Member postings for Mark Rand

Tidiest way is a diamond slitting saw.

Quick way is to clamp it in the vice between two blocks of wood at the point where you need the shank to end, with the unwanted bit sticking out.

Then just clock it with a small hammer. it'll snap off very easily.

I got caught out the first time I came across the US colour conventions for single phase (in a South Korean power station).

It's obvious that white would be live and black would be neutral isn't it?

Turns out that it's white for safe and black for dead (due to electrocution)...

SY might not comply with the 18th edition (having got 15, 16 and 17 I've given up on keeping up to date), but it's been standard fitment for exposed flexible 415V cables to movable machine tools for decades. SWA is unsuitable for that use.

There's generally no need for it in internal cables, but it works.

PS:- electrons are colour blind...

Edited By Mark Rand on 19/09/2022 08:41:40

Yabbut, when you've got a fully loaded Harrier or Tornado hanging off the back of it, who'se going to argue.

I would suggest that since the steam lorry is being built from scratch, the facilities for towing with an A frame can be designed in, so there's no issue with the 'age' of the vehicle. Remote brake operation, breakaway operated braking, light connections and correct steering can all be designed in right from the start. You say that it'll weigh about 1200 kg, and that's well in the range of a towable vehicle or trailer, so long as the brakes, lighting, construction etc. comply with the requirements for both vehicles and (with A frame) trailers. It's going to have to have an Individual Vehicle Approval test because you are towing/using it on the road, but that'd apply to any one-off traction engine steam lorry used on the road.

I am not a lawyer or a vehicle type approval expert, but I don't see any problems so long as all the I's are dottet and the T's crossed.

My limit is 1 1/4 tons. Not because I wouldn't like a larger lathe, but because the shed is so full that it's overflowing.

HLV lathe 11 cwt. Beaver milling machine 21 cwt with slotting head, J&S grinder 1 1/4 tons. Bench with tools in draws 1 1/2 tons. Surface table and stand 12 cwt.

All the machines were moved in with a flat bed trailer to the front of the house and a 2 ton gantry and chain hoist the rest of the way along the narrow path and up the slope to the shed.

Pick the machine up with the hoist at one end of the rail.
Run the hoist to the other end of the rail.
Drop the machine.
Move the gantry along.

Lather, rinse repeat.

The chain hoist and the beam off the gantry is now part of a bridge crane in the shed to help with moving anything that's too heavy to comfortably lift.

I had a Mk2 Renault Espace (lovely cars, like driving in the open, where's so much window). The MOT testig station had recently taken a lad on, who commented that the front nearside door panell was rusting (it was startig to delaminate). I didn't want to believe me when I said thar GRP doesn't suffer from rust untill the boss grinned at him and explained how Espaces and Reliants were made.

Here in Rugby we have an MOT test station that does MOTs, and nothing else! I've been using them for 40 years. There is no pressure on the chaps there to invent faults or even cause them and if they say something is wrong, it is.

I'm afraid i don't trust any garage that tells me the car's got a fault that wasn't there when I took the car to them.

Took delivery of a number of flat head impact bits and set the moving part of the vice up to have another go at undoing the screws. The hammer powered impact driver was having just as much success after cooking as before (none whatsoever). In a spirit of adventurousness I got the air powered impact wrench out and gave it a few blasts with that at increasing lefels of torque and differing directions. After three snapped 1/2" impact bits, I decided that the problem hadn't been Loctite...

Milled the countersunk heads off the screws. Started with an HSS cutter, but that wasn't happy with the hardened jaw, so changed to a 10mm carbide one:-

The jaw still wanted to stay where it was, so I milled a couple of 75 thou slots with a 6mm carbide cutter. Then used a 1" cold chisel and 3lb ball peen hammer to persuede it. Only took ten minutes of hammering and wedging:-

Turns out that the jaw and screws were completely locked up with corrosion. Probably going to have to machine them out and helicoil the holes.

