Member postings for Bazyle

Setting the scene:
You have a 'chicken feed' fuel system. The pipe from the removable tank descends into a sump that has the tube horizontal to the burners. The level in the sump is kept roughly constant so the burners have a steady supply, not too much or too little.
The tank must be sealed, NO little air hole or it will drain itself all over your feet.
From the start with a dry sump the dip pipe comes from the bottom of the tank so a gulp of air goes up the tube and a bit of meths comes down, just like when you turn any bottle of liquid upside down and teh sump fills.
However when the sump fills up the end of the tube is below the liquid level (it must extend far enough for this or again - wet feet) so no air can get up the tube to let more meths out. As the meths burns and the level drops it is possible for another gulp of air to get up the tube and meths comes down until the tube is covered again.
It is a simple but effective system invented to provide chicken pens with water from a bigger tank because chickens like a shallow trough and won't drink from a bucket or stream.

Issues:
Surface tension can stop the flow. To help the transition from covered to allowing air up it is common to cut the end of the tube off at an angle, 45 or 60 degrees.
it is also possible to use two tubes, both ending under the level in the sump but one from the bottom and one to the top of the tank.
There is often a valve to stop it dribbling during loading.
it helps to start with some air in the tank not filling it right up.

Wicks - assuming the problem is a dry sump not just flow up the wick. The wick needs to be quite loose almost falling out not stuffed in as hard as possible as more wick does not equal more flame.

Join the gauge 1 forum on Groups.io as there was a discussion last year on wicks and Aster steaming.

Not just engineers. Everybody and every thing when we were just apes. Then mankind learned to talk which not only enabled us to transfer each bit of discovered knowledge but revolutionises the way we think by enabling us to create our internal monologue. The transfer of knowledge took a leap forward when we invented BOOKS and actually read them, a skill that seems to have been lost recently.

(There was an interesting program on the BBC a couple of years ago that explained that people born deaf and dumb who are not taught sign language have difficulty in progressing mentally beyond a 5yr old because without speech they cannot develop an internal monologue, which develops in children only when they learn to speak)

Because you reported the theft to the police so when the item is found in a location that does not match they look it up and find the string of burglaries reported for your area with lists of items. The half ton lathe gone from the area is probably unique to you.

It isn't the thread that defines the fit but the register - the plain parallel bit just behind the thread. And a tap will never be true enough for this job. What you can do is measure it all and practice making a few small threaded bushes in aluminium as it is easy to cut. Make sure the fit is not so tight it can shrink on if you put it on warm.
When you are confident you can cut the thread and register accurately make one in cast iron with 1/8 to 1/4 extra all round. Then find a faceplate nobody wants (rather than a useful Myford or Drummond one) and bore it out to take your bush, fitted with Loctite.

Nowadays you can bet several risk assessments have been made, two committees have discussed it several times and commissioned an in depth report from someone's brother-in-law and the drivers have been on a special 'Safe Bridge Crossing' course.

You said the external magnet operation was too violent etc. How about making a sort of gravity arm that can nudge the pendulum but is lifted by the manual use of the external magnet, applied out of range of the bob.

I notice your impulse is driven by a simple on/off line. Does the sudden application of the force cause the ringing you saw in your FFt. It is rather like being hit by a hammer rather than a gentle perhaps sinusoidal ramp up and down.

If the only forces on the pendulum were gravity and the force from your electromagnet it must start moving, even if it takes weeks to be visible. However you also have vibrations etc which should average out but then you have the force from the suspension spring. Can the non-movement be used to calculate anything useful about the force from this spring?

If you had an induction coil near the metal of the bob (at rest) I assume it would produce an output relating to ambient interference eg from you walking past with a bunch of magnetised keys but also from tiny movements due to vibrations etc. Would this tell you anything useful, particularly would it show peaks relating to its period and other modes?

Have you found your local Model Engineering club? You are going to need to to have a track to run it unless you build your own and they will be able to help you out, including probably having some members with bits to give/sell you.

