Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

There's no evidence that the ELSA data is used for any commercial purposes linked to individuals; and the rubric does say what it's for! It is looking at trends in populations and needs at population level, not individual shopping habits. In fact it does not even ask those, but does ask about things like using public transport.

No need thanks to social-media, "smart"-'phones, supermarket "loyalty" cards, banks and insurance companies. shopping on-line for day-to-day goods, clothes and food. The big ad agencies who are the real clients of Facebook etc are unlikely to even notice our mail-ordering 3 end-mills and a two-foot length of brass bar; but the above channels are far more direct and relevant to them.

Besides, as far as I recall the questions don't ask about your identity or anything, and though it was nearly ten years ago I don't think you put your name on the sexual activity form. Age maybe, but that was the basic question anyway.

As it happens I've still to hear from the surveyors.

I use a QCTP on both of my lathes but have also used four-way tool-posts like that.

I don't find the four-way tool-post significantly less convenient for setting than the QC type. A bit slower as you still need set each tool to height but now using shims. You still have lots of screws to tighten.

Most turning operations don't need more than 4 tools anyway: although using a QCTP means you can build up a set of more than four ready-installed tools. One of mine holds the knurling tool, another a screw-cutting tool.

If set appropriately an indexing 4-way post is marginally quicker to operate than a QCTP, especially for repetition work, but there is not much in it. (A capstan lathe is one with souped-up, 6-way versions of indexing toolposts.)

Some users of 4-WTPs and plain top-slides, keep a set of appropriate shims with each tool, especially if using insert tools whose own geometry is constant.

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Their drawbacks are the tools not in immediate use are sharp pointy things happy to bite your hand, and occasionally, the projecting tools are in the way of the tailstock or chuck.

The other main disadvantage of a plain 4-way toolpost without indexing, compared to a drop-in type QCTP, is that you need use a straight-edge or square to align each turn to the slide for repeatability. It should not be too difficult to make some form of indexer for it, though.

Otherwise really, there is not much to choose between the two systems.

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I am not familiar with Amadeal lathes but the photograph suggests yours will take a rear tool-post usually dedicated to holding the parting-tool; and you may find that more useful than changing the tool-post.

... Or of course raise the table, if your milling-machine has a fixed head, with the quill fully home.

Either way also allows a finer, steadier feed than using a lever-driven quill; and on a mill like mine (a Myford VMC) gives more room for measuring the bore.

Still needs a spring-cut at intervals.

It may help if you state your type of lathe so others have a better idea of a suitable tool-post.

The simplest types available, made for small lathes, rely on being basically a split clamp to hold the tool-block itself. Probably fine for light work but the more sophisticated forms, with a cam action, such as those made for the Myford lathes (similar to the bigger industrial varieties) are likely to be more accurate and last a lot longer.

I don't think the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has been published yet so we can't predict it here; but a builder told me (presumably knowing via the trade) that the fire spread not because the cladding material could burn, but because it was installed to a design that made sure it would burn once alight.

I must admit I was worried about the insulating-board fastened to my rafters, but a test on off-cuts showed it did not ignite very easily, and anyway, for it to catch fire the home is already alight.

One precaution I took though was to remove all six halogen inset lamps in my main bedroom, and replace just three or four with l.e.d. types.

Good point - the top-slide on my Myford ML7 is at some odd angle at the moment so I could bring everything close in. Though normally the less overhang the better.

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Otherwise.....

The usual suspects...

....new parts made in all good faith only to find them or the sub-assembly they are in, unsatisfactory;

- parts made ages ago now found unsatisfactory or giving problems for neighbouring parts yet to be made;

- fasteners fouling each other, internal corners of angles, or other components;

- slot-drilled slots both irregular and out-of-parallel to the edges even over less than 1/2" so needing filing to fit...

Nowt new there then! Just part of the challenge of a major project built from no more than old advertisement photographs - no drawings, even drawings as proverbially full of errors as many published model-engineering ones are alleged to be.

I never said I was after the heady heights of "Commended" , let alone Bronze Medals.

That seems small, M8. ARC Euro sells M10 and 3/8" BSW ones for MT2 tools.

Otherwise, if the spindle or tailstock barrel is clear right through use a drawbar instead.

Thankyou!

