Member postings for Jim Guthrie

Jason,

I can't remember a vast majority wanting to stick with the present option. I do remember that a new version of software was being installed on another forum early last year and that that new version would be installed Spring/Summer last year on this forum. I waited during the year for this installation but nothing appeared, and I had hoped that something might have been installed to improve matters.

There are several good versions of forum software in use around the Internet with much better facilities than this version so it's not as if there aren't tried and tested options available.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 12/06/2022 17:00:15

They have supplied a different model of three jaw chuck for at least the last twelve years which has the bevel gear on the scroll within the chuck body. So I suspect that they probably don't support the exterior bevel chuck any more.

Jim

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 25/05/2022 15:19:47

I've been trying to access the Arc Euro site for the past couple of days and get this error message when being refused access :-

Server Error in "/" Application

Runtime error

I use Firefox, but tried other browsers with the same result. I can't remember seeing an error report like his before.

Jim.

Interesting to note that the largest proportion is in favour of the BBC using advertising to raise revenue. This question about BBC funding has been around for many years and I do remember similar discussions at the end of the last century. The major objectors to the BBC using advertising to raise revenue were the ITV companies. There is a finite amount of money available from advertising and if the BBC started using that as a source of revenue then there would be be less all round for all of the broadcasters.

I believe that the funding of the BBC by the licence fee was set up to provide a source of revenue that was free from government influence, although several governments have attempted influence by other means.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 28/12/2021 09:19:40

I've just copied this off their website at :-

Solid Edge Hobbyists' web page

"Free software to bring your ideas to life

Cowells supply 0MT drill chuck arbors - see near the bottom of their price list

Cowells price List

These have the shortened 0MT taper to reduce overhang.

Jim.

The one problem I had with my ML10 early on was running the bearings in the countershaft. I had been fastidious about oiling the headstock bearings but had forgotten about the countershaft. I was able to repair the countershaft with the help of the mechanical workshop where I was employed but I didn't want the possibility of the same happening with the headstock. So I fitted a pair of wick fed lubricators to the headstock which did require cutting clearance slots in the belt cover. But at least I feel reasonably confident that there will be much less possibility of damaging headstock bearings on long running jobs. I suspect that your previous owner might well have had similar thoughts and fitted larger oil cups.

And the oil has to go somewhere on a total loss system. My ML10 headstock has a fair amount of oil around it and on it which needs a wipe from a rag every so often.

Jim.

The ML10 was built down to a price. It was Myford's attempt to provide a small lathe for model engineers with limited resources who couldn't afford Myford's larger and more expensive options. I got one almost fifty years ago when I could just about afford one and I've never regretted it, and it's still working fine. I can't remember ever needing a tumbler reverse on the gear train, and I've never had a problem changing a belt speed.

If you haven't already got one fitted, a leadscrew clutch is a good accessory to get - maybe difficult to access these days but it would not be too difficult to make one yourself. Another nice-to-have accessory is the longer cross-slide which gives a good bit more room to work in. On the shorter cross-slide it was almost impossible to leave a rear toolpost mounted semi-permanently when machining because of the lack of room.

Jim.

I own an original plain bearing ML10 and I would agree with others that it is luggable on its own with chucks and tailstock off. You might even take the cross-slide and saddle off to gain a kg or two. I've installed mine on my own in several situations over the years and I've never had to resort to lifting equipment to help out.

Jim.

Now there's a feature which would be welcome - present on any other forum software I can think of.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 12/02/2021 23:51:54

Things have moved on from the middle of January - and with some success at last. After digging around on a lot of CNC forums I opted to go for the Warp9 ESS rather than the UC100. I had noted some comments on the UC100 not handing backlash compensation very well so I opted for the ESS since it seemed to handle that facility satisfactorily. I also opted for the more reliable Ethernet ESS rather than the USB USS.

I got it just over a week ago and got it hooked up to the PC and the KX1 in the middle of last week and got the ESS talking to Mach3 with not too much problem. I got the EStop working fairly quickly but it took a day or two of messing around to get the axes working - partly finger trouble on my part setting up pins and ports wrongly. After that it took another two or three days getting the spindle working, which included a lot of digging around on the Internet for possible pointers along with experimenting with adjusting all the presets in Mach3 to see what happened. Finally yesterday I got the spindle working and I'm not sure how. The ESS had lost contact with Mach3 and I went through the setup routine again. The ESS also had its Emergency Stop red LED permanently on. So I went through several restart routines when finally the red light stayed off. Then I re-checked that the axes were working, and just tried the spindle - and it worked. So I'm not really sure what I did or the ESS did.

I'm taking the day off today to give my brain a rest but I'll get back on the case tomorrow to check out the tuning of all the axes and the spindle and to check that the limit switches are working. I've also made a safe copy of the Mach3/ESS XML settings file to go back to if I ever lose facilities in the future.

