Member postings for Jeff Dayman

This type of sharpener shown by the OP was made by Boston in the US but are now or were made in China under different brands. The internals of the inexpensive x-acto one at the Canadian retailer's link below would probably be a very close match to the cutters./ gears of the one in the OP's picture. Compared to the Caran d' Ache things at 10X the price, the x-acto one might be worth a punt.

https://www.staples.ca/products/10938-en-x-acto-ks-pencil-sharpener?variant=19666712133701

Agreed Jason that an in-person visit would not be advisable at the moment, but if Neville's 27 mm dia tube is not too long before making the 50 mm length cut, maybe it could be sent by post or courier? If of course someone in Southampton or not far from it can do the job. Sending it by post or courier may not be too expensive if distance is short.

I would be glad to do the job for Neville but am several thousand km away in Canada, so not much help to him on this.

I suggest asking your surgeon and / device technologist about your specific model of device. Effects from nearby fields vary by device, and in general newer devices are much less susceptible to interference or field effects than older devices.

That said, it would be better to err on the side of caution if you get a pacemaker, and not use electric welding unless your surgeon and technologist say it is OK to do it.

There are two types (at least) of Dremel cutting discs. The 1" dia ones with the small screw retaining them do a great job but as you say Ron they wear fast. However the second type are 1 1/2" dia and fit on Dremel's E Z Lock mandrel. The metal cutting ones are fibre mesh reinforced and last much longer. One drawback though is that they wobble a tiny bit on the mandrel and are thicker than the smaller disks, so the cut width is larger. Link below shows these at a Canadian retailer's website. I am sure you can get them in UK at a Dremel distributor.

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/dremel-ezlock-grinding-disc-0543976p.html?rrec=true#spc

The next step up is the 1 mm thick cut disks for 4 1/2" angle grinders. You can do some serious damage fast with one of those!

I have never used anything other than normal steam cylinder oil in the steam engines I have built, which are many, and have had no premature wear or any other issues.

When rebuilding car engines , motorcycle engines and 4 stroke small engines I do use assembly lube on cam lobes and pushrods etc and if the engine is plain bearings, on them too. For roller bearing mains as in many 4 stroke Asian motorcycles normal engine oil generously applied is best. For any 2 stroke engine, 2 stroke oil only is best.

It's looking great Ron!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terne

Get your wheel bearings checked.

Whether or not a ball bearing exhibits Brinelling in time during use will depend on 4 things - load, lubrication, speed, and metallurgy / finish quality of the bearing. If the bearing sees low loads, low speeds and has good lubrication and was decent quality to begin with, it could last a very long time with no Brinelling.

Huge loads, high speed, someone hammering on it, lubrication loss, rough quality bearing to start with, and problems are inevitable.

Re telegraph key pivots - if designed correctly I would suggest flexures would give the longest service life with least wear, compared to ball bearings or cones / taper pivots. Depending on the operator's keying style, the bearings in a telegraph key could see high loads which could induce Brinelling.

I am not a "clock guy" but I do recall seeing both knife edge and flexure type pendulum suspension for clocks. (may be many other types, I bow to the clock experts on that)

Many years ago when I was programming CNC in industry as one of my duties, I observed a CNC mill controller being serviced by an electronics technician from the mill manufacturer. I recall the controller PCB had large diodes on each of the conductors going out from the controller PCB to the 3 stepper motors XYZ. I asked the elec tech what they were for and he said " they keep back EMF from blowing the controller when idiots use the handwheels and it back drives the motors". Just stating what I observed. Diodes on the lines might be worth a try, even large current high voltage diodes are very inexpensive.

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 07/03/2021 00:34:26

Not sure what version you are using, but on my screen at top centre of the graphics window you will see a cube icon with one side white the other side blue. It is just to the left of the eyeglasses icon. Anyway click on the part blue cube, and you can select the graphics display mode from solids with edges down to wireframe display.

If you select a setting and it does not change, you may need to reboot your machine, as the graphics card may be playing up. Just mentioning it, seen funny things happen with displayed edges / lines when the graphics card is having a bad day.

