Here is a list of all the postings Richard Parsons has made in our forums. Click on a thread name to jump to the thread.
Thread: The use of adjustable reamers |
10/07/2010 12:27:54 |
Adjustable reamers are really scraping devices. They scrape out small quantities of metal from holes. They are not as rigid as solid reamers and should only be used to take small cuts. There are usually two types. The 5 bladed reamer and the 6 bladed reamer. The 6 bladed can be measured to determine the hole size, 5s cannot. To set the reamer up for he first cut, put the reamer into the hole and adjust it until it just begins to grip the hole. Then increase its size by ¼ of a turn of the collars. Always make sure that the top collar is tightened down. Make your first cut. Repeat this by increasing the size of the reamer by no more than ¼ of a turn of thee collars. Measure the hole frequently. Measuring the 6 bladed reamer gives you an idea and only an idea of the hole size. GOLDEN RULES
As I have very few metric reamers I use expanding reamers quite frequently. Regards Dick |
Thread: High pressure air pump |
08/07/2010 12:14:23 |
Hi John, The pump its self was rather like the old fashioned motor car type tire pump but much more solidly built. There was a simple water trap in the base of the pump and an in line filter. The piston was sealed to the cylinder walls by ‘O’ rings and moved on the pump shaft closing off the inlet valve closing it against an ‘O’ ring. The filler valve on the gun’s air chamber was sealed by two loose O rings which were compressed by air pressure. I think it could be made in the normal workshop for about £40 or less, but I do not think you could do it with a mini-lathe. Regards Dick
Edited By Richard Parsons on 08/07/2010 12:15:41 |
Thread: Brazing torch |
08/07/2010 08:32:00 |
No it was a Flame Master. I know of the Flamefast kit and this was different it was in solid cast aluminium and had an economiser trigger which you pulled in to use the torch. There was another one at the same college which had three gas supplies gas, compressed air and oxygen. It was made in Germany and was probably ‘a liberated’ item. I have a micro flamefast burner, which is a devil to use as I have to clean out the residues left by the gas each time. I have not tried it over here yet. |
05/07/2010 15:03:21 |
I have used Seivert torches for along time. But once in a silversmith class I used a Air propane unit. It was a Rolls Royce of torches. I have hunted for one ever since. Any one any ideas as to where I could get one? I think it was called a Flame-master, but as good things go they seem to have gone. |
Thread: Rustless steel |
05/07/2010 14:26:55 |
Yes it is. In German it is called INOX. In French Inoxiable, and roszdamentes in Hungarian. |
Thread: The story behind logging in... |
04/07/2010 08:26:51 |
It is not always the fault of the web site techies. Some of the problems are caused by the interactions of the web-site, the web browser, fire walls, anti virus programs etc. In addition you can get problems with your ISP etc There was a problem with the cut and paste from MS word until a few weeks ago but this has been corrected. This was dictated to MS Word then ‘copy and paste was used to transfer to the website’s editor. This allows you to use all the facilities and power of MS Word (spell check etc), keep a copy and then if you need you can edit your own post.
You can chenge and add to your post Edited By Richard Parsons on 04/07/2010 08:27:32 |
Thread: High pressure air pump |
03/07/2010 11:35:34 |
With my old Webley Axsor I bought a hand pump. It was about £40. To make one you would need about 600-700 mm of 25-35mm thick wall hydraulic tube. You will have to design the top guide, piston and valves your self. The pump shaft is 12-14mm solid rod and the ‘T’ handle is equally rugged. The bottom of the pump with the foot rests was also steel, with a 250 bar pressure gauge and had a ‘blow down’ valve to depressurise the system and get the gun off. To use the pump you kept your back and arms straight and bent your knees letting your body weight do the work. Edited By Richard Parsons on 03/07/2010 11:36:41 |
Thread: ME Issue 4381 - 02 July - Subscription Copy Delivery ? |
02/07/2010 07:45:46 |
Mine arrived Thursday (July 1) but a few weeks ago I repaired the tyre on the post ladies bike. Gumi-Szervisz over here can be very hit and miss. Mostly miss. |
Thread: Bearing Extraction |
02/07/2010 07:30:54 |
Front wheel bearings are usually pushed in from opposite sides. Once you have the axel out of the hub and the hub off the car, have a feel around inside the hub. If there is a distance piece (which is often used if you have tangential ball bearings) between the bearings you will have to knock the centre out of one bearing to get the distance piece out out. Inside the casting you should find two or three groves cast into the housing. These allow you to get a ‘drift’ at the race ‘outer’. Using a good quality drift, a good hammer and a suitable support drift the bearing out by punching into each groove one after the other. This is to ensure that the bearing does not ‘gripe’. To need a 7 ton press to shift a bearing myst show that the hub is under a very high stress. Good Luck.
