Member postings for Clive Hartland

An, 'Alias', something to hide behind or, 'Nom De Plume', an assumed name that a person writes under, so take your pick.

Clive

At a minimum order of 100 I doubt it Michael, there are not many people cutting 'V' belt pulleys at the moment and they are all on here !

There are some highly specialised tool bits from that firm and mainly for high production rate machines.

If an 11Tpi chaser does the job then OK. thats what I will use if I need to cut a pulley. I know I have one.

clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 14/10/2012 09:53:48

The re-fuelling of the two Vulcans that were used to attack the airfield in the Falklands meant that a fleet of re-fuelling aircraft had to fly ahead and then they themselves had to be re-fuelled by other accompanying planes to allow them to return to base.I bet that took a lot of working out ! Miss one intercept and the whole thing falls down like a pack of cards.

I believe some 12 aircraft were involved and on occasion some of the intercepts were almost critical.

One of the Vulcans had to abort the raid and landed in Brazil where it was impounded for a while.

The factual story is worth the read as it explains a lot of things that were not at the time released for public consumption.

Clive

One has to consider that the, 'Old' people had little concept of time and lived day by day and only experienced the seasonal changes and as such saw the migrations of animals and maybe followed them to take them as food.

In the same period the ice age occured and it was only when the ice age retreated that mankind flourished. During this time they no doubt domesticated several feral animals such as cattle, dogs and anything that took their fancy, goats ?. Like today with Reindeer in Lapland.

it does not take much imagination to see that they would then use the larger animals as pack animals like the nomads do today. The dogs would help in hunting to distract the prey as it would be despatched.

Doing all this they had to create shelter, perhaps caves, (wall paintings) and perhaps clothing and create weapons like the bow and spear(Shown in the wall paintings), fire was essential as seasonal weather would curtail hunting and of course fire can help with food preservation and cooking.

so, one of the first devices may have been a rotated stick in a piece of wood to make fire.

It is clamed that the birth place of modern man (Homo Erectus) was in the Olduvai gorge in the Northern Frontier District in Kenya where Prof. Leakey found the bones and skulls of ancient man. mankind were few and far between in those times and there were no massive populations like now. In those days you could live off the land and comfortably. Animals abound and the lakes are full of fish, I know, I have been there and it is wild, hot and rugged with hot streams bursting from underground. You would not go hungry but you would need shelter as in the day it reaches 40C.I understand that in those days the land was forested. Like many parts of the world that are now desert that were once wild Oasis

Clive

The overhead drive shafts were quite common when I went to Tech. School in the 50's , One big electric motor drove the system and cross over belts were used to engage the drives to the machines. I can still remember the , 'Slap, Slap' of the belting.

To my memory the shafting drove 3 Lathes , a shaper and a Horizontal milling machine. Maybe a big drill also.

I used to quit History and Physics to work in there and the teachers would try to get me to go to their classes but after a time they did not bother anymore. In any case i quit school at 14 to join the army so it did not matter anyway.

Clive

It is without doubt that quality control is all but non existant with some tool suppliers. I have received sets of three taps that were all of different makes and also drills that were negative rake. Also in a set of center drills found a left hand one. That may have been from selection in the shop !

There again quality control is still valid on selection of items for sale.

In fact the manufacture of some tooling is quite amateurish and it shows as they try to polish out faults !

The quicker this stuff is thrown back at them the better.

Clive

Ian, the only source of ,'Ifanger tools' I know of in the European area is Brutsch Reugger in Switzerland.

My last dealings with them they wanted a minimum order of Sf 500. Their catalogue is something you will study avidly as it contains superlative tools and equipment.

Clive

Schaublin had a similar set up where the milling tool holder was clamped on the slides and the drive was taken from the headstock. Indexing allowed maching of different shapes.

The overhead gantry was spring supported to keep belts taut. It was only used for small scale jobs and would not machine large objects at all.

Clive

This is the bane of a bee keeper, his bees are opportunist and will collect what is easiest to collect. One of the biggest honey processors would receive honey in bulk containers and empty them and put them outside, it did not take long for the bees to find these containers and start foraging on honety from all over the world with the possibility of worldwide diseases in the honey.

This is all sorted now and the processor washes the containers before outside storage.

I would like to explain about honey, the image of a beekeeper and his bees is that he takes the honey filled combs and uncaps them and spins out the honey in a centrifuge (honey spinner)

The honey is then bottled for sale or gifts. In this process the Esters and Essences and flavours are all preserved as there is no heating or manipulation of the honey from its raw state, it is Pure Honey !

Meanwhile the big honey processors import honey from all over the world and it comes in large quanities of different types. They have to blend it and make it palatable.

smaller beekeeping concerns have no time to uncap and spin out the honey so they use a hot air machine which melts the wax and honey together which is then run into containers and allowed to cool and then the wax which has solidified is taken off and the honey is put through a filter to remover detritus. Then it is bottled for sale.

My feelings are that this process removes a lot of the esters and flavours and makes the honey a mish mash of poor quality. I feel it cannot be called pure honey. Also because it is finely filtered the pollens are removed which can help a person with allergy to self immunise.

