Member postings for Clive Foster

On my Macs I use Cookie which lets me save a whitelist of sites as favourites enabling me to dump anything esles I might have picked up during regular clear outs.

Whitelist for things like saving log ins et al to make life a little easier. Maybe 50 at most.

Typical monthly clear out strips 200 - 300 plus tracking cookies. If I think I've been unwise in accepting things I do a clear out either immediately or before shut down.

Think something got through tag end of November and signed me up for more Junk E-Mails. Catch went up to about 20 a day for a while. Dropped back to 6 or 8 now and I've got things trained to deal with them automatically so I don't usually see them in the in-box, just clear junk to trash and gone.

Now if only I could auto-junk the darm "Janet-Worlds Greatest Astrologer" E-mails that have been cluttering into my in box for the last 20 odd years! The Macs tell me they think its junk and colour it appropriately but will they auto-junk the things. Nope! I guess the little spalsh of colour make s the in-box a bit less boring. If I do find a cure I maght actually miss them.

Clive

+1 for what Jason says about re-engineering the countershaft.

Time to hunt down the poly-vee / multigroove belt and pulley catalogues to get something compact sorted out. Rule of thumb with polly-vee is that pulley OD can be less than half the diameter of vee belt ones for same power transmission. Multigroove pulleys are much easier to make than Vee too. Just need to sort out a decent bed stop system on the lathe to get the groove spacing right. A lump bolted to the bed and a set of spacers works fine.

If space is limited I'm rather partial to the "back belt" system that mimics the operating principles of a lathe back gear. Two identical large and small pulley pairs. One pair bolted together running on a countershaft. The other pair has one free running and one fixed to the drive input shaft. Free running pulley has the output pulley bolted to it. If the motor has an adequately long shaft you can do a right neat job by fixing a sleeve to the motor shaft to carry the three concentric pulley set viz fixed input drive and free running output pair. For low powers, 1 hp range, the official belt sizes look stupid skinny!

For folk like us a sliding fit and high strength loctite is much easier. Odds are it will be stronger too as the hoop strength of a small, pretty thin wall, bush isn't that great. Hence the bush will tend to compress running away from the fit load reducing the grip between bush and eye. Maybe compressing enough to necessitate reaming to restore the size.

Force fitting with a nut, washers and through bolt can be a little fraught too. So easy to pull the bush in a little tilted.

Oilite bushes are diffrent. The specification gives you a hole size ensuring the bush is both tightly gripped and reduced to its nominal bore size. My experience is that oilite are much easier to draw in straight than shop made bronze.

Clive

Edited By Clive Foster on 01/01/2022 15:38:00

+1 for Westfield Fasteners. Good folk to deal with and, as Allen found, fast on delivery at reasonable prices.

Clive

Malcom

Thanks for telling us about locking keyless chucks for use on impact drivers et al. Never realised that such things were made.

Quick Google shows that Toolstation offer at 13 mm one with a threaded mount for £11.50 (ish). I may indulge myself as the one on my Makita battery drill is getting iffy. Official Makita replacements are more expensive too.

Clive

VFD boxes are consumable devices. In particular the capacitors lead a very hard life. Real VFD rated capacitors are not cheap. Lesser types may last for a while but they will fail. The power electronics work hard too.

Inexpensive import boxes are built down to a price so capacitors will be skimped on and power electronics devices specified with little margin for overload. The drive programs will be generic and, probably, not exceptionally efficient which doesn't help component life.

For folk like us putting the box to relatively intermittent use and, generally, running well within its capabilities the $64,000 question will we put enough hours on it for it to go pop! Industrial rated boxes built to run 24/7 for 5 or 10 years will be overkill. But 10 hours a week, which is a lot of spindle time for most of us, is only 500 hours a year so getting 5,000 hour life from a cheap box would do fine for most of us.

Certainly don't cheap out on a compressor drive tho'. Even a Hydrovane has hefty start up loads.

I can afford the name brand premium so buy from IDS. Folk with shallower pockets have less choice. The worst thing about low end unbranded via E-Bay et al is that the actual source is unknown. Suppliers just buy boxes and may have lucked into some better end ones several years back but this years ones may not be so good. No way to know. Most of the really cheap boxes are built via production line rejects from Chinese brand makes. Rejects from a 24/7 long life line will still be more than up for our use. Further down the scale? Who knows?

Clive

I'd not choose a keyless as my one and only chuck. Although I mostly use keyless (Albrecht and Jacobs) there are times when only a keyed chuck (various Jacobs from the quality years) will do.

First thing to remember with keyless chucks is that they need good quality drill shanks. If the shank is damaged due to spinning they won't hold well. A one time spin can be cut away, leaving a small depression to clear the jaws, and the chuck will still hold properly. But the sort of shank abuse a keyed chuck can accept won't fly.

