Member postings for Tomfilery

Colin,

I have a similar top/cross-slide to yours. Once you undo the clamping screw the large ring should turn to allow you limited (2-3mm) adjustment of tool height. Mine definitely doesn't have any locking screws in the ring.

Regards Tom

John,

RS components sell it in sheets 500 x 300 in various thicknesses and in packs of 10. 0.6mm thick is about £75.

Search for "steel sheet", or "tinned sheet".

Regards Tom

Gary,

Many thanks for that.

Regards Tom

Fowlers,

Ok many thanks - as I thought.

Thanks for the tips re replacing battery and re Accubattery - much appreciated.

Regards Tom

Gary (and any others with the MOTO G5),

What is the battery life like? I'd read one review where they said it might need charging every day. Is that the case?

Am thinking of upgrading my old phone and was put off the G5 for this reason, so would appreciate the view of someone who actually owns one.

Regards Tom

Paul,

I've recovered a brass part before (with a broken M2 tap in it) by leaving it overnight in citric acid. Tap turned rusty and basically dissolved. Suggest you try your usual brazing pickle.

Regards Tom

Dean,

I agree with Martin W - your rework looks much better.

I'm not sure about the gap between the top of the frame and the underside running board though - it looks odd to me.

Please keep up your fantastic work.

Regards Tom

90 degree spotting drill for me too!

I mostly use a 3mm one, even for tiny holes, and follow up with a normal 118 degree drill.

Tom

Mike,

You have my sympathy. A few years ago, I fell and cracked a rib and was prescribed codeine for the pain. The problem is that codeine makes you very constipated and, when you do need to go, straining against a cracked rib is particularly painful.

In the end, I ditched the codeine and lived with the discomfort of the cracked rib.

Hope you were prescribed something different and don't experience the same as me.

Get well soon (and the same to Bob).

Regards Tom

Edited By Tomfilery on 02/02/2018 15:03:22

Clogs,

I know you said laser cutting was no good, but a quick check on eBay shows SGS Metals do 10mm thick discs in a variety of dimiters (sic) - 150 dia for 4.50 quid and 250 dia for 12 quid. Plus 6.50 postage. Might be easier in the long run, though depends on your budget.

Have no connection with them, nor have I ever used them.

Regards Tom

Piero,

I have an Axminster micromill which has an MT2 spindle and which I've owned for about 10 years. I found that milling cutters could pull out when just using the MT2 collets, so I bought a Clarkson chuck. First time I fitted it I had the devil's own job removing it. Like you, I was wary of using too much force to bash on the end of the drawbar.

In the end, I removed the drawbar and drilled out the top of the spindle to a suitable size (using a hand-held pistol drill) and tapped the top 30mm of the spindle. This allowed me to drop a length of 3/8" studding into the chuck and then apply pressure to that studding using a bolt fitted into the newly tapped thread. The bolt was M12 if I recall correctly.

This allowed the chuck to be released (with a loud bang) though not before the studding had been compressed into a wavy shape (showing how much force you can apply with a bolt).

In the case of my mill, the top of the spindle wasn't hardened - yours may well be, so check if you decide to do similar. So now if any fitting isn't released with a light tap, I can apply controlled force, via my M12 bolt.

Hope this helps.

Regards Tom

I have a very messy drawing board "style" and am useless at art. However, using TurboCad, I can produce professional looking drawing with relative ease (after developing my own style of how I use the program).

As per Ian T's post above, I use an awful lot of keyboard shortcuts and treat the drawing as if it were actually on a drawing board. I have drawn all sorts of things - from workshop tooling and add-ons, to house extensions (mine) and lots of railway rolling stock. CAD gives me the ability to change things quickly, without messing up my paper drawing and having to start again. If I had more artistic ability I might not feel that way, however, don't ignore the fact that with CAD you can draw your real life situation and play around until you can make your modification fit.

