body is a U shaped bracket with a clamping screw, the clamping screw acts on an H plate which slides up and down inside the U shaped bracket, that clamps the drill bit in place and the shark fin nut acts on the back of the drill bit thus advancing it. At the front there is a tapped hole for attaching an indexing pointer but I've never used it.

The main body is attached to a 6mm plate which has a 12mm guide plate fastened underneath. The angle is set at 118 degrees and is not adjustable.

The jig is useless by itself, so I made a table with a 12mm slot across the middle in which the guide plate runs. So to use, clamp the drill in place and slide the jig across the table, thus grinding a facet. To advance the drill, turn the knob and lock it off with the locking nut, when one side is done, turn the drill over 180 degrees using the indexing pointer and repeat.

Cutting angle and relief angle are adjustable by angling the table. I do have marks on the table for this, but they are useless as the wheel gets smaller with use, making the marks redundant.

Probably over complicated in design, but it is simple to use and it works well. You can grind the web thinner at the tip with a diamond wheel, but I've never found it necessary as a conically sharpened drill has more of a chisel point that a facet sharpened drill has.

Now before you feel moved to point out one shoulder of the drill looks longer than the other, take a look at the angle of the drill to the camera, nuff said?

I made a wooden box for it and, in Chinese script, wrote 'drill sharpening jig' on top. Just to give it a bit of cred, we all know the best tools come from China, right?

You are correct of course, drivers routinely do not see, pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, animals and even other cars sharing the road with them. I use an ebike now, but I prefer to ride on pathways where provided, unfortunately, I can't drive or ride my car or motorbike on pathways, so, when using them, I join the throngs with selected blindness.

Kangaroos are nocturnal, so I suppose they were a bit sleepy.

Better than shooting them isn't it.

I bought a DJI mini 3 Pro a while back, After trying to use cheap and nast RC helps, this thing was a breeze, and the camera is exceptional.

I've managed to crash it a few times, mostly just damaging props, the last crash I broke the gimbal and props, cost a bomb to fix.

Anyway, here's a couple of videos I shot, the first one I flew around the local wetlands a couple of times, the first loop forward, the second loop sideways. In the second video I was filming a mob of roos, one got a little irate and took a swipe at the drone. Luckily, he missed. Fast forward to 4.40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5J6tStXLEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiKv8dNZCm0

Have never broken or bent one. Square tube is pretty dang strong. That's the normal design for the boom, I've never seen one that was braced.

The white one had braces behind the cross beam on to the seat beam,  but I found it wasn't necessary, so, I discontinued that design feature on later builds.

Recumbents, if you look at them critically are just leg presses with wheels attached, you can put a lot of pressure behind a leg press, that's why recumbents are so fast.  Haven't bent or broken one yet.

Edited By Tony sacc on 14/08/2023 02:02:40

I made recumbent bikes and trikes for about 20 years. 8 trikes and four bikes. I don't use other's plans,, rather I design and build myself.

I built the grey/white one about 20 years ago and used it everyday for about 7-8 years. Made of junk I found, the only things I bought for it weren the front hubs and stainless spokes. The rest I found out Bush, on the side of the road or at the rubbish dump. Eventually, the chain and sprockets wore out, so I retired it and started building others. This one featured a modified rear cassette in the middle to raise the gearing to account for the 20" wheel at back. It had side pull brakes, 20" wheels, five speed cassette at the rear, tthree speeds at the front and four ranges in the middle via a modified rear cassette and deraileur to account for the smaller wheel at the rear.

I started building another two wheeler. a few years ago I got it to the test ride stage but fell off trying to ride it in my small back yard, badly gashing my leg and head, the wife stepped in and convinced this old codger to,stick to trikes for safety sake. So, it went on the scrap heap before getting painted.

The last trike I built encompassed all the best design features I came up with over the years.. It featured:

Deore cycle componentry,

9 position rear suspension,

Hydraulic disks,

Tank steering,

lumbar support,

42 degree back rest,

adjustable toe in via left and right hand threaded toe rod ends,,

Two degree caster and camber,

27 speed,

20" wheels at front,

700c at the back,

19kgs.

My hips started playing up after building this one, so I sold it and moved on to ebikes.

Just as a matter of interest, recumbent bikes are extremely fast, so fast they were banned from competing against diamond frames back around 1930, I believe the ban still stands.

Edited By Tony sacc on 14/08/2023 01:33:28

Edited By Tony sacc on 14/08/2023 01:34:21

I made these two air engines about 10 years ago, just to see if they'd work. They did so switched my attention to bigger things.

The first on was a single cylinder made of steel. I scratched my head for a while trying to come up with a valve that'd work. This valve system worked fine for air, but I don't think it would handle steam too well.

It worked on about 2-3 psi and up. After I made the single cylinder steel engine, I made a horizontally opposed twin cylinder with another two cylinders for valving, fed by small tubes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoprenFsAt4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhb14gCQ5_8

Lost interest after that and took up building other things.

