Member postings for Gary Wooding

I've been using an offline program called Convert for some years. It has lots of different units, including Imperial and US volumes. Just download and install it - its free. Get it from **LINK**

By the way, SCAYT tells be that install is spelt instal.

Is there a way to change the text colour?

I've done lots of turning and milling of Nylon. With sharp tools it machines very easily and gives a good finish.

Turning produces very long ribbons that get everywhere, so I traverse the workpiece in bursts to break the ribbon before it gets too long and wraps around the chuck. Blunt tools tend to rub and produce sufficient heat to locally melt the Nylon, which results in a very poor finish. This is particularly true when drilling large diameter holes. Be careful when using slitting saws; the saw can easily generate sufficient heat to weld the Nylon to the saw, with obvious results.

Have you looked at **THIS**? A friend has one fitted to his home brewed CNC mill and it works really well with Mach3.

Maybe I read it wrong, but the headroom of the AMA25LV is 280mm, that of the Chester 626 is 320mm, and the Warco VMC is 345mm. Not sure why the difference between the Chester and Warco, 'cos I thought they were essentially identical.

My Avast (anti-virus) program blocked Thor's site: said it contained malware.

My first lathe was a Boxford CUD, for which I had the Boxford Vertical slide which was attached by replacing the top-slide. I used it very gingerly at first, but started taking bigger cuts as I got used to it, until one day it was wrenched right out of the dove-tailed hole. I used it very carefully after that but seldom with confidence.

One day I got the opportunity to buy a Centec 2B which, with its vertical head, is a small but very sturdy horizontal and vertical mill. I fully agree with the advice to find room for a proper mill.

Regards, Gary

I think Roger is correct - you exploded too many times. I just tried combining several circles into a group, then exploding the group, and the circles remained as circles (the Selection Pallet reports them as circles). If I explode them again, Selection Pallet reports them as Polylines and they are, indeed, lots of little arcs or lines.

Hi Malc,

I've been with Coventry and Warwickshire Remap for about 17 years. My personal opinion is that its probably the biggest charity that nobody has heard of, despite it being a national charity that celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Its definitely very worthwhile and can be very challenging and rewarding (but certainly not financially).

As far as helping the people it aims at, its probably the most efficient charity there is - whereas most charities are doing well if more than 50p of each donated pound reaches the final recipient, Remap provides about £20 worth of equipment for each donated pound. This is due to the very low overheads resulting from volunteers using their own workshops and re-cycled materials.

Go for it.

Good alternative - it's designed for two way running and probably about the same power.I didn't think of that when I did the REMAP job.

Rich Wightman's article in MEW 225/226 uses a car windscreen wiper motor for a lathe power feed. Some time ago I tried using such a motor in a REMAP job; it had to be used in both directions. It worked fine for a while, but then mysteriously lost power. Initially I suspected the power supply, but that was OK. The problem turned out to be with the motor itself, which turned out to be intrinsic in its design and ruled out its use in this application.

Modern motors are very powerful and compact and, although they can be run in reverse, they not designed for it. In order to make them compact the brushes are arranged to be tangential (or nearly so) to the commutator, instead of radial. This way there is a larger area of contact on the end of each brush, thus allowing more current to flow. When the motor is run in reverse, the commutator drags the brushes a little in the opposite direction and wears a new arc on the end. After a a number of runs in each direction, the brushes end up with two arcs; each one about 1/2 the length of the original, thus reducing the current that gets into the windings, hence the lower power.

Apparently, the older motors didn't have this problem but I wasn't able to locate one. So I had to abandon the motor and use a different power source.

The riser block is 6082T6 alloy.

A friend has just purchased a Warco VMC which he ordered with a 3ph motor. I converted it to delta, added an inverter, and we added a a 3-axis DRO from MachineDRO which went on the X,Y and Z axes (knee), plus a magnetic reader for the quill which integrated with the knee. The Z display now gives the distance between the quill and the table. He also added power feed to the X-axis

He also, was concerned by the lack of headroom so we made a 5" raising block, which has totally solved the problem.

He is now very pleased with the mill, which has been checked as being very accurate.

The only thing he didn't like was the rather unyielding plastic sheet/cover for the knee and Y-axis dovetails, which he replaced with a far more flexible cover in a bright yellow colour, which doubles as a useful background when milling.

In the photos, the inverter can be seen on the wall, and the X-axis DRO scale can be seen to have an extension in front that still allows travel hard stops to be used.

I recently had to drill 45 0.6mm (a fraction smaller than #73) holes in a rather soft, gummy, metal. After drilling 7 holes the drill broke. The next 8 holes consumed a further 4 drills, so, with only one drill left I was in trouble. A friend at my ME club loaned me a 4 facet drill sharpening jig specially for small drills that he'd made to a D.A.G.Brown design that appeared in ME in 1993/1994. I sharpened one of the broken 0.6mm drills and managed to drill the remaining 30 holes without mishap. Since then I've drilled another 24 holes with the same drill, and its not required sharpening.

My next job is to make myself a drill sharpening jig.

Thanks for the information guys,

I checked Chronos but, because there was a discrepancy on their site, I phoned and was told I'd be called back - but it never happened. In the end I purchased from Arc Euro.

Roy and Roger,

I tried that route before posting my request. The directory listing is way out of date, so much so that the phone number has been re-assigned to a private individual, who gets annoyed by people seeking Clifford Northfield.

I want to make the device described by D.A.G. Brown in an article entitled "The end of a boring problem - Sharpening small drills" that appeared in ME dated 7 Jan 1993.

The article mentions a diamond lapping plate supplied by a company in Kettering, called Clifford Northfield Ltd. Alas, this company appears to have vanished.

I know its a bit of a long shot, but does anybody know of an alternate supplier, or just happen to have a spare plate?

Many years ago, when Proops was appearing at the ME Exhibitions, I purchased one of their digital callipers. I use it almost every day and, despite never switching it off, the battery lasts for well over a year - in fact, I can't remember when I last replaced it. I think I paid about £12 or £15 for it.

If you've got a tablet or smart phone there are a number of apps available that will fore-fill most or all of your needs. Some are free, and others have prices from less than £1 to about £16.

I took a look but couldn't figure out how to view the photos. What am I missing?

Well, how about a 1/10" crank pin vs a 10" crank pin?

I reckon the 1/10" would knock a lot more than the 10".