Member postings for Brian G

Personally I would treat CAT5e as a minimum, there is hardly any cost difference between gigabit and 10/100 switches and 802.11ax routers are normally gigabit anyway. I'm wiring our bungalow with CAT6 as the cost premium compared to CAT5e copper was negligible, and with a rural broadband subsidy our fibre connection delivers 300mb at the lowest price tier - if I could afford it 900mb is available over the same hardware.

I'm not sure that the installation requirements for CAT6/6a are that onerous, after all, minimum bend radii apply to all cables, and unlike power cables, if you go below the minimum, the worst that would be likely is a drop in speed, not a fire. (Probably not anyway, 10GBASE-T or POE might get warm).

If you do choose to go CAT5e or below, you might want to consider CCA (Copper-Coated Aluminium) cable which is less than half the price of copper. It is cheap enough to make it worthwhile doubling up on cable connections rather than using additional switches to get an extra connection in a remote location.

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 04/09/2021 12:36:53

Edited again as I forgot to insert the link to Kenable for CCA cable.

Edited By Brian G on 04/09/2021 12:38:41

We know we want bolts, but are they bolts, fitted bolts or driven bolts?

Talk of fasteners is bringing back some VERY bad memories about interactions with buyers who couldn't understand that the length of a bolt or screw is how far it goes below the surface which may or may not be its overall length depending on the head (as well as dealing with qualified engineers who specified brass self-tapping screws, but that is another sad story).

I'm also pretty sure that based on their failure rate, somebody in China took an order for "cheese head" machine screws a little bit too literally. At least our buyer asked me why a drawing for woodscrews didn't specify what type of wood they should be made from before placing an order.

At least screws and bolts are less prone to confusion than rivets.

Brian G

Probably been won almost as soon as we started using base 10 with arabic/indian numerals Dave, as the sum of the digits of any multiple of 9 is always a multiple of 9, and 3600 = 400 x 9.

I just checked and the same thing seems to work in other bases such as Hex, so that the digits of multiples of F add up to multiples of F. I'm beginning to understand why I was put in the applied maths stream at school as this sort of thing just confuses me.

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 24/08/2021 20:37:57

To quote the first verse from the great McGonagall's masterwork:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879,

Which will be remember'd for a very long time

Say what you like about him, were Shakespeare or Burns ever as exact regarding dates? it is all very well saying twelth night or midsummer's night but in what year?

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 22/08/2021 19:39:56

Could I suggest "The High Girders" aka "Disaster at Dundee, Prebble 1956. A good read that is a cure for hubris, a justification for quality management as well as providing the best response to people who say that software development isn't proper engineering because "nobody heard of a bridge version 2.0".

It also contains useful hints and tips for fixing faulty castings

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 22/08/2021 08:45:58

MCBs have one advantage, it isn't easy for somebody to accidentally (or deliberately) uprate them when resetting after a trip. I can't be the only person to have seen the wrong size fusewire in a box and I know of one box that contained brass bar instead of a cartridge.

Rather than go backward, would it be possible to put a non-replaceable but slower blowing fuse inside each MCB/RCBO so that if they fail to trip, the fuse cuts the power and disables the faulty device?

Brian G

I thought that is what digital verniers* were for.

Brian G

*Sorry, "I can resist anything except temptation"

Those and the sprung waterpump pliers look handy, but I am a bit less sure about the ratcheting adjustable spanner.

I am left wondering however if this entire thread was just a guerilla marketing exercise by Lidl?

Brian G

There is another vice rebuild on YouTube featuring similarly adaptive gripping, this Ampogrip vice that uses ball bearings as a hydraulic fluid.

Ampogrip Vise Rehab

Brian

Check out DWG TrueView Dave. It is a free viewer from AutoDesk (Windows only I'm afraid) that also acts as a file converter to allow recent drawing files to be edited on earlier versions. I found out about this from a CAD rep who realised he wasn't getting a sale

Brian G

It might be worth finding out if the feed shaft has a plain coupling to the gearbox or if it is a ball clutch. If there is a ball clutch it will slip when overloaded, allowing you to set a stop when using power feed. (The clutch on our similar Chester DB10 Super's feed shaft has also clicked when parting has gone wrong, potentially saving the apron gears).

