Member postings for Gary Wooding

I need to measure the thickness of something that is surrounded by a raised border thicker than the item I want to measure. A calliper like this would do the job, but I don't know what its called and can't find anything like it. Any ideas?

My workshop is in an unheated cellar in an old Victorian house. It's not noticeably damp but very light rust does show after several months. I have had another DRO (from M-DRO) on my lathe for over 12 years. I never switch it off and the LED display is still fine.

The overwhelming consensus was that the keypad had failed, and was no longer available. One very helpful guy said he had an old keypad from a similar display that had failed with a fault unrelated to the keypad. He was willing to send it to me to try out. £60 if it worked, send it back if not, which seemed a good deal. I agreed and waited for the parcel to arrive. After a few days the guy phoned to ask if it had worked, but the package hadn't arrived. He phoned again a couple of days later to say that the package had been located in a storage unit and would be delivered by the end of the week.It eventually arrived two days ago. 8 days late.

In the meantime the DRO had been languishing in my study for 8 days. Nicely tucked up near a a radiator. Before opening it to replace the keypad I decided to have one last try on the mill. It worked! I waited an hour or so and it continued to work fine. The next morning it was still working, so I phoned the guy. He reckoned that the prolonged stay in a dry, warmish, area had dried out some moisture that had affected the keypad. He said to keep the replacement keypad for a few weeks and to return it if it turned out to be not needed after all. No charge!! A true knight.

As of this morning it's still working fine. I'm leaving it switched on permanently from now on.

Noel: It uses an external power supplying 15v.

Oldirn: I contacted EEC via their email system, but had no response.

HowardT: Goodwin seem promising with a no-fix no-fee of £125, plus shipping of £15. I'll try them if another plan fails.

I fitted a Newall Microsyn system with a C80 3-axis DRO to my Centec 2B in 2005. It started behaving strangely just before last Christmas: it started making chirping sounds - just like a little bird asking for food. For a week or so I thought it was a little bird just outside my cellar workshop. It was a little annoying, but that was all, until the Z-axis display started to reset to zero. I'd set a Z value only to find that a short time later it had been reset to zero. Sometimes it reset after a few seconds, sometimes it took several minutes, but it seemed always to coincide with a chirp.

I phoned Newall who suggested that the chirping noise was the same as the keypress noise. They then said it sounds like a keypad problem, but now that the C80 has been discontinued they no longer have spares for it. The best they could offer was a discount on their current DRO, the DP700 unit, for £703!!!

Up until now I've been pleased with the Newall system, but am now appalled that, despite being in a hobbyists workshop, it has survived only 15 years of very light use.

Is there anyone out there that knows anything about the C80 and can suggest a solution?

A friend suggested that condensation caused by my cellar could be the culprit, so I removed the DRO and warmed it slightly near a radiator for a day or so. It had no effect. I've tried swapping the scale leads around, but it's always the Z reading that gets reset to zero.

Can anybody help please? I really can't afford £700 for a new unit.

I had this bell-mouth problem on my 6" chuck. A member of my model engineering club had donated a 'kit' he had made for truing 3", 4" and 5" chucks. When I borrowed it I found that, naturally, the 5" kit was too small for my 6" chuck. A swift phone call resulted in a package containing the missing 6" device, which he loaned to me.

Each kit comprises two components: a device to allow the chuck jaws to be partially closed under tension with no backlash, and a diamond lap that is held in the tool post. The lap a small piece of diamond impregnated matrix silver soldered onto a bar rather like a boring bar.

The chuck is closed as far as it will go against the tensioning device and the lap is fitted to the tool post. The lathe is then started and the lap positioned until it is just touching the 'lowest' part of the chuck jaws, when a faint chirping noise is heard. As the lap is slowly withdrawn the chirping is reduced, which is a clear indication the the chuck is bell-mouthed.The cross slide is adjusted and the lap moved left and right until the chirping is constant right along the chuck jaws. It took about 10 minutes to true my 6" chuck. No sign of bell-mouthing now.

Here's a photo of the complete kit of four devices. I didn't notice that the diamond 'flag' wasn't visible in the large lap, but it's just like the two smaller ones, only bigger.

You can use a jeweller's piercing saw to cut shapes from very thin metal - 0.4mm steel is no problem.

To a remarkably large percentage of the population, extortionate prices appear to confer some sort of superiority to the product.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Here are some answers to the questions.

There is absolutely no play between the knob and the selector fork - the knob is attached to the shaft with a roll-pin and the lock-nuts at either end of the shaft are good and tight. The are are no flats on the shaft. The slightest twist of the knob results in a corresponding movement of the fork and there is no lost motion. The play between the fork and the gear it moves is no more than would be expected.

When the gear drifts to the right, the shaft, fork, and knob move in unison. There is no lost motion. It certainly appears that the fork moves the gear.