I'd only ever regarded CAD as a tool, a means to an end, like the lathe and milling-machine, but had not bargained for how hard it would prove to learn.

One trap many here warned me to avoid was trying to think in one make of CAD while trying to use another, and I did take that warning. TurboCAD, SolidEdge and Alibre are all very different in style and controls even for drawing the same thing.

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I was also too hasty, from misplaced optimism, to dismantle my drawing-board. I can re-assemble it after a fashion but not how it should be, so though all the parts are still there its complicated, parallelogram lift-and-tilt mechanism will never work again! I am considering cutting from its enormous, very heavy A0 size to a more sensible A1, trimming the draughting-head rails to suit, and making new parts to fit it on the stand at a convenient but set height. Only I have gone and accidentally broken one of the two plastic rules, which does not help!

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Anyway, after yesterday's tempest, it's sunny outside so (typing this while dinner cooks) today's focus is on the model-engineering itself, making and fitting bits from real steel to correspond with the real bits already made, rather than trying to draw them on the computer.

IanT -

I have wasted a lot of money, including electricity, and countless hundreds of hours trying to learn what I thought originally, would prove genuinely helpful. Instead, beyond a very low level, it proved genuinely impossible.

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IMSI seems to make many changes to TurboCAD with each new edition, not just more features; but the major new additions are all architectural, artwork and commercial file-sharing. The basics are all still there but I think like Microsoft with 'Windows', IMSI loves to tinker around the edges to suggest Doing Something Useful, without improving anything. Also, each edition's versions differ by the commands available.

SoD is right. It is hard to try to use two very different systems but unfortunately necessary if we change from one to another, but still need the original drawings.

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Any CAD tutorial is better than none at all; and I completed Alibre's own exercises reasonably successfully. However, following step-by-step instructions does not guarantee learning.

I still need my basic-level TurboCAD, orthographic-only, project drawings; but am still faced with its baffling, "WYSIWYDG" printing system. (D = "Don't" .)

I have no "real" drawings in Alibre anyway. A failure. Tried it recently, but what looked very simple proved beyond me.

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In the workshop now I use mainly, rough freehand sketches; often even only measurements "on-the-job". CAD is only for the few, formal elevation drawings necessary. I want to get the things built.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 23/07/2023 12:25:29

Bazyle -

Thankyou!

The stretch I walked is from the West edge of Portesham. I saw only one hut, which appears rather oddly as if recently re-roofed, a bit crudely but reasonably effectively. It's about a third of the way to Abbotsbury, maybe less, and on the left. It could be the splodge that Google Earth shows, by two opposite field entrances.

I'm intrigued by Google Earth marking the Goods Shed as a now a museum ("temporarily closed". I don't know what that was about!

It is also noticeable that the station was rather short of the village but there is a vague hint of the line starting to curve away to the North-West there, as it would have needed do to have continued to Bridport.

I hope the roof repairs have succeeded!

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Tea-and-natter morning at the club, with rain stopping any outdoor activities, apart from a locomotive's steam-test in the vague lea of a building.

''''''

Just a guess, Michael, at Q2:

Spring wire for a clock part?

Treated myself to a break from frazzling my brain trying to arrange the fixtures and fittings on a steam-wagon - though did screw a few bits back together this evening.

Instead I saw bits of Dorset I'd never seen previously, all within ten miles of home; courtesy of a short bus ride then a walk of about 5 miles on footpaths including about a mile of the South-West Coast Path - with fine views.

I determined the distance on returning home, by using a map-measurer on the 1:25 000 OS Map (about 2.5 ins = 1 mile).

The first section was actually along the last section, Portesham to Abbotsbury, of the track-bed of the long-dead branch-line to the latter village. I used local knowledge to help me locate its not-obvious start from the road, but soon the flatness, straightness and shallow topography indicated I was on the route.

I passed a platelayer's hut, minus door, window and furniture, but surprisingly with quite new corrugated-iron on the roof. Perhaps a farmer sometimes uses it for short-term storage or a field-shelter.

Later, another surprise: shallow indentations left by sleepers. Yet the line closed in the 1950s!

Abbotsbury Station goods-shed is all securely locked, probably used as a farm store, and still has the loading-gauge hanging from the wagon-door lintel. Just beyond, the original station building is now part of, or been replaced by, a big modern home; but the platform is still there, peeping out from among shrubs.

