Member postings for Steve Withnell

Basic observation - the Ceriani 203 has a nett weight of 80Kg, the nett weight of my Sieg C6B is 145Kg.

Ceriani is 200mm swing and 500mm between centres, the Sieg is 250mm swing and 550mm between centres, so similar size.

Fairly crude indicator of rigidity?

Steve

I'd eMail the seller, I've had a quite a bit of 'modules' type stuff from China and the sellers are usually very helpful, assuming the Chinglish isn't a barrier. You might get a good surprise in just how much they are prepared to share.

Steve

You say you are a beginner at this - the number of people on this forum who do turning operations in a Sieg Super X3 with a 100mm chuck in the spindle must be close to 1 - by legal definition, I think that makes you the expert!

As shipped, does a Sieg mill spindle have the same accuracy of alignment to the vertical as an equivalent Sieg lathe would have in the horizontal?

Steve

At the risk of being laughed off the shop:

https://www.aldi.co.uk/p/92750/0

I bought one of these a couple of years back and the quality is pretty good. There is a 6mm die nut in my set, which following a tip from John Stevenson, I converted to a split die with a Dremel...

Double check the quality of course as they might have 'gone off' since I bought mine.

Steve

Largest Titanium parts printed so far -

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120006401/en

Steve

I tend to search youtube! Some really nice work comes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yopcz-IYDyQ 

Edited By Steve Withnell on 19/01/2016 20:54:24

Question. Where are the Axminster, Warco, Amadeal , Clarke, Chester reps contributions? This thread has been running for over a year, the core topic is electronic speed controls and motors for chinese hobby machines. Are Arc the only people that know or care about this stuff ?

Steve

I bought a microphone (eBay seller) - couldn't get it to work, checked all the wiring and nothing found. Stripped it down - no mic insert. Now that is a dirty trick...

Steve

One thing I'd throw into the pot - if you are cleaning up castings especially the flywheel, don't round the edges that are meant to be 'square' it can make the engine look like a cartoon toy. (Edges do need to be 'broken' to hold paint (tip from Jason...), but that's different to adding an unintentional radius).

Another is to take care with Stuart castings, some can be surprisingly soft and you can remove more material than intended quickly. I had a bit of this on the spokes of the Victoria flywheel.

Personally, I would not leave as cast some improvement usually improves things - but taking a sole plate say, to a motorcar finish can end up looking like a plastic moulding.

Steve

Having more than one project on the go is a good excuse to buy another lathe...

50p - you persuaded some poor sod that it was a reject sash weight because it had a hole in it

Steve

Good thing it was in a vice and not between your fingers!

I like Windows 10, it works well on my machine, although I have lost a couple of minor functions along the way. DO NOT upgrade to W10 without doing a full trawl on compatibility first! The upgrade itself was very slick.

The last horrible version of WIndows in my opinion was Vista, that whole saga was a disgrace.

DOS 4.0 was a dog too.

The PSU is for a repair/restore of an old Kenwood TS700G...

73

Steve

I found a very easy to use and free electronic circuit simulator here:

www.lushprojects.com

Doesn't appear to be any malware issues - I've shared with a couple of friends without a problem.

**LINK**

Here is a simple power supply I'm building at the moment, as an example.

Steve

Tweaking didn't work, the crank assembly just binds somewhere else now and tweaking again caused the loctite to fail, so I'm going to remake the crankshaft assembly and do a proper job, some of the (factory drilled!!) holes must be out of alignment in the original assembly.

Steve

Edited By Steve Withnell on 31/12/2015 14:35:35

Interesting responses! There is very little load on the constituent parts compared to what 403 will normally deal with and I just need to tweak the alignment a fraction (it looks like the holes that take the journal pin are slightly out). The fit is sound, so it looks like a case of go gently and see what happens.

I shall be back shortly...

Steve

I never wear gloves for machining, but use ordinary riggers gloves for cleaning up and changing cutters etc. The gloves I use are ordinary 'Riggers gloves' which are as cheap as chips off eBay and come in various cuff lengths and sizes. I've never made any sense of nitrile / latex gloves for anything, (even painting) maybe I need to try harder.

Steve

I've made a crankshaft from a composite of 3mm steel rod and brass for a Stirling engine. The plans said to solder the pieces together, but I've used Loctite 403 instead. Works perfectly fine.

However, the alignment of the parts isn't quite correct and I need to adjust it a bit. If I gently warm the loctite until it moves, will it 'loctite' again when it cools?

Steve

I use a 125mm self centering TOS 4- Jaw chuck in the lathe. Theoretically, a 3 jaw chuck should be better than a 4 jaw for round bar. In my case the 4 jaw TOS has better run out than the 3 Jaw chuck supplied with the lathe, both are more than good enough for a hobby lathe.

Given the 4-jaw will hold square and elliptical stock, I only use the 3-jaw for hex bar now.

So how do I go about setting up chucks?

Aside from stripping and cleaning my process has been.

1. Pop mark a point on the spindle.

2. Fit a backplate, pop mark to align alongside the mark on the spindle

3. Turn the backplate in-situ to reset the register faces for the chuck.

4. Mount the chuck and pop mark to align with the pop mark on the back plate.

This should produce the very best alignment in terms of run out, and everytime you take the chuck off the machine, you can put it back exactly where it came from. Similarly, if you need to strip the chuck, the backplate can always go back exactly where it came from.

Issues - if the backplate is already 'a fit' with the chuck, you have to lose some of the meat out of the backplate, but this has not caused any noticeable problems. For the four jaw, the spigot on the new backplate was a bigger diameter than the chuck register, so perfect for this treatment

Final point - to get best run out keep everything scrupulously clean when assembling chuck to backplate, chuck to lathe, chuck jaws. Any trapped bit of swarf has the ability to throw out the alignment. Same with machined tapers, if the socket isn't clean a bit of detritis gets trapped between the taper and socket, again there is the potential for upsetting the alignment and increasing the run out. Problem is, it tends only to be noticeable when its bad, when it's tiny, it's usually found when the job didn't turn (pardon the pun) out to spec.

Bear in mind I am an expert in these matters - I've nearly finished my third engine... Feedback is a gift

Happy Christmas

Steve