Member postings for Mike Poole

I think HSS ground thread is because it would be difficult to make them any other way. Carbon steel can be absolutely fine but bargain basement manufacturing cuts every corner available and so the cheapest rubbish will be carbon steel and poorly made. Finding good quality carbon steel is more difficult these days as the old reliable brands for CS are mostly gone and most of the recognisable good brands deal in HSS. I find the products supplied by the Tap &Die company to be fine although the picture is clouded by calling the material they use HQS which is carbon steel if you spark test it. It would be lovely if it was as simple as just buying HSS and everything would be wonderful but poor HSS exists so we are back to trusted brands and trusted suppliers. As taps and dies are a popular subject for an enquiry on this forum there are many threads and much information to be found with a search of the forum. A useful search box is to be found on the Home tab on the black horizontal bar above.

Mike

I have had valve collets that are reluctant to let go but a tap with a mallet after tightening the compressor usually releases them, saves distorting the compressor.

Mike

Scroll down to the videos on Bills link and the application of the device and what is required becomes clear.

Mike

It depends what the measure of a good driver is, I shall not be troubling Lewis Hamilton on a gp track but I hope my roadcraft and patience will keep me out of trouble. I always said if you can survive until you are 25 on a motorcycle you may be in with a chance of making a safe motorcyclist but that got turned around by middle aged gents buying fireblades and R1s and killing themselves, a bit more of a handful than old Bonnies and commandos which were probably the last thing they rode. Is this guy insane, a brilliant rider or just luckyGhost Rider 2022

Mike

When I finished my apprenticeship I went onto nights and one of the things we maintained was an outdoor travelling crane, the control panels were on a walkway about 30ft up in the air on the main cross beam of the crane. A woolly beanie hat was an early purchase despite my very significant mane of long hair. It still was a treacherous climb up the steel ladder on a frosty or snowy night.

Mike

The police advice seems to be don’t leave items on display in your vehicle, as criminals usually don’t bother smashing into cars just on spec then I expect they don’t bother if nothing can be seen, if they took the approach that privacy glass must be hiding something then they would be very busy with little reward. I would always put a laptop or similar high value portable item in the boot but as my jacket will be just a jacket with no phone or wallet then I will risk it in the footwell with dark windows, I doubt there is much demand for a second hand jacket for a fat bloke.

Mike

As a significant number of us are probably old gits we have probably discovered that the accelerator is a proportional device and not a switch and our copilot prefers smooth acceleration and gentle braking. We have probably discovered that going hell for leather gains only a few minutes on a journey time but wears our vehicle out and drains the tank very quickly. My wife’s cousin lived just outside Paris for a few years and remarked that he had learned to drive his car properly on his trips to visit his parents in West Oxfordshire, he was having to stop for fuel when he made the trip with aggressive throttle and hard braking but he could comfortably make the trip on a tankful with a more economical driving style. I think his rear windows were clear.

Mike

We had a guy at work who had an endless supply of broken cheap crappy radios, he brought them in to the electrical maintenance workshops for a free repair. When a workshop got fed up with an unfeasable number of radios for a man to have and sent him away he would move on to another workshop and so on. The suspicion was that he was selling them on somewhere.

Mike

I think bell wire is quite a thick wire for making signal interconnections, have a look at some 30AWG or 0.25mm wire, some wires like Kynar are quite easy to solder without stripping back. Bell wire is handy for the matrix type solderless breadboards although a little bit heavier can make life easier.

