Member postings for Martin Kyte

I would say that the disc from an old hard drive would be ideal as a flywheel.

regards Martin

One thing I would consider is splitting it into 2 with a partition to provide a small store room. Depends a little on the shape. My workshop started out as a bigger than double garage but smaller than a treble but with an up and over door on the short side. My store separates the short end door from the main space. The main advantage is you generate more wall space for cupboards shelves and racks etc and with the partition you get to use both sides.
Put in way more sockets than you think you need, I figured out what I required and then doubled it. I have a split consumer unit with lighting on an RCBO separate to the power distribution and protection so that if something trips the lights stay on. I have 2 ring mains which again provides flexibility like being able to shut one down to work on it and still having power to hand. My floor is self levelling screed with insulating underlay beneath flooring grade chipboard which is painted. I have single skin brick walls which have been battened and then a sandwich of 70mm celotex and floor to ceiling 12mm MDF. The beauty of that is if you wish to fix anything to the walls you can screw straight to it. The cables run in the space between the celotex and the brickwork crated by the depth of the battens so povided the screws are less than 80 mm there is no possibility of hitting a cable. The ceiling is fibre board with rock wool insulation and then boarded in the loft space which again generates a huge amount of storage.

The lathe sits on steel bushes extending through the flooring and bolted into the concrete base, everything else just sits on the floor.

regards Martin

At the very least you should chuck the pears back.

;O)

It’s a spindle lock to be used once you have broken the back gear cluster.

regards Martin

Turn the taper. Disconnect the cross slide lead screw so you can push the tool into the job by hand. Set up for screw cutting and make a number of passes from the headstock towards the tailstock. This works for cutting the grooves on Fusees for clocks. You are only mating with a mop after all.

regards Martin

Not sure about the beyond scope comment, there are various companies experimenting with encapsulating waxes for mixing with plaster etc to construct rooms that ‘hang’ at a certain temperature. The idea is that during the day when the solar gain from windows is high the room temperature rises to the point where the encapsulated wax changes phase from solid to liquid. So the room absorbs energy but doesn’t get any hotter. In the evening when the outside temperature drops the reverse happens and the beads give out heat as they solidify and hold the room at a comfortable temperature. The result is less burden on the air con or the heating system and it’s totally passive to boot.

regards Martin

You could do far worse than select something from Hemmingway Kits the drawings are clear and they come with full build instructions as well as including all materials and fixings you need. I sometimes ‘do a Hemmingway’ just for being able to machine and not think or order stuff.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 23/09/2023 20:22:08

They are indeed

regards Martin

There are a lot of ‘modern’ hobby targeted toolmakers clamps around of various levels of quality. Generally they all have course threads on the adjustment screws. This nearly always requires the application of a Tommy bar to achieve a reasonable level of grip which tends to lead to over tightening as anything to hand gets used as the bar. The old style clamps have fine threads which as well as leaving more meat on the clamp jaws allow a decent grip by finger tightening. In addition over tightening using a bar tends to strip the thread on the screw rather than breaking the clamp. Making a new screw is straight forward and I would guess that spares would have at one time been available.

regards Martin

PS I too have broken a cheap machinist clamp but never a second hand old school version.

Make the screw, straight knurl the outside and create the hex socket with a rotary broach.

But then I have already made my rotary broach.

regards Martin

If it wasn’t for the ambiguity of language lawyers would have no function and certainly would not be able to bill at the rates they do.

🥴

I have a DRO on my vertical mill but it’s not really there for accuracy. It allows me to:-

1 Switch between metric and imperial units
2 Set zero reference at the push of a button

3 Drill holes on a pitch circle for flange mounts and for chain drilling

4 Drill holes space along a line at an given angle

5 Add and subtract

6 And finally eliminate the requirement to approach all positions from the same direction to take up lead screw backlash.

I would not be without it.

regards Martin

PS It’s value is huge as a mistake eliminator.

Edited By Martin Kyte on 21/09/2023 13:19:12

Or what’s more to the point when we’re they invented and by whom.

regards Martin

Ah you are proving software, my mistake.

👍

Sounds suspiciously like your function generator synthesises the two channels from the same master clock in which case it’s not surprising they stay in synch.

Sorry to rain on the party.

regards Martin

Fair do’s SK I was just describing the general principle. How you implement it is a matter of choosing the right hardware. Several microcontrollers allow tuning of oscillator frequencies nothing to stop you setting up something like a Pi Pico for instance to run alongside your main processor to just manage the oscillator frequency.

regards Martin

Almost certainly temperature swings Gray. Doesn’t have to be moisture in the workshop, wood ‘breathes out ‘ moisture as it warms up.
regards Martin

I’m sure someone was already doing it.😊

Not really what I was suggesting. If you set up two counters to run concurrently clocked by the ceramic oscillator of your processor the first of a period defined by your pendulum opto sensing and the second by the GPS time interval you end up with two numbers. The first is the uncorrected period of the pendulum and the second is a number from which you can determine the rate of the processor clock (count over accurate) time period. The second value can then be used to correct the result of the first to give a high resolution high precision pendulum period. It relays on the processor clock having drift but being stable over periods of 10s of seconds.
Forgive me if this is already being done and I’ve missed it.

regards Martin

If you have a fast clock that drifts slowly and a slow clock that is accurate counting the oscillations of the fast clock using the slow accurate clock gives you a correction factor for when you use the fast clock to measure pendulum period. For example if you had a very accurate 1 sec marker and counted the transitions of a nominal 1 MHz clock and got say 1000007 then your measurement of your pendulum period using the nominal 1 MHz would require a correction of 1000000/1000007. Doing this for every measurement corrects for drift in the fast clock. Would this not be a way of achieving high resolution and accuracy. Just thinking out loud really. Depends really on the way the fast clock varies.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 19/09/2023 22:57:44