Member postings for Bazyle

This does show the problem that whenever anyone makes a sensible suggestion there will be a bunch of people wanting to pick holes in it with exceptional cases as thought they were the norm. The targets are precisely the people who are not ill but heat every room in the house all day when they only actually occupy one room. Huge numbers of central heating systems do not have a zone valve to shut off upstairs heating and the occupants are too dumb or lazy to at least cover the radiator with a blanket to reduce heat loss.
I too am in a chalet bungalow on an exposed hill not a cosy valley and the small woodburner has got the living room up to 16C (now 2pm) as the weather is mild. The chimney is internal so the dining room behind it has got up to 9C. The bedroom is at 8C again because it is nice weather and it gets morning sun. If it is going to be a frosty night I sometimes sleep with the window closed - surely everyone has hear of duvets by now. For 60 years we have only ever heated the living room and sometimes kitchen and just avoid lazing around in cold rooms.

So there are plenty of things people can be educated about that will reduce their heating costs, cost them nothing or very little and save them enough to make bigger improvements later on. A very small number of people are genuinely short of money for heating who should be properly supported but most are just prioritising beer, cigs, holidays, fashion, streaming video etc.

The 100A limit is irrelevant as only Elon Musk can afford to soak that amount on a daily basis.
The E7 turn on load is being mitigated already by smart meters that can have their turn on time remotely spread out. The system already handles the instant turn on from the old crude mechanical switches so new installations only have to have a few of the heaters fitted with a delay and heat pumps replacing gas boilers can be made to spread their load.
More intelligent devices will start to adjust their turn on and ramp up the load they present which is probably already done by car chargers Since the smart meters transmit instantaneous consumption to the little consumer display this data could be used by smart devices to control themselves appropriately.
One of the things that ought to be done is assessing gas and electricity consumption per house based on the type of property to detect people who are obviously heating excessively or have inadequate insulation. They can be further assessed with infra red cameras to identify the problem area and targeted for remedial education.

One of you CNC nerds should get the 'BEST CNC" private number plate currently on Ebay.

There have been a couple of designs in ME over the last 40 years.

You probably don't often stray down there but at the bottom of the page are a number of links to magazine sites not included in the above change. So what about them???

Small shapers were once the bees knees for a model engineer. Now more of a collector's item so can be listed for silly money. Note that there are two sizes of the Adept hand shaper, one fits in the palm of one hand, the other in the Hulk's hand. I think this is the small one but the seller hasn't put any dimensions on the listing.

If the manufacturer had an inspection department how would this be measured? Perhaps as in the old days though as there is probably a million pound digital machine that does it automatically in a German factory nowadays.

The room will sink to the average outside temperature over day and night, depending on the thermal mass of the walls etc, then elevated a little because of the heat coming in from the room next to it, if heated. Intermittent heating will also mean the walls don't get the chance to absorb so much heat so they may be several degrees cooler than if continuously heated so will lose less heat to the outside.
Modern timber framed buildings have much lower thermal mass so have a wider temperature swing but should have been built with more insulation than an older house. Where there are internal stud walls rather than solid brick it would be desirable to put insulation into those too so that only the living room is heated and that more efficiently.

Reading 'Reading' in Reading on a signpost I got rather lost.

One of the ones that has annoyed me for a long time is pronouncing the children's book hero Don Quixote as Keeotay rather misses the educational connection with the word quixotic.

Does the geometry make it look like they took a parallel reamer and tried to regrind it to have a taper? Or just someone who had no idea how to set up the grinder for tapers. Probably who batch will be wrong, and now spread over 1000 vendors in 3 continents.

Styccobond F56 is used by a local flooring company but might only come in the 15litre tubs in their skip. Judging by the smell it is a friend of evostick.

off-topic but the bits of vinyl or whatever they also have in the skip are about 3mm thick and would be a great benchtop covering. It is thick enough for other modelling uses if only they would throw away big bits but is embossed on the top surface with a wood grain.

If the ratio in the gearbox is 'different' then the gear train from spindle to gearbox must compensate so compare what is on your lathe to any other VSL specific data / pictures you can find.

When 127 is used to imp>metric it is a driven gear, When 63 is used it is normally a driver but as it is 7x9 you can often use other gears to achieve the ratio.

What is important is always the primes involved so using higher primes is sometimes better. Late Drummonds/early Myfords used 46/73 or 2x23/73.
Harrison M300 uses (8x36)/(19x11x35) much better (left the 36&35 as so because they are fixed at the gearbox output for metric threads)
Colchester uses (13x5x29)/(19x7x36) staggeringly close at 2.540053

In each case you throw in some of the common changewheels with factors of 2,3,5,7 to get the thread you want.

"If I had a hammer" by Pete Seeger

Is there still current to the steppers? It might just be to tell you that so you don't think it is off, don't just unplug things, maybe risk overheating something.

After the cleaning part I recommend beeswax for things you are going to touch and clear waxoyle (thinned with white spirit) for everything else. I now use the latter even for things that will need oil later on the basis that it will dissolve in the oil that gets added when I actually start using the machine. (except ball bearings that need grease packing during assembly obviously).

This can be fatal. I lots of things I can't find that used to have a place to live and I can remember the 'organise' event when I decided to put them somewhere that would be the' obviously sensible' new place. haven't seen them since.

99% of the time you are not using it for measurement, just centering - unless you are using it to measure infeed as a poor man's DRO. So accuracy is not as important as smoothly returning to zero.

It is the sort of thing that you can pick up sometimes at a club auction or sales table if you have one at your club. My best one was a raffle prize at the club Christmas meal raffle - much more use than a bottle of wine.

I would think acetone is rather more difficult to get nowadays (in the uk). Although white spirit is more expensive than paraffin one should be using such small quantities that that is a minor consideration.
I use it in quantities of half an eggcup at a time when cleaning say a chuck with a toothbrush only drying it off with a bit of industrial tissue. That then provides a damp tissue to start the cleaning on something else and eventually goes into a sealed jamjar for later use as a fire lighter. Then the remaining oily white spirit goes into another jar to be used as the first stage of cleaning something bigger/messier. A well used ie oily jar provides a fluid that I know will evaporate to leave a thin film of oil for minor protection when appropriate.

Carb cleaner is a much stronger solvent and expensive which I only use if white spirit is not shifting the gunge, old oil or coolant stains. Sometimes on oily painted things, benches etc rather than tools i just use kitchen creme cleaner.

If you are coordinate drilling on your mill then it gets important. You should make a high accuracy holder, not collet blah blah system to hold a spotting drill dead true.

The old fashioned system of marking out on a surface plate, centre popping by feel at the intersection of the microgrooved lines produced, then drilling in stages could get things as accurate as your height gauge. (and skill). A wobbly chuck mattered less, within reason. It also makes sense to have a small chuck for a small drill to start things off. edit - by which I mean a 0-1/4" not a 0-3/8"

Edited By Bazyle on 22/03/2022 13:50:17

Agree and because they have cutting edges on the end. They probably developed from spot face cutters which are intended to cut only on the end but someone thought that with a little extra filing they could make it cut a bit sideways to increase the area of the spot face.