Member postings for Tomfilery

Oliver,

You need to load your pictures into an album before you can post them on this site.

From the home page search for "posting pictures" and you'll get 3 threads which provide explanation of what to do.

Regards Tom

Sorry Nigel but I think you are being too hard on TurboCad (TC) - I'm afraid the problem might lie behind the keyboard!

I've used TC for years and haven't experienced the problems you seem to encounter. I have printed A3 drawings on an A4 printer (as multiple A4 pages) with no problem. Why you are bothering using a Viewport is beyond me - it isn't necessary, at all. And, if you do use a Viewport, be aware that the Viewport itself often introduces a reduction factor of it's own, in addition to any page related reduction!

I don't normally dimension my model , as it ends up too cluttered, but do end up with multiple Paperspaces for individual parts (or groups of them) which I do dimension. Only downside is that if you change the model, you have to redo the changes in the Paperspace(s) too. If you use a viewport changes made to the model are reflected in the paperspace, but dimensions reflect the Model dimensions (when I've used a Viewport, I've drawn the wagon full size and used the Viewport to give me the reduced scale of print I require - e.g. 1:19.05 for 16mm/ft). You can break the link to the full size model, so your dimensions appear in the scale size (if you know how to)!

In it's simplest form, highlight your model, or the bits you want, in Modelspace and paste it into a Paperspace - you can see where the model is bigger than the paper you have selected - set any reduction (or magnification) you need and print the Paperspace.

If TC keeps defaulting to US paper sizes, you need to create a new TC Template for future drawings and set up the features as you need.

Hope this helps.

Tom

Ok, so I'm obviously a wuss!!!

When I moved my Myford S7 into it's new home (around the side of the house, down 10 wide steps and into the workshop) it took 3 of us - 2 of those (not me) big hairy **sed builders! I'd removed the motor, tailstock and rear bracket (but not the slides) and bolted a 4" x 2" batten to the front support lugs (feet) to allow an easy place to get hold of it - and I can't emphasise enough how easy that made it to comfortably carry the damn thing.

Two of us could possibly have managed moving it a short distance, but for a longer travel, you need more grunt, just in case someone misses their footing, or stumbles.

Regards Tom

Nigel,

You've forgotten the standing charge, which the display clocks up as well - hence the reason you appear to have a spike of usage at midnight.

Regards Tom

Greensands,

"As it was not a Stephenson designed bridge I cannot see why Smiles would have included the colour print in his book.of the engineers" - because you are making the assumption that Smiles always got his facts right! As SOD points out Harrison was a close associate of the Stephensons and so it may have been assumed (that word again) they were responsible for the design/ build. Perhaps it was just a nice picture which they had to hand?

Regards Tom

Greensands,

Not really a mystery. Search for Victoria Bridge, Washington UK and you'll find a Wikepedia page for it. Part of the Old Main Line from York to Newcastle, which crosses the river Wear East of Sunderland, near Washington, Tyne and Wear.

Track is now lifted.

Regard Tom

Jason,

Nice to see how the professional does it (in the video). Many thanks.

Regards Tom

Gentlemen,

Thank you for a nice instructive thread. Ideas to be "parked" for when the job requires it, methinks!

I'd like to ask Jason a question re the first picture in his post of 07:32:30 today - how do you cut the almost finished glands from the round stock? A slitting saw, or something else fiendishly clever?

Regards Tom

Dave,

I replaced mine with a watch glass (crystal for a wrist watch) bought from eBay. Sorry, I can’t remember what diameter I actually bought, but they were available in increments of 0.1mm and it wasn’t expensive.

Regards Tom

Jan,

Despite what others have said, some people do turn out very good work on a small lathe. On the HMEM website, search for the thread "Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive" where Crueby does his turning on a little Sherline lathe. He does have a mill as well, but (in case you don't know) Kozo's Shay is a 3.5 inch gauge loco - so not "clockmaking"!

I have had a Cowells lathe from new and don't rate it. You can only take tiny cuts, so turning anything requiring significant material removal is a real pain! A few years ago I bought a second hand Myford S7 and now don't use the Cowells - I guess supporting the views of the "bigger is best camp".

Doubtless your final decision will be constrained by space, or funding (or a number of other things). Good luck with making the right call.

Regards Tom

Mike Hurley,

I use 32 bit TurboCad (18 I think) running on VIsta (I had an official copy) under Oracle's Virtualbox, on laptops running Ubuntu. All files are saved into a shared directory which I can access directly from Ubuntu, should I need to (without running VirtualBox). Works well.

Regards Tom

Whilst various people are enthusiastically agreeing with PatJ, it seems to me that we shouldn't take too much notice of someone who has not posted on any other subject and who merely seems to be spouting the conspiracy theory nonsense which seems to be so prevalent in the US currently. Perhaps a Moderator would like to check this and, if deemed necessary, take appropriate action.

