Member postings for John Hinkley

i've no personal experience of the brand, but others on here have given favourable reports. Chronos have their 125 to 150mm micrometer at a sale price at the moment. 100 to 150mm don't seem to be available.

Chronos link

RDG don't do larger than 75 to 100mm ones, unless you want a six-piece set at £180 a pop.

RDG link

John

This topic has been covered a number of times and a quick site search from the home page turns up a lot of replies. However, I remember Michael Gilligan replying in one thread saying that he bought a packet of them from an eBay seller and giving a link, as a result of which I did the same and got a packet of 50 for about £3 inc postage from - guess where? I can't find the thread now and anyway the link will be long out of date I would imagine, but you could try a search on said site.

John

P.S. just looked on eBay and they're all over it but the price has gone up to circa £5 for 50. Cheaper if you only want a few.

spelling

Edited By John Hinkley on 28/08/2023 12:54:00

Looks like your drill uses two different length belts - 23" and 24". Suitable replacements seem to be available here, from Solent Tools as well as numerous other outlets. Alternatively, if you have a local belt stockist, you could take your existing ones along and get them to match you up a pair of the correct lengths.

John

ChrisB

i fitted a Clough42 els to my Asian 9x20 lathe. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of the Rocketronics one, but all I wanted was the convenience of button selectable feed rates and inch/metric threading. I had already made a ball turning accessory and later, a taper turning attachment. The installation is briefly described in an album and more extensibly in a YouTube series of videos. I didn't keep track of the total cost either, but I'd be surprised if it came to more than £350. That includes two Texas Instruments Launchpads, 'cos I managed to fry one somehow.

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 23/08/2023 17:34:23

Then how am I able to add a description to accompany the photos in my albums? I suggest that you revisit the "upload more photos" page and try the text box below the filename.

John

I haven't been following thi# thread particularly, but got especially frustrated by having to scroll through so many photos to get to the explanation of what we were looking at. Except there wasn't any. So, thougt I, let's go to the albums themselves. Lo! and behold, a quick look at a selection of albums revealed just photos again. Not a single word of description with any of the ones that I saw at random. That's the point at which I gave up and moved on.

John

I made some progress with my new gearbox design - a 5-speed sequential transaxle loosely based on the Hewland series of gearboxes for the motor racing fraternity. I've started off with the differential as I assumed (rightly, as it turned out) to be quite difficult. In fact I found that the easiest way to produce the gear forms was to fire up Fusion 369 and use the "GF Gear Generator" add-in. A really useful bit of kit that I'd not come across before. The resultant gears were exported as STEP files which in turn were loaded into Alibre Atom and manipulated therein by extruding and cutting bosses etc, to suit my application. The STEP files will be used later to 3D print the gears themselves. Here's the guts of the diff when it's exploded:

And when assembled with the pinion added ...........

There's an album to which I will be adding various photos and screenshots as the project progresses - "Transaxle design. The link is here, if you're interested.

John

As Robert says, use the lathes.co.uk to try to narrow down the search for the Clausing equivalent (or nearest), then have a look on This page on Keith Rucker's site. You might be able to find some info in one of those publications. There's certainly a picture of a steady rest in the accessories catalogue. It looks to be a pretty standard design.

John

After an agonising wait for some silver steel to (not) be delivered, then re-ordered from a different supplier, I finally got around to putting the 3D-printed light drill press together. By dint of a bit of nimble fumble-fingerness, I managed to press the wrong button on the video recorder and thus missed the actual construction and just got a photo of the initial set-up. That's the second time I've done that! You'd have thought I would have learnt my lesson by now - but no such luck. Anyway here's a still from the Youtube video of the reveal:

Looks pleasingly like the CAD image. It could really do with some springs around the two columns at the front under the motor mount but couldn't find any online. If I still had my lathe, I'd make my own. I REALLY miss that lathe!

John

I apologise to Jason for my comments on breakout. I should have known better, given his expertise in woodworking. Now that it's been pointed out, I can see the boards referred to. All I saw initially were two wide grooves. And I learnt a new word - "spelch". Even the spellchecker hasn't heard of that one!

John

I think I've seen Will, of "Repair Shop" fame, using a Japanese dovetail saw for similar jobs, like this one. Chop out the waste with a sharp chisel as Robert Butler has said. Job's a good'un. Far fewer Saki tokens, too.

I like Jason's method, too, if you have a mill, but I would personally add sacrificial pieces either side to restrict break-out of the wood fibres

John

Rod,

I suspect so. The wording on the Hemingway web site certainly suggests that is the case.

