Member postings for Paul Lousick

How about a lathe. A machine that can repair itself. Without it you could not make a tractor.

I have been using a windscreen washer pump on my mill for the last 6 months and has been great. Power is from a small 12V battery via a variable resistor to adjust the speed and an old plugpack charger to top up the battery. Got the pump from a car parts supplier for about $10, an old 4 litre plastic bottle as a tank and a plastic water strainer from the local hardware.

As Blowlamp has said, the original poster was asking about transferring paper drawings to CAD and I advised that they can be imported into vector format but will not be to scale. And if you check my first posting you will find that I did recommend that he use Draftsight. The following comments were intended to show that it was not the best product available but would be suitable for his project.

Draftsight is one of the better free CAD programs available but is not in the same league as others like Autocad. We have more than 120 licences of Autocad and 50+ copies of Draftsight but Draftsight is only used by our sales engineers and non-drafting personnell to view, print and make small changes to drawings. All of our professional drafters in our drawing department use Autocad or Solidworks because it is more efficient for full time use, far outweighing the extra cost. But for small projects where time is not a problem, use Draftsight. I could go on for a lot longer but am putting this discussion to rest. I am sure that you still have something to say, so will leave it to you.

Paul

John,

My original statement was for comments about CAD programs for which I have been using for over 20 years (Autocad Release 9 to Autocad 2012, Pro Engineer, Microstation, Solidworks) ,so I HAVE done my homework AND do have some experience in these matters. I stand by my statement that Autocad is far superior to Draftsight. It must be it's £5000 more expensive. If Draftsight was better Autodesk would be out of business. This in no way is "slagging" Draftsight. It is excelelnt value for money , its free to download. We even use it where I work for viewing and red-lining drawings.

And as I have previously said, Draftsight IS suitable for transferring paper files to CAD and exporting dxf files to CNC machines which only require 2D input (and minimal extra programming). It is not suitable for cutting complex shapes/contours,fillets, etc on a CNC milling machine without the input of a lot of extra programming.

Paul.

I disagree that 90% of CNC parts are produced from 2D Cad drawings, more like 9%. The example shown is no more complex than profile cutting from plate which only reqiured a 2D drawing Anything more complex which does not have the same profile all of the way thru cannot be made this way. For example machining an engibe block or a making case for a mobile phone cannot be done from a 2D drawing.

CNC milling machines, pattern making machines for castings and machining centres to name a few can produce complex angular and curved shapes which are imposible to make without a 3D model. But as I have said earlier if the reqirement is only to convert paper drawings to 2D CAD for controlling a profile cutter for cutting steel plate then DraftSight should be OK.

CutePDF installs as if it was any other printer and can be used by any windows program (not sure about Apple). I use it all of the time with Autocad and MS office. After you print it askes you where you want to save the pdf file.

Autocad cannot open a pdf file and therefore it will not show up when using the Autocad file open function. PDF files can however be inserted into an Autocad drawing by pasting from the clipboard. It is displayed as like jpg image and not to scale. The individlual lines cannot be selected.

It is possible to trace over this imported image but the drawing produced is not very accurate.

Regards, Paul.

Autocad is a far superior product to DraftSight. I have been using it for more than 20 years as a mechanical drughtsman, also 3D programs like solidworks and Pro Engineer. DraftSight is slightly similar but lacks many of the features of Autocad.

Paper drawings can be scanned and converted to vector format for use in CAD programs but they are not drawn to scale and are useless for exporting to CNC machines,

BUT if you are not familiar to either program and only want to convert paper drawings to CAD, I would go for DrastSight because it is free. Even Autocad LT (cut down version) is still expensive.

Remeber though that Draftsight is only a 2D CAD program and the DXF files which it could export can only be used in 2D machines such as profile cutting steel plate.

If you want to make files suitable for use in CNC milling machine you will have to have a program that models in 3D such as Solidworks, Pro Engineer or Inventor.

Hope this was useful, Paul

Hi Andy,

Filing a thousand drawings is a little harder than a few hundred.

A horizontal filing cabinet is not suitable because the drawings have to be lifted to get at the individual drawings. They can easily get damaged by doing this.

A vertical plan cabinet is a better option. Each drawing is hung from its edge on a set of pins. One set is attached to the back of the cabinand another from the front hinged door. It is easy to flick thru them to find the one you want. Self adhesive plastic strips are available for attaching to the drawing sheets. Do a search on the internet for "vertical plan cabinet" . You should be able to pick up a cabinet for a song as the they are outdated because everyone is going digital. They will also stop your drawings fron curling.

Paul.

Hello Andy, I have worked as a draughtsman for the past 40 years and have had to store thousands of drawings. The horizontal plan cabinets are good for storing drawings, especially those which are used often but they can still be damaged by constant use. The best way is to have them professionally scanned and use a copy for day to day use. They can then be printed as full size, A3 or A4 for easy reference. If you damage a print just print it again. Store your originals in a sealed tube in a dry place. I have tried photographing them myself but you do not get the quality of scanning.

Drawings should be scanned in TIF4 format to get the best quality prints. Jpeg format compresses the image to reduce the file size and expands them when opened for printing. Each time a jpg image is opened and saved it loses resolution quality because of the compression algarithm used.

Copy the scanned files onto DVD not CD. DVD's are more resistant to damage. Make several copies as backup in case something goes wrong.

I recently had a number of A1 size drawings professionallyscanned for about $3 (Australian) each. Laminating an A1 print was about $5 each.

Hope that this was useful, Paul

The mension of printers ink gave me an idea and I tried ink from a ball point pen,

Cut the end of the pen and extract the ink and wipe over the plate with a cloth.

Works a treat in an emergency for small jobs.

A standard pen holds enough ink to cover an area 100mm x 100mm.

One of the larger "Parker" type pens would do a bigger area.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 29/05/2012 13:21:07

I have set up a simple flood coolant system on my SX3 mill using a 5 litre plasic bottle as a tank and a car winscreen washer pump. Power is from a 12v battery and a plug-pack charger.

You will need to make some sort of tray and splash guards to collect the used coolant and drain it back to the tank.

PaulJ

Sorry, forgot to add the address

Have a look athis site.

They sell a tachometer suitable for a mill or lathe.

You can buy it complete or build your own.

www.machtach.com

Paul J

Have a look athis site.

They sell a tachometer suitable for a mill or lathe.

You can buy it complete or build your own.

Paul J