Member postings for David Colwill

Firstly I have no experience of your lathe.

When confronted by confusing wiring diagrams it is often helpful to make a few copies of the diagram that you can take notes on. Then by looking at the obvious things and amending the diagram with things like wire colours, you can reduce the list of unknowns until hopefully they all disappear.

Obviously having someone who has more knowledge is best but this may not be easy in these times.

David

Carbide circuit board drills go down that and are pretty cheap RS do one for £13.50 (RS Stock No.:198-4678) but there are cheaper offerings on eBay etc.

Be warned you can snap one by merely looking at it.

I have used them at low speeds (3000 rpm) on my CNC mill but be prepared to lose a few.

I have just had a look and I have a pack of 0.3mm if you pm me your address I will put a couple in the post.

David.

Well the vice is back on the mill!

I stoned the table with a ground flat stone and put some oil on it.

The vice is better now the bottom is flat and I would echo what Mike said.

Overall definitely worth the few hours spent.

David.

Same here!

Ours also has wifi and an app to control it but sadly my phone is not new enough to work it!

David.

Sold!

The minor service is becoming more major and has now moved to regrinding the top and bottom face of the vice which should improve things as the bottom whilst looking okay wasn't very good. Fortunately the vice breaks down to fairly convenient and easily ground pieces, so this shouldn't take too long.

I had meant to do this when I got the vice but it was bought to do a job and once that was done the next panic came along and....

Thanks for the unanimous verdict!

David.

In a recent post, the idea of placing paper between clamped surfaces was discussed. It is an idea that has many advocates. I am about to remove the vice off the mill for a minor service and was thinking of doing this as I have had it move very slightly in the past. I have some VCI anti rust paper and was wondering if this would be suitable? Has anyone tried this? Am I being stupid?

Thoughts please.

David.

I have had a Warco lathe in the past and it was fine. They always seem to come with one or two niggles but nothing too bad.

On the strength of this and the generally positive experiences of people on this forum, I recommended that a friend buy one of the smaller gear head machines (gh600).

It was dreadful! It had clearly been put together by someone who had no idea what a lathe was. The spindle was running out by a mile and everything about it felt wrong.

In fairness to Warco, they offered to take it back or send whatever it needed to get it going,

I am not trying to knock Warco or other imported machines but would say that before you buy, make sure that you have the time (three days to a week) to go through it and any test gear that you would need. Also try to think what is and isn't acceptable as it can be easy to get sucked into a more complicated fix than you would otherwise be comfortable with.

David.

The driver obviously thought he wasn't making enough smoke, so nipped off for a Woodbine!

This could be one of those weird advertising campaigns.

Once everyone has finished talking about this there will be another post.

"Warco more sense"

Another pause until it is revealed that Warco have released a new lathe that can sense exactly what you need and cracks on with it!

David.

Hi,

Yes I'm working with Mach.

The aim is to add extra screens to what is already there.

The extra screens will contain a number of the wizards which will hopefully use common DRO's (for example, at the moment X start is assigned a different user DRO number for each wizard). If I can standardise these, then it should be possible to use MPGs to move around and then be able to select a current position to be a start or end point of say a turning cycle.

Early indications are good! I have a screenset which includes a couple of the wizards and I seem to be able to copy and paste whole screens in and out of it. This means that in your case, it should be possible to get whatever I come up with and just add the extra screens if they are of use.

I would be interested in any enhancements and your tool setting macros do sound interesting.

Regards.

David.

Just curious.

Whilst I am now running Linux on a test bed and am happy with the screw cutting and will stick with it for that, I am not getting on with customising it.

I am trying to get a lathe running that can be used like a manual lathe with some degree of conversational programming.

To this end I have started making a screenset. I'm not sure how long this will take but if there is interest I will make it available.

Regards.

David.

Yes!

I use:-

Skimmed milk for most general machining.

Semi skimmed for non ferrous.

Full fat for Tapping and reaming.

Gold top for exotics.

For heavy turning on the lathe I have a cow (Daisy) connected via a milking machine, the sump is fed directly to a latte machine.

Errr actually no. I'm sure that I have read this somewhere but thought that it might be an old wives tale. Did the instructions on the box give any clue as to how to overcome the smell after a couple of weeks? I have been a doubter of these old recipes until quite recently. I was complaining about tea stains in my cup (as you do) when someone said " fill the cup with hot water and add a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate" as I already had some I tried it. Amazing it actually works.

David.

I'm guessing the "boring tools" are no's 2,3, & 4. A view from underneath would confirm.

Regards.

David

I buy mine from APT. To give an idea of cost M3 is £4.00 and M12 is £10.00 both plus vat and shipping.

Regards.

David.

I am finding Royal Mail to be the worst offender at the moment. While most parcels are getting through, every now and then they will take 2 / 3 weeks to deliver. So far I have had no troubles with Hermes or UPS.

Regards.

David.

I can see why you would want to put something under the clamps / blocks as most of the cheaper blocks don't have very good surfaces and could easily mark nicely ground surfaces. This is not a practice that I do but thinking about it , I will at the very least grind the bottom of the blocks and will probably find something better to place under them. That said my milling machine table has the all the signs of something used as a work horse in industry (it was like that when I got it) and probably wont look any better for it.

Regards.

David.

One of the things that I really like about Youtube is that it is largely free of censorship. If you search around you will come across people operating at different skill levels doing things from the incredible to the downright dangerous. Long may this continue. Anyone who blindly uses it as an educational tool will sooner or later get more education than they bargained for!

It should be pointed out that this is a video made by a man in his shed. He doesn't have the resources of the BBC and isn't claiming to be any kind of authority on either machining in general or model making. Whilst I haven't watched this particular video, I have watched other videos by Ades Workshop and have thought that he seems competent in what he does.

He currently has around 100 hours of video on his channel, all there waiting to be scrutinised and picked over by the more learned amongst us.

I would suggest that before criticising one should consider making videos of their own, that way we can all learn something.

Regards.

David.

5c or er32 collet blocks are a good option if you have them. I also use vee blocks for larger stuff but this is limited to 90 degrees.

Regards.

David.

Not too ambitious then.

I thought from the title that they might be trying to get them to agree on something!

I must admit, it is good to see them trying to get back to the moon.

Regards.

David.