My return path was along a ridge to the South of this line, which follows a vale all the way from the main line, and from here the railway was clearly marked by a shallow embankment and in places, lines of trees.

The line was one of those 19C speculative things that ambled across the countryside and never made any money. As well as passenger trains, its good trains took coal and other materials along the vale, and returned with agricultural produce, fish (caught off Chesil beach, near Abbotsbury), and stone quarried from the Portland Stone formation on the hill above Portesham. Iron-ore too, quarried at Abbotsbury, but that was a short-lived venture as the iron-stone was too rich in silica to be economical. Its builders (GWR I think) had had hopes of extending it Westwards to Bridport and beyond, but that never happened.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 21/07/2023 22:20:48

I noticed that too. Your textures-table has just managed to find its way to my computer too, so it's not your tablet.

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Squiggles? By the end of a two-week holiday on Crete I could just about pronounce from the phrase-book the Physics expression on the end of a warehouse-style building in the town. Though not understand the word until I recalled where I'd seen Phyto previously. Of course! Plants! The building was a nursery or garden-centre.

Groan!

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Very interesting replies!

I tried to find the mug but failed - I have a horrible feeling I'd gone and broken it!

However I looked back at the 'Word' copy and that has italic "w" so I don't know if it was a "w" or lower-case omega. I think I'm right that it's conventional now in Theoretical Mechanics for rotation calculations - I forget if for angle or angular velocity - but I don't know if Green used it, nor what for.

Without knowing what that equation is about, and anyway it is lifted from its context, with a " .....3" after it, I don't know if its U and V there are those used in modern texture calculations. Though they might be.

My original guess when I salvaged the mug from a clear-out at work, was that Green was analysing solids, by the dz bits.

Then, wondered I by the two Pi terms, for a solid of revolution whose bounding shape is mathematically definable but not by a single, regular y=[x^n] type curve? It is an odd value, 4pi (12.5664...), but I recall it occurs in the formula for the volume of a sphere.

Further, I wondered if his U and V are Area and Volume, but why U, not A?

Given that George Green was alive in the 18C I tried to think what particular applications he had in mind, or if it was just an exercise in very arcane Pure Mathematiks. It would not have been for artistic work, but map projections, perhaps, e.g. how to represent the irregular shapes of continents on a globe, accurately on a flat sheet?

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The same clearing unearthed the original report of an experiment; typed text and hand-written algebra. One page was so stuffed full of Calculus, one equation having five definite-integral signs at its head, that it looked like a sketch of a swannery. I am impressed that someone had found it easy to feed a big load of numbers (the readings) into Extremely Complicated Algebra, having developed the ECA itself for the purpose in what would seem a sort of circular argument, and solve it to obtain the Results.

Ironically the mechanical part of that experiment, about vibrations in some sort of material, was just an ordinary hammer screwed to a wooden metre-rule swinging on a hook.

Its web-site is still active but the company could simply be poor at responding. Not the way to run a business!

I have no idea why the sexual activity survey, apart perhaps from useful in some way in genito-urinary medicine.

The sensor was worn on the wrist! This is a model-engineering forum not Facebook!

A good question, about members not often seen; and it applies to any club not just model-engineering.

Really, there is not much the club can do; though as far as I have experienced so far over many years, all the absences by deteriorating health have been flagged by the members themselves, or perhaps spouse; and all deaths by relatives.

My caving-clubs are affiliated indirectly to the British Caving Association and members can obtain third-party insurance directly from BCA by joining that as well or via the club. Your still pay the BCA subscription and insurance, at the same rate. However, members who have ceased active caving can still belong at a reduced rate to reflect much lower insurance; but still paying for the printed club magazines and towards upkeep of the club's physical assets.

I don't know if any model-engineering societies have a parallel arrangement. Mine doesn't, but the Club insurance covers only club activities and you need pay for property and third-party insurance for private use, yourself. Expensive it is too.

However that only accounts for the individual's continued existence.

It misses the point I raised.

You can be at your club weekly, whatever its interest and whatever your level of participation, but that still does not mean anyone else can necessarily be relied on to give accurate answers about your daily life outside of it, let alone your state of mind a decade previously.

