Member postings for I.M. OUTAHERE

The way i explian it to newcomers ( on a mill ) is the x axis is across , it looks like a cross ( X) and travels across from left to right and vice versa when standin in front of the mill.

The y axis travel is toward You and away from You so think of the word You which starts with Y so it is the y axis .

For the dummies like me out there can you please explain why it matters ? I don't have a degree of any kind but like to learn so any info you have about this would be a worthy addition to the filing cabinet that resides between my ears !

Isn't the 3in 1 brand an offshoot of the WD company (WD40 ) if so it is probably only good for cutting fluid on aluminium 😉

Just because some of have seen something similar doesn't mean that your good gesture was futile , there are many readers of this forum that have little or no experience with 3d printing but are into model planes that will find that article very interesting . I don't read RCM&E so i would have never known the article existed but i may hunt down that issue for a look ! 😀

V8Eng ,

The me 109 had most of the parts printed with a 0.2mm wall thickness and the biggest problem was warping as the prints cooled .It was printed in a clear plastic that showed off the internal structure - even if one never intended to fly it , it did make a nice looking model !

If you have a look on youtube at the CNC KITCHEN channel he does a ME 109 and flies it , you can buy the stl files on the net for this and i believe a few other planes .

I think the biggest turn off for these types of printer is the clean up and handling of chemicals and then you have to cure the print you have rinsed it down .

A youtube channel called makers muse does a lot of reviews on various printers , not sure if they did one on the printers mentioned above as i don't own one i wasn't looking.

I did watch another video on resin based printers but it was a machine aimed at commercial applications - still pretty interesting to watch and the things this unit could print was astonishing!

Nup all working fine for me , downloaded the larest mew via pocketmags yesterday .

Only thing i can suggest is to shut everything down and re boot , sometimes the apps on my ipad play up so i reboot it and it seems to fix it .

Might be an idea to let them know there is an issue with that part of the website .

I remember reading an article somewhere about using the plasic caps from milk containers and melting them in a pot of hot wax this gave a machinable soft plastic / wax mix that the author used to make patterns for castings .

Might be worth a try and by using a soft drink can as a mold you would get a nice ingot to play with , the bonus is the swarf can be re melted to make a new ingot . I haven't tried this but just a thought and thinking about it maybe the PLA type filament used for 3D printing might work as well ?

Nigel ,

Just as an exercise try starting the cut in the middle and feed out to see if the finish improves but first check the carbide insert for damage as hopper recommended and double check that it is on centre height . What shape insert are you using ? Are you able to lock the carrige on your machine when doing facing cuts ? If you cant you can use a packing block between the saddle and the talistock then lock the tailstock down , this will stop the tool pushing off the workpiece and if you use a sash clamp to clamp the saddle to the tailstock it cant move in either direction , Sometimes the shock and vibration from an interupted cut will make the saddle creep alond the bed .

It could come down to insert geometry , small lathes like sharp tools not the various radii built into carbide inserts which they need to strengthen the cutting edges . Generally i would use carbide as a roughing tool then switch over to HSS to give the finish i want , they are also better for very light cuts that i may need to creep up on a dimension that has a tight tolerance .

Just to add to what SOD mentioned with cutting fluid on carbide , you either use  it from the start or not at all , adding cutting fluid halfway through a cut can crack a tip so if you must use it apply it before you start cutting and don't add to it during the cut . One of the benefits of carbide for us model engineers is it negates the need for cutting fluid for most jobs , i still use wd40 on aluminium and this is applied before each cut .

Edited By XD 351 on 08/06/2018 10:08:11

Maybe something wrong with the rings , i would take them off the piston and sit them on a flat surface to make sure they are not warped / twisted . Then i would roll each ring around the groove in the piston to make sure there are no tight spots , you can check the ring groove depth clearance at the same time . When you checked the ring gap how hard was it to get the ring into the cylinder ? Did it feel like there may be an abnormally high amount of ring tension ? Is there a small amount of clearance between the walls of the ring groove and the ring ? (I would be aiming for 0.003 - 0.005 inch or so) I would then look for any taper in the ring and piston groove - to check the ring just give it a light lap on a flat surface ( surface plate if you have one ) with some fine wet and dry paper ( do both sides ) , look for any high spots or burrs and to check the groove in the piston use feeler gauges or a gauge block if you have a set . Lastly , in the ring groove is the a small radius where the sides meet the bottom of the groove ? If so check the inside dia of the ring to see if it has a small champfer to accont for this .