A little 2 1/2 in vice appeared in the Men's Shed today with an odd mounting which I immediately recognised and could have cried to see such ill-treatment.
Back 110 years ago Drummond Pre-B lathes had a topslide with a single bolt mounting foot in line with the slide and a fixed half inch stud in the slide top to hold the toolpost. Well this had been turned upside down to use the stud probably into a bench or drill table and the vice had a single bolt fixing used onto the foot. So it did provide a single direction positioning function. AAAAAgh. Topslide has been rescued and is convalescing.
Also a Pratt 'empire No7' 2 jaw drill chuck with the rusted in arbor cut off with an angle grinder or something. Will have to drill and bore that out. Probably was once used on the same lathe. I wonder what happened to the rest of it.

Funny this should come up. I used some gutter PVC for electrical brackets on the club 08 loco a couple of weeks ago. Flattened with an electric paint stripper. Available at low cost in several colours and thicknesses, mostly black, from a skip near you.

I don't recall the over-height being so much because of the affect on tool angles but the reason is to provide a component of force outwards or back onto the feedscrew/nut which takes up backlash, reduces chatter and hopefully snatch or dig-in. The book is aimed at beginners, trainees etc using old worn lathes so relevant and helpful. Not necessary for a big engineering lathe with backlash adjustment and solid structure.

Solder paste is not a good option as it contains too much 'other stuff'. Since all mating surfaces should be jolly flat tin them and while hot wipe off the solder (dampish cotton cloth). Then hold bits in alignment with a jig / clamp and heat the whole lot up making sure the clamp pushes the joint together firmly.

Not quite on topic but I was looking for some issues of ME last week. My collection gets mixed up from time to time making it difficult to find a particular issue. It really emphasises how BAD the front cover designers are. Like the latest issue has the data in tiny print not at the top, but an inch down so in a pile one would have to rummage to see it.
THINK. How do mags get stored. At best in cardboard holders with the top of the spine the easiest to get at.

MEW latest issue has the number in the top left corner, sensibly large test so can be read without glasses. Clear white text. Only missing a date.

Is there a phone app, without being full of spyware, that tracks you movement over a year to give you a profile of usage that then helps you select the most suitable battery size / range?

Then we need a car designed for different sizes of battery to match this, with a system of either hiring a different car for occasional long journeys or a battery trailer that you exchange halfway down the motorway.

BTW one third of urban households don't own a car, and one third own >2.

I would make a guide to hold the file in a stable configuration then use some other item like an existing saw or screw thread to index the teeth. The one thing that is recognised as a bad idea, although used extensively in re-sharpening systems like tool and cutter grinders, is to index off a preceding tooth.

I remember my final year practical exam (metallurgy & material science) included a junior hacksaw blade and the question 'how is is made'.

Would it be simpler to mount the containment tube in its own container which is temperature controlled to a tenth of a degree?

As with recent 'bench design' threads and previous lathe bed ones would the support frame benefit from diagonal bracing and perhaps being based on a great big lump of granite?

Not quite the same but there is an old system of making a sub-plate where you make a flat on eg a 4in round bar and screw one end of a flat plate to it. Then hold the round bit in the vice at the required angle, preferably with packing under the far end for which certain styles of vice are better than others. Attach workpiece to sub-plate. Not for very heavy cuts.

In late 2019 there was a thread on this forum about the Ender 3. It pretty much became the recommended starter point in low cost value for money even if you swap it out later for bigger/fancier/fine-resloultion/faster whizzbangs. They do keep updating it with 'pro', '+' etc names to boost the price. but the original is ok.
The Ender is a filament printer. Use it for bigger things but will have less fine detail.
If you are wanting to make 00 scale railway models with rivets you will need to consider a resin printer. They do detail down to a few thou but tend to be slower and better fro small things. The latest copy of MEW magazine has a review of one that is top of the range but the same mfr has an intro model currently on offer at £100.

People are printing wagons from n-gauge to 5in gauge, yes that big is possible.

I recommend you at least start by looking at SillyoldDuffer's (SOD) tutorial he linked above as it is free and a gentle introduction.
One thing that frightens people about FreeCad is that there are lots of 'workbenches' that seem like there are lots of different programmes. However actually there is just the one programme and the workbenches are only different sets of toolbars being displayed for convenience because an architect wants different tools to an engineer. You can actually customise the display to add or subtract those toolbars if you wish but it is easier to just click to flip to a different workbench for a few minutes and back again. It doesn't hurt your drawing.