The lead into the bell mouth is flat, so not a perfect shape for induction. You can recess the filter lower on the bell mouth, creating a bit of a lip on the outer periphery of the bell mouth to improve induction, but realistically the improvement in induction wouldn’t be worth the time.

Both filters fit well and the hoses from the fuel distributor block lead over the filters nice and neatly. Happy with the outcome, except the inner knurled nuts are a little difficult to get to, probably due more to the fact my fingers are fused, but I can turn them with a little bit of messing around, better still, use the wife, her fingers aren’t fused. I’ve yet to get some perforated sheet metal to replace the stainless crap I used to keep the foam in place.

Pancake filters.

I took lots of pictures to outline the steps in making them.

I cut a 15mm slice off the 101.6mm lump of ally and turned down one end to 97.4mm, then cut a piece of 1.7mm sheet to around 111-mm in diameter, stuck them together and bashed the overhang until there wasn’t one. I have to use my left hand now, as the right elbow complains. Sounds easy, but it’s not, out of every 10 strikes, I think I miss about nine.

Once formed, I mounted it in the four jaw, and turned the overhang down to 3mm, then smoothed out all the scratches and what not with sand paper, finishing off with the random orbital sander with 240 grit.

Next, I mounted the 15mm slab in the three jaw using the turned down area and drilled through with a 25mm bit, machined the outer diameter to 101.4mm, machined out the centre leaving a 2mm wide lip on the periphery, 3mm deep, then bored out the 25mm centre hole to 57.3mm to fit the 57.4 mm carb bell mouth. .10 mm proved a little tight, .07 would have been better I think.

I flipped the slab over and mounted it in the four jaw, then spent a couple of hours trying to centre the damn thing, then turned down the inner mounting ring so its 8mm wide and the flat body of the filter 2mm thick. Final step, turn down the inner mounting ring so its 9.8mm deep.

The cutting tool was then centred., spot on, and used to scribe a line across the back of the centre mounting ring. After removing from the chuck I found the centre point using a calliper, centre popped it, mounted it on the mill and drilled the centre pops with a 4mm bit, then mounted it on the pedestal drill, centred the holes and tapped the 4mm holes with a 5mm x .8 tap. The plate was then turned on its side, and drilled and tapped in the centre of the centre ring at 90degrees to the other two holes on the face.

The piece was mounted in the three jaw again and using 240 grit any cutting ridges were smoothed over, then both plates were polished.

The knurled securing nuts were turned up from a piece of 20mm stock, tapped 5mm and then knurled using the scissor knurler. These were mostly done by eye, so won’t be absolutely identical. You’d need a calliper to pick up the difference though, so good are my four eyes.

The carb body was mounted in the three jaw and a file used to remove the ridge at the beginning of the bell mouth. The face of the bell mouth was pretty rough, so I took the time to smooth that with some emery. The turned piece was located over the bell mouth, the assembly was then stuck in the vice and pressed into place.

A longer inlet tract can increase the engine’s lower rpm power and torque output. Conversely, at higher engine rpms, a longer inlet tract can limit the engine’s higher rpm power output.

In a nutshell increasing tract length can make engine power more usable for everyday riding. The XS650 is a 360 degree twin, 1ie, it is a shaker, and not really suitable for a short inlect tract runner. The higher the revs the more uncomfortable it is to ride.

Of course, that's not the end of it, to realise any changes in performance the length of the inlet runner should be tuned to match the pressure wave at selected rpms, tuned correctly, the pressure wave will arrive back at the intake valve just as it opens.

Longer runners also slow the pressure wave which can have detrimental effects if the runner is too long.

As an example of carb intakes,the picture shows the filter base at the same level as the bellmouth, that's not ideal, moving the filter base back a little, so a rounded bell mouth edge protrudes above the filter base would be better.  However, the difference would be minimal, as is the extra 30mm in manifold length:  The manifold is not a tuned length, so would not affect performance much at all.  Unles of course I lucked on the right length. 

Minor changes like these are of no real use on their own, however, in conjunction with two into one exhausts, lumpy cams, high comp pistons, flat slide carbs, 270.degree cranks, big bores, etc. the increase in performance can be startling.  Individually, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference though.

Inlet tract design is a real can of worms.

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 10:15:23

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 10:35:04

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 10:37:29

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 10:41:19

A couple of manifolds I machined up for the VM carb conversion.

The TX650 originally had BS38 carbs, these are a CV carb, similar to SUs, which I detest.. Diaphragms and other bits were junk, and I don't like CV carbs so they were junked and I bought a couple of VM34 round slides.the carbs came with manifolds, rubbers, cables, pod filters and cable splitter. The manifolds were nicely made but had elongated 8mm mounting holes, requiring 6-8mm adapters and jiggling the manifolds around to line up with the inlet tract on the cylinder hea - not on my my bike!.