There is a caveat here that honey should not be heated higher than 40C or it changes and can become contaminated with HydroMethylFurFural which is harmful to humans.

Incidently I have taken a further 120lb of honey and I still have some more to take, weather permitting.

Clive

As we are going back to the beginning of human occupation of the earth then we must include in the mechanical inventions Animal traps ! Man did not live unless he hunted and foraged but could not do all at the same time so animal traps were important and then the flint edge to process skins and flesh. It is important to remember that to live one has to forage for food and this can take a lot of the day just to accumulate enough to survive. Fishing is time and the idea of a fish trap is important and then traps on animal trails which work when you are not around.

The basic things are important.

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 12/10/2012 08:08:23

There are so many diverse directions that inventions and processes have gone its hard to see and choose any particular mechanical invention.

As one process is started it goes into the next, for example iron ore smelting/bronze/tin etc and then the refining of iron metals into steel and all its variations without which non of this 'Future' would have happened so fast.

The wheel is only part of it and its progression into the pneumatic tyre so beloved of us all now. To drive that tyre you need steel and gears, then an automotive drive, carbon fuel or electric.

this brings us to the petro chemical industry where oil and fuel are found but also coal is a fuel so we are back to the blast furnace.

I see it as a giant, 'Thread' picture with threads leading all over and interjoining into every process.

One aspect is the making of glass and the first windows, 'Bulls eye' glass where a glass balloon was blown and then pierced and spun into a sheet of glass with a dimple in the middle. But that was a progression of something else, not an invention but a process.

So what was the first invention ? the cleaved Flint to cut with or the pierced fish bone as a needle.

The band is so broad I doubt if any one thing is first ! As a simple native, all he needs is a spear and a bow and some arrows and something to cut with, modern man cannot survive without constant music and fags and alchohol and TV. The rest follows as a progression.

Clive

It is the Anvil, that the first Blacksmiths used to shape and mould wrought iron and steel.

Clive

The noise from a machine on a floor above another space is 'Subliminal' It is perceived as a rumble or you can even feel it !

We installed a milling machine on a first floor in the corner where there was plenty of light and as soon as it was switched on the complaints started.

Initially we placed it on two Alu. strips 6" wide and 30" long and about 12mm thick, hoping to spread the load of the machine over that area.

We ended up with a full size 1" Blockboard sheet and then the alu. which seemed to keep the perceived noise level down. The wieght was some 890Kg.

I think the idea is to spread the load over a large area and give some solid support on the under packing for the machine.

Clive

The oilers described are fine but let in small particles with the oil !

Does anyone recommend replacing them with spigot type oil/greasers. It means tapping the hole for the thread and best done when dismantled.

Just a thought.

Clive

Hansrudolph, can you not use your 'History' button to see where they are. if they are there then you can click on them and go from there.

Clive

my new X3 came with minimal preserving grease and as far as I could see did not need a strip down at all, as all the parts were clean and lubricated. What I did do was apply Copperease to the spindles and slides.

In use the machine is quiet and vibrtation free, I would have preferred an MT2 taper in the quiill as most of my tooling is MT2. I purchased an MT2 to MT3 sleeve and all is fine.

It is heavy at some 160Kg and needed some considerable effort to lift and locate it on the bench so be prepared.

Clive

Ed, just today I have reworked a milling vice to true it up.

It came with the jaws perfectly aligned as they had been ground in situ. But, they had a left to right ramp of about 0.7mm. The inside faces were truly vertical but as it was ,it was no use to me at all. I Took off the two jaws and they measured exactly the same in all dimensions. But, where they seated there was a big burr at on end of the step that one sat on.

Two Hex . head screws secured the jaws to the body and the hole they went in, the seat was a conical shape and not flat and I also found that all four screws had eccentric heads. The first thing I did was to turn the heads and cut the seating face square. ( I will replace them later) Using a carbide endmill I seated the holes and then offered up the two jaws and tightened the screws, boy, it was all over the place. One was about 1mm higher that the other one. Using a parallel, I tightened the vice with an open gap and milled the two steps of the vice body to equal each other in height and also milled across the two top surfaces and the inside faces.

This of course meant that the mounting holes were now in the wrong place so I elongated the holes in each jaw by 2mm. Now they sit flat and when the jaws are closed they are equal in height.

It came with a rotary base and with the base keyed to the table and the vice square, the degree reading was a 1 deg. out so I re-cut a new line to indicate '0'.

It is obvious that there is no quality control and as a European vice would not be supplied like that.

I have a Gressel machine vice and it is excellent but is slightly too light for heavy work.

Clive

Yes, a bit of a frustrated read is all I can say, I expected pages of interesting stuff but got dreary reports of an exhibition.

Clive

My first thought is that it is off a Fire Hose and goes between the nozzle and the hose connector ?

clive

Like a lot of lubricated devices that run slowly (relatively) the oil bath does not need to be deep, as long as the crank pin dips into the oil then its fine. Oil leaks are minimised that way.

Clive