Member postings for David Taylor

Wow, that's beautiful!

I have never bought a genuine Arduino and have never had a problem with USB drivers. The only problem I've had is with "Mini" arduino clones that don't have a USB port so you have to use a USB-to-serial adaptor to program them and press the reset button at the right time to get it to work. Every Uno and Nano clone I've had has been fine though.

I admire your persistence! I'm not willing to make even one more unless this one breaks completely. I turned down the first 5mm of the boss and loctited a steel sleeve over it.

I did something bl**dy stupid today. These crossheads took quite a lot of effort and then I went and put a crack in the boss of one. I won't say how, you can probably guess.

A club member has suggested a turn down the thicker part of the boss and put a sleeve over it so that's the next job.

My dad was a diesel mechanic, ship's engineer, fitter and turner, and finally a draftsman. He wasn't particularly affectionate or hands on as a father but I enjoy using the few bits and pieces I took out of his shed when he died.

There is a 0=1" micrometer which is useful. A small engineer's clamp sees a lot of use. I even used on old lathe tool he must have ground before I was born a few weeks ago because it was just the right shape for a tricky job. The drafting pens, compasses etc are good too.

So they don't really bring back 'good memories' but I do feel a bit of connection to him when I use them. I think he was glad I was interested in these things, as long as it stayed a hobby and I kept my day job which is a lot cleaner!

I also do this. A 2MT arbor with a 25mm parallel end bought from the usual suppliers allows the RT to be centered easily.

I machined a sleeve that is a good fit over the 25mm straight part of the 2MT arbor and a good fit in the 3J chuck's hole, or can be gripped by the chuck jaws.

1. Center the RT using the arbor - I use a 3MT centre in the spindle to do this. Clamp the RT down and zero the dials.

2. Put the sleeve over the arbor.

3. Put the chuck over the sleeve and bolt it to the RT.

This is accurate enough for me.

I have a Vertex rotary table and it has a tight spot in the worm. I only discovered it last week as I usually use it freehand. Shop is too far away to return it anyway

I think I got a bad batch when I bought my workshop 40th birthday present - lathe leaked all the oil out from everywhere, milling machine gear shaft has a sticking keyway meaning you get stuck between gears, and the rotary table has a tight spot. I guess you get what you pay for, and I paid for Chinese and Indian cheap iron.

Thanks for that, far better than what came with mine.

I enjoy Keith Fenner and MrPete222, although I wish MePete222 would use steel rather than plastic and aluminum (as they call it). AVE is a bit of fun but have to watch out when kids are around due to bad language which is a shame.

I agree the garage sale finds get a bit annoying, as do the "look what other youtubers sent me". They're kind of setting up they're own communities where they promote each other. Happens with the electronics ones too.

David.

I had time to look at this again today and figured it out.

While counting the teeth on the gears I noticed both of them were meshed with the 127 tooth middle gear. The bottom 48 tooth gear should have been meshed with the 120 tooth gear which sits on the same arbor as the 127 tooth one.

The way they were set up was okay for the imperial 1/2" thread I cut a couple of years ago and when I saw the correct gears were still installed I stopped looking so didn't pick up one of them had to move out to mesh with the other 'middle' gear.

So this time the thread was clean and to the correct pitch. I couldn't thread a nut on though, even when the thread looked pretty good. I had to run a die over it before the nut would go on. On the plus side I think this left a nice clean thread, which looked better than the turned one.

If I am turning a male M12 thread, do I turn the initial diameter to 12mm, or a bit under?

Regards,

David.

If I am using the top slide to increase the depth of the thread, would having the wrong angle on it account for the incorrect pitch? Seems like it would more make the peaks and valleys run into each other than affect the pitch to me.

I have it as close to 30 or 29.5 deg as I can tell, but that doesn't mean it actually is one of those positions.

Imagine you lined up the top and cross slide so they're parallel, then swivelled the top slide 29.5 or 30 deg CCW. So feeding the top slide feeds the tool right to left on an angle. That's how I set it.

I'll have a chance to redo it tomorrow as the top slide is at present set for the MT2 taper.

I have owned the lathe from new. I've just decided it's time to get used to screw cutting to try and help preseve my dies.

Thanks for all the advice.

Well, good and bad. I have a clean looking thread now I am not opening the half nuts, but despite many checks of the gears and settings the pitch is off. It should be 1.75mm, but it stretches to somewhere between there and 2mm.

I'm not going to blame the lathe as there are many of these in the wild. But I have no idea what I've done wrong. Maybe I should count the teeth on the gears rather than relying on the stamped number

After watching some of mrpete222's videos I'm using Hopper's method of retracting with the cross slide and using the top slide for depth, only ever moving it in. Thats the way mrpete222 does it too.

