Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Obviously it would be far better to use the proper part or at least proper thread, but I investigated the pitch error over 20mm if you treat a 1mm pitch as 25tpi (with 60º angle).

1mm = 0.0394 inch, so 20 turns = 0.7874 inch.

25tpi = 0.040 " pitch = 0.800 " over 20 turns.

Cumulative error = 0.013 " so possibly too much.

Nevertheless I'd still prefer a proper replacement, for the reason Martin suggests. The machine may be a badged clone, or its present incarnations may still use the same small parts, so spares might be fairly easy to find. M8 x 1mm is an ISO Metric Fine standard, but left-hand?

John Hinckley-

Thank you for the Arc Euro tip!

'''

Welded the 8 horn-cheeks for my workshop hoists' cross-beam. I'm giving it a basic rubber-bush springing because with the best care in the world I am unlikely to set the longitudinal rails totally level all over, at nearly 16 feet long by 6 feet gauge. The wheels and axles do stay generally where I park them though, so it's not far off!

These horn-cheeks are simply bits of hot-rolled steel bar welded to square-section tube pillars.

I say welded.. I have to admit I am lucky if a quarter of the electrode or wire used does anything useful. Most forms lumps separated by slag on only one side of the joint, even if it looks and sounds right during the process itself. This is partly inexperience but also my hands tremble when I need them steady under some strain - they always have. So I use welding only rarely, and where strength, function and appearance are not too critical.

These pillars won't carry the load, simply take mild lateral forces when manually moving the hoist along the shed. Nor will the crab carry anything more than my Clarke-badged manual chain-hoist and loads well within its limits, and will normally carry rope blocks and tackle.

The rest of the assembly is all bolted.

I left trimming the weld lumps until after tea, and ensured my neighbours were indoors, as I carry out welding and angle-grinding outside the workshop.

I've successfully tempered oil-quenched springs, admittedly of small size and thickness - for the Ken Swan-designed 'Wren' - in molten lead , having verified the temperatures.

For quenching I heated the leaves, threaded onto wire, above the oil-tray and just dropped them in so they had no chance to cool significantly in the air.

The lead-bath was just a washed-out food tin, with about an inch of melted lead. I kept the lead just on crystallising point, raising it slightly to draw the springs out after several minutes of soaking.

Noticeably, the submerged steel stayed bright. Steel protruding from the lead turned blue/purple (oxidising), indicating the process was working.

BTW... I did this all outdoors!

Though an idea that came to me, I don't claim originality. I knew industry uses molten salts of various types. The owner of a small-scale steam-lorry telling me he'd used a lead-bath for its road springs. (Salts - common salt melts at about 800ºC, but that is too high for tempering.)

Martin Connelly -

" ...had no choice but to put in a heat pump system where he lives as that is government policy. "

Does he live in the UK? If so he could still have had a gas boiler.

Unless it's been changed, UK government policy will be to fit new homes with no gas supplies, but not until after a certain date, in 2025 I think.

' ' '

Clive Hartland -

Magnetic water-conditioners, both permanent-magnet and electromagnet, were all the rage some years back; and you could even buy ones for the petrol pipe in your car engine, supposedly to improve fuel-efficiency. There was never any conclusive evidence even then that they work in either application.

A friend in the trade said he's never known them to be effective. He also warned me if I fit a water-softener as I'd considered, that the saving is not as much as it seems from capital cost alone, thanks to spending quite a lot of money a year on salt. They've also been know to exacerbate boiler-corrosion but the boiler manufacturers may have solved that.

I fitted an electromagnetic conditioner but it didn't last long. It was in the airing-cupboard in my bedroom, its coil round the rising-main supplying the immersion-tank - I had no boiler. One night while in bed, I heard a sizzling sound... the mains-driven conditioner trying to catch fire. Needless to say I unplugged it immediately and watched it until it had cooled down. I have not fitted one, of either type, since.

