Member postings for Samsaranda

Old Mart, I had the same problem, ordered some relays from a company in China, they say they despatched them but never arrived, when I complained was told they are with the Post Office, matter was never resolved. Dave W

I am sure that a lot of you will have had this scam email but for those who haven’t then beware. At 6.30 this morning my mobile pinged and the message read: You have been in close contact with someone who has recently tested positive for Omicron. Please order a test kit: https://your-pcr-order.com. At that time of the morning I am not at my best and not as alert as I should be. In our house we are ultra careful about infection with Covid as my wife’s health is not good so we avoid contact with others, but last Thursday I visited a local tyre garage and had a new set of tyres fitted but I was impressed at how Covid aware they were so thought it highly unlikely that contact was from there. Anyway I decided to follow the link, as instructed, to order a test I began filling in the questionnaire that was presented on screen, it had NHS logos on the pages which meant it seemed credible. I was ok till I got to the line which requested credit card number and last three digits, in order to pay £1.28 for postage, alarm bell then rang, this is a scam. Because it came early in the morning, when I was not at my best, it nearly succeeded but I remembered the warnings that I had seen that the NHS would never ask for credit card details as no payment would be requested. The Independent had highlighted this scam a while ago and advised that it had been taken down, apparently it has been resurrected so be aware. Dave W

I think it is evident now that decisions concerning Covid regulations are made with more emphasis on political reasons than medical science. I am not a conspiracy freak but just stating the obvious. Dave W

BR, I remember Blanco, we had a ceremonial parade which meant that we had white blancoed webbing with our best blue uniforms, it rained and the blanco washed off all over our best uniforms, what a disaster. Dave W

I religiously check my credit card account on line for entries that shouldn’t be there, last year noticed an entry for about £30.00 that wasn’t there the day before and I definitely hadn’t made. Phoned my bank, who are my credit card provider, and was put through to their fraud department, the chap who dealt with me was actually working from home, and he was able to pinpoint the town and IP address of the computer that had made the fraudulent entry. No problem he authorised a refund straight away and organised a replacement card. I am careful with any of my personal details and never use the debit card for my current account online, I just use my credit card for purchases online and pay it all off straight away, it’s surprising how easily credit card details are cloned and fraud takes place. Quite a few years ago my debit card details were cloned in a petrol station and the fraudsters took £1600, bank were very good and immediately refunded it, never use my debit card nowadays. It seems as though there is a pandemic of fraud nowadays. Dave W

A Button stick, we were all issued with one when we joined the Air Force, for keeping your uniform clean when cleaning the brass buttons, still have mine but don’t where it is now. I doubt that they are issued now as all buttons on uniforms are “staybrite” anodised aluminium, that’s progress. Dave W

Some thirty years ago I was employed by an engineering company, part of a global engineering supplier, to assist in getting the company an ISO Quality Certification. To give you an idea of some of the problems that were commonplace there, the drawing office would produce drawings for parts of the finished product and these would be issued to production, they would give them to machinists to produce parts, the machinists would find errors on the drawings or the parts wouldn’t fit others in the assembly so the machinist would alter the drawing and make the part to fit. The altered drawing would then be retained by the machinist at his workstation to use next time the part was required to be made, no feedback was given to the drawing office so there were now two different drawings for the same part, if and when the drawing office issued a drawing to a sub contractor to produce a batch of these parts when they arrived they wouldn’t fit the product, you can imagine what sort of problems this caused. When I questioned why this was happening I was told well this is the way we have always done it. The company was trying to introduce “just in time” manufacturing and they also wanted to introduce “statistical process control”, this was a recipe for chaos, you can imagine how much scrap was being produced. To give you an idea of how old fashioned the company was there was still the old line shafts running the full length of the machine shop from the days when the machines were belt driven, it only modernised to a degree during the war years when “modern” machines were installed to produce armament equipment. The old values were so firmly entrenched that needless to say the company didn’t get its quality certification and was closed down not long after I left. The product that they were making was a very sound product engineering wise but the quality of its parts meant it gained a reputation for poor workmanship, seeing the situation that we had at that factory it’s not difficult to see why so many incorrect parts end up being sold to customers. Dave W

Have a factory fitted lamp on my Chester V20 mill but it is very poor at illuminating the job in hand, I wear an led head torch which gives great illumination and is always shining at the area which your looking at, also use it when turning on the lathe, didn’t realise till I started using it how useful it would be. Dave W

Just to digress slightly, all cars, those that are ice and EV will continue to need tyres, today I visited my local tyre supplier, have been a customer of theirs since the 60’s and was served then by the present owners grandad, makes me feel really old, we had an interesting conversation on how prices have skyrocketed and the reasons. The tyre supplier purchases the majority of his stock from the Far East, no surprise there, and ships 1,000 tyres at a time in containers, the cost of a container pre Covid was £1,300, last month the invoice for one container was £17,000 for the hire, no signs that costs will be going down. Running any type of vehicle is going to get more expensive be it ice or EV. Cost of four tyres came out at £350.00. Dave W