Realistically, apart from any that you can use yourself, they're pretty well worthless.

Sorry.

Yesterday and today I've been trying to fettle a Record Vice I got. It was absolutely covered in grease and grot in the bits which aren't normally visible and merely filthy on the visible bits.

The jaws need replacing because they've suffered the usual sawing, filing and grinding abuse that one sees in an industrial environment (and because I feel that a fitter's vice needs smooth jaws, not serrated ones).

The 5/16" BSW screws on the fixed jaw were almost loose and came out with a few taps with a 12ox hammer and punch to get them past the tight spots. The Screws on the moving jaw have managed to bent one bit on my hammer/impact driver and shatter a larger one...

There is no sign of movement with the screws and there doesn't seem to be any major damage and no signs of welding. On the guess that they've come loose before (they tend to, being quite a coarse thread, with compressive and side forces often applied), I think that someone may have put them back in with Loctite 603 or similar.

After cleaning the castings with degreaser and giving them a going over with a pressure washer in the garden, the moving body is in the kitchen oven clawing its way up to 220°C.

The domestic manager and the dog are currently visiting Mother in Law's.

Oddly enough. There are. The bits of the pins that go between the vice jaws also have flats machined on them.

When the nuts on the top of the pins are nipped up, the grip is very good.

An amusing update on this:-

I've sharpened a number of drills so far and got better results once I made some new stop fingers for the angular positioning of the drills. they are prone to being ground away if the operator is careless, which messes up the drill positioning.

I ordered a wheel for the drill point thinning attachment on the left hand side and have had a few experiments with it. It shows promis, but a bit of experimentation will be needed to see what results can be obtained. The instructions aren't the world's best.

I also ordered a new wheel for the main drill sharpening side. The one that's on it is worn down from 8" to 7". it's still quite usable, but not for long.

The amusing bit is what happened when I ordered a wheel modifed it to the required dimensions:-

Spot the (not deliberate) mistake.

They hadn't actually used the 200mm wheel I asked them to modify. They very quickly got the chap that does their modifications to pick it up and return it after dressing a couple of inches off it.

Some years ago I made a 7.5" raising block for the milling machine so I could get the 20" of headroom to rough machine the ram ways on my shaper.

The raising block has become a permanent feature of the mill, since the original spec allowed a the quill to be flush with the table when both were at their highest position (stupid!).

At the time, I added some lugs so that I could mount backets onto the side of it, just in case that would be useful.

I've spent the last few weeks welding and machining some brackets to allow me to hang the rotary table and its chuck, the large angle block and the vices on it. This has freed up space on the bench and floor and makes it far easier to mount them on the mill table:- Just loosen the clamps, move them over the table and raise the table under them.

Second vice and angle block.

Rotary table.
Need to re-site the mains plug to alow for a bracket for the first vice.

Overall view.

A few tweaks are still needed, but I'm happy so far.

If I can make it (there is some uncertainty, which will be resolved one way or the other in a week's time), I would like to bring one drill along. Then I/we can see if there's any difference between the Brierley and the relatively simple Meteor ME14 that I picked up a few weeks ago.

Edited By Mark Rand on 10/09/2022 20:01:13

When I rebuilt my beaver milling machine, the table had 20 thou of bend on it and three thou of wear. that's on a 48" table. That amount was removed by scraping. The normal machanism for distortion in milling machine tables is peening or stretching of the upper surface by over--tightening T-nuts.

I wouldn't bother removing scars on the table unless I was also going to scrape or grind the ways for alignment purposes.

Got some copper strip, silver solder and a torch?

Edited By Mark Rand on 04/09/2022 19:37:44

Why not just keep the fire extinguisher in the condition that it was designed to be until it is used on a fire?

It's lasted a number of decades so far, It'll probably last a few more...

The problem with not backing to tool out is that any slack in the half nuts or the axial location of the leadscrew will cause the tool to be a bit to one side of where it was in the 'forward' direction. That will make the flanks of the threads narrower than they should be.