'

The original condensing boilers that were enforced didn't last long thanks to very thin, aluminium heat-exchangers, and even very weak electrolytes are corrosive to aluminium. I think the boilers made now by the reputable companies are much better - cutting corners to cut costs may ultimately only cut profits!

(At work, I knew but the designers could not understand, why some of their marine-engineering prototypes made of anodised aluminium screwed together with stainless-steel fasteners emerged from a few days in a test-tank of fresh water, looking very tatty. Yet the water contained only swimming-pool disinfectant and pH correctors kept at swimming-pool levels - part of my work as a lowly lab assistant lacking credibility thanks to no Very Hard Sums-ology.)

Ian -

Only just spotted your post of 2 or 3 weeks ago, wondering if you can go and buy metal. This must be a problem for many of us.

I suppose you could have added it to a food-shopping trip, but would the place have been open anyway? The restrictions on driving are there to protect you, me the staff and everyone else, but if it's still open would it still be permissible to buy there on the principle that it is a shop still allowed to trade? The shop itself might have established a similar system to Screwfix: telephoned orders collected at the door. (Some pubs are selling their stocks rather like that - you collect the ordered beverages from a table outside the door.)

Some of our regular suppliers, including MJ Engineering and ArcEuro, have suspended trading but I bought some fastenings recently from Live Steam Models, by mail-order. Others may still be trading but their web-sites no longer work. I do hope we are all between us still supporting these firms as we can.

' ' '

It's made me think carefully about the metal I have in stock. I've always used 'new-to-me' materials, but am presently using some steel that even I might otherwise scrap as it's so corroded.

It's a matter of cutting and machining the less affected metal to lose the worst pitting, and leave the remaining surfaces where it won't matter too much, and will be painted. Obviously those pitted surfaces are not on model components that will be visible so have to look right. Nor heavily-loaded, unless the steel is sufficiently over-size for cutting all surfaces below the corrosion. If loaded, I assess how it is loaded, and whether the weathering has weakened it too much for the application.

This is to leave my precious, non-precious metals in decent condition, for where original size and good surface condition are important.

Me today...

A bit of light garden pottering - used a piece of flexible electrical conduit to repair the split hose from a down-spout weir to the water-butt - short bits of the original sealed with bathroom sealant act as adaptors.

More work on the workshop hoist, waiting until late afternoon so as not to disturb the neighbours unduly with rather noisy band-sawing.

One component, 8-off, is cut from some very rusty old bar-rail, so started using the Drummond manual shaper to produce a clean face on each.

My plan is to drill and tap the 4 mounting-holes required in each, using that new face as datum, weld these embryo Part A to their Part B; then screw the assemblies to the plates they will occupy anyway. That will give broad flanges I can clamp to the mill table for the requisite surfacing and profiling, referred to the plates' own machining-datum corners, which I have marked with a small drill indentation.

'

Disturbing with loud sawing... Well, there is an evidently gadget-conscious family about two doors in the opposite direction, whose young daughters must be getting cabin-fever by now. The other afternoon one of the girls was loudly nagging, ' Alexa! Play xxx! Alexa... Alexa!! ' where xxx was some of the dreariest, cloned pop-music going. I was almost tempted to shout across, ' Alexa! Disobey her! Play Obla-Di-Obla-Da or Gotterdammerung! '

Michael -

Not only corrosion but copper oxide junctions can act as diodes!

Saw a motorist today, accompanied by I presume his wife, adjusting his face-mask as he drove past me. This entailed taking both latex-gloved hands off the wheel.

I wonder which hazards and risks he faced or posed?

It was explained on today's News after comments by the Police in one town about empty "non-essential" goods shelves, that Downing Street has clarified that if a shop is allowed to trade, it can sell its normal lines.

There was a similar remark not long ago from the retail-trade association.