Brian G

I've found that if the tap is too small the point of the guide centres itself in the jaws of the tap wrench which seems to do the job. If the point on the end of the tap gets in the way of this I just hold it a bit further down in the wrench.

Incidentally, if you have a big enough chuck an automatic centre punch is a pretty good makeshift tapping guide for taps with hollow ends.

Brian G

Hi Jeremy

I'm curious about your choice of a front-mount chuck. As the Myford has a screw thread you are unlikely to want to remove the chuck from the backplate whilst mounted on the lathe, so why choose a design that will require you to accurately drill three holes and tap them to suit the chuck?

A rear mounting chuck will already have three accurately tapped holes, and a simple paper template would be enough to position the three clearance holes you would need in the backplate. It also opens up more options when buying a chuck, although to be honest, I would agree with Chris about Sanou chucks.

Brian G

What worries me about cloud storage is that there is no historic back up which I would need in the case of accidental deletion, overwriting or ransomware. All our family's shared files are kept on mirrored disks in a Synology NAS which in turn backs itself up to another NAS at my son's house. Either of these can be left backing up to a portable drive caddy without any of our PCs being tied up.

I'm not a total luddite though as I still use OneDrive to back up the data on my local disks.

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 20/05/2021 12:48:05

Hi Jez

The pull down spring is fitted between a peg on the base of the saw and the part of the L shaped dashpot rod that sticks out on the right-hand side of the saw frame. It looks like 16g wire with a free length of 5 inches x1/2 inch diameter. No idea where you could get one I'm afraid apart perhaps from looking at old garden furniture.

My saw came with a bimetallic blade that wandered all over the place, but it cuts straight and true with all-hard HSS blades. The spacing of the clamp bolts is a bit of an issue when it comes to deeper blades, I have used 1/2" and 5/8" blades in mine but it looks like 3/4" blades would fit as well. (The 1/2" blades needed the hole drilling out as the pin is larger on the Kennedy saw than on a hand frame).

Confusingly, Cromwell list power hacksaw blades under hand tools HSS All Hard Power Saw Blades but If you buy from them, check the price on both the Cromwell and Zoro websites, as sometimes one is much cheaper than the other,

Brian G

Hi Jez

Looking at your photos, I wonder if you could make a cut-out mechanism based on the smaller saw (shown on lathes.co.uk) which had its switch on the motor?

I posted photos of mine and the parts I made for it on this forum Kennedy Hexacut 90 Power Hacksaw

Brian G

RoHS doesn't apply to them, probably with good reason, although they are still stuck with the problems of lead-free solder on commercial components. Nasa Tin Whisker Homepage

Brian G

It looks like a mounting for a clear toolpost guard that was cleverly designed to get in the way.  Warco's website only appears to show one lathe with this in place, the WM180V with DRO.

Brian G

Edit "guard" is better than "cover"

Edited By Brian G on 18/04/2021 13:41:52

Edit 2 Link to Warco webpage

(Note to self, pause before posting)

Edited By Brian G on 18/04/2021 13:49:12

Sorry Martin, I completely misunderstood and thought you meant a metal cut-off bandsaw. I'm reminded by your comment about odd shaped lumps of the reason I would like one of the Axminster machines, as 40 years ago part of my job as a foundry technician was cutting up alloy wheels using a bandsaw to extract large enough pieces to machine test samples. There probably isn't another tool that could do this as well as a bandsaw.

Brian G

According to The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 "work" must be carried out by a competent person but Section 2-(1) which defines "work" says "but the expression does not include the connection or disconnection of a bayonet fitting or other self-sealing connector".

Even though this means you can disconnect and reconnect the same cooker in the same location for cleaning, decorating etc. you cannot connect the cooker to a different bayonet connector as it is necessary to check the installation, ventilation and the proper function of the cooker in its new location, all of which count as "work" even if a new hose isn't fitted to the appliance.

Brian G