John

Jeremy,

Hemingway kits sell an aluminium oxide cup wheel which is used on their Worden grinder. I built one and didn't experience any balance issues with it at all. It may require a custom flange to mount on a Kennet, however.

John

Stephie,

I also send my condolences.

I recently emptied my workshop of all but the minimum of machines and their associated tooling and accessories. I didn't want my executors to be left in the situation in which you find yourself. Initially I approached three machine dealers (two advertise in the back of MEW). None were interested in what was on offer. Eventually I advertised the whole lot in the for sale section of this site. It saved entering multiple adverts and directed interested parties to an album in which I posted what was on offer marked with prices. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the prices I advertised them at and received were ridiculously low at about 50% of their probable "real" value. It did mean, however, that the machines sold within two weeks and the purchasers were all (I think) very happy with what they got. Main problem I encountered was the packing of smaller, heavy items and the subsequent delivery of same via courier. I used DPD. They were very efficient, picking up from my front door and delivering on time and in good condition.

Best of luck with the disposal, I hope that it works out well for you.

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 24/07/2023 10:52:31

Edited By John Hinkley on 24/07/2023 10:52:47

Jack,

Have you seen the note on the Rocketronics web site that states that the els kit is currently metric only?

When I fitted an els to my lathe, I used bits available from James Clough and followed his method of control using a nema23 stepper motor with error feedback inbuilt. Pictures in my album. This only gave control on the Z-axis as I didn't have powered crossfeed.

John

With nothing better to do while waiting for some material to arrive, I cobbled together this sequence of drilling/milling procedures to make something approaching what appears in the OP's photos.

Drill the holes then turn the piece on end to mill the large slot and "keyway".

With a milling cutter of suitable diameter, remove the area shown (left) and make a couple of blocks, using bolts to align, solder them to the main body.

That's how I would approach it, anyway, but sorry, that's taken up quite a bit of real estate in the thread. Mods feel free to delete it if you consider it wasteful of space.

John

Edited to try to get the photos side-by-side

Edited By John Hinkley on 21/07/2023 15:15:19

When we lived in France, we had friends in the nearby village who had a holiday cottage which they only used a few times a year. Neither of them were computer-savvy and when I showed them the street view of their holiday home on Google Earth, we were astonished to find that the camera car had captured the gentleman outside his front door, putting the rubbish bag out for collection. Imagine our further astonishment when, on looking up their address in the UK, lo and behold, there he was again, putting out the rubbish again! What are the chances of that happening, I wonder?

John

I've already given Dick a possible source for a complete set of gears, above. I still have digital copies of the lathe manual supplied with my lathe and another for an identical lathe from a manual site on the web.

The gears are listed in the chart below and are described elsewhere in the manual as being MOD 1.5. Pressure angle of choice, if you are going to the trouble of making them, likewise the width. Just have to match the one on the gearbox output shaft.

Vic - one manual I have suggests it's possible to introduce an 18 tooth gear in the train as a tumbler reversing gear so that the leadscrew turns "the other way", Then you can turn right hand threads away from a face at any speed you like.

Dick, you ask about the ELS. I did a series of videos on YouTube about fitting one to my lathe. Introductory video here. It's not difficult but neither is it cheap! Probably more expensive than buying/making the gears and banjo, but far, far more convenient.

Here's the relevant page for the gear tooth counts:

John

Very recently I sold my lathe - a BL200/Axminster BV20 lookalike. I had fitted it with an electronic lead-screw but retained all the change gears which were included in the sale. They would fit your lathe. If you like, I can email him to see if he could be persuaded to part with them?. He is a forum member, so he may contact you directly.

John

Thanks for all the encouraging comments, chaps.

Perhaps I should have been a bit clearer with my description. The three vertical columns are Ø12mm steel tubes to provide a bit of stiffness to the structure, but as I said most hole drilling will be to bring printed hole to size for tapping drills and clearance hole for the bolts, so not a lot of stress on any of it. Having said that, the proof of the pudding will be when I start using it. Time will tell.

Neil, I bought your 3D printing book some while ago and am about to start re-reading it to refresh my understanding of the materials and their various properties. So far I've only used basic PLA, because that was what was supplied with the machine (which, incidentally is a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon). I did try some carbon fibre impregnated filament without any success so went back to the basic stuff to get me going. More experimentation needed with settings.

John Doe2. Not my fist foray into CAD by any means, just its use to create STEP files for printing.

By the way I'm using Orca Slicer to produce the G-code and sending the files wirelessly to the printer. It also takes a micro SD card but, again, that's for the future. Some users are wary of sending their files via the cloud and I can't say that I'm overfond of the procedure.

John