That would make sense because if you are in a certain shop for bread and milk, you are in that shop whether you stop at the bread and milk or also buy a bag of bird-seed and tin of paint there. As you long as you stick to the distance rules and markers. It's also helping the shop and its suppliers.

The Police have been put in an awful situation, given weak guidance in administering what by our normal standards are draconian powers; facing physical as well as verbal abuse; having to deal with idiots who think themselves immortals above the law .

[The weather outlines on the radio have just mentioned ' isolated showers '.....]

Scrap? No. New to me.

I cut the original motor-plinth from the back of my Harrison lathe cabinet as it made the machine stand a wasteful foot away from the wall, in a workshop already tight for space. The new 3ph motor, physically smaller than the 1ph motor it replaced, is on a frame above the headstock, where it's also clear of dust and dirt around the floor. I had to modify the guard to suit.

I didn't throw the welded-steel box away, not with a lot of 5/8-, 1/2 and 1/8- inch plate on it, though it took a fair number of 4.5 inch cutting discs to dismantle.

One of the thick bits is earmarked for my wagon con-rods, the thin bits have supplied material for the wagon and the workshop hoist. A small off-cut picked up from the floor became a washer for a bolt clamping work to an angle-plate.

A manual winch I built for a cave-digging project on Mendip uses a fabricated PVC drum thrown out at work (a left-over from something), between hexagonal frames I welded (well, very-hot-glued) from old miniature-railway rails that looked as if they'd been dragged through a hedge backwards then left there - as they had, for a couple of years in fact.

There's something satisfying in finding a tatty, heavily-rusted old steel bar or plate has decent steel inside it waiting to be let out and put to new use. As long as it's easier to machine than some old cable-drum tie-rods I have in stock.

The only new-to-me items I've really had to abandon hope on, were a cast-iron sash-weight so hard it even defeated a heavy hacksawing machine at work, a bit of architectural cast-iron that was free-cutting but with blow-holes reminding me of a pikelet, and a half-shaft too hard even for a carbide tip.

Actually I tell a lie... I recall now the cast-iron pikelet was useless for a piston but fine for the heavy inner part of the lid on my steam-wagon's vertical ' stoking-shoot ', as the original was described.

Live Steam Models - I thanked them only a few days ago for prompt mail-order service.

My thoughts exactly. This is no time for ' yah-boo ' politics, and I too wish him a full recovery...

' ' '

My Coronavirus letter from Her Majesty's Government arrived today, along with the latest Model Engineer and a flyer for a forthcoming show in Weymouth Pavilion. In May - I would be very surprised if that can go ahead, in only a few week's time.

An interesting point about our governmental system emerged in the News programme this afternoon, about the need to choose a deputy Prime Minister when the PM is ill; but the UK does not have a regular post of Deputy or Vice, PM. (Remember, anyone can fall seriously ill, and at any time, not just in a pandemic.)

Prefaced by the hoary old canard about our "not having a written Constitution", we learnt that the British Constitution is not a rigid set of procedures, so it gives the Government a degree of flexibility in such situations.

(Our Constitution IS written. Of course it is, but spread over a series of documents and Acts from Magna Carta onwards. Those who claim we don't are misled by countries like the USA, which was founded historically rapidly enough and recently enough to have enshrined practices brought by the settlers, in one paper.)

Thank you Pete and Ian.

Pete -

You asked what I draw. Mechanical-engineering drawings. My main project in mind for buying TurboCAD was to help me design my miniature steam-wagon from the scanty surviving photos. I'm also using it presently for a travelling-hoist I'm making for the workshop. I'd hoped the isometric (3D) mode would be useful for assembly-drawings, but found it impossible to learn sufficiently for any practical purposes.

'

Ian -

I know there are keyboard short-cuts in TurboCAD as there are in other programmes - I used to use several in Word and Excel, at work, for scientific symbols I used regularly. I gather TC calls them SEKEs but I forget what that abbreviates.

