Member postings for Clive Hartland

Have you considered wrapping some small bore copper tubing around the casing and pump some water around to cool it? Needs a tight wrap though to make good contact.

Quite feasable using a small pump and a header tank away from the machine. Ypu could even stick a thermometer in the tank to see the temp. rise.

Clive

JS, you may find that the swarf will come off in bright blue chips or long lengths with some sparking. Dont worry about but carry on cutting as that is normal.

The swarf will be very hot !

Clive

With the current price of Leccie I would suggest a 230Volt generator !

Clive

I have to relate this story, many years ago in Hong Kong I worked in the Instrument shop and we had a rather vocifereous young Scot who was having trouble cleaning the optics of a pair of Barr and Stroud binoculars.

Come dinner time the lad was off and while he was away the other lads put a small spider into the binos. When the lad came back he was amazed to see this magnified spider walking over the graticule and in some temper shouted out, 'Blxxdy Sassanach binos'. It was gently ponted out that they rere made in Glasgow!

Clive

I have spiders behind my wing mirrors on the car, they have really travelled whilst on my journeys.They are still there the next morning! Blow some dust on the web which they do not like at all. They recover the web by eating it I believe and re-process it.

This year they seem to have colonised the space under my beehive lids, big ones jump out when I lift them off.

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 08/01/2013 14:26:51

Have you noticed that the Gremlins leave huge amounts of rubbish on the floor? They sort through everything and just leave it there instead of tidying up after themselves like I do !

Clive

I have always annealed brass extruded materiel, it then does not bend when machining one side.

very simple to do, heat to a red colour and quench in water. If in doubt do it again.

Clive

Some years ago I was being tutored on the finer details of taking apart and assembling a Compur shutter, suddenly a small spring erupted and flew past me and disappeared. End of job, no spares.

Some years later came the move of the firm to Milton Keynes and I emptied out my work trolley and lifted out a corrugated cardboard tray and as I did so out popped the lost spring ! So from 1977 to 1989 it had sat there unseen.

I went to the stores and retrieved the said shutter, relieved it had never been used as a spare or sold on, and carefully replaced the spring in its right position, the shutter worked fine.

I know one black Hole which was in the bilges of my sons ship, they pumped out hundreds of gallons of crud and oil and then went in and had a look around and found dozens of spanners and screwdrivers and sundry other equipment. Including crowbars that were used to turn the engine over and lots of nuts and bolts.

Clive

Can someone look in their , 'Black hole' and see if my single ended half inch QCT spanner is there?

It always lives on the bolt head and now has walked, I have had everything out of the workshop and no sign. It left no note saying where it was going, so I have posted it AWOL.

Had to buy another spanner, the ring end fits but the jaw end does not!

Clive

Well done Will, now you can hone it true. By the way, 'Happy new Year to you and family'

Clive

Steve, the gearing will incorporate an anti backlash set up, make sure that is freely working. Normally I leave them dry. Wear will only occur over a very long period of time.

Clive

I have bought one and modified the base with a very strong circular magnet, this was very simple and only needed a couple of holes drilling and a piece of metal turned to shroud the magnet and then all glued up.

The light has one fault, it can swing if too much of the wand is sticking out from its anchor point. In retrospect i would fit two magnets to stop this swivelling.

All round this light gives good illumination right where it is needed. Bear in mind it cost £10 but with postage it is £15.

Clive

I found working on the Americam M109 fulfilling, I rebuilt 2 engines, I often took out the engine and drive gear for running outside the gun on umbilical hoses and cables.

The sights, my main job were very easy to work on. I was always on the range when they fired and the accuracy was superb. I have seen shells lobbed down the turret hatches on target tanks at 2500mtrs range. Long distance accuracy, when the Regt. is split into three Batteries at different ranges the shells are fired at different times of a few seconds and they all come in on the target at once. 18 guns x 60lb shells make a big bang in a 50mtr target area.

By the way, the gun is made of aluminium armour, its two layers, soft inside and hard outside.

Clive

Beware stainless steel, my son is a deep water engineer on boats and one day he had just left the engine room and a stainless steel elbow in the 600lb high pressure air system exploded filling the engine room with shrapnel !

Investigation could not find a quality control/origin of the items fitted and the whole system had to be changed. A similar thing happened with a stainless steel hook that was used to secure a door and it snapped, it was rated at 7tons. It showed crystaline fracture.

From that I doubt I would ever use stainless steel in that sort of situation.

The only way is as I said earlier to use a forged/shaped cylinder but certainly not 30mm in dia. in the length quoted. The example of the suspension on a car is with the spheres is that they act as reservours and hold pressure to activate the system.

Here is a factual story, The M109, 155mm Howitzer has hydraulic traverse and elevation of the gun and turret. It was found that the gun and turret sitting on a 7 degree slope could not be traversed up the slope as the pressure was 700lbs in the lines.

The makers were quick to modify and we had to fit the new system at 1500lb and it had a hydraulic reservour 9" dia and 18" long made of 10mm steel wall thickness. All new pipework and new fittings all over to accomodate the higher pressure.

clive

I think drawn aluminium tubing would be totally unsuitable for this project. As far as I know all aluminium air bottles are forged/ formed in one go and are annealed.

I am sure there will be other opinions about this.

Clive

Probably made by an army of craftsmen and apprentices, I doubt it is one mans work.

Indeed a beautiful example of craftsmanship from an elegant era. The inlays are very nice.

Clive

Will the drill, drill through any other materiel? Check the end of the drill and see if it has a positive cutting lip as i recently bought some that had a negative angle!

Clive

Martin, every part should be anodised seperately at the same time in the bath. If its anodised as one item the internal threads and inserts will not get anodised.

The tubular parts will be put on the jig with internal clips so marks will not show on the outside.

The anodising figure for what you want doing should be AA5 - AA10, this will be perfectly adequate for the use it will be put to.

Clive

I must say here I have never had a problem with threads and anodising, cut to standard dimensions and then anodised they have always worked and fitted fine.

The only proviso was that the thread was lubricated with a kilo poise type lube. or a very tenacious Silicon typelube. These were used on all the eyepiece threads and focus thread drives and lasted for years. Some of the Lubes were usable to -50C as the instruments were used in arctic conditions and left out 24/7.

Also that I have seen Kilopoise grease used that was too thick and when cold you could not turn the spindle and in fact once had one snap off.

I ordered a selection of metals from M-Machine and phoned through the debit card details at 2pm and the items arrived at 10am the next day.

They could not be quicker and I recomend them for service.

I am in no way associated with M-Machine and just a satisfied customer.

Clive