Member postings for Philip Rowe

I must say that I much prefer this type of video with no commentary, just a few on screen descriptive lines are all that is needed. I have given up on watching a number of YouTube videos because of the long and frankly very boring monologue commentaries liberally punctuated with lots of errs and umms.

Well done Tim for a very good idea.

Phil

You are not kidding, when I started model engineering as a teenager using my father's ML2 I got used to the weird saddle wheel operation but then I didn't know any different. Later on when I started my apprenticeship I discovered lathes with saddle wheels that worked the other way in my view more natural. Confusing I don't think really describes it, I lost count how many times I would ruin a piece because I ran the tool bit into the work instead of away. Usually I would get the hang of it by the end of the day, go home and do something on Dad's lathe and the process would start all over again.

It's many years since the ML2 was replaced so fortunately I don't have that problem any more.

Phil

Just out of idle curiosity I did a search on tinternet and I was quite suprised to see that my 40 year old imperial micrometer set is still available, albeit in the States with a metric equivalent available here in the UK. What suprised me even more was the prices that various suppliers are asking, including second hand prices. So I will definitely be putting a bit of effort into refurbishing the box and the nesting material, I haven't yet decided exactly what I will be using, a lot will depend on what I can find but in the meantime here's a shot of the box with the disintegrating foam.

Phil

Thanks for all the replies and commiserations, it's good to know I'm not alone. I will investigate the potential materials suggested and report back in due course. I find it curious that some foams deteriorate and others remain fairly stable over many years, I have a set of drawing instruments that I made a ply box for and lined with some foam that came out of my mother's sewing box when I was a teenager about sixty years ago and that is still good. Ok, it's worn a bit around the edges where fingers rub but the foam is still quite resilient.

Phil

I have had a 0 - 3" Mitutoyo micrometer set in it's original box for some 40 years, the 0 - 1" mike is usually to be found on my bench or lathe but never in the box. Imagine my horror earlier when I went to use the 1" - 2" and found that the nesting foam in the box has turned to dust. Worse still is where the dust has adhered to parts of the mikes and setting bars has caused some kind of corrosion, not on the painted frames only the satin chrome and bare metal. I've managed to clean most of it off by scraping with a finger nail, cocktail stick on the knurled parts and metal polish, but there is some staining which I cannot remove fortunately not that prominent. Has anyone any idea what could cause this to happen? I can't remember when I last opened the box maybe a year or more and it was ok then.

I have just opened another Mitutoyo box that I have containing a dial caliper which has definitely not been used for many a year and the nesting foam in that is starting to turn to dust, fortunately I've caught that in time.

Need to source some hard foam to make some new nesting packs, suggestions anyone?

Phil

Nice job there Alan, bit of luck you finding that handwheel I can't say that I have ever seen one before. Were they a standard Myford part or is it a homebrew?

Phil

But this can also lead to problems with people not reading work instructions simply because they are over done and too precise. In a previous life I used to write work instructions in an electronics environment and it was always a fine line between writing something that would enable someone walking in off the street to understand and going to the opposite extreme e.g. "pick up a number 2 Pozidrive screwdriver in your right hand and using a fastener from bin xxx, attach bracket Y from bin abc and tighten to x Nm". OK, I could go on but I think you get the picture. Maybe I was just unlucky in not having the dedicated people who read and comply.

Phil

Going slightly off topic (sorry) some years ago the company that I was working for at the time decided to try a new vendor for cable loom manufacture, these looms were for electronic chassis and were drawn at full size on A0 sheets. These were then pasted onto sheets of plywood and nails inserted at each change of direction, the wires in the loom would then be routed around these nails and laced or tie wrapped together and connectors or terminations added. These A0 prints were black and white except for a very prominent note printed in red at the bottom of each sheet that said "Do not scale drawing". The new vendor proudly submitted some samples to us for evaluation which were not much use as he had printed out the electronic file onto A4 paper! This meant that the samples ended up being approximately 5 times smaller than they should have been, he was quite miffed when he didn't get the contract!

Phil

Bazyle, there is an unused lead on the display but whether this is an input or output I have no idea, the Chinese data sheet that came with it tells me little except to confuse!! Also you are correct about the magnet, I have since tried the sensor at a right angle to the way it is shown in my photo and the sensitivity does in fact exceed the 10mm specified but as you say it hardly matters now as it is working.

Phil

Finished fitting a tachometer to my Super7.

