Member postings for Brian G

Hi Neil

Are there any plans to migrate the archive to another format before Flash support ends or will we lose access to the older issues at the end of the year?

Brian G

Thanks to the services of certain online markets, electrode heaters as shown in this video are readily available.

Brian G

https://youtu.be/hIUJWIT9GrU

We may have had less types of light bulb, but we made up for it with six different non-interchangeable domestic power plugs (two pin and three pin in 2A, 5A and 15A sizes). Plus of course that bayonet plug that fitted into a bulb holder, a hangover from the days before electricity meters when consumers were charged per light fitting or socket, and the proprietary (and expensive) plugs needed for council houses with non-standard sockets.

People would go to extreme lengths to keep the bill down, many years ago, when my father was asked to wire a house for the first time he was told not to put a light fitting in the front bedroom as there was a lamp post outside.

Brian G

Might be worth posting the same query on [email protected] the successor to the old Yahoo group.

Brian G

I've failed to find a photo I once saw on the web of a loco (Simplex?) with an elongated tray fitted to the eccentric strap, funnelling oil from a drip feed into an oil hole. It took me a while to work out why the loco had four pipes from the oil box on one side and three on the other.

Brian G

Take a look at Meshroom. It is free and uses photogrammetry to produce a model from (many) photographs taken with a phone or digital camera. The workflow is pretty simple and the results of the tests I have made impressed me.

The only real issue is that it is processed on CUDA cores, and therefore requires an Nvidia graphics card. I had to swap my AMD card for a pair of GTX760s from my son's PC to run it at all, and even with 2300 cores and 8GB of video RAM it still took nearly an hour to create a model from 40 x 8MP images, so I would suggest that is about the minimum spec and that a modern card (the 760s are six years old and are only CUDA 3.0) would be better.

Brian G

First class stirring.

I love the fact that there is no longer any connection between the BSP/G size and that of the pipe. It shows that sometimes practicality is allowed to override order.

Brian G

Could it be a patternmaker's shrink rule?

Brian G

Is it time to accept that our language has changed over time, and accept that these sophisticated (but in which meaning?) calipers are called "verniers"? We could always go back to an older usage, still used in German, and call the Vernier scale a "nonius".

Perhaps we could then turn on Mitutoyo who use the term "Digital Micrometer" to describe their QuickMike, despite it using a linear scale instead of a micrometer thread? Should however Mitutoyo decide to give me one of these instruments, I would happily use the same argument in their defence

Brian G

Has anybody tried stainless steel desoldering tubes? I ordered a set after seeing them described (but not used) on YouTube, but haven't had occasion to use them yet. The idea is that the solder is melted and the tube slid over the component wire. The solder doesn't stick to the tube, so when it solidifies the tube can be pulled out, leaving the component wire loose and a hold in the PCB.

Brian G

(Edit, found a video showing use)

Edited By Brian G on 24/01/2020 16:50:35

My son and I moved his Sieg X2.7l upstairs in 3 main pieces, the head was probably the lightest after we removed the belt cover and motor to get to the securing bolts. He ended up doing most of the lifting on his own as my paralysis kicked in half way through but the base with the (long) table was definitely a two man job. Photographs of the connections and adding numbered labels to each wire as it was disconnected helped. Unless you have access to the rear it is useful to have a smooth surface on the bench so it can be spun around during assembly.

Brian G

I nearly bought one at Christmas (Amazon had some seriously silly price reductions of 75% or more) thinking the "see-saw" deep hole attachment looked handy but in the end went for a vertical dial DTI which, like the back plunger indicator, can also be read in any position on the mill. I have to say though, US made Starrett kit always looks and feels lovely, especially in the padded jewellery boxes.

Brian G

I suspect a very long time, as it is difficult to imagine the web going down permanently unless the physical structure of the internet was destroyed, in which case the collapse of the financial system and complete stoppage of communication and international trade would probably reduce us to a barter economy. Assuming of course that we weren't wiped out by whatever disaster ("dinosaur killer" meteorite, global nuclear war, pandemic?) caused the failure in the first place.

Sorry, I'm operating in "little ray of sunshine" mode this afternoon.

Brian G

Not the first time, and certainly not the last, but I suppose we should be glad the subject of this famous photo is wearing safety glasses.

Brian G

I've never seen one in use Gene, but I think the hole spacing is the same on both faces of the angle plate so that the compound slide can be fitted in the same way as to the cross-slide. You might get some more flexibility if you drilled and tapped a steel plate to fit in place of the toolpost so you can clamp awkward workpieces to it where you cannot use the vice.

As your space is limited, it might be an idea in the long term to look out for a BFE65 miiling head which fits to the back of the lathe bed. They come up occasionally on eBay.

Brian G

Hi Gene

When new the Hobbymat was supplied with an angle plate (shown here) that allows the compound slide to be mounted vertically on the cross slide so that the lathe can be used for milling. If you have this, or can make one, you might be able to do the precision parts of the job with the lathe and use hand tools for the rest.

There are some forum posts and photos here showing another fixed steady being made **LINK**

Brian G

The cost (and poor results in the case of my favourite Oris) of servicing was getting to me, so I decided to try a Seiko '5' automatic. Originally bought just because I didn't have a '5' and wondered what it was like, its lack of manual winding led to it becoming my daily wearer, which in turn made it my favourite.

The bracelet is rubbish, but despite its slower beat it keeps time as well as the others and the well-known five features cover all my needs. It is also far more fun proudly saying how cheaply I bought it instead of grudgingly admitting how much I paid for the others

Brian G

Pattern welded Damascus steel would look attractive, or perhaps layers of different coloured metals (brass and nickel silver sheets soldered together?) machined to give a rainbow effect similar to the caps on some Parker 61 pens. Something totally impractical and difficult to machine, but I suspect very inviting to the steampunk fraternity, might be corten steel, left outside to weather before fitting the movement.

Brian G

Perhaps your statement is untrue with regard to CDs as there are still large numbers of CD/DVD/BD disks sold, and that, so far at least, all 120mm optical disk readers are backward compatible, and that pressed (rather than burned) optical disks have a long lifespan. It may be there is so much material on these formats that cash-strapped future historians would be more likely to preserve or re-create hardware to read even fragments of material from these than any other current data format.

Whilst conventional writeable optical disks have a very short lifespan, M-DISC compatible DVD writers are available for under £15, and Blu-Ray for around £50. The disks can be read on most DVD/Blu-Ray readers have a claimed readable life of "up to" 1000 years, so it might be reasonable to expect a century or two under less than ideal conditions. Unfortunately the disks themselves are relatively expensive compared to other media (unless you compare the total cost of ownership over the next few hundred years.

I fitted one M-DISK and one LightScribe DVD writer to my PC, so I have perhaps achieved a 50% success rate in choosing drives

Brian G

A solid bottom would be less likely to ding a wooden workbench as well

Brian G