In the 30+ years i have been building full sized engines i have seen some weird things - a piston ring that was thicker one side than the other was an especially memorable event that had me scratching my head wondering why the piston was so difficult to get into the bore , once i stripped it all apart and rolled the ring around the piston ring groove i discovered the tight spot . Fortunately that was only a mower engine so the supplier excanged them for a different set .

Just to add to what Jason mentioned with cylinder finish , you can wrap some fine wet and dry paper around your hone and give the bore a finer finish ( don't polish it ) just a few stokes back and forth to knock the tips off the honing marks and you can also give the outside dia of the rings a light hit with some fine wet and dry if the finish is a little rough - once again don't polish too much as the fine scratches help the rings to bed in .

I remember back when i worked in a plating shop , we used dc power at many hundreds and sometines thousands of amps but never had an arcing problem because all this power was running at less than 15 volts - had to be careful of sparking though as the hydrogen released as part of the plating process liked to go bang in a big way !

Maybe you can modify the design so your friend can replace the bushings and pin themself ? That way you could make extra parts while you are set up for it .

And you get the milling for beginners for free !

There are also a couple books from the workshop practise series as well as Niels one but for a start especially as you want to focus on the mini lathe his book is where i would recommend you start as it will allow you get familiarised whith your lathe and not a machine from yesteryear .

once you get the hang of it the offerings by Sparey and Westbury will will become top of the list of books to have .

Hey Jason any books in the pipeline ?

I wonder if one could be made frome a battery and a pwm controller ?

You haven't lived until you have used washing detergent ( the stuff you use to wash clothes ) to scrub your hands , especially when you have spent the day skinning your knuckles working on a car , i can gladly report that the pain is exquisite ! If you know of something that can the smell of diff oil off your hands please let me know !

Many years ago i worked a a hardchrome place and the manager would dip his finger in the caustic strip solution and rub it on his hands to remove any stains from the chromic acid fumes that got onto everything - he had a bad habit of not wearing gloves . . One day he did this but unfortunately for him i had loaded the strip tank up with a lot of caustic beads to strengthen the solution for a job - he had about 10 yards to get from the strip tank to the wash basin to rinse his hands and he was screaming by the time he got there !

For the Aussie readers the hand cleaner from Hitec oils is good stuff although it can be a little difficult to find in shops - no connection just a happy user when i could get it for free from work ! .

From the few times i have used swarfega it seems to be a good cleaner , a little expensive for my tastes and for most of what i do these days dishwashing detergent does the job and if i need to get some really oily/ greasy gunk off me i use the septone pink stuff followed by dishwashing liquid ( this gets the chemical smell of the septone off ) .

We used to get this white stuff i a steel tub years ago ( possibly protectolene ? ) it cleaned well but jeez it stank ! If you let it sit undisturbed for a while it would get this liquid stuff seeping out of it that looked like motor oil i don't even want to think what it really was !

I wonder how many square wheels were made before they worked out that round ones roll better !

Model engineering at its finest ! If the first one doesn't work make another and maybe a couple more after that !

For a joke i covered the labels of my various loctite products with new labels of my own design :

Retaining compound became " stick ya bastard " , sealer became "don't leak ya bastard" and threadlocker became "stay there ya bastard " .

Any guesses what i call insect repellent ???

I used to work with a toolmaker that called retaining compounds snot and parts held together by it as snotted - his theory was that the person that made parts that needed snot on them could only work to tolerances that snot could run through ! I can sort of see his point as it really is like liquid sticky tape !

Nice fix Rod .

One good thing about diong it the way you did is you can change dimensions for each part separately and if this one breaks at the thread you only have to print that part not the whole lot .