One example which springs to mind was when I was trying to hang a large extractor unit above the hob in my kitchen. I wanted the top part of the extractor "hopper" to fit inside the wall cabinets and needed to work out how much cabinet I needed to cut away and what thickness of mounting batten I needed to mount the extractor on so that it was a sensible height above the hob and stuck out a reasonable distance. To do this on a drawing board, I would have had to produce several iterations (probably starting a new drawing every second or third one) whereas with CAD, I drew the wall, hob and cabinets once and then moved the hood around until I got the right fit.

I tend to now do properly dimensioned drawings, rather than "fag packet" sketches, for things I make in the workshop..

I've just bought a secondhand cnc router and clearly the first stage of routing anything is to draw it up in CAD.

I haven't mentioned:-

The ability to draw an object once and then reuse it in other drawings

The ability to draw something full size and then produce drawings in different scales

The ability to rotate objects (e.g. railway bogies) to explore whether they will bind against the chassis for a particular radius of curve.

So - CAD, I wouldn't be without it.

Tom

Here we go again!

More tosh about carbide.

30 years ago, I bought a little Cowell's lathe and muddled on by with HSS (but, it has to be said, without a grinder and with tools dressed by hand when they blunted). I left one job in 1988 and, as part of my leaving pressy, was given a set of brazed carbide tools, a grinder and a green grit wheel for said tools. From the moment I started with the carbide tools, the quality of finish improved greatly. There is no way the Cowell's could be considered, either particularly rigid, or high speed (it wasn't the watchmakers one) and they worked fine. Some of those tools are still used today (but only very occasionally) and rarely did they need the services of the green grit wheel, or grinder.

Later on, I bought (still for the Cowell's) a set of 6mm indexable carbide tools, which used a triangular insert. Providing you don't throw then in your drawer when you put them away, they are reasonably robust. Ok, if you catch the tip against something hard, it will break, but usually, you get 3 goes at each one.

I now have a Myford S7 (reading this forum, again not considered either high speed or particularly rigid) and use carbide tips pretty much exclusively. At a couple of quid a pop (if you buy 10) they are still pretty good value. About the only thing I use HSS for is parting off.

I have made (to Mike Cox's design, but larger) a tangential toolholder and can understand why many people swear by them and use them as a "one tool for everything". If your lathe isn't equipped with a quick change toolholder, you might be better off trying a tangential tool - though the commercial one is very expensive.

From what I've read elsewhere on this forum, modern brazed tip tools can be of very suspect quality and I wouldn't recommend them to you. At least with indexable tools, should you end up with poor quality tips, you can try ones from another supplier or manufacturer. Carbide tooling meant for industrial machines will be unlikely to work well with a hobby machine - however that doesn't mean all carbide tooling should be dismissed out of hand.

Regards Tom

Edited By Tomfilery on 08/12/2017 16:50:40

MyHermes seen to employ multiple delivery drivers in my area. One of them is great, but a few weeks ago I ordered a pair of tinsnips from ebay but they didn't arrive on the expected day. That day my Royal Mail postman told me that he'd seen my parcel in a letterbox in a location 3 miles away (the building has the same name as mine, the converted farm has the same name as mine, but the town location is different as is the last letter of the post code - a pretty unusual set of similarities in the addresses I'd have thought). The postie said he couldn't remove my parcel from the other postbox without the owner's permission (which I consider to be absolutely right) and no one was at home when he rang the bell.

So, I drove over to the other farm, introduced myself to the owner (who was at home by now) and who gave me my parcel. You'd have expected MyHermes to want to know they'd screwed up and although they sent me a nice email telling me my parcel was left somewhere safe there was no immediate way of contacting them to let them know.

Eventually, I went to their website (their telephone system was a complete waste of time) and raised the matter, only to be told "we delivered it to somewhere safe", - completely ignoring the fact that they'd delivered to the wrong location. My response was ignored and so I raised the issue again; again pointing out that they had delivered to entirely the wrong address. Their response was along the lines of "we can't discuss this with you due to data protection issues, as our contract is with the person who sent the parcel and not with you". No apology, no "we'll ensure we look into it and bollock the driver", nothing!