A damaged shank creates a serious risk of damaging the chuck jaws.

Keeping a good set of drills for machine use only so they can be treated with appropriate care is best policy but frequently not fiscally possible so there is always the risk of shank damage from use in the hand drill. Especially from the crappy keyless chucks fitted to battery drills. I've yet to meet one that holds well when hammer drilling or bouncing when trying to deal with a poor, out of round, hole or local material variations. Makita standard issue currently seem to be rather poor.

A keyless chuck relies on axial pressure to maintain grip so needs a firm feed to settle into the cut without vibration or wobble. Enlarging holes can be fraught. No sneaking up. As soon as the drill vibrates loosening is likely.

Because the chuck needs axial movement of the drill to generate full grip, only a few tho' but still movement, the drill must not be allowed to bottom out in the chuck. If it does things tend to jam up and be a right pain to unjam whilst taking appropriate care not to damage the chuck. Grip on a slipping drill can be stopped by extra pressure but the resulting axial slide may bottom the shank. Best practice is to stop and refit the drill.

Shanks with flats, either 3 or 6 are chancy. Nicely machined ones seem to be OK but the general run of hex shanks on hole saws and similar will slide back. Not good.

Bottom line is a good keyless is a precision tool and should be used as such. A bad keyless is for throwing at things or, possibly, a paperweight.

Clive

I think the CEJ is intended to be used like a serial tap to reduce the tapping loads on these big BSW threads.

Start with a taper tap and run in until it gets to be really hard work. Probably no more than a turn or so at full depth thread. Run the undersize CEJ in and finish off with a full size bottoming tap. If a set were made it would replace the second tap. But I don't think serial sets were a thing in those days.

Being undersize the tapping loads are lower and the tendency to pull sideways is reduced.

Big coarse BSW taps are a pain to keep true when used by hand. Doesn't help that the taper on the taper tap is often excessive so its difficult to get them cutting well enough to pull in. I have one biggie that is basically a reamer. Have to step drill the end a thread or two deep to get it to start by hand. Leaning on a tapping head in the big Pollard drill teaches it manners tho'.

Clive

Howard

Dig ins with a carbide parting blade on a front toolpost would have me taking a very serious look at how rigid the toolpost set up is and how well your alignment method works. Not forgetting the obvious things like cleaning the innards of a QC system out on a regular basis. Dicksons get remarkably "loose" if not cleaned on a regular basis. Innards of mine are total swarf magnets when it comes to tiny shavings.

Although the OPs' Chronos post is inexpensive it looks to be inherently really solid with the cap head screw pulling up the floating part hard against the dovetail.

Cabide blades seriously don't like being fed in at anything other than perpendicular to the axis.

Had one part off going a bit iffy a while back. Stopped to check the toolpost alignment and found it was maybe 3 thou per inch of travel off perpendicular. Let my mate Paul "I trained as a toolmaker" use the lathe and he'd moved the top slide and set it back using the scale rather than my preferred method of putting a drill carrier in the parallel to axis station of the Dickson and gently bringing it up to touch the extended tailstock poppet. Full line contact means its dead nuts on with my S&B 1024. Adjustment was invisible on the scale.

Power cross feed when parting off is certainly the key to a stress free experience. Nice steady fine feed means the chips are thin enough to drop out. Spare hand to squirt lube in to prevent them hanging up on the sides if they do drag. Although having to drop the feed occasionally to break the chip when you get a "snail" rolling up on top of the tool is annoying and usually leaves a mark. Adjusting speed and feed settings usually cures that. But I have a varispeed drive and lots of settings on the gearbox. Harder for folk who work with less.

As always power feed tests your set-up ability.

No skilled hands working around an error if its a bit wrong.

In this game its well worth taking the extra time and trouble at the beginning to learn how to do it right, do it quick like a pro rather than hurrying to get started doing things via Haynes manual style short cuts.

Right out of my copy of the "Don't Do As I Do, Do As I Say" book. Were I honest with myself I'd admit that it has taken decades for the penny to fully drop along with, probably, "years worth" of wasted time. Don't mention the scrap. Just don't!

Clive

Back in the day small (and large) planers were made XZ on the gantry. I imagine there were good mechanical reasons for that choice.

Despite our modern ready access to decent quality components at the wave of a credit card I always feel that the fundamental geometrical limitations of machine we can realistically build are closer to pre WW1 and inter war products than modern factory builds.

Clive

No-brainer decision.

Get a decent industry standard carbide parting blade and a holder for it. Sort out a way to repeatably and accurately mount the parting blade at exactly 90° to the axis. Use it at a respectable approximation to book speeds, your Myford probably hasn't the power and heft to get right up to book. But given proper adjustment and wise choice of insert it will come close. Hafta choose well. Some are made to work at seriously scary speeds! Then get on with making stuff rather than worrying about tooling.

