Member postings for Ajohnw

Noticing the comments about indexable tools I have found this type to be pretty good really.

They are 110xxx series from APT. This one is a tip listed for finishing stainless. They also do them raked for aluminium. The stainless ones work will with that and other materials too. Holders are a bit of a problem. I had to buy one of those cruddy sets that came with hex screws but I notice Gloster do them complete with Torx so the screws should be swapped immediately. I use 10mm ones which are adequate for a boxford. Spare screws can also be bought from APT. The sets have LH, RH this hand etc but to be honest I only use this one.

This is the results dry on some silver steel a local supplier was selling off, think I can guess why. Come back stubbs but I guess I could anneal it. Just trying them on a bit of left over from something else.

Few things to realise. The shot is larger than life and the work feels like glass. There is a slight coarse repeat pattern along the work that seems to be caused by a rather large heavy wobbly pulley on the countershaft setting up a vibration in the lathe. The tears and machining marks are um deep and not many at that.

I had a Schaublin for restoration for a while and one of the people on their group suggested I tried them. Best I have found and on materials like this I don't think I could do better with HSS really - unless I can find some way of making it literally razor sharp. On the other hand an even smaller rad than the one on the inserts might help.

The tips that come with the cheap sets are so so but usable. I don't buy ebay tip bargains any more. I suspect some have actually been used. Not from main suppliers of course but I have seen buckets of them come from machine shops and they always look as new - taken off before they have worn out as people don't want to wait until the machine produces scrap.

John

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I've set my self the task of building a furnace for metal casting and have started collecting bits. I'm aiming to try electric even having been advised to forget it and go for propane which is easier. The usual problem with elements is having them burn out.

The videos are for casting but Myfordboy on Youtube shows some good construction ideas in his later video's. The materials are easily available.. Of late ebay is cluttered with suitable elements even in the higher temperature range. Only problem is that they are 220v so might have problems at 240 if run flat out. There are all sorts of wattages about. Cheapest usually from China.

Some years ago ME had an article on making a small heat treatment furnace using fire clay. One interesting thing he found was that ordinary fibre glass coated thermocouples were ok as the insulation just burnt off. His elements were buried in the fire clay - that's a lot more difficult to do and he did have problems with them burning out. There are refractory cements available that seem to be suitable for this but I've only seen them in the USA and it's not that clear if they are the right thing.

Rather than having masses of refractory bricks it's better to use ceramic fibre for a lot of the insulation.

Out of interest this is the best I have found on a propane burner. It's impressive. I did keep a llink

**LINK**

The general aspects could be used for other things.

An easy to make set of rolls is also shown in use in Myfordboys video. It uses out of phase cranks to rotate the rolls. Now why didn't I think up that - probably bamboozled by gear driven designs etc.

John

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The subject came up on the Boxford group some time ago. Some one had a BA set that they had found - car boot sale if I remember correctly. Described in my terms as something like a slot drill with a hole up the centre. I'd expect them to be 3 flute to work reasonably well. One problem would be that the tail stock would have to be well centred - boxfords generally are.

John

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One thing I wonder about lathes in the UK is where are the bench lathes like this one

**LINK**

There has been others even cheaper none geared head. It's interesting to read the reviews - they mention results. Never found any in the UK. The 0.002 - 0.003 between centres could easily be fixed and the machine may not have been installed correctly. I'd hope it had a hardened prismatic bed. Might turn out that it has 2 flat rails - nvg. Generally though it looks pretty sane and as I have said there has been others and probably still is.

John

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The basic idea works well. I have one of the old Myhford ME designs that fastens to the bed, plate added to lift the centre height up to suite a Boxford. It doesn't take long to cut a key way. Mine works well but I really should make a tool holder where the bit slopes at 10 degrees to provide some back rake without weakening it. On the other hand that might make the holder bend if it's too much and the tool will dig in making it bend more etc.

John

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I feel you are wrong to blame the Chinese for the problems Ian. True in some quarters they do have a reputation for providing excellent samples and even first production runs and junk there after but I don't think this applies to the sector that is under discussion providing things are bought from well known sources.

