Member postings for ChrisH

Humm, no shed time today, had to go Christmas shopping in Exeter with Senior Management. Put stone in shoe before setting off, just to be sure. Perhaps a return to the nerves in the shed tomorrow to complete the internal thread, SWMBO permitting!

Chris - now relaxing in the armchair with a well earned beer.

Nervous day today, machining a back plate for a new chuck which needs an internal thread cut to suit/fit a 45mmOD x 3.5mm pitch male thread. The nervous bit was starting the internal thread - the first one I have done for 50 years I guess. Have got about ⅔ done so far before end of play for the day and so far have not made a horses bottom of it - fingers crossed for the completion!

Chris - Radio 2, plus Joe Cocker, Led Zep, Dylan, Santana, Stones, 1960's stuff.......... and similar! At good volume! Plus dog free, so no doggy comments from me!

Picking up on this thread somewhat late in the day:

Vic, 12 deg. angles for the tool bit, what angle does the grinding jig have on the ones you have made?

Chris

That may not be a bad idea Bodgit !

Chris

On my mill table I drilled 1/2in hole and then opened out until a 15mm copper pipe would just fit in, then sealed it with Araldite and secured/reinforced with an epoxy metal filet around the outside. I then placed a mesh filter across the hole to stop the swarf going down the tube - the filter is very easy to keep clean by a wee brush but of course it's a function of the beast that it does restrict flow a bit. Mesh choice is a tricky one, too fine a mesh and flow is restricted a lot, too coarse a mesh and it doesn't stop the swarf. I'm not sure I have it right, I think it could be more coarse, but it's not too far wrong! From the 15mm outlet pipe I changed direction with an elbow then straight into a reinforced ½in hose down to the tank. The pipe exits at the top of the tank into a wide bore (relatively) return which again has a coarse plastic filter sitting in the hole which provide very little if any restriction due to the area of the filter relative to the size of return pipe and flow. I'm not sure I have any syphon effect in the drain pipe but it sort of works if I don't wind the coolant flow up too much but I need to improve the system as I would like more coolant flow at times.

Chris

PS is it just me, but when I press 'Return' on the keyboard on this post the curser goes back to the beginning, not drop down to the next line? Is this a function of any recent upgrade, never used to happen before?

My pipes have a gentle slope down from the table. I am also using neat cut oil at the moment. I would have liked to put large pipe in but the problem would be in the making of the hole into the table, getting a 15mm hole to suit the copper pipe elbow used meant starting with a half inch hole and then Dremel grinding it out larger to fit. Where do you get silicone pipe, or is that just another name for clear unreinforced type flexi hose? Ensuring the hose does not put in a restriction itself by kinking is sometimes a problem too I find. I do think a bigger bore pipe/hose would be better, but it's the fitting of it

Chris

With further thought I wonder if the drain pipe requires an air vent a couple of inches downstream from the connection to the table to aid the flow? Might try that.

Chris

Graham, I also have a round column mill and have fitted the table with one drain so far, with a 15mm copper pipe draining from a hole the bottom of which is only just below the level of the bottom of the end trough. The fall to the tank is only about 8-10inches and about 2 ft horizontally but the drain pipe does end at just below the top of the coolant tank, well above the tank level. Even so, the rate of drain is very slow, enough for a modest coolant feed but not a flood, not sure how to speed it up other than improve the pipe run layout. Will be interested if you manage to get a drastic improvement to see how you did it.

Chris

Hi, thanks Neil and Les. With your help and reference to MEW 158 have managed to determine my little gears are DP 36 and with a PA of 14.5degrees so far, so well on the way with them. Thanks to you both,

Chris

I have a bag of assorted small spur gears, some steel, some fibre, up to about 1.25in od and up to ½in bore. But whilst I can count the teeth I have no idea of how to identify them any further.

Can anyone tell me how to identify them please, what to check, etc?

Chris

Neil - the Little People have borrowed it. Happens all the time.......

I'm still wondering what "a bit of bare wall" (Neil's comment of two days ago) looks like. Why do you find those Neil?

Chris

Jason, I had a go at Jan Ridders 'Blokker" ignition system a few months ago and got it all wrong and it didn't work. I then bought another spark gas lighter and different capacitors but partly I have not had the time to redo it plus I also lost confidence to have another go, but another go I will have sometime soon.

Will look at S/S in the USA too - thanks for that.

Chris

Hi Ron, was that a copper boiler you were welding?

When you say it's welded fine, have you welded up a test piece and then cut it, sectioned it, to determine the weld penetration? That would be an interesting exercise and a good reassurance of the weld integrity!

I must say I quite like the idea of TIG welding as you describe, it certainly gets round the problem of ensuring you get enough heat into a soldered joint.

Chris

Thanks for all the responses. Certainly gave a lot of food for thought.

