Member postings for Brian G

Not sure it is worth recommending any particular make for occasional use, as they aren't an easy tool to wear out, but if I were buying again I would look for variable speed and the ability to hold pinless blades so I could use decent metal cutting blades at an appropriate speed This would probably mean at a minimum Scheppach or Axminster machines in the £140-150 bracket.

Trouble is, I don't use my current machine enough to justify changing but each time I use it I regret having gone for a cheaper one - I reckon we have all been there though...

Brian

Could that be "Gebrauchanweisung" (instructions for use)?

Brian

I happily admit to knowing next to nothing about Myfords, but assuming an imperial lathe is wanted, I am a bit curious as to why nobody has mentioned the ML10 which tends to sell for quite a bit less than the ML7 / Super 7.

Brian

Is the risk of a brass boiler that great on a boiler with a volume of less than 9cc? This is a lot smaller than a Mamod or Wilesco brass boiler.

Brian

Why not just buy a 24 volt LED power supply as used for 3D printers? If you don't trust eBay suppliers, Ooznest do a 24V 10A supply for £25.

Brian

Best thing about Draftsight (apart from being free and "feeling" just like AutoCAD) is that although it has its own syntax you can type many AutoCAD commands and it recognises them as well.

Brian

Could you turn down and thread the post that comes with the toolpost to fit your lathe (or even make a new one), leaving the lathe unaltered?

I'm afraid I cannot recommend any particular toolposts (other than avoid the very cheap aluminium ones - I wish I had avoided them), but if you look on Arc Euro Trade's website the specifications of each of the ones they sell are shown in full, so you could work out the size you want from there.

Brian

Replacing the cap head screws on my son's mini-lathe has made a massive difference to the condition of our knuckles. I found that button-head screws were just right for the handles on a Warco machine, but if not, flanged button head screws in stainless steel could be turned down to exact size.

Brian

Never used them, so not a personal recommendation, but BA Bolts offer BSW and BSF nuts and bolts in chemical blacked finish **LINK**

Brian

(Edit "and BSF"

Edited By Brian G on 22/02/2019 08:50:28

Why not try running it to put water in a cup and then boiling it? That way you will know if there is a taste from the machine or if it is just not hot enough to make tea. I suspect the latter as coffee isn't meant to be made with boiling water.

Brian

I'll have to persuade my wife that she wants a UV lamp Michael...I have been working on her as it would be handy for photo etching

Brian

Has anybody tried UV hardening nail varnish for this kind of application?

Brian

My son hopes to build a 9F and was advised that the combustion chamber should be omitted as the tubeplate is completely inaccessible once the boiler is complete, making it impossible to correct any problems except by heating the whole boiler and sloshing soft solder around it. (Is that even allowed under the current codes?) To quote Martin Evans (in 1980) "not an ideal solution perhaps, but this may be why combustion chambers are not too popular among model engineers today!".

Brian

I assume the horizontal boiler with the dome Alec. I am a little confused, are you planning on feeding the superheater with water or using an internal pipe from the steam space down to the bottom of the boiler?

Brian

In case the spare parts numbers are different, Chester's own manual is on their forum at **LINK** - just search for "Craftsman" (or "Manual" which is why I stumbled across it whilst searching for a different one).

Brian

To be fair to the device, I had only considered milling. Used with a rigid pillar drill (i.e. not my one), the second type could be a useful substitute for a jig borer. A tiny version would go nicely with our recently acquired Proxxon drill - the one in the link appears to be bigger than either the drill or my budget

Brian

A cross slide on top of a rotary table would simplify milling a rectangular object with rounded corners or perhaps a flycrank as a single operation (rotate around one centre, traverse, rotate around the other centre, traverse). I had been considering making a slide to fit my rotary table for this very reason. You could also make a slot with rounded ends whose radius didn't match any of your cutters.

On the other hand I have no idea what you could do with the other version that has a rotary table on top of a cross slide that you couldn't do with a rotary table on a milling machine. It might be useful as as a vertical slide on a lathe, or at some other angle on a sine bar?

Brian

My father (a dockyard wireman) taught me to touch potentially live wires by sweeping my (moistened) finger down quickly at arm's length so I touched them in passing but the momentum of my arm would take my hand away. I still do that even after testing the wires with a neon screwdriver, voltage tester or multimeter as I would rather not find out that the neon etc. had failed by getting a proper jolt.

Even after testing it is still not a bad idea to short the circuit, as it could just be dead because of an intermittent fault and on domestic circuits you cannot just put a padlock on the breaker. You can also use a live circuit just to make sure that whatever you tested with really works. (I have a healthy paranoia about electricity ever since I first encountered busbars instead of cables in the pit at a substation).

Brian

EDIT: And whatever you do, don't reach down to a potentially live cable!  If it gets you, you want to fall away, not toward...

Edited By Brian G on 01/02/2019 18:21:27

To quote from the manual for the Cowells 90 which has a leadscrew clutch and trip bar as standard: "When screwcutting, the clutch is NOT disengaged at the end of each cut. The machine MUST BE STOPPED, THE TOOL WITHDRAWN AND TRAVERSED BACK TO THE START OF THE THREAD USING THE MOTOR REVERSE" (Their capitals - I'm not getting shouty). This is for the same reason that we use a thread indicator dial when screwcutting, there are (except when cutting a thread of the same pitch of the leadscrew or a whole multiple of that pitch) multiple possible engagements.

Brian

Edit:  Sorry Chris, I took a while and didn't refresh before posting so have duplicated a lot of what was in your post.

Edited By Brian G on 01/02/2019 11:07:10

I would tend to agree about the brass dovetail. Why go to the expense of making it a separate part unless it is adjustable?

Could I suggest being careful with the screws if they are cross-heads? A lot of older Japanese equipment has JIS and not Phillips screw heads (as if Phillips vs. Pozidriv wasn't bad enough). Hard to identify by sight, but they may have a little dot in one quadrant. Larger sizes are available from Machine Mart, whilst there are plenty of JIS instrument screwdrivers on Amazon.

Brian