I suspect the real problem goes like this. Some large scale importer wants to make the lathe bigger and better. Sorry I go on about lathes but they are classic examples. Say it has 18in between centres, adequate for many really but they ask for it to be increased to 20in. The supplier could make the bed 2 in longer at a cost. They could chop 2in of the tail stock. That is a much cheaper option, just saw 2in off the pattern or block off a mould. The importer is aiming to sell at a set price so which would you go for in the same position? I'm not talking small scale importers here I'm talking ones that buy in numbers that are significant to the supplier. Once it's done everybody else gets the same. Later the same people might want to get an even larger centre distance - the head gets thinner.

I'm not going to rabbit on about more recent thinking on specification and marketing and problems as a result. It would come as shock to many people who expect to get what they have apparently paid for. Things haven't been that simple for a long time. And don't I know it, 39 years with the automotive industry. There is a chance as well that Chinese marketing people think the same way.

It all leaves many retailers in an odd position. People want them so they sell them. My only feeling on that score is that certain sellers are clearly rather synical about it all. On the other hand it's understandable that in general they may not want to tell customers about any problems with a product.

There can be other problems too. A couple of years ago one retailer was asking me why they had problems with a certain type of collet holder. They had done their best and had them produced by an aero space company and it didn't work out. Many complaints. This is different type of problem. Poorly conceived and based on a need rather than reality and in truth due to accuracy needs it's doubtful if any one could achieve even low production rates. Customers expect collet performance though - its' a collet holder and does hold collets. I find that hard to accept because to me the idea had it's advantages but clearly could have problems working as some one would expect collets to work. Maybe they are sorted now but some how I doubt it. This doesn't mean they are useless, just not as good as the real thing.

John

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I'm not offering but if you want to make them it's a lot easier if sized in one cut. I have a problem making M2 thumb screws from 6mm stainless. If I have to take a 2nd cut the dam things sometime bend and break. I just size about 1/8 in and then cut to the full length in one go. Brass is is a problem too. Never needed to try MS. M3 is not much better either.

There are also some cutters that fit in the tail stock. Sort of end mills with a hole down the centre that leaves the correct size for specific sized threads. While they may be about I have no idea of any stockists or what they are called which might help.

John

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The Boxford steady is likely to be extremely similar. They use socket head screws rather than the square head bolts. They also use these for clamping the fingers. The OP could switch to the same thing but as they will be unbrako quality it wouldn't be a cheap option.

I'd guess that the originals are a tool steel rather than mild so it would be best to make one out of key steel really. That can be obtained in square or hex. Or flat ground cast sections.

Yep - perfect job for a capstan if the right bits and pieces are available.

John

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I'd probably take those down in one cut apart from a bit left to finish. Slow speed and a fine feed. Witha centre in the end by the look of them.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 24/06/2015 22:23:27

Ubuntu mantain an engineering type list of programs. It might be worth looking through those to see what is about now. It's here

**LINK**

There are an ever increasing number of multi platform package about in many areas now so some may run on windoze and mac.

I'm not sure where they all are in terms of end to end cad cam but work is always being done on several of them. I suspect freecad might offer better rendering than some packages.

I've noticed zero difference under VirtualBox but haven't used it at all for a long long time.

Then there is the pay for wine ?? Crossover if I remember correctly. I suspect they might test it if you ask. Not sure on that point. The problem with wine is that there is little help about on sorting applications out and a lot of the interest stems from running windows games. I filed a bug on one application some years ago. Nothing happened as some body would have to pick the job up. It's an optical design package but it does run ok on the more recent versions of wine. There are no good OS optical design packages. I find that Q4Wine helps a lot with more complex packages that have to run from their own directory. Swine on the other hand is not of much use. Q4Wine is a bolt on which removes the need for general wine configuration knowledge.

There was an odd bug involved in running 64bit packages under wine. A search of the forum should bring up a solution. I'd have thought that would have been fixed by now.

John

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Your more likely to get chipped carbide tooling doing that sort of thing if the headstock bearings are loose. If your using HSS there is unlikely to be a problem.

