Member postings for Mike Poole

The Amateurs Lathe by L. H. Sparey remains a book that is seriously worth reading. Other authors have produced books that are more up to date with tipped tooling and innovations like VFD drives for the lathe but I think the time taken to read Sparey will be well spent. Reading is not everyone’s choice but reading some of the classic books will answer many of the novice questions. This forum has many people willing to share their knowledge, so ask the members if you cannot find what you want to know or for advice on a problem.

Mike

The first one I ever went to was at the Seymour Hall in the early 1970s, just a lad in those days.

Mike

My mother’s bungalow had solid brick walls, the earth trip was operating so after unplugging everything the problem remained, dampness in a bedroom 13A socket was the problem, curiously it never happened again after a good drying out with a hair dryer. A high voltage insulation tester commonly referred to as a Meggar is the most useful tool for a fault of this nature.

Mike

An friend was moving into another office in the factory and they were having trouble with getting more than 3 crt monitors powered up before the RCD tripped, I found that for some reason a 10mA RCD had been fitted rather than the typical 30mA device.
Mike

I first encountered gib when reading and read it as a soft g, in discussions I later found that there are hard g users and I doubted that my guess at it being soft was was correct. The question has come up a number of times on the forum and it seem there is not definitive answer.

Mike

The Telegraph journalists seem confused about the correct us of home and hone.

Mike

The movement you suspect in the spindle may be the quill in the body, put all quill and axis locks on and check they are effective before taking any measurements.

Mike

As Myfords are imperial machines then dimensions in metric will throw up some awkward figures and some rounding if the accurate conversion is not used. 1/64” is 0.396875mm or 0.015625” . The problem with rounding dimensions is that the errors can accumulate. Is your idea to produce a dimensioned and toleranced drawing to make a part to original spec. or just a general drawing with dimensions? I would think most people would be fitting the parts to their machine so just the nominal dimensions would be adequate.

Mike

Your symptoms are typical of a failed capacitor or a centrifugal switch problem. Some pics of the motor including the data plate would be helpful. The capacitor is usually mounted in a housing on the exterior of the motor. Some motors may have two capacitors and are described as capacitor start, capacitor run. Capacitor start will have one capacitor. The centrifugal switch is internally fitted in the motor and is used to switch the capacitor out of circuit when the motor is up to speed. If no capacitor is fitted then the motor could be of the split phase type which uses the centrifugal switch to switch a start winding out of circuit when up to speed. Your motor is unlikely to be split phase as the starting characteristics are poor compared to a capacitor start motor.

Mike

The table of threads for the Clough42 ELS can be modified to include any pitch or tpi you would find useful. It is not a feature but as the software is open source you can find the places to modify quite easily even if you are not a programmer.

Mike

A friend put his motorcycle crankcases in the dishwasher, they came out lovely and clean and he is still a happily married man.

Mike

Roman concrete seems to last a bit longer than the modern stuff, more than 2000 years longer in some cases.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 02/09/2023 14:39:51

Machinery’s 30th edition seems to have escaped on to the internet and is downloadable from many sources, I rather get the feeling that it was not intended as a free gift to the world but an unfortunate venture into the digital format that was not secured properly.

Mike

I find Dasqua to be good value for money and was not disappointed with my purchases but you are not buying Starrett or Mitutoyo cheaply. M&W seem to have embraced an economy range which again seems to be value for money but is not the standard of their best tools from years gone by, I haven’t bought any of their high end range in recent times so don’t know if they have maintained their quality.

Mike

Gerstner toolmakers chests have a special compartment for a copy of Machinery’s Handbook, toolmakers must have clean hands or wash up to read their copy.

Mike

I have straightened tines that I have bent by using my bench vice to hold the bent tine and bending it straight using the leverage of the handle. I haven’t used heat and not encountered any problems.

Mike

I don’t think the guy who built this did it without drawings, sometimes you can work straight from your minds eye and sometimes you need CAD.

Mike

The machine shop I worked in had a mixture of mercury vapour lamps and tungsten filament to combat strobe effects, they invested a lot of money in the design of a lighting system to address an old wives tale. It was a long time ago now but was regarded as the best design for machine shop lighting at the time.

Mike

Both are bad workshop practice, in the case shown in the picture I think the surface plate is past caring. Personally I don’t like tools placed on guideways and tables of machine tools, the back of the vice is handy for light centre punching but not heavy hammering. There are many do and do nots in a workshop most for personal safety or avoiding damage to expensive equipment

Mike

The king of motors in industry has been the 3 phase totally enclosed fan cooled squirrel cage induction motor, 2 pole and 4pole by far the most common. If you want variable speed supply it from a VFD and if you want position control then fit an encoder to the motor. Robots these days favour brushless DC. The DC motor has some great characteristics that lend it to various speed control systems, other big applications were traction motors often found on trains and forklift trucks. I can’t think of much new equipment being fitted with DC motors since the early 1980s.in the home workshop I would tend to choose a 3 phase TEFC motor and run it from a VFD, particularly for lathes and mills. At the moment I think brushless DC is not an easy technology to pick up spare controllers and motors should you need them whereas the 3ph TEFC motors are readily available online and at your local factors, a VFD is easy to source and even if you need a replacement for an obsolete model they are almost a drop in replacement for any failed unit regardless of manufacturer, you may need some understanding of setting the parameters though.

Mike