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Thread: "Precision" or "does NOT do what it says on the tin" |
30/06/2010 09:57:41 |
Actually the only machine I have bought which ran true ‘straight from the box’ within its limits which were imposed by its design and materials was my Emcomat SL. This was over 65 yesrs ago. All the others (including my Myford Super7) have had to be ‘prepared for use’ after delivery. With the big Chinese lathe this took over 3 months of work. This work included evicting a piece of pink paper with Chinese characters on it which had jammed up and damaged part of cross slide feed. I do not read Chinese but I think it was part of a pestilence paper (or the curse of Ho Lin Wun the Chinese golfer). In other words ir was stripped cleaned and re-buitl. I now have to sort out a little problem on the cross slide which has developed too much ‘spring’. About 0.005”, from the look of it, this is annoying. I think it may be due to the plastic bed sweepers but I have not tracked it down yet, but I will. Machines built in the Far East are produced by mass productions. If the QC people do not get after changes in production methods which are causing rejection you will get a bad product. All machines need servicing to take up wear, looseness which develops with time etc. I do what I call a 6 months ‘clean’ and re-set everything with lots of ‘clocking’ and the use of the micrometers. The next one is scheduled for the beginning of October when the weather cools but before it becomes too cold. I admit none of my tooling is up to exhibition quality but it is accurate within the limits and my ability to measure this accuracy. |
Thread: Nova |
24/06/2010 06:36:31 |
I did a quick Google on the Swiss Dyno engine and amongst the things I found was this site http://modelenginenews.org/ed.2005.02.html#1 which lead (amongst other things) to this site http://modelenginenews.org/mbi/dyno_1.jpg . All my poking about seems to show that the Swiss Klemenz-Schnek Dyno was first on sale in 1946. An earlier engine, again of Swiss origin, was the "Etha". I am not surprised that people had problems with Edgar T Westbury’s Ladybird 2. The centre bearing must have been a nightmare to make and get gas tight. The reason he made in the way he did was to allow himself to get the end bearings properly lined up. |
Thread: Error Reports |
23/06/2010 15:25:00 |
Since I loaded the latest Mictosoft Vista Upgrades I cannot upload Pictures to an album.
The problem is the signature of a cookie from http/www. myhobbystore.co.uk/sites/1000/images.
Best Regards
Dick Parsons |
Thread: Nova |
23/06/2010 14:55:05 |
I have found them. I have four (or rather 3 and a bit) ancient copies of Model Engineer. 1 is from 1947, 2 from 1947 and part of one from sometime in the war. The bit from the war time shows how to build a chassis which links a S.T. Sirius/Sun to one of several motor bicycle dynamos. These were used by the Resistance to charge their radio batteries. How ever I got the date of the Twin cylinder CI engine wrong. It is in ‘The Model Engineer’ Vol 100 No 2507 of Thursday 9 June 1947 (price 9 whole real pennies). The column by Edgar T Westbury called ‘Petrol Engine Topics’. In it his opening gambit is a rebuttal of criticism for calling his column by this name. 2 out of his 4 ?quarto pages he rebukes his critics etc. He also talks about the original Swiss “Dyno” which was described in ‘The Model Engineer’ of the 15th November 1945. It would be interesting to read this if a copy of it still exists. The engine is his 2.5cc “Ladybird 2”. He also reports that CI engines with a cylinder size of much over 1.25cc are too large and says that “single cylinder engines of over 5cc to be somewhat rough running and inefficient”. This article which is mainly one of admonition contains the LGA drawing, a group of sectional drawings and a picture of the die castings for the main body of the engine. There is probably enough there to be able to reconstruct the original engine if it rest of the articles have been lost. Edgar also says that “Ladybird 2” has been under development for nearly a year. That it would have been started in 1948. The name ‘Ladybird 2’ also suggests that there was another earlier Ladybird engine probably written up in late 1947 or 1948. The second copy from 1949 Vol 100 No 2506 (1 week before) Edgar T Westbury is describing a Utility Steam engine called Spartan. So at that time he was very prolific.
Due to a bug I cannot upload a picture (JPG) to tan album!