Best option to minimise strain in a number of places is to use a slow speed and fine feed to rough it out. I've been known to turn with the back gear in but that's probably a bit extreme for this sort of thing but why not really. Assuming you have the gearbox you can go down to 1.5 thou per rev and also take a decent sized cut. That's 224 tpi setting if your on change wheels. Personally I feel the worst thing to do with work like this is to be ultra cautious. In this case that means more bangs as the things turn round. I'd take cuts of my usual size, get it over as soon as possible and not worry about it.

From round or square? If you need to mill to get the correct square you may as well work from round. If you would need to do a bit of filing from square and no miller square would be the easiest option for a lot of people.

You could also fabricate from all thread and use loctite. I've also seen that done with out. Screw the all thread into the square , file or what ever flush and dot punch around the thread. That does need fairly well mated threads. You could also make the bits for doing that yourself. Probably a good idea if you have reasonable taps and dies. Loctite could still be used but let it set before filing or machining flush and then dot punching.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 24/06/2015 19:21:41

That may be the case but 1200cc Bandits are much more fun to ride. Great bikes if the valves are adjusted every now and again - bit like lathes, well some of them.

Trouble is too far past 50 really I realised that I probably don't bounce too well any more so it had to go before some idiot arranged for me to find out.

John

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I want a real one so I can load jobs on a pallet and walk away and leave it to get on with it. Mixed milling and turning of course.

**LINK**

Only problem really is getting on for a million quid but worse still the good ones are about 12ft tall.

John

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Good point Martin. I was trying to point out that things don't really need to be as they are. Myforfd's actually can be very very good in all respects if in decent order and adjusted correctly. It seems I am the only person that ever asked for a replacement super 7 spindle. They decided to make a few. It was interesting to talk to them. I explained that if I was to scrape the cone back in I needed something that was definitely correct. Also had problems with rust in the morse taper and elsewhere which was the main reason. They couldn't understand why there were lathes about that were worn enough to cause problems as they had 30 odd year old lathes that were still fine - even ML7's.

I was trained as a toolmaker often working to ridiculous limits, even turning up plug gauges rather than having them ground. It can be done with a good lathe that is in excellent order. This particular lathe was a DSG. I've also made V blocks on a horizontal miller that didn't show any improvement following grinding. I was also asked to machine some 6ft long machine ways on a very large miller hoping to avoid grinding. Trouble was the table deflected by a couple of thou at full stretch. This was a very large hefty powerful vertical miller. Big tables on millers are a mixed blessing depending on what some one wants to do with them.

I went into design rather than tool making but one person went into the tool room and asked to work on the lathes. First job that came up he had to go to the stores and ask for a mic. Everybody burst out laughing as people could work to the expected accuracy with a 6in rule. Many things made in a tool room finish up being hardened and ground. Finish within reason doesn't matter for the same reason so bearing wear doesn't matter. Large tool rooms might have a lathe about that is hardly if ever used - to make stuff for other machines when they need it. This is all a lot of businesses will expect from a lathe so why bother keeping it in adjustment or even lubricating it regularly. There are smaller shops about still that are entirely different and have to squeeze the last drops of accuracy out of their machines. They sell on when worn past some point. I know of a technical college that did this and also sold machines to model engineers now and again if they asked. The man set up his 5 Colchesters, turned the suds on and had them all turning for 1/2 hr. The model engineer got the one that showed the worst signs of bearing wear. Happy man as he could do far worse elsewhere and got a decent machine at a reasonable cost. From the colleges point of view they spent less buying a replacement than waiting until the machine was unusable for their use and selling to a dealer. They pay peanuts.

Rambling and pointless maybe to some but this explains why some machines are as they are. Used machine tool dealers can be something of a dodgy lot. I've come across some real jokers especially at the model engineer end. Same on new ones too but maybe they have improved but frankly by the look of them I doubt it.

East / West. Some time ago the east did turn out a number of decent lathes at reasonably cost. Millers too. Fact. I understand there were even some Indian Myford clones about at one point that people were very happy with. Before my time. Indian tooling started disappearing around the time I started buying. Going on complaints about Indian microscopes though - would that be a good idea ............ don't know.