However, I don't find it difficult to use the tool-bars whereas to use SEKEs I'd have to write a long list and refer to it every time as I'd remember only a very few. I keep on-screen only the tool-bars I need for orthographic engineering-drawings - perhaps 8 or 10.

'

I can't learn from videos, especially if the displayed screen is set differently from my own , or the software edition is slightly different.

My copy of TurboCAD came with a training CD written by Paul Tracey, and though it seems for a slightly different edition, it has been very useful because it is not a video, but a pdf "book".

The pdf "Manual" via the 'Help' tool is one of the worst technical documents I have seen in both arrangement and information, but I succeeded in creating a proper index for it.

Surprisingly for a pdf, I could copy its Contents pages into Word, then use a lot of editing to turn them into a .csv text file for a 2-column table in Excel (topic and page number), I could sort alphabetically, in MoD-style noun-adjective-adjective. Having the print alongside me greatly facilitates finding any given topic - though when I looked up Layers I found nothing helpful and it is all mixed up with Snaps!

I didn't index the whole lot. I omitted the chapters on computer OS details, 3D and wood-work drawings.

'

I experimented after my previous post, by opening a New drawing and just trying using the Layers table when the setting-up series asked for it. That seemed to do the trick when I drew a square with a circle in the centre (layer called Outline), added two centre-lines (Centre-line layer) and dimensioned the square (Dimension layer).

It was all in inches but that's not important. Most of my drawings are in inches anyway (as are my machine-tools though the 3-axis DRO I've fitted to the mill, gives the mm option).

So perhaps my guess that the templates are locked to two default layers was right.

No photo I'm afraid but I made a set of small tool-holders originally for my EW 2.5-inch lathe with its plain clamp, by drilling assorted 1/4-in holes in short pieces of rectangular steel bar, to hold bits ground from broken / worn-out centre-drills, FC3 cutters and the like.

Extra holes, tapped, hold grub-screws to secure the bits.

The bit-holes are gently inclined to give both top rake and some height adjustment, and whilst not a real QC system, with care it can give some of the QC advantages.

Suitably longer versions would also work in a QC tool-post, of course.

Spurry -

I may have a germ of an idea where my Layers problem lies.

I don't really know how you either create a gallery here or make and transfer screen-shots, but thank you anyway!

I have a big collection of tool-bars, and I know where to find others, but I was trying to do was what I assume TC is trying to let me do.

That is to set up the layers by format, such as outline (the object you are drawing), centre-lines and dimensions.

For example, having drawn a square containing a concentric circle in solid black lines of 0.02 inch line thickness on Layer 1, you can then go to Layer 2 for the centre-lines because that layer holds chained 0-inch width centre-lines, then Layer 3 to dimension the assembly, presumably also with the numbers and letters in the typeface you require.

I can't remember off-hand what control opens it, but the Layer editing table is easy to find and use; but I am now wondering if I am using it at the wrong point in the process; or in the wrong context (drawings based on one of the supplied templates).

TurboCAD offers a long setting-up menu series to allow custom consistency from drawing to drawing - normal professionally - but it is so complicated and advanced I use the offered templates. I think these use only the two default Layers, of which one is dedicated solely to construction lines. Although the Layers editing table is available at any time, it would be logical to work only within that custom setting-up from a blank sheet, not on the published templates whose formats are probably locked.

All I can do there, unless someone can confirm or explain otherwise, is experiment with a drawing produced from New, not a supplied template; though I know so little about that custom set-up system I would risk revealing yet more tinned Lumbricida complexiform.

Have you tried variants on the name, such as 'sensitive drilling machine', or 'sensitive bench drill'?

Just a thought....

Very smart they are too, Keith.

I'd probably have followed the same sequence, but I do note the suggestion of knurling before drilling.

One thing not mentioned... don't use your best self-centring chucks for turning rough stock. It puts unfair, unequal stresses on the chuck. Use a 4-jaw independent chuck.

