Member postings for Mike Poole

At the Bristol Show I saw this firm www.ems-i.co.uk I have no connection with the firm just reporting their presence at the show.

Mike

The most nonsensical thing about imperial measurements is fractions, if a drawing is dimensioned in thous then they are easy to add/subtract and relate directly to machines dials, a shame rules have fractions.

Mike

I would go with tapping the shaft with a soft faced mallet, a few not too heavy taps should show whether the end housing is going to part from the body easily. There may be some notches on the joint line to allow a flat punch to be use to help part the cases. The shaft should not be too tight a fit in the bearing and should knock through without too much force. Extreme force should not be required or used.

Mike

My hearing has survived the best efforts of Motörhead and Ted Nugent and riding a Trident with a 3-1 exhaust that made your ears ring after 100 miles. My last hearing test was within the expected range for my age. Our village hall has a limiter that cuts power to the stage if the limit is exceeded but this is a joke as you could hold a polite conversation while the band played. Strangely a disco can play at a reasonable volume but a live rock band just trips it straight away. F1 came in for a lot of criticism when the current turbo setup emasculated the sound of the cars and speedway lost some of its presence when they silenced it. Drag racing seems untouched at the moment, maybe the sound is intense but it is very brief.

Mike

Edited By Michael Poole on 22/08/2016 21:08:53

Sunday afternoon used to be a great time to go for a blast on the bike, the few Sunday drivers were nothing compared to the hoards doing their weekly shop.

Mike

Is this too much of a toy for what you are looking for?

Mike

Tesco, Barton upon Humber

1/ 4 BSF should have an across flats measurment of 0.445" or 11.303mm. for practical purposes it is probably close enough as most bolt heads measure a shade under size.(assuming you have hex bar)

Mike

Edited By Michael Poole on 17/08/2016 12:26:03

Edited By Michael Poole on 17/08/2016 12:27:12

The start and finish of the winding must be correct but the phase order does not matter as it will just run the wrong way so just swap them to get the desired rotation. If you get a winding the wrong way round the motor will not sound at all happy.

Mike

ARG took massive strides forward in the 1980s, unfortunately we were chasing a moving target. Everyone knows how the Japanese amazing quality and reliability were achieved but implementing the processes is not easy and requires massive and continuous effort. I worked on the equipment that made the Rover 800 and the Honda Legend, later the Rover 600 was integrated into the same line. Much of the line was built by Honda Engineering who are a truly impressive organisation to work with. Following the Honda process of building batches of 30 it was noticeable how much better the build went when doing R600 (which was a thinly disguised Honda Accord). The R600 pressings which were made on the same presses as R800 fitted superbly which is one of the thing you must start with in a highly automated manufacturing facility. For Sams info we could change a complete press line in 20 mins, that is all dies and inter press automation ( these were conventional presses not triaxis type which can change in single digit minutes). Unfortunately if a pressing is unsatisfactory it is a lot of work to correct it and it did not always happen which means you will live with a problem. One of Hondas bike engine tests according to folklore is that they ran them on a test rig at full power for 24hrs, a brutal test of any engine but if it can take that it should survive normal abuse and apart from a C50 which only blew up because I let the oil run low I have not blown up a Honda despite plenty of hard use. When you look at the cars from ARG they were all the result of compromise, the life of the A series engine was probably only exceeded by Triumphs parallel twin, everyone knew it needed replacing but where was the money? Although the government bankrolled the Metro it was not unlimited money, they installed a facility to build 10,000 a week but 5,000 was the realistic volume. The Metro facility was installed around 1980 and had many forward thinking ideas like automatic guided vehicles, unfortunately adopting new technology early means you suffer all the problems. The vision technology I mentioned earlier cost a huge amount of money and was very complex, now a camera can check glue paths and correctly fitted components that only costs a couple of hundred quid, so robots can have eyes to check what they have done.

You may feel I am a bit sensitive to criticism of the British car industry but I know how much effort was put in by very many people to try and make it better. Ultimately we failed but I think with proper investment and management it could have been different.

Hats off to our Olympic sportsmen and women for their outstanding results, but apart from their own Herculean efforts the big factor is that they have been properly funded to allow them to be successful and so it could have been for our car industry.

Mike

Thank you gentlemen, I am looking forward to it.

Mike

Murray, I think you must be a Sun reader, many talented forward thinking engineers worked for the Austin Rover organisation it in its many forms. The electro coat primer system was developed at Cowley and is still used today by all major car companies, they were one of the first car companies to install CAD, the tool room invested in Numerical Controlled machines in the very early days when companies like EMI, Ferranti, Cramic were players, a Cinncinnatti Hydrotel Mill had a Cinncinnatti Acramatic series 1 control fitted to it. A private micro link was able to video conference in 1970. Ideas in spot welding technology from the 1970s have only recently become mainstream. Vision systems were used in the mid 80s to establish the position of a body and send offset data to robots so they could adjust their task program. The biggest handicap to the British car industry has been investment. The people you slagged off played a significant role in the startup of the Washington Nissan plant, many engineers from ARG left and worked for independent design offices working for manufactures from all over the world. Jaguar and Landrover are now making great products with the investment to make it work. Cowley has made the MINI for the last 16 years and this has been an astonishing success. The products you mentioned as being crap compared quite well to the competition of the time. The lack of continuous investment meant that many models were well past their sell by date, a 17 year life for the Metro is ridiculous. Quality is more about getting the engineering right and then having processes that keep deviation under control, the Japanese embraced all the systems that make a quality product many years ago and the Americans and Europeans were reluctant and slow to adopt. All Uk manufactured cars had problems with early death through rust but the early Hondas and Datsuns took it to another level but at least the free radio kept working.

Mike

Retiring next week after 44 years in the British car industry.

I find that the new car cosseting stage wears of quite quickly, I am now down to twice a year whether it needs it or not.

Mike

I think that the thing that winds people up is the paperwork side of the RA every skilled man should have been trained to make an assessment of how to do a task safely. Planning a job is a way of life for a properly trained person, knowing when you should seek advice rather than carrying on with a task you are not sure about is essential.the most dangerous people are the confident ones who think they know what they are doing, best to keep a good distance from them or the HSE will blame you for not stopping them.

Mike

Is the RA process to prevent accidents or to fix the blame after the accident? We can't go around having accidents without someone to blame.

Mike

As a small boy I lived 500m from the end of RAF Leeming runway, Javelins were the resident aircraft at that time. Could be noisy at times.

Mike

try googling concrete lathe, many machines have been built of concrete. I think medieval machines were mostly wood. have a read of Tools For The Job by LTC Rolt. I found it a good read but it is not universally appreciated.

Mike

Have a search for Beck and Pollitzer Foden, it certainly looks to have been a source of inspiration for this model.

Mike

I can't say much about the model but Beck and Pollitzer are specialist machine movers and heavy gang, they have some trick machinery to get into tight corners and lift heavy loads, they have a crane about 750mm wide that can lift a 10ton gearbox out of a pit and drive out between other fixed machinery. Interesting the model bears their name.

Mike

When I was an apprentice I was warned to look out for red earth cables, as a temporary wartime measure red was chosen as earth as all flex cables seemed to have a red. They were still cropping up in 1973 in my second year, it was always a recable job not just a new plug top.

Mike