John

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The post was too long - I must have some strong feelings in this area

My advice to some one who expects true toolroom accuracy on a lathe is buy second hand and find a good reconditioner if needed. It will make a change for them to do a smaller lathe and if the need for accuracy is explained they can be helpful. Finding a good one may be difficult though. One major problem will be finish. It's a sad fact that lathe bearings wear at an alarming rate and cost a fortune to us. On the other hand many of the 5in or there about machines have adjustable bearings and that can help a lot if they are not too bad. They may not be adjustable on some of the larger stuff. I had some one regrind the top slides on my Myford. They did a decent job. The only thing I added was that I expect it to face square - shock horror cause the couldn't really do that. On the other hand they took extra trouble and the dish was negligable as it should be. Despite lathes co uk seeming to think that the detachable bed strips on a Raglan can't be reground I had that done too. The people that did it pointed out that they had much worse lathes in daily use - I pointed out that I didn't have a cylindrical grinder. They did a perfect job. I didn't even have to redowel the rails. They also ground the strips that hold the bed down for me after I had measured what the gap was. Interestingly they were also prepared to regrind the spindle bearings for me. They grind a pocket for them and then grind the faces. The pocket takes out some of the machine errors. It's a job they did regularly but can only be used if the bearing is adjustable. A company also offered to do a decent job on a Myford for me but were not prepared to spend time setting up so the usual stick on packing would come out. My conclusion was it would be better to leave the job to Myford. Not and option any more.

John

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I feel that suppliers play an important part on cheaper stuff. If ARC is Arceuro 3 strikes and you are out doesn't surprise me as I have had good experiences with all items I have bought off them. I do get a bit annoyed when they stop selling certain things at times but it could be that I am the only person who wants to use them. I wouldn't be inclined to say the same about one large scale seller on Ebay.

I come from an insanely precise toolroom background and can do work like that given a decent machine. I also have some machine tool design experience - unfortunately and that causes me to have a general feeling of disgust when I look at some machine tools as they are off to a bad start purely from a design point of view. Lathes are interesting. We get hobby, medium duty etc and my comments largely relate to the hobby end as there appears to be a big jump in standards in some cases - in the UK at least. I also come from a very high volume manufacturing background so am well aware of where the costs come from. Much of it is plant what ever the quality levels. A lot of the quality aspects come form how things are designed and made anyway. As far a lathes go at the "hobby" end the aim seems to be the highest number style spec in the shortest space so that more can be packed onto a ship for a given size of lathe. This is probably largely down to USA dealers but people over there do have more choice than we do so our importers are partly at fault anyway.

Cost can come into quality. I wanted to make a small x-y table for testing optics so bought a couple of baby lathe compound slides. I was gob smacked by the way the lead screw was located. Ok cheaper but too cheap to serve it's purpose in my view even on a lathe. I feel there is too much of this sort of thing going on so it's little wonder that many people with a background in this area complain. I also feel that this sort of thing has increased and am inclined to blame the USA for it, looking for penny savings, well maybe a couple of quid in this case. Also for making the spec look better as far as the numbers go and also probably keeping weights down a touch - I wonder how much extra weight would be added if the cross slide was long enough to make full use of the swing of the lathe for instance. It needs to go a further than the swing suggests.

Centre distances have grown. One favoured way seems to be to chop of the nose on the tailstock and even make it a bit shorter - worth 2in on a medium sized lathe. A morse extension is then sometimes needed to turn up to a centre. More sources of inaccuracy. Better still make the spindle and head stock shorter. Sounds fine but say there is a not unreasonable 0.001in error in bearing placement. That much taper will appear over the same distance on the work. This is why real lathes even Chinese ones have longer heads. Bearing accuracy also comes into this and true we can't expect super precision bearings at this price but hang on they aren't heat treated. The Chinese real lathes also come with bearing alignment adjustments so maybe they don't use super precision either. There is a problem in the bearing area as lathes get bigger. More sophisticated arrangements have to be used but that needn't apply to say a 5in centre height lathe and most definitely not on smaller ones. Or even bigger ones really but there will come a point when performance wont be as I would expect. On the other hand design can help with that - they are called disc springs as used in Hobbymats and a few others at times. Dirt cheap and do their job if used correctly.

