Member postings for John Smith 13

I live in the USA and bought the Grizzly version of the Chester lathe DB10. To date I have been very happy with the choice - my only complaint is that I was too cheap to spend the extra for the variable speed model. Many times I would like to change speeds particularly if facing across a large diameter but just need to pick one speed that is too fast on the perimeter and too slow at the center. I don't miss not having the the power cross feed but then I don't do too many facing cuts. I had a hobbymat lathe and a Warco combination lathe/mill when i lived in the UK and ALL of my new machines needed adjustment to get the best out of them. My view is that you get a lot of machine for the money and both Warco and Chester provide good back up for their products. As an aside if the leadscrew drive gear train include a 127 tooth gear you will be able to cut either metric or imperial threads accurately.

Enjoy your new purchase and practice on some simple turning jobs before doing anything critical. There a lot of how to videos on youtube and large number of helpful people on this forum to help you sort out ant problems that you may have.

John

I bought a WEN variable speed drilling machine with the same issue that the tacho takes several seconds to catch up with what's happening. I could live with this but the quill is such a sloppy fit that the drill bit blurs at high speed making it unusable for accurate work. I didn't get chance to use this before the 3 month warranty expired. I can see a major rebuild in its future or trip in a skip!!!!

John

I've used Coca-Cola to clean very dirty brass items very quickly with no apparent damage. Try putting a dirty penny in a little Coke and it'll be clean in 10 minutes.

John

I live in the States and found sheets of hardboard coated with a white plastic coating like whiteboards in offices. I use this on my bench and like how it is easy to clean and any small items are easily seen on the bench. Temporary sketches or calculations can easily be done in felt tip pen and wiped away when they are no longer needed.

John

Just a quick note from someone who has been involved in air traffic control (building the new Prestwick centre in the early 2000s) At that time all traffic across the Atlantic was put into "Pipes" and the details noted on a computer to alert the controller on the other side to expect the aircraft at a certain time. The system employed when I was there was a dBase III+ application which worked very well. All computers in NATS were networked within the organization with NO LINK to the internet to avoid infiltration of viruses or hackers. To send an email out of NATS you had to find a standalone PC and use that - disc drives and USBs were disabled. In the control room each controller had a sector which covered a part of the UK and traffic was handed off using blocks of wood with a card attached detailing the aircraft/destination etc. These blocks were literally handed to the next controller who slotted them into the traffic flow in their sector. The power to the building was from 2 separate supplies with battery backup and in the event of a total power loss the last system to go down was the radios. The controllers were able to effectively control all aircraft using just the radio and these blocks. In case you think it couldn't be done I personally witnessed this working when we switched from one supply to the other which failed and we couldn't reconnect the first supply. The battery backup for the control screens also failed at that point but control was maintained calmly while us engineers tried work out why it had failed and how to correct it which we did in about 40 minutes. The controllers were calm while we were acting like headless chickens - a most impressive feat. As I recall the airport controllers at the Heathrow didn't have windows in the control room so would have great difficulty working visually. As they say the most dangerous part of any flight is the drive to the airport.

John