I did once (a couple of years ago) manage to cut a 1/2" thread, so I can do it.

When I've calmed down a bit I'll have another go at some different size/pitch. Maybe M12 just isn't for me.

On the plus side I managed to turn a MT2 taper with a 17/64" spigot on the end to stick into my rotatary table which I used to mill round ends on the draw bar for my loco. Attempt #1 of doing those ends finished with the work getting grabbed out of my hands and winding itself up the end mill getting chunks taken out in the process. Much safer with it held centrally and clamped on the RT! Of course I slipped on the linisher and my painstakingly shiny round ends now have a slight flat on them but you won't be able to see it!

Regards,

David.

Yes Steve, I get what you're doing. I'm sure my pitch is ok.

I think I have two problems - trying to use the thread chaser for metric threads, and I would not be surprised if I am not getting the cross-slide back to the same place each time I take it out and put it back at the end of a cut. I go back to zero but maybe I'm not accurate enough or something.

I'll try tomorrow without opening the half-nuts but still retracting the tool and see if that helps.

Thanks guys. I tried leaving the half-nuts engaged and running backwards a few days ago but I have just realised what I did not do in that case was bring the tool out - I just left it in the work and I'm guessing the slop in the half-nuts wasn't doing the job any good. I'll try it again this time bringing the tool back each time I reverse.

I do have the gears set up as required, and had set it to cut 1.75mm pitch. I was only converting to TPI because I thought I should use the chaser dial to engage the half-nuts so was looking for the closest TPI to use those settings. FWIW the chaser dial has 1, 3, 5, 7 and lines between each number as well, so I assume that stands for 1 - 8.

The lathe is basically this one **LINK** - it has the same controls and gearbox, just a flat front rather than curved. You can see a picture of the chaser dial from that page. It seems to be similar to the Warco GH1236.

Regards, David.

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out how to do screw cutting on my lathe. I've watched a bunch of videos about it and thought I understood but the tables on my lathe are puzzling me.

First off, how do I reconcile the metric thread pitches with the indicator table? I have been doing 25.4 / metric thread pitch to come up with a TPI but this rarely works out to an equivalent number on the table. Is just choosing the nearest TPI the best I can do?

I tried it with a M12 1.75 pitch for example and got a TPI of 14.5. So I figured both 14 and 15 TPI told me I could use 1 and 5 on the thread dial, but the thread came out a mess.

I'm also wondering about the imperial table. I'm guessing it's telling me the middle gears just need to be equal. Is that so? Not sure how to go about that as it has larger 120 and 127 tooth gears on there now and nothing else that came with it looks big enough.

And with the indicator table, how do I figure for TPI above 28, such as 40 TPI? Is it just like 4, 8, 12, etc - being divisible by 4 or 8 means I can choose any number on the thread dial?

I don't want to cut the screws to final size, but I want to cut them deep enough to make it easy to start a die straight and have it just finish the thread off rather than cutting the whole thing. This has not worked yet!

Bazyle,

A lot of that stuff isn't because the compiler is too stupid to figure it out. It is to help the programmer stop making mistakes.

Having to declare things before use, declare the return types of functions, etc have all been brought in to help avoid bugs which are easily introduced without them, and can take a long time to track down.

The different bracket types become second nature soon enough.

Your complaint reminds me of trying to learn maths - there is a subject with hopelessly inconsistent notation and syntax! I found it massively frustrating after 30 years with nice consistent programming languages.

Regards, David,

I have had one for 3 years, and really like it. Because the chucks don't thread on you can happily run in reverse for parting off, and I was able to get a 5C collet chuck for it too.

The only problem I have is stuff less than 3/16" can't be gripped by the chuck which mine came with so I have to make little collets or use the 5C if I have one of the correct size.

But the separate carriage/cross-slide feed so you're not wearing your leadscrew out is nice, as is the ability to reverse the feed.

Not having to mess about with belts for changing speed is also great.

The only thing I'd like to know is what the screw thread on the non-chuck end of the spindle is so I could make a handle for it.

Regards, David.

The steel tyres on my loco are loctited to the cast iron wheels with no pins etc. One of them came loose once in about 5 years. Seems to work well enough.

I really enjoyed this issue, and I like the short articles like Stub Mandrel. That is a great little project to use some scrap. The spade drill article is good too.

I even enjoyed the beginner's article about the Stuart engine.

Regards,

David Taylor.

I like the new look - seems more "open and airy" , and appreciate the plans in #210. I think the last few issues have had some more interesting articles than there were for a while, and I liked the charts that were in recently too.

I think the magazine is going well at present.

Regards,

David.