To be honest going on the only Chinese lathe I have had and certain other things I get the impression that they have been made badly on purpose or by some one in a shed. Taps interest me too. These days they always seem to be slightly over sized. This may be down to standards or could it be that the real things are run off and at some point when tooling needs resetting the rough stuff is made. Odd really as modern high volume machines often take out tool wear and also slide wear via software and sensors. There has been indications in the past that identical machines from different retailers vary. I've also read complaints some where in the past about 0.100 != 2.5mm. Think that may have been from the USA. Could be down to the size of the over all EU.

I too do some woodworking. I have Ryobi radial arm saw, dewalt band saw, a planer, a newtool bench drill, a few routers and several other powered things. I've owned most of these for over 20 years. Accuracy - I can do work with many of them that can stand measurement with a digital calliper if I need Over the last 5 or so years I have bought other thing such as a router table which is a complete load of crap. Purely bad by design in this case nothing what so ever to do with manufacturing costs. It was even designed to hold the wrong router in the range. One range that stood out for quality at very low cost was B&Q PowerPro. Some trade people used them as well with a reduced guarantee. It can be done.

John

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Cast iron was cheap it's also ideal for some things. I have seen model engineer designs in mild steel that will fail at some point due to it's properties. I even have one a Eureka.

Peatol make good use of al and concrete slurry. My Peatol vertical slide has faired well too. Maybe the answer to the vice is to simply fasted some mild steel section to the bottom and chamfer the edges as it too will deform if given a whack. Flat ground cast sections would be better.

I have done a bit of anodising and found the numbers in the workshop book series to be incorrect. I'd guess this might be down to the type of aluminium.

The strength aspects of aluminium is an interesting subject. I have rebuilt several car engines. The heaviest ones for size were easily the 2 that used an aluminium block. On the other hand aluminium pistons and cylinder heads are rather light considering their strength. I feel it all comes down to the alloy that is used and also how parts are made in some cases.

John

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The only way to find out of something will run under wine is to down load it and install it. It's best to get the very latest version of wine.and install wine tricks. When it comes to tossing in some real windows dll's etc there isn't much help about.

There is no need to dual boot these days if some one wants to run windows and linux on the same machine. VirtualBox is probably the easiest virual machine to use but there are others. I'm not sure if it will run 64biit windows. There was talk last time I used it and that was some time ago. In terms of obtaining windows some smaller PC outlets may have earlier versions around that they will sell. Totally illegal of course.

Seeing comments about 32bit and memory a lot depends on what the OS decides to let users do. It doesn't take much memory to blat a pc screen even a big one and the overheads for paging in memory are surprisingly low.

Me - well I have only used Linux plus KDE for around 18 years now. I did use both for a couple of years before that. I do have Vista Home on a laptop that I use for the web when I am away from home and also for upgrading firmware in certain items when I can't do it from Linux.. I also have a copy of XP pro that will have to go on it at some point.

John

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I used to use swarfega then one day at a car boot I saw Knight's Castile hand soap. We just bought some out of curiosity as we remembered the add on TV from a long time ago now. For some reason it does it's job and it's what we always have by the sink now. We come across it from time to time and buy it to keep a stock.

I wonder if it works so well because it's real soap. It's rather odd that it will shift oil and grime really. My son wont use it as he doesn't like the smell. My wife and I use it all of the time now.

At work, machine work mainly, they used to have some green gritty stuff. No idea what it was called. The gritty aspect was borax as the company had found that this helps prevent skin infections and dermatitis.

John

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There is or was a book about concerning home casting complete machines in suitable grades of al. The ways were plated with mild steel. I visited some one who made an excellent shaper this way. As it can be a relatively dead material like some cast irons it can work rather well for machine frames.

Personally in case such as a vice I would be inclined to bush the the areas that might be subject to wear from say a stainless steel shaft. More stainless or even brass and penny washers under any nuts and bolts.

I was going to mention that Record make an excellent little drill vice that works well on small milling machines and also vertical slides on lathes. Then I checked the current price. The word insane springs to mind. Not much sign of the sub 3in one either only the 4in.

John

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