With quality carbide parting blades and tips available at something like affordable prices the major advantage of a rear toolpost mount becomes instant readiness due to permanent mounting. As it will always be in place on a rear toolpost its worth taking extra time and trouble to get it set dead right rather than the "close enough to work OK" setting that tends to be the norm when switching into and out of the normal toolpost.

The fundamental problem with parting off is that the cutting action makes the chip a bit wider so it tends to jam in the groove. Carbide tips have a concave Vee shape top that folds the chip making it narrower than the groove so it escapes more easily. A little lubrication is a great help too. Consider arranging a drip feed just for parting. Full time use of cutting lubricants tends to be excessively messy at home.

As ever carbide gives you the advantage of speed. Being able to run at pretty much normal turning speeds makes it much easier to steadily apply a nice fine cut to keep the chips thin and flowing freely. It has to be said that the width of a parting blade makes a relatively heavy cut for any small lathe.

Running at low speed with a, probably imperfectly sharpened and slightly out of line, HSS blade is not an appealing way of going about things. Although lots of folk have done and still do. Running slow its very difficult to keep the chips thin to help them escape. A moments inattention results in an over-thick chip which prompty jams up stimulating, at best, considerable workshop esperanto and worst a broken tool and / or ruined job. No wonder parting off has always been considered the stuff of nightmares for the home workshop person.

Get things just so and both faces of the part off will be smooth and unmarked. Digs, gouges and marks indicate that the chip is trying to jam.

Clive

felis

Stick with what you have. Assuming a reasonable fit between the dovetails on clamp and toolholder it will work fine.

Objectively its one of the more mechanically secure types of small, affordable, QC posts. Main disadvantage is that it only has one mounting dovetail. Having a second one at 90° is convenient when needing to mount a boring tool. But its not a deal breaker. Generally its not too much trouble to shift the toolpost 90° for boring but sometimes its nice not to have to.

The inexpensive wedge and piston types are likely to be less secure. Good Dickson and Multifix clones need to be made to a degree of accuracy that is generally incompatible with affordability. For obvious reasons Myford toolposts need to be quite small so its difficult to accommodate really effective part turn, friction jamming, locking systems as used on all the other types shown on that Chronos link.

Clive

I've had some, generally intermittent, success by working through the gentler solvents I have about the place. Things like neat washing up liquid, isopropyl alcohol, computer screen cleaner, foaming aerosol cleaner (RS breed in my case), sticky label remover, Jizer, Gunk, et al. Apply a little at a time on small areas and rub.

If you can find the right one the results can be good for a year or so but there seems to be no lasting cure. Lots of effort for little reward. 50% success is doing well methinks.

Wear disposable gloves because a seriously wrong cleaner pick will create a super sticky gunge that seriously doesn't want to wash off your fingers.

I have the impression that regular use of foaming cleaner holds back the deterioration can prolong the life of a cleaning session. Letting finger sweat marks build up to the sticky stage seems to be a fatal mistake as the sticky seems to spread from such marks.

Clive

By reason of its very design the frame of a Kant Twist clamp is torsionally weak. Probably intentionally as it allows the clamping blocks to self align against the parts being held even if they are not quite parallel so ensuring full contact.

Clearly there is a point where "slight flexibility" becomes "too easy to twist" so proper clamping action is not possible. My feeling has always been that the bobbins need to be a solid push fit in fairly substantial arms if the the design is to be stable under decent clamping loads. Maybe welded braces across the frame arms too.

As other posters of said its a lot of work to make a nice one. Vic and Bernard have shown just how nice the results can be if its considered worth the work.

Something that might go easier as a group effort making enough for semi-production line work. Five folk collaborating to do a pair each perhaps.

Clive

Edited By Clive Foster on 25/12/2021 09:36:51

Don't know whether that was ever a commercial product.

But I have seen a reference "somewhere" showing a home made version of slightly simplified design with the clamp bolt closing a simple slit in the post body rather than having a proper pivot point like yours. As I recall it the source implied he had obtained plans and simplified the design to make it easier to make. Performance was claimed to be perfectly acceptable.

I think you will have to accpet that you will be making your own tool holders unless the dovetail size corresponds to a commercial wedge or piston type post.

Clive

Further to Ramons suggestion of throw away cutter shanks an equally good "thrown away" source of high quality HSS material are centre drills whose point has been broken off.

Not all of us use FC3 throw-aways but we all use (and break!) centre drills.

Clive

Sam

Although a well made screw adjustment on a column system is the most attractive way of carrying an adjustable wheel head the Clarkson style seesaw pivot is much easier to make and functionally more than equivalent for our purposes. I'm unsure as to whether the wheel head actually needs to be rotatable in a horizontal plane for the things we do. If so it would not be too difficult to make a base that allowed the whole thing to rotate through a suitable (smallish) angle.