I was appalled. I know the address circumstances are somewhat unusual, but thought they might want to make a note to avoid such confusion in the future.

I'll certainly avoid using them if I have a choice!

Tom

Edited By Tomfilery on 30/11/2017 17:04:53

Steve,

You probably need to tell us which model Super 7 you have and a picture of the clutch lever would probably help. If it is the Mk 1 with the one bearing inside the long lever and two screws which bear onto that bearing then you might well have to take the whole clutch assembly out and take it apart. When mine slips, it tends to not drive, rather than engage the drive permanently.

If you look carefully at the largest pulley there is a hole in it (in the valley where the belt sits) around 8mm dia. You need to turn it by hand (with the power off and disconnected) and find the corresponding hole in the boss beneath. This allows access to the screw which adjusts the clutch. There may be 2 screws in the hole, one to lock the deepest one in. You'll have to fiddle to find whether that gets you any adjustment of the clutch. In the Mk1, the clutch is like a 2" diameter circlip, about an inch thick, and moving the lever forces the legs of the circlip apart so that it engages with the inner bore of the pulley.

The whole thing is relatively simple and comes apart with some persuasion. There are no nasty great springs inside it. HOWEVER, be aware that the later models do have a ruddy great spring inside and shouldn't be taken apart without appropriate precautions.

Make sure you read up (online) on what to do for your particular model of clutch.

Regards Tom

Edited By Tomfilery on 22/11/2017 17:00:46

Bandersnatch,

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS dual booted with W10 on 2 machines - so no problem.

Tom

Rob,

I went through the same a few years ago and dual booted my machine. I found that, as time went on, I realised that Ubuntu was pretty good and that I didn't really need Windows, or any of the crap associated with it (like "I'm going to update now and you will just have to wait until I'm done".

There were two programs which I still needed Windows for - TurboCad and Finale Guitar, however, I discovered that I could use Windows from within Ubuntu by means of Oracle Virtual Box. Although alternative Linux programs were available, I knew how I like to use those Windows programs and the alternatives wanted me to learn something different. I already had an original Vista DVD, so could load that legitimately. I understand that Microsoft make available a version of XP (for free) to run in such a virtual environment if you don't have original media.

The only downside of Ubuntu is that it is written by geeks for geeks (apologies) and they sometimes forget that us mere mortals who don't know the system inside out need keypress by keypress instructions for some things. That said, the only thing I've not been able to do was load something called dxf2gcode. Everything else (including the dual booting and getting VirtualBox and CamBam to work) I managed through following instructions I found on the web.

I do occasionally run Windows outside of Ubuntu but find that happens quite rarely these days and when I do, I get annoyed at how slow it runs and how little respect they have for what you the user wants from the software - the attitude seemingly "you will run this and you will use it this way". Ubuntu isn't like that.

Regards Tom

Errrr I can see the plan even though I don't have a digital subscription (I have paper only). But you do have to log in to see it.

Tom

Yes Neil, I have used it. Like you, I was initially impressed - however .........

Despite trying the usual tricks to keep the nozzle clear, I found that I spent more time unblocking it than I spent doing any gluing. Then, having stuck a wooden headstock upside down onto a 16mm scale rail wagon (so wood to wood) and having left it for a few weeks un-noticed I found it disappointingly easy to remove the offending item from the wagon. Headstock was approx 6 x 4 mm, approx 130 long, glued to ply for the full length of the 4mm face and also to two other similar sized spruce strips end on. The ply did not delaminate when I removed the headstock.

Ok, so I managed to get it all apart without damage and was able to reuse the headstock, which was a bonus admittedly, but "serious" glue - I think not!

Regards Tom

Neil,

TC doesn't handle well drawings in TCW format which were created on newer versions of the software. So, if the contributor had a more recent version than you have, the error you reported would show.

I still use TC 16 Deluxe and when new it received an update. Any drawings created on the updated software couldn't be opened on the original (un-updated) version. I have it on two machines which I don't use concurrently.

Regards Tom