I will probably try a glow plug system initially although some of the model spark plug ignition systems as marketed by Just Engines, MiniMag and Hemmingway Kits look attractive. It's just the cost! Now where have I heard that before?

Chris

I am trying to complete a part-built 3 cylinder 4 stroke aero engine; to give an indication of size, bore and stroke are 24mm each.

One of the missing bits is the ignition system and there seems to be no provision for it so far in terms of space for any timing mechanism. So I was wondering if the it had been planned to use glow plugs; I had originally assumed a spark plug system would be employed.

Now my knowledge on glow plugs is zilch, other than they need a battery source to get going (glowing) and possibly to keep the plugs glowing when the engine is on slow running. Also that with glow plugs there seems to be no provision/requirement for timing.

Could anyone with knowledge of glow plugs please give me some advice on how to employ them, is the timing or lack of it an issue and what plugs would be suitable, or should I bin the idea and go for spark plugs and it's associated equipment instead?

As I am now trying to design the valve timing gear at the moment now is also the time to sort out the ignition system as crankcase space will very much be an issue if a timing actuation has to be incorporated as well, as I had originally intended.

Thanks in anticipation,

Chris.

Back in the 1980's a guy at work came out the supermarket one Saturday morning to find a scumbag trying to break into his Audi. Telling his wife and young son to stay by the shop he went over making for the car beside his, dropped his shopping when he got there and grabbed scumbag in a headlock and asked what he was doing. Each time scumbag answered he was trying to unlock his car our mate walloped him good and hard and asked again. Scumbag was too thick to change his story so got a good walloping. When plod arrived our mate said to plod he was sorry, he might have over-reacted a bit, but plod, bless him, said "oh no Sir, he was surely trying to resist arrest". Things were different back then!

Don't knock perception. Perception is not just caused by media and forum chat but also by personal experience. If there are crimes more frequently being experienced in an area where previously they were not happening with such frequency, then in that area the perception is that crime is on the increase even if it is just local to that area.

For example, oil nicked from home oil storage tanks is not something that affects cities where vast amounts of people live, but in rural areas where mains gas is not on tap many people rely on oil for heating and for those people increasing reports, as there are, of oil being nicked increases the perception that crime is on the rise and is worrying for them. Overall crime may be falling as a percentage of population, but the population increases tend to affect cities more than rural areas, and in rural areas crime, affecting a much smaller amount of people, may be on the increase.

Plus. There is no comfort brought to the victim of a burglary by saying that such crime is going down because for him or her it has just gone up, even if there is a well respected independent report to say otherwise!

Chris

Neil, not sure you have spoiled any good story with facts. Statistics can be made to prove anything it seems. My story is just that, my story. Whilst overall burglary may well have gone down as a percentage of the population who can say for sure, how many are not reported and how many does plod not bother with even noting down?

Round here (UK) theft of propane gas cylinders is more common than it was - at the time I was done so was another lady up the road - and so is oil from central heating oil tanks and not from isolated farms but any home by the roadside seems to be a target.

At one time, and within my lifetime, one could venture out and leave one's house unlocked, you can't now - a sad reflection of present day life! Even if I am home but in the back garden or in my shed my front door is always locked. In France, in the countryside, it is common for houses to be unlocked and unattended still, even overnight on more than one occasion by mistake with my daughters house! A couple of years back I spied a car parked near our village shop, drivers window down, radio on, keys in the ignition, owner was obviously in the shop/bar. An hour later it was still there. In the UK it would have been gone in under ten minutes I bet. A roofer was working round the back on our roof with a pickup parked outside with various expensive tools on show in the flat back bit, none went. He couldn't have done that in the UK. So I stand by my comment "It is a very sad reflection of present day life in the UK when we have to go to all these measures to protect our properties".

Chris

When I was away last year some lowlife nicked a couple of 47kg propane cylinders from our house. It had a security wire but they just bolt cropped that and the connection hoses. The first thing plod asked was did we have a cctv system fitted. So we bought a 4 camera system and eventually installed it just before we went away again, good system, can be viewed remotely on-line, playback recordings on-line, it emails activation alarms, but, always a but, I did not spend long enough fine tuning the sensitivity and activation areas before I went away again. So I get about 100 or more emails a day, wind blowing the flowers, rain, passing car headlights all set it off, not to mention the helpful spider who has repeatedly built a web over one camera everytime the wind or rain wipes the old web out! But rather that way than maybe miss something. It maybe just psychological but we do feel we have sometime that will maybe make the scumbags think of trying elsewhere, if they are not too thick.

My shed has 500-600mm thick walls, the roof is fully boarded and the door has 2 off 5 lever locks, but I still feel I could do more to the door. It also has a window, double glazed and I must fit steel bars inside to protect that.

It is a very sad reflection of present day life in the UK when we have to go to all these measures to protect our properties.

Chris