Member postings for Joseph Ramon

The protoype Vulcan was notoriously rolled. Some were rolled at airshows but had to have structural checks afterwards.

Joey

Hi Harold,

"Having a much greater mass, small errors in the balance of the workpiece and its clamps becomes less significant resulting in less frequent need to balance an assembly."

With respect, I imagine that the reduced speed you use when turning such a large mass makes the difference. An imbalance of 100 grammes will exert the same force, regardless of overall mass.

However, having such chunky holders will mean that relatively small movements can correct an imbalance, making adjustment easier.

Joey

My first attempt was a crude piston valve engine. I later built a more sophisticated one.

While it is possible to do this succesfully with little experience you will find that a slide valve is much easier as the mating faces are flat so it is easy to get a good seal. Getting piston valves right requires machining to a higher standard to get the same level of performance.

Oil grooves or o-rings will work, but o-rings can be cut to pieces by the sharp port edges that give good crisp vave events.

But you won't go far wrong with teh link that Bog's has suggested.

Joey

"Last weekend I was at an event in canberra called The Mont. This is a 24hour endurance mountainbike race,"

I look forward to seeing someone compete on a Stirling Cycle.

The Sirus-based generator package was designed by Ian Bradley of 'Duplex' fame.

Dick - I deal with a lot of H&S in my job, in an industry that sometimes, but thankfully very rarely, kills people. There is an industry itself in propagating the elfinsafety myths, but most of them are myths. The HSE is much more proprtionate in its approach than people think - we had a RIDDOR a couple of months ago. It was clear (afterwards) that we need to take some remedial action to prevnt a repeat. All we got from HSE was an acknowledgement of our report. If it happened again, we would be in trouble, but we can document that we have acted to eliminate the hazard and in all honesty none of the cations required were very expensive or time consuming. What was costly was paying for a staff member to sit watching digital TV for eight weeks.

Joey

I understand that many modern cars use whitworth threads for the cylinder head bolts as they are less likely to strip in an alloy block.

Joey

I hope you wore a face mask, or are you blowing black gunge out of your nose now?

Joey

It's no coincidence that the Stuart 10V used to be the standard entry point for model engineering, It comes with all the fixings, so no extras needed. It's straightforward to build and there's a good instruction book. It's small enough that you can build it on a 2 1/2" centre lathe and no milling machine. Even for a novice it's only amonth or two's spare evenings of work. Finally, as long as it isn't stiff even if you haven't made the best job in the world you can run it off low pressure steam, an air compressor or even a tyre pump.

I think the problem we face is that too many designs out there are overly complex and expensive, but mostly that they require extras to be bought and lack simple, step by step instructions (the killer for most peopel is how to safely hold the unusually shaped parts - a picture and a few words can solve this at a stroke).

Joey

You can sometimes rejuvenate a Nicad pack simply by puttibng as much charge as it will take in, then shorting it with a thick wire for a few seconds. As mentioned above you are trying to burn out the 'dendrites' in the shorted cells.

A failed pack is almost always just one duff cell, easy to replace but be aware that another cell will fail in turn.

Hard to run such a drill off a transformer, as they can take 20 amps peak which might be about 300 watts.

Joey

David,

If that's a joke, please add a smiley.

If serious...

Joey

Back in the 1980s even Dixcel was recycled - made from used computer listing paper. Most posh loo roll is recycled, they just don't market it as such.

Joey

Edited By Joseph Ramon on 09/01/2012 17:26:02

Edited By Joseph Ramon on 14/11/2011 13:21:55