I think the original KX1 and KX3 are basically similar, with a C11G breakout board, drive boards to match the axis motors and a standard 0 - 10V spindle control driven from the C11G which converts a step and direction input. Maybe owners of the original KX3 could confirm.

I've certainly learned a lot about the KX1 over the past few weeks. When ARC Euro originally marketed the machine, the late John Stevenson was the official support with a specially set up forum. And I think John also supplied the setup files to give himself a reasonably easy life. Certainly if you stuck with John's setup of Mach3, you could get excellent work out of the machine. I remember trying to diverge from the beaten track once but had to go back to John's setup to recover my sanity. And the manual didn't help much, with precious little detail about what went on under the hood in the machine - that I've had to find out over the past few weeks to try and make sense out of setting up the new equipment.

Jim.

I've had a quick look at the components you mention and I think I might be getting a bit old to venture down that road. And the Mesa product is a computer card and I would prefer a controller using a USB or Ethernet connection so that I am not restricted to a desktop PC.

The KX1 does require a step and direction signal for the spindle. I assume that there must be a converter circuit in the machine to provide the 0 - 10v output for motor speed. Maybe the unfortunate thing about the KX1 in the UK was that there was not too much technical detail about the machine itself. The only electronic information is a block diagram of the wiring of the machine and that's about it. I think John Stevenson was trying to avoid encouraging us to poke about.

Jim.

I wanted to get away from hunting around for an old machine again. The machine that died on me was an old Dell machine I sourced about seven years ago.

I do make use of the A output on occasion so I didn't want to look at using the "A" step and direction to run the spindle. I don't know if the PoKeys part could have been configured to do that. In my exchanges with PoLabs, they never suggested the possibility of using the "A" control output for the spindle.

Jim.

My venerable 32 bit PC running WinXP and controlling my KX1 via the parallel post gave up the ghost at the end of last year. I decided to upgrade to a modern USB or Ethernet controller and I got a PoKeys57CNCdb25 controller only to find out that it would not work with the KX1. The KX1 requires a step and direction pair to control the spindle and the PoKeys controller cannot provide that. This was confirmed by PoLabs.

So once bitten, twice shy and I then started digging around on the Internet to find out what other controllers might be suitable and that only raised one or two other questions. So I'm looking for someone who has successfully upgraded the KX1 and can give details, or knows of a successful installation.

Jim.

It was actually an official upgrade kit. I remember trying to order the indiviual bits from Myford and the nice lady taking orders advised me of the kit, and it was significanlty cheaper than the sum of the prices of the individual parts. The longer crosslide is an absolute necessity on the ML10 if you use a rear toolpost.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 04/08/2020 11:40:15

One important measurement that I almost forgot was clearance to extract a collet drawbar. I've got a low ceiling in my workshop and it was fortunate that I have just enough room to extract the drawbar from my Centec 2A. It is the reason that I have never got a raising block for the machine.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 06/03/2020 10:33:08

I do remember the Government Surplus shop in Stockwell Street in Glasgow. When we did shopping trips to Argyll Street in Glasgow, my mother would often go to the china bazaar on Stockwell Street under the St. Enoch station arches and my father and I would go a few yards further down the street to visit the surplus shop. It was a treasure trove of bits for a young boy and my first transistors were bought there - red spot, green spot and yellow spot as far as I can remember. The transistors worked - soldered with a large copper bolt heated on the gas hob. There were also things like bomb sight computers with loads of small gears to play around with.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 13/09/2019 09:17:18

One day in the mid-1950s, my mother returned from her shopping trip with a copy of the New Model Engineer for me. I think it was the first issue of the re-release of the magazine in a larger and more glossy size after the smaller wartime issues. If you had known my late mother you would have realised how far out of character this was. She had absolutely no interest in things mechanical and she probably thought that it was similar to the Meccano Magazine which I already got. So an eleven or twelve year old was introduced to model engineering with absolutely no knowledge of machine tools. But I did start to pick things up as further issues appeared since Mother had gone as far as putting a firm order from day one. I think I remember that it was the LBSC articles that I understood best. I eventually got my hands on a lathe at school in my later teens but it was a few years more before I got my first lathe.

Jim.

Quite a short list compared to some so far.

Started with a very old ML2 bought for £10 which taught me what to look out for.

Super Adept - which taught me how to centre quickly in a four jaw.

ML10 bought in Ted Heath's year of the three day week

Cowells ME90

The ML10 is still my favourite although the Cowells gets preferred since it is inside.

Jim.

When working with the KX1 toiday, I just remembered another thing from my experiences at the start. I suspected that my spindle speeds were not as requested by the GCode. So I got a cheap tachometer which I checked against my Cowells and found it pretty accurate. I then checked the KX1 spindle speed and it was running much slower than reported by the Mach software. It wasn't too difficult to adjust to get the correct speed and the life of my small cutters improved no end.

Jim.