Member postings for Colin Heseltine

Michael,

Yes your right they do come with long cables. As the controller box communicates via Bluetooth I could move it off the bench and the long cables would come in handy. As its a house mill I am instructed to try and keep the area tidy, even though it is in my office. I was quite pleased with how small I could make the installation. The magnetic strips are only 7mm thick. They are two part and if I had been able to use just the top cover then this would have reduced thickness to 2mm.

Colin

Well Yesterday actually. Completed fitting 3 axis DRO to Cowells Mill. Used the Android TouchDRO App from Yuriy's Toys website and built controller from his plans using Texas Instruments Launchpad MSP430 Processor board. Used 5 micron magnetic readheads from Machine-DRO (no connection just a satisfied customer).

Processor board shown before closed up and mill.

X asnd Y axis read heads mounting bracket

Z Axis Readhead

View from front, tablet can be seen with readout displays and controller box at the right rear of the picture.

Very please with the result.

Colin

Hi Martin,

Your lucky you had a vice with yours.  I'm still looking for something suitable.

Colin

Edited By Colin Heseltine on 26/02/2015 19:57:03

Hi Martin,

It is interesting to compare your Corbetts XL with mine. There are several differences.

1. Your access hatch appears to be hinged whereas mine is held on by two thumbscrews, one on each side of the hatch.

2. There look to be oilers fitted to the two drive shafts, I just have champhered holes.

3. There is some form of micrometer fitted to the left of the top slide. Is this a later fitment by a previous owner.

4. The adjustment mechanism for the belt tension looks to be a later mod. The original was by a threaded and knurled sleeve fitted over the long thread on the back motor mounting plate.

I was able to locate new drive belt for the motor side but as yet not managed to get replacement for the smaller belt.

If you need any info re dismantling I can try to help.

Have fun with it.

Colin

Martin.

If you have a look in my photo folder "Twizseven's Bits & Bobs" you will see photographs of my Corbetts XL shaper which I obtained late last year and then refurbished it. It is a nice little machine. I have mine on a large Machine Mart tool chest on roller wheels. It has a lot of weight in it (Lathe chucks etc) to keep it stable and the wheels lock ok. The rear motor mount on mine had been well and truly b......d about with and it made the shaper around 7 inches longer than it should have been. I made a new sliding mount and fitted a new motor. It now looks very good and runs well, I have not tried to use it in anger yet. It is mesmerising to watch running.

I'd say clean it up and keep it.

Regards,

Colin

Rik,

I intend keeping it. Need to source some suitable tooling for it and then learn how to use it.

Rgds,

Colin

Rik,

Very nice job with your shaper. Below is my small 7" shaper which I refurbed earlier in the year.

It is now sat on a mobile bench elsewhere in the garage. This was an Ebay purchase. I replaced the motor and mounting bracket fitted by the previous owner and it now is a lot more like original and is around 4 " shorter overall. I believe this is a Corbetts XL 7" machine having looked at lathes.co.uk

Colin

If you can locate it I would suggest the plastishim would be better than the feeler gauge as you could cut a length to go across the whole front of the pillar, which is what I did.

Colin

Just about to start brazing up a split in metal shield above the manifold on my Cortina Mk5. At the time I had an economiser setup whereby a pilot light is lit, you pick up the welding torch off spring loaded hook which then lets the oxy-actylene mixture through and the torch fires up from the pilot light. Also in this setup I had a gas fluxer. The acetylene bubbled through this (very highly flammable fluid) and there was no need to add flux to rods. It was a great setup.

I had lit the pilot light, bent down and opened the valve on fluxer. Straightened up to pick up the torch when the set screw holding the control knob in the fluxer sheared. The knob flew out under 6psi pressure and then promptly 4-6 pints of highly flammable fluid exited the small hole, vapourised and then hit the pilot light.

Cue massive explosion, I caught fire from waist up, hair, beard the lot. Garage roof lifted at least 1ft in air. up and over door bent out at hinges, all paper in garage caught fire, all plastic coated products instantly shrink wrapped. All paintwork looked as though a blow torch had been held over it.

I did a runner outside, rolled down lawn to put out fires, jacket etc. then back into garage to deal with consequences. Grabbed extinguisher and hit some of the fires, lots of thinners in garage and cellulose paint but luckily none of it ignited. My old man came into garage, gave him extinguisher and I jumped in bath. After a few moments I remembered I did not have blow back valves at time so shot back into garage, moved ten ton press and then moved bottles outside and opened valves.

Then hijacked a car coming down road to get me to hospital.

I can still picture the yellow flames all round me to this day.

Don't use gas fluxer anymore and have a few more extinguishers around.

Thing is I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just unlucky or lucky as no lasting damage done to me house or car. Even the dog sat alongside me at the time survived.

Colin

Took the 7 round Curborough Sprint Track on the annual Boxing Day runout. Very wet and slippery, raining and sleet. Lots of slidy opposite lock bits. Good fun just the same.