Best Regards
Dick Parsons
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22/06/2010 17:14:27 |
Raymond I am looking for the copy of Model Engineer for 1947 - I cannot remember but i think it was by Edgar T Westbury |
21/06/2010 10:09:24 |
It is interesting that the blue prints were for this engine published in 1946. When I can find it, I have a copy of Model Engineer dating from 1948 in which there is the beginning of a construction series for a twin cylinder CI engine complete with dimensions. I have a grump that is I cannot tell how big this engine is as the author gives NO dimensions at all. Even words like drill and ream 6.5mm or what ever would be helpful.. If the editor of ME would like it I will copy the article and send it to him (when I can drop my hook on it). |
Thread: G-Code in a downloadable form |
20/06/2010 15:27:38 |
I have looked at OCR but it can be very messy and requite a lot of corrections etc. If you have the original article in say MS word just cut and paste the stuff to a “.TXT” (dot txt file). This has no ‘Formatting’ and should be as seen. These could be uploaded to somewhere on the site. I have just tried a few ‘tricks’ I know but as you are using ’Adobe’ They do not work to well. A little more time and perhaps I can fiddle it! Dick Parsons |
Thread: "Precision" or "does NOT do what it says on the tin" |
20/06/2010 14:59:26 |
Someone wrote somewhere in site that ‘Cheap Chinese lathes’ should be regarded as a kit of parts and will need building up. The same is true of collets sets, chucks etc. My big Chinese lathe took nearly 6 months of patient cleaning, scraping etc. to get it right. I had my hooks on a Dean Smith and Grace which used in my name sake’s tool rooms before they built the main engines for old Noah’s Ark. I could not bring it out of the UK because it was not on the DTI’s data base of machines and I was damned if I was going to provide a full set for drawings for it. As Mr. Bogstandard says you have to fit the collet-holders to your machine and get them true. For this reason I only buy collets and make my own holders. I bought a set of second hand Russian collets 4mm to 14mm by 0.5 mm steps for about £25. I then made a holder and they are 0.005 mm max run out. I also do a standard alignment check on my lathes once every 3 months and again before I am going to have to do something which requires great accuracy. I only takes 5 or so minutes to do. As to spending more money, well some western companies can turn out pretty good junk at times. No one does 100% inspection and as the chief Chinese inspector Mr Wun Thou Wong says ‘You no gettee light allee time”. |
Thread: Minnie Cylinder block |
13/06/2010 17:00:30 |
Snap! My first machine for which I had to help design a ‘bulk picking system’ in 1963 was an ICL1500. It was three machines in one large room, 1 working, 1 having its valves changed and 1 warming up for tomorrow. The warm end of the cooling system was excellent for warming up the meat pies for the night shift. It had a 3Kword memory and a 3’ Bryant disk which had to be started by hand. Later on I designed the prediction part of the stock control system for the 1900. Then I went to worship at ‘Big Blue’ a 360/55 which had 64 Mb of ‘real’ and the idea of ‘virtual’ memory. Was your Eliot a process control machine –Hot ends of Rolling machines etc? By the way ‘Magnetic matrix memories’ are still being produced for the military. I do not blame your Magyar speaking population is probably quite right not to cross the ‘Medicine line’. The locals have their problems. They will not listen to anyone (even their fellow language speakers on your side of the line). Over the time I have been here when we need casual labour we try to get Hungarian speaking Romanians. Actually I liked NT4 it was a release from MS DOS (actually I used Dosshell). But I think my favourite was IBM’s OS MVS. I am about to switch to Windows 7 less file bloat etc but I do not want to loose any more of my ‘legacy systems’ and I do not like Microsoft updated which remove old but very useful facilities and replace them with things are very dodgy. I am having to re-write my gear wheel search facility nasty it was highly procedural in structure. My late wife was always complaining about my metal stocks and wanted me to give them to her sister’s fancy man.
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Thread: wrought iron |
06/06/2010 16:59:46 |
How precious they are is partly dependant on their age. If they were originally wrought before July 1945 (first atomic explosion) could be in great demand by laboratories who measure tiny amounts of radiation. This goes for mild steel, very old lead pipe etc. If you cannot find such a laboratory try either HMS Warrior at Portsmouth, SS Great Britain in Bristol – they are made of the stuff. You might be able to sell it to a Boat builder. Wrought Iron is nearly inert in sea water. I think Warriors plates have lost less that 1/16” in over 100 years. The stuff is also very tolerant of the harsh conditions inside a fire box. My mother used to cook on a kitchen range made about 18 and ‘how is your father?’ In the mid 1960s the fire bars gave way. The local ironmonger looked sadly at the remains and said ‘we still sell these but they are expensive as they are wrought Iron not the cheap cast iron ones like this’ Dad paid 10/- (Shillings in real money) When he sold the house some 12 years later they as good as new but the new owner’s scrapped the whole thing.’ |
Thread: Minnie Cylinder block |
03/06/2010 09:29:41 |
Hi there Keith, I am near Kecskémet about 150 Km away (as the crow flies). Magyaroszág is what the natives call the country and they call themselves Magyars (pronounced Mod-jaws). Any Romanian will tell you this The 750 Kg was a lifetime’s collection. Part of it came over in an ancient 3½ tonne Merc van. The rest of it with my furniture One place I worked at I was sometimes asked, by security, to leave my car unlocked. Occasionally they found stuff that was ‘identify, mark and destroy’. But someone forgot to do it so it just had to vanish! All sorts of stuff, from a box of left-handed 9 BA screws to a billet of weird hand forged non magnetic ?steel? Hansrudolf hello trumpets are usually varnished so Brasso will take a lot of elbow grease. An on site test would be to take a mite of brass with you and see if you can scratch their sample. If the sample is harder than your bit of brass it may well be PB. ‘lace w:st="on">Hungary lace>’ seems to be something generated in the file transfer system which the website uses. It may be due to Windows Vista –Come back NT4 ALL is forgiven! Keep you posted on progress, but I am still in the investigation stages. |
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