Interestingly the instructions state that the sensor will operate up to 10mm away from the magnet but in my case I had to close the gap to around 2 to 3mm before it would work.

Then mounted the display into an ABS project box which I'm also utilizing to mount the displays for my poor man's dros. To initially test the system I simply powered it with a 9volt battery (PP3) but I realise that the battery life would be a bit of a limitation so rummaged around in various places and found an old 12volt wall mounted power unit which is what is powering it in the photo. I did briefly consider powering the dro displays in a similar way but so far these have working for nearly three years on the original set of coin cells so I don't think I'll bother. I'm sure some of the purists on this site will wonder why I bothered but with a VFD driving the lathe motor it is difficult to to assess what the spindle speed is and anyway for around £8 it turned into an interesting project for a few afternoons.

Phil

Back in the 70s the company that I was working for used carbon tetrachloride for most things but this was eventually replaced with something called Inhibisol. I've always assumed that this was a trade name but what it actually was I've no idea, apart from being an excellent cleaner/degreaser. Has anyone here come across this at all?

Phil

All this fantastic technology amuses me, where I am in Norfolk (UK) there are numerous areas where you can't even get a mobile signal of any description and where you can it can be very iffy. 4G what's that?

Phil

Next month the PV installation on my roof will be five years old, so far I've no complaints but my initial calculation of recouping the up front cost in about seven years isn't going to happen. My roof alignment is unfortunately not the optimum and I think that payback will probably happen in about nine years, but at least the money spent is doing something rather than sitting in an account somewhere earning virtually no interest.

Phil

Probably not a viable solution nowadays but I thought there might be some interest in what I did many years ago for storage of small parts using empty tobacco tins. The rack on the left was made by my father in the 1950s which I inherited and then I expanded by building the one one the right. The labeling was originally handwritten with a felt tip pen but more recently upgraded to computer generated labels, although only paper I am quite suprised at how hard wearing they have proved to be, one or two of the more frequently used ones are a little grubby but generally I think they are ok considering the labels were applied around 15 years ago.

Looking at the number of tins here I shudder to think how much this all cost in buying the tobacco in the first place and I'm so glad that I gave up smoking nearly 40 years ago.

Phil

I've had one of these table clamps on my drilling table for some years now and a very useful feature it is for securing jobs whilst drilling.

Sometimes the arm is too short to reach the job that requires holding, so I bought the next size up which has a longer arm. Unfortunately this one is secured to the table with a 12mm stud and the slots in the drill table are only 3/8", nevermind I think I'll make a smaller stud to suit. After more closely examining the way the stud is attached to the clamp assembly I concluded it was a lot easier to cut the stud off and make a new sub base with a smaller stud screwed into it. This is the result of an afternoon's work delving in the scrap boxes, I know it will never win any prizes but it now does what I want and to my mind that's all that matters in this instance.

By the way if anyone is wondering what the ropes are at the back of the table, they are part of a crude and simple counterbalance to offset the weight of the table when raising and lowering it.

Phil

I'm intrigued, how is the vibration generated? Is it a simple eccentric weight on a motor driven shaft of some description? Also how do the plastic containers stand up to the ravages of the various polishing mediums?

Phil

A couple of years back I converted my S7 to a 3phase conversion courtesy of Transwave. Being lazy I stayed with an imperial motor to save the problem of shaft diameter and I have not regretted it, in fact the only problem was the annoyance with myself for not having done the conversion years ago. A long afternoon's job or a short day and it was complete and that included making mounting plates for the remote and the inverter. When I first switched it on to test it, I initially thought that it wasn't working as the control pot was set at about half way and there was no noise or vibration whatsoever. It was only when I spotted the pulley rotating that I realised that indeed it did work.

Phil

So am I, looks like we should start a group of our own.

Phil

Some years back I purchased a digital caliper from my local Lidl, only around £8 but fine for general measuring in the workshop. When I got home and opened the package I found I had a very nice plastic case and a little bag of descicant but nothing else! Fortunately in my case it was relatively easy to take it back but has taught me a lesson when buying anything from there. Incidentally the staff told me that that sort of thing went on all the time, not bad quality control but tea leaves in the shop taking the contents out of packages so they could steal them more easily!

Phil

I just love looking at old publications like that, I know some of it is nostalgic and maybe a desire to return to a much simpler world, but even then I would have thought that turning on a lathe wearing a white shirt would bring wrath from the domestic authorities and get the stiff collar and tie! Does anyone here know the date of this publication?

Phil