That is the problem of the auxiliary part of the survey, not whether you are in this world or the next.

If you missed something, so have I, because I was summarising from a book published a century ago describing a process developed a decade previously.

The electrodes were of graphite but they would be insufficient as a source of carbon, so more (probably pulverised coke) was added with the iron-ore and limestone.

Yes, it still produced carbon-dioxide but a lot less than a normal coke-fired furnace would, because only enough is needed for the ore-reduction. Not as fuel as well. At the time that was not seen as a problem (although the dangers of high atmospheric CO2 levels were being recognised around then).

So it still needs a source of heat and reducing-agent, and about the only non-Carbon based chemical that would supply both now without creating carbon-dioxide is Hydrogen, so where does that come from? It would not produce CO2 but may well form a lot of nitrous oxides, and they'd presumably need cracking by, for example, urea ('Ad-Blu ' !) which breaks the gas to nitrogen and oxygen.

No easy answers, wherever you look!

Aha!

I'd not associated software designed for architects and engineers, with the entertainments trades, but I can see the application to the former two for publicity material, even at a relatively simple level like a "walk-round" tour of a building or vehicle.

The cover page of the Disney paper raises another question in my mind.

Its illustration of a complicated mesh shows co-ordinate (?) directions in each element as V and U. Not X, Y, Z although it has to represent all those three in only only plane.

So what are V and U?

I have a mug fairly obviously from a museum gift-shop, remembering the 18C English mathematician, George Green. The mug has printed round its rim, one of his equations, quoted from a paper or a book by him.

I do not know how well it will reproduce in a text-editor like this, but let's try it...

ʃdxdydzUδV + ʃdσU dV/dw - 4 πU’’ =

ʃdxdydzVδU + ʃdσV dU/dw - 4 πV’ …..

Oooh, it has, at least so far, before posting the message! I found I had to break it over two lines.

Now, all I know there is that George Green made one bunch of squiggles the same as another. However, the d{x,y,z} bits and Pi make me think it is Integrating three-dimensional "things" . (Advanced mathematics was never possible for me.)

So are the Disney Studios' V and U for drawing cartoon dinosaurs, the same mathematical entities that Mr. Green discovered / invented for decorating coffee-mugs? Of what are they values?

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Incidentally, my original post was firmly tongue-in-cheek, but the advertisement did show more rendered than pure isometric work. It did have an example of a formal machine sub-assembly drawing, but whose stepped shape gave the whole thing an oddly Escher-esque look.

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IMSI's agent Paul ('The CAD' ) Tracey recently offered to sell me the same TurboCAD 2023. I had bought the 2019 'Deluxe' - i.e. basic - version, from his stand at a model-engineering exhibition; and TC2021 remotely from him early this year. The latter only because I thought TC2019 would not work on MS WIN-10; now 11, enforced by Microsoft.

I replied with thank-you, but I cannot use TC's 3D mode, only orthographic, and then not very often now anyway. So don't need all that rendering etc.

TC is good for geometrical plotting though, distinct from design drawing; by modifying standard methods familiar from manual mathematics and draughting. I used it recently for just such a purpose.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 20/07/2023 09:22:57

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 20/07/2023 09:24:07

Lee -

The previous versions of TC simply offer a palette of colours and a very simple rendering tool, which give quite effective results without delving into its really advanced regions.

I think Alibre does too, including letting you remove the "glue lines" .

Nothing new of course - 19C drawing-offices developed a set of near-standard hatching and tinting conventions for different materials. I think they would have been used more on sales and contract-negotiating drawings than the actual manufacturing ones.

Footnote:

Returned to the ad and read the rest of it. The very last line was an "Unsubscribe to newsletters" choice printed in Ariel 2pt very faint blue.

Newsletter - there's a grandiose name for an advertisement. I had never knowingly "subscribed" to any such periodical anyway.

Unsubscribed. I wonder if I'll receive plaintive messages from IMSI, asking me why and telling me I really need TC2023. (It's for very top-level, professional architectural and engineering work.)

So maybe I'll never find out what is Brass Disney - I've heard of Brass Necks, Brass Monkeys (owt to do with the Arctic??), and the Brass you need to buy Brass, but not that one!