How about “I don’t need Google, my wife knows everything!” but you need to be careful when you wear it. Dave W

I found underfloor heating in a work area to be punishing on my feet and ankles, this was an aircraft hangar and we were in there for a full working day, every day, the underfloor heat makes your feet sweat and ache. I wasn’t alone in complaining about the problem almost everyone who worked in there felt the same. I wouldn’t by choice work again in an area with underfloor heating. With the problems already highlighted with bolting down machines I would go for heating above ground level, if the workshop is well insulated then a small oil filled radiator will work fine, that’s all I have in my workshop, which is well insulated, and I leave it on overnight on a low setting and it keeps the temperature to about 10 degrees, when I am working in there I crank up the thermostat to an acceptable level, this radiator is used in conjunction with a dehumidifier. Dave W

Had my first taste of scrumpy when living on a farm in Devon, I was thirteen years old subsequently fell of a hay Rick in the Dutch barn, didn’t feel a thing, the power of scrumpy, anyway Happy Birthday Bill. Dave W

The motor in the photo is labelled as 500 watts, that equates to .75 hp not 1 hp. Dave W

I would definitely use a jointing compound when assembling, my compound of choice would be Duralac, my background is in aircraft engineering and jointing compounds were used extensively when bolting together dissimilar metals. I can give an example of how quickly dissimilar metal corrosion will take hold, We have a Ring Doorbell at our front door, the first unit I purchased failed, out of guarantee, when water penetrated into the electrical internals and the unit shut down. This was replaced about 18 months ago with another unit, when I removed it recently to recharge the battery I noticed that there was corrosion festering around the bolts that secure the backplate of the unit, obviously dissimilar metal corrosion from the stainless bolts being in contact with aluminium and water being present every time it rains. This has taken hold in less than 18 months, again conveniently for Ring outside of the guarantee period, wonder how long this unit will last before it fails completely. For the cost of a jointing compound you will have peace of mind about the integrity of the assembly and could use stainless bolts. Dave W

DutchDan

You joke about wiring up the door to 230 volts, many years ago a friend of mine did just that. He had his workshop broken in to and all his tools and models were stolen, he was devastated and vowed it wouldn’t happen again, he wired the door knob of his workshop entrance door to the mains with a hidden isolating switch so that he could get in. I don’t know if he “caught” anyone with his security measure, suffice to say that to my knowledge he was not broken into again. Definitely not to be used as a security measure, you could be facing a manslaughter charge, however nothing to stop you using an electric fence apparatus, I once had trouble with seagulls raiding my ponds and rigged an electric fence around the ponds at seagull height, they soon stopped raiding the ponds and even when the fence was switched off they wouldn’t go near it, they had obviously had a belt from it. Dave W

I would love my workshop to be as clean and white as those featured but once you get a couple of large stationary engines in various stages of dismantling (restoration) , and add into the mix numerous days of machining cast iron castings etc. the only white object in the workshop is my white deaf Turkish Angora cat who follows me everywhere and when I am machining he loves to sleep on the bench next to me. Dave W

Surely with multiple earth conductors to one equipment you can end up with parallel earths that in certain circumstances can build up a lethal potential, I seem to recall some deaths being caused from this type of situation when I was in the Air Force, this was on power sets supplying power to aircraft electrical systems. I witnessed hefty blue sparks leaping to the airframe from independently earthed equipment being used on aircraft connected to ground power units, “wiggly amps” not my trade so I learned to treat this condition with respect. Dave W

I think you’ve cracked it Clive. Dave W

My grandson works for a multinational engineering group, he works in the circuit board assembly area and recently showed me a video he took of one of their flow solder baths working, you can see this river of molten solder flowing over a weir at the end of the machine, very very impressive. He assures me that they only use lead free solder, just imagine how much lead fumes that one of these workstations would give off if using leaded solder. Dave W

Modern cars with stop/start have special batteries fitted, as I recently found out on my Honda Jazz, very expensive special batteries, if the battery is not in peak condition and fully charged then the stop/start will stop working. I only fitted my new battery a few weeks ago but already the stop/start has stopped working, probably because I only do short runs and the battery voltage drops off very quickly, I remember that the stop/start ceased working about two years before the battery finally failed, can only assume that the electronics in the car sense the battery charge and condition and stop the system selecting stop/start unless the operating parameters are met. Modern car electrics are vastly complicated compared to the electrical systems of cars that I first owned, my first car was a 1954 Ford Popular, a 6 volt system and as back up it had a starting handle, used frequently when it was cold and snowy and the battery couldn’t cope with the starter. Cars like the Volvo and my Honda are designed so that it’s virtually impossible to repair yourself and you have to use the agents, whose hourly rates for labour are frightening, Chris I wish you luck with your rear lights, would be interested to hear the outcome. Dave W