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 05/03/2021 21:41:55

Why not make a simple boiler to a proven design, and use steam? Could just be a pot type low pressure boiler, maybe one of Tony Wright's designs? Or make a boiler from a kit of parts from a ME advertisers?

The old boys who built these original beam engines used steam, after all. Using electrical apparatus to get a steam mechanism going seems rather odd to me, but that's just my opinion.

If running on air, you might be able to change valve event timing to admit air for a longer part of the stroke to get the engine to run.

After heating the setscrew and surrounding metal, hitting a small punch in the hex socket of the screw with a hammer, sharply, will often help get stuck screws moving.

Error in thread post stating it may be possible to run a UNF tap down a BSW chuck -

1 1/2"-8 thread as used on 9" SB is an 8 series UN thread, but NOT a UNC or UNF thread.

UNF 1 1/2" thread has 12 TPI, UNC 1 1/2" thread has 6 TPI. If you run either UNF or UNC taps into a chuck it may ruin it for use on a SB 9" lathe. I am not sure if using a 1 1/2"-8 UN tap would leave enough metal or fit the BSW thread in such a chuck.

There are plenty of Chinese made chucks on the market that are not top quality but are perfectly serviceable and quite cheap, maybe less than the cost of taps as discussed above, and they will fit right out of the box. Years ago I bought a cheap Chinese 4 jaw chuck and it has given excellent service. Fitted right out of the box. The worst part of it was getting the brown sticky cosmoline anti-corrosion coating off it - seriously nasty stuff to remove!

As far as I know all SB 9" lathes ever made use 1 1/2"-8 UN thread on the spindles.

In the days before mills were common in home workshops, the recess may have been done by clamping the work to the lathe cross slide and using a between-centres boring bar to produce the recess. A flycutter mounted securely in the lathe chuck may also work. The work is well supported with either approach. depth of cut could be controlled by adjusting cutting tool position outward in the boring bar or the flycutter. Just food for thought.

+1 for Dave's suggestion of silicon braze or bronze welding / brazing as it is called locally to reduce costs vs silver soldering (silver solder is extremely costly here). I've made a number of extended drills just using mild steel rod with a drilled hole to fit a twist drill, later bronze welded in place. Cheap fast and it works. By using a drilled hole in the rod the twist drill self aligns for the bronze welding.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of steam toys have been made since the mid 1800's with oscillators with drilled ports open at mid stroke. They all worked fine, maybe not efficiently but certainly functional. Why worry about it?

No, I am not sure if a Boxford chuck will fit 9" SB spindle. FYI for checking, The 9" SB spindle is threaded 1 1/2" -8 UN, the register diameter is 1.509". end of spindle to flange/stop is 7/8", end of spindle to end of thread is 11/16".

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 04/03/2021 09:51:33

I also have a SB 9" lathe built in 1949. I would recommend the book "how to run a lathe" published for many years by South Bend themselves. You can find hard copies on different auction sites but there are also various sites that have accessible PDF files for you to read it. This book is generic to all sizes of SB lathe , not specifically the 9" but the essential info is all there.

One such PDF is at the link below.

http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/1617/5795.pdf

For high volume production (ie millions of parts / year) every gram of metal counts and every second of machine time counts. For plumbing nuts that are only made in a few sizes it probably makes cost sense to make a dedicated cast / machine line for them in Asia. For the fittings, they could be machined in many sizes and so hex bar gives max flexibility.

Years ago I worked at the Canadian factory of a big US controls company. We had a whole section of the plant making hot water heating valve bodies and all manner of fittings and nuts. I know of which I speak. For 3/4" size valve bodies alone there were 28 variants of fittings sizes / threads to accommodate the world's plumbing needs. We also made 1/2" and 1" valve bodies with a similar number of variants. When I started there the valves were made by soldering machined brass fittings into a centre brass forging. Later we changed the valves to be made by sand casting and I designed the castings to be able to machine all needed threads and fittings in 2 or 3 way valves for the whole 1/2",3/4" and 1" families with 6 different castings. The centre machining was same for all valves the only variation was it was cut a bit deeper in the 3 way versions. Changing to the machined castings vs the soldered machined fittings / forging saved many hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. We produced between 4 and 6 million of these valves per year out of our plant.