Colin

I'd love to use the Cloud for additional backup, but where I live broadband is abysmal. I only went from 1Mb to around 3Mb in January. I still have photos syncing to dropbox after 8 weeks. We have nice new Infinity cabs 100yards away from me, but no indication whatever from BT when they will be active. They have been in place over 6 months.

As an example download of latest maps for tomtom satnav at moment and scheduled to take 3hours.

Colin

Michael,

My Buffalo NAS are both used on Windows. I must admit the software is a bit sluggish when configuring stuff, but access speeds seem ok.

Colin

Geoff,

I am using Buffalo Terrastation lll NAS devices. These are attached via Cat5 cable to network switch and then to servers/pc etc. The software that comes with them NASNavigator2 allows selection/configuration of the various RAID options. I use RAID 5 with a hot swap disk. The small unit has four x 1 TB drives and I lose 1TB immediately by having this as an automatic hot swap spare. This leaves me with 3x1Tb drives, which when set up as RAID 5 gives me just under 2Tb of storage. So in one respect I lose a lot of storage space but have the additional safety. To be honest this is why I have now purchased the 12TB device.

I am also using some backup software called Novabackup (which IIRC came with the hard drive). This enables me to run scheduled backups of particular directories, e..g. photos on a regular basis.

With many of these NAS devices software is provided which will enable to access the data from anywhere in the world. So for example a son/daughter at UNI could back up uni work to your hard drive, or you could share a drive with a colleague.

I have a friend who runs MAC's and his stuff is backed up to the cloud continually.

Hope this is of some help.

Colin

Got to agree. You cant beat external hard drive systems (NAS). I have one 4 Terabyte and one 12 Terabyte external hard drives. Each one has 4 hard disk drives, One is used as a hot spare and the remaining three are run as a RAID5 group. Should a DISK Fail then it is taken out of use by the system and the hot spare is automatically brought into use and the system rebuilds itself. You get a notification that a drive has failed, pull it out and fir a replacement.

Data will be backed up on PC, backed up to NAS 1 and copied across to NAS 2. The grief one is likely to get if all family photographs for the last x years vanish does not bear thinking about, let alone the work that is backed up.

Some stuff is also backed up to the Cloud.

Laptop data is also backed up to another external hard drive. NAS drives and server are on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so brownouts and power cuts don't damage the drives.

Regards,

Colin

Talking of Coniston speed week brings back a few memories. Back in 1968/70 I looked after an R3 class hydroplane with a Lotus twincam engine in it. I went with it to Windermere where the record attempts were held at the time. It held the speed record for the class at the time. Unfortunately its co-driver hit some driftwood and sank it in one of the deepest parts of the lake. The money spent by some of the owners of the big boats was amazing. Saw one guy with 4 big Mercury outboards, come back in with a problem and he went straight to the Mercury dealers there and bought four fresh engines on the spot. Even then there was a fantastic buzz at the event. Only down side to the week was seeing Bill Shakespeare from Shakespeare boats getting killed when his boat went airborne and nosed dived straight down into the lake.

Colin

I use varifocals without too much of a problem but if working really close could do with using single vision lenses with short focal length. As far as the issue with straight lines appearing bent, I had this problem with my first pair of varifocals. Was told (rightly or wrongly that it was to do with the quality/manufacture of the glass. A higher specification glass (and more expensive) would cure the problem. I opted for the more expensive glass and the problem went away. With the first pair I actually felt as though I was at sea and things were moving up and down.

From the safety point of view I tend to use one of the full face visors, over goggles tend to steam up to easily..

Colin

Nigel,

The toolpost does have a recess. How do you suggest I machine the spigot. Obviously I cannot do it on the Colchester, not sure whether the topslide would fit on faceplate of ML7. I could possibly fix it to the rotary table and do on Milling machine. I have not used the rotary table as yet, so this would be a first.

Thanks,

Colin

Ian,

Did you hacksaw the main chunk off and then mill down the face of the topslide, or did you flycut it. I am highly unlikely to get rid of this lathe as have lots of bits for it.

Murray,

I've not used it a lot since it was fitted, but it is set up to work in conjunction with the scale on the bed of the lathe. I think it can be set up for an angled top slide but that would be beyond me. I have glass scales on the bed and cross-slide and magnetic on the top-slide. My ML7 has same scales on bed and cross-slide but none on top-slide.

Rgds,

Colin

I have just purchased a very good Colchester QCTP with 4 toolholders from Fleabay. Intention is to fit it to my Colchester Student 6" lathe which currently has a 4-way tool post. Dismantled the 4 way toolpost to find that it revolves on a 44mmx4mm pillar which appears to be as one with the topslide casting. The threaded and splined post you can see in the photograph is removable by undoing a locking bolt of some form underneath the topslide. I unfortunately thought the whole assembly would come of as one.

The QCTP came with a 'T' slot mounting and bolt. What would you advise. machining off the 44x44mm pillar and just using a bolt without the 'T' slot fixing. or machining off the pillar and maching a 'T' slot in the topslide (not sure there is enough depth for this option till fully dismantled. This latter option would cause issues with the DRO components so may well be a no goer. The more I think about it option one would appear to be the best. What are your views.

Many Thanks,

Colin