As for what Dave called Awkwardcussium... I expect we've all been there. In my case not long ago with some 18mm diameter supposedly-mild steel (well, it was rusty outside and silvery-grey inside) from a scrapped cable-drum tie-rod. I thought it is just plain old drawn EN3. Perhaps it is, but it proved as tough as old boots and would not yield a decent finish no matter what I did, and I had to find some better metal. Even so I do have one use for that Mild-Awk~, but requiring only facing, drilling and tapping the ends and simply cleaning and painting the surface.

I'd have thought the swept bends the right approach. The full-size parts might well have been castings so able to take a relatively sharper curve that could have been managed with its own equivalent, bent steel pipe.

Right-angle elbows would certainly give a turbulent flow and hence some resistance, but whether it would have any significant effect in this application I could not say.

Does seem a large diameter though. I wonder if that is a scaling result more than design need: a cast exhaust branch would have been quite thick-walled.

[Edited to correct a missing word!]

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 06/04/2020 00:28:38

The people who are wilfully and openly flouting what have become laws, have only themselves to blame if as a result the Government does carry out today's threat that it can clamp down even harder, putting us all under house arrest apart from the necessary shopping, work, medical and livestock-care reasons.

There is though an aspect to it all that the authorities have not considered.

Most of us here are in model-engineering clubs of which many have costly, large-scale physical assets; but we are unique only in the types of assets, and by no means alone generally. There are all manner of sports, outdoor-pursuits and other special-interest societies; small museums, preserved railways and ships, social clubs, charities, church and village halls, the Scouts, WI... all run by volunteers locally at least, not as businesses.

How does anyone entrusted with any of this property, look after it in these restricted times?

It's hard to see logically why someone local can't pop in with one other (a spouse?) or alone but overseen by a safety contact by telephone, now and again to test smoke alarms, ensure no leaks or vermin, pick up letters, collect wind-blown litter, air the building for a couple of hours.

Yet officially this appears to be an illegal ' non-essential ' act, not deliberately so but because no-one in power realised that the country is awash with such voluntary activities and premises; all needing basic security attention, post collecting, and bills paying despite no income.

In not realising that, they would also have not known that these organisations all together must be of vast economic as well as cultural value to the nation.

What if a burglary, vandalism or a fire were to occur during this enforced neglect? Would the insurers entertain any claim? Of course not. They can hide behind force majeure ( or 'Act of God ' , the pandemic itself), and the neglect (ignoring its reason). They can refuse renewal let alone a claim if unpaid, even if because the notice was trapped un-read behind the club's locked front door - a hazard that club treasurers should bear in mind.

The insurance-companies' concern would not be for a society failing as a result, only for the lost premium income.

Adding to Paul Kemp's entry : -

I worked for a small electronics manufacturer back in the late 1970s- 1980s, at the height of North Sea oil and gas exploration; and among the things we built were wind and roll monitoring units for these huge floating cranes.

I forget what sort of transducers they used as well as an anemometer; but the part that was in the crane driver's cab was a standard cabinet the size of a small wardrobe, with displays showing wind speed and direction, levels, load, etc.

They looked a treat - magnolia paintwork to "exhibition standard", chrome-plated handles on the individual units, screen-printed panels...

Then one came back in a bit of state, several weeks after it had left our premises in Weymouth. Transferring it from lorry to supply-ship in Aberdeen Harbour, they managed to drop it, luckily on the quay not in the oggin. Even so, it fell face-down, the handles taking the full force so bending them, distorting the panels and damaging the finish.

Then to add insult to injury they didn't put it in a nice dry warehouse while arranging speedy return for repairs. They merely chucked a sheet over it. There it stood, forlorn and unloved for those weeks on the dockside while the usual obstacles to efficiency, common-sense and initiative - the insurers - argued over fault, transport and repair costs, etc. etc. By which time, rust was setting in, delicate electrical contacts becoming verdigris, labels deteriorating...