Member postings for Baldric

Neil,

I didn't want to completely redesign the gears as thy fit within a cast part and as the model has been built by others the basic design should work, so in this came need to confirm the cutters to use.

From what I have read I think I have the correct calculations taking in to account the fact that this design of gear is an approximation for the average model engineer. I just need to get on and make them, first finish the arduino controlled rotary table to make my life easier.

Baldric.

Andrew,

​I should have mentioned that although the drawing does not show parallel depth gears that is what I will be using.
​Thank you for confirming my calculations, getting different answers form different places started to make me think I was doing something wrong.

Baldric

I am making a 3" Foden steam wagon and looking at the bevel gears in the differential having difficulty with some of the calculations, getting rather different answers depending on where I look.

The gears are 30 & 10 teeth 1/8" pitch, I am happy that the details from the drawing mean it is 12DP, and for the crown that gives a PD at the small end of 2.5".

​Using Steve Withnell's spreadsheet this says the gear cutter required for both the pinion and crown wheels is No.4 as the equivalent number of teeth is 32. Is this correct or is the calculation in C12 using Sin instead of cos?

Using this book I get the equivalent number of teeth as 94 & 11, a somewhat different answer. This book also says you could use the DP midway along the tooth rather than the small end.

I also have seen someone else building this has worked out the result as 142 & 16, but they used the DP at the outer end.

As my calculations end up with such a small number of teeth has anyone any thoughts on which method of calculation is best to use?

​Also a question about pressure angle, RDG stock cutters for 14.5 degrees, for the spur gears later 20 degrees is specified, the pressure angle for the bevel gears never seems to be mentioned. Is it OK to use 14.5 for both the bevel and spur gears rather than finding a sensibly priced UK supplier for 20 degree ones?

Thanks in advance.

Baldric

Normally it is the male on the tool as many of the female connectors are self-sealing when nothing is plugged in to them, thus easy to change tools without turning the air supply off.

Baldric

Dave,
I was thinking that I will use the numbers and have ordered **LINK** as it had the start & stop buttons, I am waiting for it to arrive. I wanted the stop so that I can easily stop it if I think something is going wrong.

Baldric

I must admit I had been thinking along slightly different lines, the rotary being used to do the up/down, but also when in jog mode to actually do the movement. In run mode I had considered using a single axis joystick, but then wondered if a rotary, joystick and something to change mode was to many controls. As with so many things what can make a good application bad is the user interface.

Baldric

Carl,
​The article has made me go and buy one of these to play with, and I will be fitting it to my rotary table. I have also started looking at a couple of alternatives:-

1. Using a display using the i2c bus to reduce output pins, this may be slower to drive though, I need to investigate further.
2. Using a rotary controller as an input device instead of up/down buttons, not sure if it will make it any better than a full keypad though.

​I am also considering using this as the basis for a power feed on my mill, may not be the cheapest solution but may be useful for repetitive work such as gutting gears.

So from me a big thank you for the article and providing inspiration.

Baldric

Hi,

​I seem to remember there was an article about fitting locks to a rotary table that could be controlled by electronics, does anyone know anything about this? I have had a look for it in the indexes for MEW and ME and can't see it with the search I was doing and Google returned nothing useful.

For background I was wondering if I could add driving of this to the recent Arduino based rotary table controller to make gear cutting easier.

Thanks in advance,

Baldric

I thought I would post an update, I have not completed the Touch DRO kit.

When I took the display apart it provided enough information to work out which connection was which. I used standard shielded USB leads from the head to my box, in my box I used a PC USB header assembly with the PCB connections remade to match the wiring on the PCB. The whole unit is powered using a USB to PSU adapter lead so a single wall wart PSU will be able to supply the unit and the display.

In my case I am using an Amazon Kindle for the display, I used an app on my phone to extract the app to be able to install it on the Kindle.

So far this has all worked when tested, I have yet to use it in anger.

Baldric

I did the same due to lack of headroom, 2 rows of 4m down the workshop (converted garage), I went for the ones with the most light output, but would have been fine with lower power units. Mine are fitted in the extrusion with the cover strip. The only problem I have had is one of the strips stopped working part way down, the solder joint between sections had cracked, a touch with the soldering iron fixed it.

Baldric.

Thanks for the information, in this case it has helped me decide I won't get them for this particular job as separate batteries with different people using them means that it is very likely the batteries will be borrowed for something else,

Baldric

Ady1, Can you provide more info on that light? Where did you get it from and how long does the battery last?

Baldric

Has anyone else used these scales with the TouchDRO app, or any other reader? Do they know what pins do what on the connector?

John,

You mention a rats nest, my understanding is that all the Masso needs is a keyboard, mouse and VDU in addition to the direction/step feed to the motor drivers, I have assumed that all the other systems mentioned would still require separate drivers so the only addition for the Masso compared to the others is the keyboard, mouse and VDU, is this correct? I do agree that the wiring shown does not look neat and tidy but I thought this was more down to the installer than the number of connections needed.
​Baldric

Thanks for the replies.I
​I have replaced the batteries, but it didn't help. Strange thing is it stopped working about a week ago, this evening I went in the workshop and the display has turned its self on and started working! I guess there must be a dodgy joint in there somewhere.

I have asked Warco what protocol the scales use, so far I have not had a response other than not understanding the question,

I may still look at using TouchDRO as it offers a few other things that seem interesting, and I will be using a PCB supplied by Yuri, assuming i can confirn what protocol they use and they will work with it.

Baldric.

I currently have these scales **LINK** fitted to my milling machine with the display on **LINK**, however the display has died.


​Currently I am thinking I am thinking that I will replace the display with either Caliper2PC or TouchDRO, but I don't know what protocol the scales use, does anyone know and have they successfully used these scales with either system.


In terms of the reader I am currently thinking I will go with the TouchDRO as it is cheaper, provides the functionality I need and from the youtube videos seems easy to use. With the Caliper2Pc I tried running the demo, whilst it worked I wasn't keen on the display and wasn't convinced that I would be able to use it with a touch-screen as easily as TouchDRO, has anyone done a comparison with both of these recently? I know they are other threads that mention TouchDRO, some rather old, so would prefer recent experience from those that have used later versions of the software.

If there are better reasonably priced options, that in the future I could upgrade to better scales, I would also be interested, however I don't want to go down the route of designing hardware to interface to scales.

Baldric

I have seen this on another website **LINK** and thought it needed a wider audience. I was thinking I may build a hobbing machine, possibly the one being serialised in MEW, but this may be an easier option. Only thing is need to remove the rack to disable the traverse, I am sure there would be other options such as adding a separate take off from the lead-screw, I guess the feed is also manual.

​What do others think?

Baldric.

Would a shrinker/stretcher work in brass angle? As seen here **LINK**

Looking at the specification of **LINK** it says to click the image to see the details of the dimensions, using Windows10 clicking the image does nothing so I can't see which dimension is which.
​Baldric