Although the lathe is more than 20 years old the the gears are very seldom used for speed changes 'cos I use a VFD just about all the time.

I've investigated much closer. I removed the grub-screws, springs, and balls from the selector knob and removed the knob from the shaft. Neither the springs nor the balls showed any signs of damage or wear. The detents in the gear housing also looked fine. I made a cardboard template that fitted on the selector shaft and contained holes that revealed the detents in the housing. The following photos shows the detents and the cardboard template.

I also took a photo of the selector knob showing the positions of the holes for the two spring loaded balls.

I then found a short length of bar that fitted into the rear of the selector knob, and positioned the cardboard template on it to give a view as if looking from within the gearbox, outwards to the rear of the in-place selector knob. The three holes in the template representing the the three detents. I was then able to see how the detents aligned with the balls when the knob was rotated in its three positions.

I position 1, the detent at 9 o'clock lines up nicely with the hole in the knob. In position 2, the detent at 3 o'clock lines up nicely, but in position 3, when the detent at 8 o'clock is aligned with the knob hole, the 3 o'clock detent is nearly aligned with the other knob hole, which has the effect of both detents trying to align the shaft.

Because of this slight misalignment, the gear in the following picture gently drifts to the right.

Seems like a manufacturing fault to me. In the meantime I intend to adjust the fork to the best compromised position. Any ideas about a solution?

***EDIT*** There was no noticeable wear on the fork.

Edited By Gary Wooding on 29/12/2022 12:15:08

I've had my Chester 12x36 geared head lathe for about 20 years, with no problems until now. I was turning a bit of aluminium when there was a clattering noise and the spindle stopped turning. The motor turned fine, but not the spindle.

I took the gearbox cover off and noticed that a gearwheel cluster wasn't in line with the corresponding gear on the spindle. See attached photo. The cluster revolves fine but wasn't turning the spindle.

Further investigation revealed that the gear cluster can move sideways by itself, without the turning the control knob. I think there should be a detent to hold it in any one of its 3 positions. The knob, the shaft, the fork, and the gear all move as they should, but when the knob is released there is nothing to maintain its position and the gear can drift sideways and disengage the drive.

I removed the two grub-screws in an attempt to remover the knob and discovered that there is a spring behind the left-hand one (not sure about the right-hand one). And the knob didn't come off - it must be the roll-pin that retains it. I figured that adjusting the grub-screws would do the trick, but the only effect it had was to restrict the full movement of the gear. I haven't tried removing the roll-pin.

Any ideas?

I checked my car, registered in 2013, and it's not compliant.

Bill: I will be very surprised if Remap don't respond, but PM me if they don't.

Get in touch with your local REMAP panel. We've used pneumatic car jacks for similar purposes, in conjunction with a battery operated dinghy pump as mentioned by Sam. Go to www.remap.org.uk to find your local panel and/or make a referral.

As suggested by others, I also use Irfanview - it's free and can do a great deal more than just resize pictures. I wouldn't be without it.

When I upgraded my lathe to use a VFD I opened the CTL box to figure out the way to incorporate the VFD. I was faced with the maze of wires, switches and relays shown in the photo below. After a lot of head-scratching I realized that it was really all about controlling the forward/reverse power to the motor by means of the low voltage switches. The relay KM1 provided the mains power and all the motor switching was via the other relays.

The Original Layout diagram shows the salient features of the original CTL wiring and the Modified for VFD shows the far simpler layout when the VFD handles everything. All the original external controls of the lathe work as they did before the VFD, but I added a little speed control rheostat on the lathe control panel.

For the ones I made, I found that the cutting of the dovetail was the easiest part. The hard parts were the slots for the fingers, and the fingers themselves. Although not strictly necessary, I wanted the steel fingers to look the same as the original Centec ones, and they were difficult to machine - they have some strange angles.

The pictures show the last 5 sets of fingers and name plates I made, and an unfinished set of fingers that I didn't think were good enough.

Drop me a PM if you want the unfinished set.

Gary

My wife and I have a joint account with NatWest; we both have Debit cards for it. A month or so ago we each received notification that our Debit cards had been changed from Visa to MasterCard and would have to be activated within a few weeks of receipt. The few weeks elapsed and I took them down to the bank. I activated mine OK, but my wife's gave an error - she had given me her old card. I phoned her and she was adamant that her replacement had not been received. I spoke to the bank teller to request a new card, but was refused because the old card had my wife's name on it. Same surname as mine, different first name. It's a joint account but, according to the bank, they can only issue a new card to my wife. Data protection?

JD": The room thermostat that failed is a Honeywell, and all the Drayton thermostatic radiator valves have failed over the years. Mechanical devices are not immune to failure - the ignition switch on my electric bike has failed after only 5 years.

As suggested by AdrianR, I'm going to try the repair route. Wish me luck.