On fitting, I also found the cables exiting the top of the carbs interfered with the petcocks, the only option was to tilt the carbs over at a rather serious angle. This is quite a popular conversion for this bike and that's what everyone does, tilt the carbs over. Again, not on my bike!

So I decided to machine up a couple of longer manifolds to move the carbs behind the petcocks. To make them from one piece would have required a 90mm round piece of stock, a lot of waste and a lot of turning,so, I decided to make them from two pieces and press them together. The manifold plenums are 40mm with a 34mm bore to suitt both the intake size and the mounting rubbers. The mounting flanges are 90mm wide and the plenums around 30mm longer than stock.

I made one to see how it would fit and look,it worked out well, so I made a matching one for the other side. First turning down the plenum, then shaping the flange. As the two are a press fit, I made the first 25 mm of the plenum .40 mm bigger than the the remaining length, that allowed me to press them togeer without scratching the hell out of the plenums.

Once pressed together I mounted them on the lathe and machined the face of the flange nice and flat, then turned up a couple of 6mm spiggots and pressed them into place. The spigots are to connect vacuum lines from the manometer I made for syncing the carbs.

Once done I mounted everything, spun up some brass cable nipples, shortened the cables and soldered the nipples in place. I also had to turn up a couple of fuel hose adapters as the carb intakes are 8mm, whereas the petcock outlets are 6mm. I overcame this problem with a different fuel feed methodology later, but more on that later.

I then started the bike, read the plugs, changed a few jets, connected the manometer, started the bike up again and synced the carbs. Sweet as a loolly, that's how it ran. Nice crisp throttle response.

Later on, I made up a couple of pancake filters and a fuel distributor block to overcome and neaten the jumble of fuel hoses, adapters, T pieces and elbows. More on them later.

Longer manifolds do change torque and power curves, however, more so on two strokes than four.  On four strokes, the change is minimal and a 30mm increase in length does not affect power and torque curves at all.

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 00:34:08

Edited By Tony sacc on 12/08/2023 00:36:03

This is the Reed valve and catch can I made for the bike, the original breather just had a baffle and blowby gas was recycled to,the air cleaner intake.

I didn't like that idea, so decided to make a reed valve and couple it to a catch can.

Blowby gas enter the main body, out the reed valve and is funnelled upward, does a Umturn at the top and is then funnelled down and out the exit spigot which is connected to,the catch can. Any oil caught before the reed is collected in a small pocket at the bottom and fed back to the rocker area.

The catch can has four baffles topped with stainless pot scrubber material. Blowby gas enters the can via the tube half way up is then directed downward were some oil is separated and pools in the bottom. The gas is then directed upward through the four baffles and pot scrubber, any trapped oil drops down into the bottom of the can. That's the plan anyway. Cleanish gas, exits via a tube at the top and into the atmosphere via a foam filter.

Reed valves are supposed to maintain negative sump pressure, thus preventing leaking through seals and gasses. The lower pressure in the sump also provides less pressure acting against the underneath of the piston on the downstroke. It also minimises particulates mixing with the engine oil.

I think all modern vehicles have similar systems fitted as standard, although most breath through the intake filter..

Due to the mounting position of the Reed valve, polishing was not considered, rather it was bead blasted.

Edited By Tony sacc on 11/08/2023 12:22:48

You can't make money out of restoring or cuctomising bikes at home, even if you do all the work yourself,the cost is extremely high. But, it keeps me off the streets at night.

I bought this bike three years ago with the intention of rebuilding it into Cafe racerish format. In pretty sad condition when the fellas next door took it off the trailer for me: Upper crankcase destroyed by an errant chain, every nut and bolt rusted away, spokes rusted away, aluminium badly oxidised, some missing bits, no compression to speak of.

Not a lot of Yamaha left on the bike now, lots of custom bits and pieces made in my workshop. I do everything myself: Anodising, painting, electrical, welding, fabrication, machining , et al.

Over the three years I've been building it I've made a seat pan, tail light, headlight brackets, aluminium battery carrier,side covers, chain guard, chain adjuster, air filters, manifolds, PMA mount, single points cam and points backing plate, remote spin on filter mount, engine brackets, cooler mount, handlebar risers, fuel distributor, brake line divider, catch can, Reed valve breather, laced the wheels, turned the hubs, modified the forms, polished lots and lots of aluminum, made two harnesses - one for lights, one for ignition, converted to VM carbs, rebuilt the engine and painted the bike. Plus lots and lots of minor stuff.

This is the finished bike. I can't ride the bike myself as I have chronic RA, which has robbed me of all strength and fused fingers, joint replacements have robbed me of dexterity. That why it took three years to build. I got the two young fellas next door to take it for it first run. Everything worked fine, they ride modern technicolour nightmares, now they want a classic.

A quick video fly around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCiit3y8NMA

Adam taking it for it's first run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaFxHRc3C-Yo