Member postings for Stub Mandrel

A sad passing. I always admired his excellent drawings and enjoyed his writing. As a fellow SouthWalian the image that sticks in my head are his descriptions of setting down tools to go piping on the Newport foreshore.

Neil

Hi Brian,

Sorry no-one could help with your initial query. Glad you sorted it out. It would be nice to see a picture of one of your models.

Neil

I'm getting very irritated as I can't find it again, but recently i saw in a catalogue or a website, a very short 13A extension lead, but it had an NVR switch built into the socket. What a brilliant idea and a great way to add NVR function to almost anything.

Neil

I used ordinary superglue and a pin to add a 6mm spigoted extension to the leadscrew of my mini lathe. That was about 12 years ago and still going strong.

Neil

> Well look on the bright side Neil, that's twice more than the first one.

Knowing my luck , it was the first one...

Neil

We should have a competition - most uses for a toolmaker's clamp.

Neil

My show story is much sadder.

Bought a little 80mm lever scroll three-jaw for about £20, for a tiny dividing head and one day in the far future a very small lathe.

Couple of hours later, all I had was a hole in the bottom of my carrier bag

Bought another, and I must have used it in anger at least twice

Neil

My parents used to have a red one in the same style as Nick's 'transparent' phone. People used to ask my Mum if Dad was somehow involved with the emergency services.

The phone at Grandad's/Dad's shop was black bakelite. There was a separate box with a handle on you had to wind up and wake the exchange before you could ring out. In those days numbers were four figures (4156 and 4153). I remember when we had STD officially introduced - we got a leaflet explaining how it worked but my recollection was that we had already been using it for some time. This must have been the early 70s, wikipedia says the roll-out was from 1958 to 1979.

Neil

Continuous cast iron as supplied by CES is a joy to machine. It is a very forgiving material that can be worked with great accuracy and is less likely to take a 'set' than steel 9although more likely to crack if shapes are poorly designed). Beware that bores which seem to be a close fit can open up - this is caused by retention of a layer of fine dust (I think) a fraction of a thou thick.

The only downside is that the fine dust has a similar effect on your nasal packages to snuff, so consider wearing a dust mask if you machine a lot.

Neil

Unless your tool shape is very poor, there will be no forces trying to rotate the work, so you don't need heavy duty clamping. Also, once you have started the groove it will tend to guide the toolbit.

A sharp tool is essential as the force to take cuts may be more than you might expect. As Jason says, expect to work the spring out of the cutter.

Also make sure there is plenty of relief on the front of the cutter (the side facing you).

Neil

Back from a 'four seasons' week in Skye. Some fantastic night skies and my modest interest in astrophotography is in danger of becoming serious. I've made a resolution to make a stepper-motor controlled equatorial mount with the hope of improving on the pictures (all heavily cropped or downsampled to reduce size) in my 'astronomy' album.

There's a couple below as a taster

Neil

Jupiter & moons 1:1 cropped

Jupiter (just) showing an equatorial band. Resampled to double resolution and cropped but far lower exposure. I need to do better than this as image stacking doesn't make a noticeable improvement - hence the need for a tracking mount.

Finally, a bit of the new moon. this is where tracking and stacking should make a massive improvement. See the albums for a long exposure picture showing the dark part of the moon lit by earthlight and showing the seas surprisingly well.

Hi Alan,

The simple answer is yes. i use ER25 collets on my mill and on my grinder.

Neil

> pilots get sulky if you get blood all over their nice polished wing.

Sounds like a good way to appease the spirits of the air for trespassing on their clouds!

Neil

One of the biggest ways to cut the size of your energy footprint is to go vegan. Being vegetarian saves enough carbon to offset having a gas guzzler car.

Neil

<Now THAT ought to spark some debate!>

HI Bill,

I admire your ability to deal with such an upheaval in such a level headed way. My Dad was one of the Royal Engineers who helped clear up after the big flood in the 50s. He was a motorcycle outrider clearing the way for the convoy through London, but he still struggles to describe how terrible what they found when they got to the East Coast was.

I hope this doesn't become the end of your model engineering - I suspect not!

Neil

> each light has it's own switch mode power supply consisting of 2 transistors,9 diodes, 5 resistors.....

At a cost of pence... this is why hefty transformer wall-warts are so rare now, replaced by SMPSUs of unfeasible capacity and tiny size.

Neil

Hi Rick,

It's important to distinguish real 'problems' (i.e. things that are not as they should be and that Warco would probably endeavour to correct) from 'limitations' arising from the design or method of manufacture or setup.

Anthony Mount did a long a series on improvements to a Warco lathe (I think it was a belt drive model, and the series was in ME), and despite the 'deficiencies' his conclusion was that the final result was a step up from his previous Myford in capability and usability.

Neil

> Disturbed flow will often trip laminar flow into turbulent .

I'm reminded of 'turbulators' - lengths of cotton glued along the wings of model gliders.

Neil

> So if you remove all of the old incandescent lamps and substitute them for the new types you will have to supplement the removed heat from another source i'e your heating system, if you wish to retain your current comfort levels.

A true point that is little mentioned, although it is a seasonal effect (in summer it makes the air conditioning work harder, if you have any) and it depends somewhat on how you control your heating. It's one of the advantages of a condensing tumble drier - although not really any more efficient, all the heat is recycled into the house instead of down a pipe.

I have greatly reduced our home heating costs - almost entirely by waging war on draughts, of which their are legion in our much-modified 30's semi.

> WHAT was used in place of lead?John

Err, what about nothing? The engines were designed to run on lower octane petrols and valve seat designs were changed. Yes there were/are additives for non-compatible engines (are you thinking of the manganese compuinds used in Australasia?).

> Low voltage systems

The problem is lower voltage means much higher currents, bigger, thicker conductors and greater risk of fire. 240V optimises conductor size, whilst 110V, symmetrical around earth is relatively safe.

May finally be a practical proposition with more efficient LED and modern electronics that run on relatively low currents, although even a 50W TV will need 4A at 12V and 8A at 6V. I think that what will probably happen is a 5V standard with outlets of up to 2A which we will use for all the small electrical equipment, with the larger gear still using AC mains.

Personally I think the UK 240V should be dropped to match most of Europe's 220V (230V is a compromise nominal value that suits both systems within the margin for error).

The drop would not materially affect most electrical/electronic equipment and it would reduce the consumption of non-thermostatic heaters etc. with materially affecting performance. Probably not popular with the energy companies...

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 23/01/2014 18:57:30

I, for one, would like to exhibit more models (I've only put one in a show once). I'm a bit nervous of competitions, but happy to enter a loan. 'The work of 'ordinary mortals' is important as it give encouragment to speople startiong out and those who will never win a DoE award.

The problem is that even MMEX was a 90-mile round trip, so doing that twice to drop off and collect was a pain, especially as both delivery and pick up were outside the main exhibition times - I ended up going three times so I could see the full show (my dad and one of my brothers came along and met up with me as well).

In short, if we are to see plenty of models (which is what makes a show for me and gets plenty of punters in) some sort of pick up and return service would make a big difference - although who would want to take the responsibility of moving other people's models these days?

Neil