Member postings for Mark Rand

"Supports up to 150 kilograms".

Might be useful for moving a single draw out of a cupboard. Not a lot of use for any of the cupboards complete with contents...

This 2004 picture shows the 5" vice I've used on my one. Its about as big of a milling vice as you want on a Royal shaper for easy mounting. A larger 'shaper' vice would be nice, but they're like rocking horse sh1t...

A bit of 2"x4" bolted horizontally 5' up the wall. 9" lengths of 3/4" round bar hammered into holes drilled in the wood. sensible length bars (5-10 foot) stood upright on the floor, retained sideways by the 3/4" bars and sorted roughly by shape and size.

Short lengths go on three 5' long 9" deep wooden shelves attached to a double sided freestanding steel louvre rack, on the other side from the plastic bins full of nuts and bolts.

Tiny lengths (12" or less) go in a number of steel totes stacked on top of each other.

Edited By Mark Rand on 29/07/2017 19:45:27

Hmm, an ML7B, will enable gears varying between 8 teeth (only with modified addendum) up to 504 teeth .

Need to make the powered cross feed as well...

Edited By Mark Rand on 27/07/2017 19:14:03

An ML4 wouldn't have a hardened mandrel. That didn't happen until Super 7's and later ML7's with bronze bearings.

How did you make sure that the taper you bored matched an MT2 taper?

Currently, I'm running all the 3ph machines in my shop from a single 23kVA inverter. That's a 2.8KVA J&S1400 surface grinder, a 2.5kVA Hardinge HLV lathe and a 1.8kVA Beaver mill. I don't run them all at one time, but do run two machines at a time if one of them is doing a prolonged cut with automatic stops at the end (flattening a large piece on the mill or SG).

At the moment, the inverter is fed from a 13A plug because I haven't got around to feeding it a dedicated single phase circuit, The 3ph wiring was enough work for that session and it works ok for now...

Anyway, what it comes down to is that I'm running a 23kVA inverter feeding potentially 4-5kVA of machines from a single 3kVA 13A plug.

I've popped the fuse once. I was running a cut on the milling machine and then started the lathe at high speed with a large-ish (8"-25lb) lump of steel in it. That was my own fault, since I normally start in low speed and switch to the high speed setting, a bit like star-delta starting.

When I get some relief from the jobs that the domestic manager keeps delegating to me, I'll be running a dedicated 32A circuit to the inverter. Then it'll run all the 3ph machines I've got at once, assuming I can get her to mind them while I'm having a beer...

Camphor as used in mothballs (not Napthalene mothballs) will do the job (available on EBay/Amazon from sellers of Indian spices/flavourings/chemicals), but it's somewhat impractical in small containers like those.

VCI paper wrap around the taps and dies will work very well.

Failing that, wipe them with a bit of way oil before putting them away.

Went out to the shed and, amongst other things, laid a finger on the top of the heated welding rod quiver. It was only warmish to the touch. Slightly concerned, I touched the underside where the electric element is.

I now have a second degree burn on my left index finger. It's been soaking in cold water for an hour and the pain killers are starting to kick in. The finger will hopefully become usable again sometime in August...

Bluddy Idiot.

Add a bit of barium carbonate to the mix if you go "home brewed". It'll work far better that way.

Were the bearings designed to be lubricated with grease? Would oil be a better lubricant?

Edited By Mark Rand on 18/07/2017 00:37:03

Crocell Dip

In my case, it might have helped if the Triumph lads at Meriden hadn't stamped the frame number through the powder coating on my T140W/TSS.

It appears that I now need a license just to buy nitric acid or oxalic at any useful concentration. Purchase of simple substances such as acetone, concentrated phosphoric acid, nitro-chalk, sulphuric acid in any quantity are reportable...

In fact, according the legislation, I need a license just to store or dilute the stuff I already legally own (or at least, I was owning them legally untill this regulation came out).

As to the replacement of the dead unit. Yes, get another one of the same spec (or a spec that matches the tubes, if there is any doubt) and wire it in in the same way. It'll work. The switch mode power supplies in the HF ballasts can fail quite enthusiastically and draw enough current in a very short time to give circuit breakers a good short-circuit test. If an RCB/ELCB is tripping when a given device is turned on, it can be a sign that interference filters in the device are failing. It can also be because the breaker is failing and is tripping at a lower fault current than it should do.

Had this problem a couple of times at work and used up our entire stock of obsolete Square-D ELCB's looking for good ones, after testing with a current/tripping-time device that we'd bought for testing office/lab mains supplies at foreign power station construction sites!

The originals are oil nipples, what you have is a grease nipple. Just put oil into it and don't worry. Oil nipples are about as common as rocking horse faeces these days...

What is it with gougers that do blue-paint rebuilds?

The paint isn't an operative part of the vice, even when applied with a yard broom.

Do you use 1/4" or 5/16" threads? I use 5/16" and there isn't much meat left on the top part of the nut at that diameter.

Where is it broken, that considerably affects any repair options. Broken castings are amenable to welding with nickel rods with some pre-heat to reduce cracking.

The No 8 is a lightweight vice with jaws that are somewhat oversize for its strength. The No 24 and 25 are much nicer vices if you can find them without having to sell the house to pay for them.

Edited By Mark Rand on 05/07/2017 22:43:29

Edited By Mark Rand on 05/07/2017 22:44:17

If you make T nuts of the small size needed for Myford lathes and such, then hardening them can be useful to avoid thread tearout. I ended up case hardening all but one of the ones I made. Tthe other one didn't have any threads left...

Note:- the T in the EN24T specification refers to the hardness it's been heat- treated to. Other specifications are available if you are buying enough...

There's a table here.

The T specification gives a steel hard enough to be used for many things as is, at about 30HRC, but EN24 can easily go up to 52HRC if you need it.

The alloys hardened to the T specification machine a bit more nicely than the annealed product, although dark brown to blue chips often result. The annealed versions can tear a bit.