Tom

Re Michael G's horsetail problem:-

We moved into our house 5 years ago and had major building work undertaken to both house and garden (including retaining walls to terrace the garden). During the building phase, we allowed the horsetails in the lower part of the garden to get really well established - definitely a bad move!

Once building works were complete and we got around to sorting out the garden (primarily for lawn with borders) we dug over the ground to a depth of 8 -10 inches and tried to remove every last bit of black horsetail root (as well as all the larger stones, bricks, etc.). As you'd expect, it was impossible to get every piece of root and some of them were literally feet long!

So, we still get a few horsetails popping up through the lawn, but pull them out whenever we see them. They still return, but are getting noticeably weedier (no pun intended). Some had been like thin asparagus, but we seem to have stopped them coming back. I can't imagine we'll totally eradicate them, but we're definitely winning. It is the "hoeing" principle - keep cutting them down and depleting their root energy supply. They are really sneaky though, and like to hide in the midst of other plants.

Good luck.

Tom

Nigel

Picking up on your comment to Peter:-

"My comment about scaling came from the printer-setting menus I find. They seem all to work as dividers, down to 1:1; of large objects. I could not see how to enlarge the image to scale and without the dimensions following suit, so for example scaling up by 10 would print something 0.1" wide, 1" wide and dimensioned as 1" wide."

Turbocad will do what you want, but you have to know how! You can insert a "Viewport" in your Model and open a "View" in a paper space which links to the model. When setting up the "Viewport" (and the "View" - so be careful you can put magnification, or reduction, factors in both) you can tell TC to make the items in the "Paper" space as large, or small, as you want. TC links the dimensions to the "Viewport" and displays dimensions in the "View" as per the full size version, irrespective of the magnification/ reduction.

Of course, this can sometimes work against you, e.g. when you draw an object full size and want the paper space item to show scaled down dimensions for model building purposes. In that case, it is possible to break the link with the Model space item and so show the dimensions in scale size. Using this technique you could draw an item full size and then produce Paper spaces for multiple scales.

Oh, and one other point - if using a Viewport any changes you make in the Model space within the Viewport are automatically reflected in the individual, or multiple, paper spaces.

I suggest you might need to investigate further.

Regards Tom

Nigel,

I wonder if you have accidently locked the layer which contains the drawing part you can't copy? I'm sorry if this is a red herring, as I don't know whether this would cause the problem you describe and I haven't tried it myself. As others have said already, one can normally easily select drawing parts and then copy and paste between drawings.

If the layer is locked, then selecting an item on that layer and clicking the little lock button on the toolbar should set it back to normal. Alternatively go to the Options menu, select Layers and do it from there.

Regards Tom

Jenny,

I would strongly suggest that you should do some further online research as to what you need! You have got slightly the wrong end of the stick.

There are three basic stages to driving a CNC machine.

1. CAD (Computer Aided Design) - a program you use to draw the parts you want to machine.

2. CAM (Computer Aided Machining) - a program which takes your drawing file and which YOU tell where and how you wish to machine the part(s). The output of this program is the g code you feed to stage 3.

3. A machine controller which accepts your g code file and drives the stepper motors and spindle on your milling machine.

There are lots of options for each stage of the process. I use, respectively, TurboCad, CamBam and Mach3. Some people use programs which combine the first 2 stages, but a lot depends on what hardware you want to run the cnc machine form (more choices I'm afraid). You don't need to really get into writing g code, but would need to get to grips with the software associated with each stage.

There have been some recent threads regarding choice of cnc systems on here and I'd recommend you search for these and read up on what people have said.

Regards Tom

Hi,

I suggest you look up John "Bogstandard"'s Paddleduck engine for a place to start.

You didn't say how big a loco you are thinking of building and John's is a small marine engine for driving a small paddle steamer. It was aimed at beginners, so provides a lot of good constructional detail and advice.

Regards Tom

Dave,

Many thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, that is all perfectly clear - thank you. I had thought that was probably how you did it.

I asked for clarification because I'd seen previous references to using eccentric bushes, with the implication that they allowed some degree of adjustment when fitting. I could see how being able to turn a bush in the rod, before final fixing, might allow a little adjustment, but couldn't see how you could avoid also introducing unwanted adjustment in the vertical direction as well as the horizontal.

Please keep up the good work and continue posting.

Regards Tom

Dave,

That's looking great!

How did you use the eccentric bushes, to correct the misdrilled coupling rod spacing? I can see how they would work, but was wondering how you adjusted them. Do they have spanner flats behind the rods, or did you install the bushes and then drill them to suit the crankpin spacing?

Regards Tom

Re Bob S and Ian B's comments re citric acid.

Freshly mixed citric acid will not make your brass go pink - I use it regularly for cleaning small rivets before soft soldering. However, once you have put copper in it, any brass then dipped will turn pink. So if you've pickled some copper then don't use the pickle to clean brass!

I don't make, or restore, clocks and it may be that certain grades of brass react differently.

Just my experience from observation.

Tom