Mike

I think there is quite a hierarchy of nursing staff, not all are qualified to the highest level. The term nurse is applied probably incorrectly to all the staff who provide a patients requirements. The person who washes you and changes the bedding is probably at the lower end and the person who sets up and monitors the equipment that keeps an eye on you and deals with drips and medication is probably at a higher level. There used to be quite a variety of uniforms and hats that went with the individual roles but it seems hard to tell these days, fortunately since I parted with my appendix at 17 I have not spent a night in hospital, a very painful kidney stone sorted itself out within a couple of hours of arriving at a triage unit at about 3am, no shortage of staff at that time of night, it was like a Grand Prix pit stop with people on every side, luckily the night surgery doctor managed to bypass A&E and sent me to a triage unit in the relevant department who didn’t seem to have much on at that time of night, full marks to him for sorting that out.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 11/12/2022 22:45:12

The book is out of copyright so here is a link to read online The Master Mind of Mars

Mike

When I was a lad our GP worked from a surgery at his house, I am pretty sure you didn’t need an appointment as he saw everyone who turned up at his surgery session. When I was 17 I had a day of feeling slightly odd followed by a rough night with an abdominal pain. My mother rang the doctor at around 8am and he called round about 9am, he suspected appendicitis but was not certain and would call back later, he returned at lunch time and sent me straight to hospital, my mother took me by car and I think I was on my way to the operating theatre within 30min of arriving. Woke up later that afternoon with mum and dad stood round my bed. I just don’t get why we have to wait weeks to see a GP. If a waiting list is getting longer then they do not have enough staff, if it is static then they need to clear the backlog and keep on top of things if they start to slip. The appointment system must self defeating if once the list is full any extra patients are put off until tomorrow and so the slide starts. Our old doctors system probably meant he had some long days but his backlog was non existent as he never let it develop, I expect he got an early finish on odd occasions. He was widely regarded in the village as a good doctor and had been my mother and fathers doctor since they were youngsters. The village named a street after him. It will be funny having a street called “anon. Zoom call” these days.

Mike

Two factors come in to play with a soldering iron, the bit size and the wattage available to heat the bit. A fine point with a low wattage iron will struggle to heat a large switch terminal. A high wattage (50W) iron that is temperature controlled can run a fine point tip without overheating it or a large tip and be able to keep it up to temperature. I run a Weller temperature controlled iron usually with a fine point. To avoid changing tips for larger one off tasks I let the iron contact as much as possible of a terminal and create a pool of solder to transfer as much heat as fast as possible this has worked for me for 50 years. A good joint will have a smooth shiny finish and the solder should flow freely, an under heated joint will be dull and rough and the solder will not flow freely. Solder for electronic work should be eutectic so that it transitions from liquid to solid almost instantaneously. Personally I do not like lead free solder but it works ok, lead tin is available as it is required for repair work to old spec equipment.

Mike

RAF Benson hit -9°C, about 4 miles from me. The frost has persisted all day in the shade. My wife is caning the heating.

Mike

You can pick up the small ones by the bucketful where gangs of youths congregate.

Mike

I suspect the reuse of a QR coded stamp would result in a charge to the recipient who may not be best pleased or return to sender.

Mike

My car has dark rear windows, it was not my choice and now living with it I find little benefit, it does tempt me to just leave my jacket in the footwell rather than the boot and reversing off my drive is more difficult at night, I don’t deal in drugs so that benefit is not required and I am not a celebrity. Overall it would mark it as a slight disadvantage.

Mike

Climb milling requires an effective backlash eliminator or a ball screw with stepper or servo control. I take very light climb cuts and put the axis locks on to provide some additional drag but not lock the axis, a fine balancing act but it seems to work. Backlash is the enemy of climb milling and even a new mill will have some and it will increase with wear. Some mills have a crude slit nut that can be adjusted to pinch the thread but as most screws wear unevenly adjustment will be impossible to be satisfactory in all positions, big boys mills can have hydraulic elimination but this is found on serious professional equipment.

Mike

The alternative seems to be a mesh screen stuck on the window. Now that aircon is so common it probably helps to prevent the sun heating the car and working the aircon harder. With youngsters strapped in car seats it could help avoid sunburn. It also helps keep your anonymity if you are a drug dealer.

Mike

I sprayed a motorcycle petrol tank black in my mums kitchen. It was not a good idea, my makeshift booth did little to contain the black dust cloud that covered every surface, even the sugar bowl had a layer on the sugar.

Mike