The column and (accurate) screw feed layout stems primarily from needing to handle surface grinder style duties which can be necessary on serious industrial toolroom cutter making jobs. Far as I'm aware pure vertical movement is never essential for straight forward tool and standard cutter sharpening.

Clive

The universal end of project comment!

A very nice build John. Really shows off how compact the Brooks design is. I'm impressed that you managed to fit a belt drive wheel head set up. I'd have put money on it not being possible to get a satisfactory installation as the Brooks was designed to use the wheel directly mounted on the motor shaft to make things more compact.

Sam

Do remember that the important thing is the holders that present the tools to the wheel. Although the overall machine layout and design is the sexy part its the holders that define how well and accurately the tooling is sharpened.

From a home user perspective the general run of T & C designs are unnecessarily versatile. We deal with very few varieties of tools and correspondingly few angles so it may well be better to sort out individual fixed angle holders rather than faff around with graduated dials et al to set up "any" job.

I have to look up the angles most times because the Clarksonisn't an everyday tool!

Its worth looking at Howard Halls designs for effective ways of simplifying sharpening set ups with easily made components. But even Howard is, in my opinion, overly concerned with versatility rather than accepting that his target audience will have sufficiently modest sharpening needs that only a few fixed angle holders will suffice.

Clive

PS The Bonelle head mount and column set up is very similar to Johns but a bit huskier. Plans can be found on the Internet.

Edited By Clive Foster on 22/12/2021 10:46:51

Sam

Back around 2005 or thereabouts I planned to make a tool & cutter grinder and did a fairly comprehensive literature survey to find something combining a decent range of capabilities with a reasonably short build time.

Ruling out the Quorn before even starting the list due to its notoriously long build time combined with some, in my eyes, seriously infelicitous design choices given its target market and likely duties.

The Bonelle is a Quorn re-worked to be made form stock materials and is said to be a much faster build with some advantages in use. It carries the wheel head on a simple column with an elevating screw alongside, a much easier build than the Quorn column. Soemthing you could easily copy.

I considered the Stent and other casting kits but decided the cost of the castings was more than I was prepared to pay. The Stent also sprawls taking up a fair bit of bench space. I felt the Worden was too limited as were a variety of simple one trick pony end mill and similar sharpeners.

I eventually settled on a design by Derek Brooks published in the April / May and June/July issues of MEW for 1993 as offering a decent balance of build effort and capabilities. In particular it combines a simple column to carry the wheel head with an elegantly simple way of building the X-Y table and a decently simple set of work holders. Its capabilities are basically that of a small Clarkson albeit without the extra versatility given by the rotating table carrier on the real thing. Derek also provided a decent guide to using it.

As Sam already has his X-Y table he can save much effort and simply copy the other parts of the design. The X (long) axis feed needs to be converted to lever action. Derek used a chain which is simple and effective.

One thing I've never understood about published designs is why no one seems to have copied the Clarkson layout. The simple see-saw motor and wheel-head support used on the Clarkson makes it far easier to achieve decent mechanical stability than the usual column. If a self contained wheel head (small bench grinder) is desired a single sided pivot arm makes a straightforward change. Much to be said for the Clarkson rotating table mount which makes a lot of set-ups easier than rotating a wheel head around a column. The rotating table mout is of course made essential by the Clarksons fixed wheel head carrier.

In the end a Clarkson appeared at a "wallet came out smoking" price so I never built a T & C grinder.

Clive

My experience is that its not so much about rate of material removal per se.

More about appropriate feed rates to avoid breaking small cutters and choking the job with chips. Safe depth of cut is pretty limited with small cutters so its annoying when you have to reduce it even further so the chips are small and light enough to be swung clear after cutting.

About the only time the Bridgeport gets wound up to the top end of its speed range is when I have a small cutter working quite hard. Speed helps clear the chips too. With light alloy even mist coolant, along with the associated air blast, is often not enough to keep the cutter clear of edge build up and stop chip re-cutting at lower speeds. Chip re-cutting being a very bad thing. Especially in slots! Depends on the alloy and state of heat treatment. Some E-Bay "not expensive" stuff is pretty horrible at lower speeds.

That said my usual speed range is in the 500 to 1200 region. Lower end of direct drive for a Varispeed. Objectively I could manage quite well with 1000 rpm top but had I your machine it would get a VFD to perk top speed up to maybe 1500 when really necessary. Knew a man who had a V1 who reckoned an extra 500 rpm was about all it needed to make it decently right for home shop one and only machine.

I often go a bit exotic on small cutters. Three and five flute centre cutting end mills rather than common two flute slot drills for example for 3/16, 4 mm, and below for example. I do very little work needing such small cutters so the extra cost can be lived with.

Clive