Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Thank you Ian and Spurry.

I know Layers can be very useful, I would use them and I have found all their controls, but I can't make them work.

I have tried to use the table in which you can set up separate layers with line characteristics etc., and I assume that lets you format things like dimensions and text labels on their own layer for the whole project. Only having taken the trouble to use it to create separate layers - L1 for the drawing itself, L2 the dimensions, L3 the centre-lines... they do not exist when I want them and I haven't the foggiest why.

So have to put up with using the default layer for the lot, and editing lines and annotations as I go. It is possible to sweep up several dimensions in one go to edit their formats from whatever TC has chosen as default font and size.

For text-boxes, I write the first and format its text, then use it as a template for others by [Copy] -ing to the second co-ordinates, then just re-writing the copy's words.

I notice creating a Group seems to put it on some mystery layer of its own. It's not editable either, without dismantling it back to separate elements.

''

By isometric I did not mean with TurboCAD in 2D mode, because whilst theoretically possible it would require as much geometrical construction as when manually drawing isometrically. I use the terms orthographic for what TC calls 2D, and isometric for the default projection it calls 3D. (I think there may be a second type of 3D non-perspective projection - but I forget its name.)

''

Spurry - I see why you need put individual drawing elements on different layers, but I am unlikely to ever create CNC files. I think you have your L2 and L3 mixed up, too, in that description, but I understand what you mean.

'''

Ian - I had a photo-faffing programme that had come with a scanner/printer, and among its features was an Outline control which could have been very useful for creating a diagram from a photo. I think I still have it, but whether something that was written for a WIN 5 or even WIN 3 computer will run on Win 7, is another matter.

Martin-

I have not used AutoCAD though I have a copy of it. I don't agree with your opening statement though. TurboCAD is not "trying" to be anything but TurboCAD, let alone a poor copy of a rival. Its Users' Forum gallery shows it can be used (by experts) to produce extremely high quality renderings of both engineering and architectural subjects, as well as proper technical drawings.

Anyway, despite differences in their powers, menus and ease of use, all these CAD programmes probably work in much the same way at heart, but present users with different controls and techniques for the same ends.

TC uses Model and Paper, Spaces by those names, and I am pretty sure allows layer selection as you describe, though that beyond my level. If you use only one layer and work-plane, the Viewport copies it all.

'

More generally, there are tutorials available for TurboCAD but most are videos, and I need step-by-step, fixed, instructions I can follow at my own, molluscan, pace; stop at any point, retrace steps. Luckily the introductory CD packed with the programme CD, allows that, being a set of pdf documents.

I agree that not using CAD, or any software, as designed will make things difficult - indeed, even impossible. That is the user's fault, not the software's.

I accept personal preference in choosing a CAD programme, and briefly tried Fusion360 and Alibre. That choice can reflect own needs and abilities to learn complex applications. .it can also reflect the competing products' intrinsic, relative degrees of ease of use and quality of tutorial material.

Those personal criteria influence to the depth to which we can learn the programme. For example, the box labels on my copy of TurboCAD - bought at an exhibition (Mussgorsky, anyone?) - depict 2 3D images, presumably by Paul Tracy. They are a rendering of a bogie, and a wire-frame drawing of the turret and valves, for a miniature steam-locomotive. I wanted to be able to create isometric engineering-assembly drawings and those examples of familiar objects made me hope I might reach that level of expertise. However, I have to accept I can not, despite two successful TurboCAD 3D diagrams for a geology article I wrote for my caving-club's Journal. That is no-one's fault, but at least my basic orthographic drawings give me a chance of making two bits of metal that actually fit together as drawn.

TurboCAD gives you a choice. It allows direct orthographic drawing, but I am fairly certain it also allows orthographic drawings from 3D models, if you prefer the pretty way round. Do other makes give that choice?

Fusion and Alibre both rapidly stopped me by both their enforced 3D-first approach, and their publicity examples. I knew many find otherwise, but the approach and examples made me see these packages as far too advanced. 

'

Summing up, all CAD packages are like our lathes and milling-machines, or cameras and computers: tools for tasks we wish to perform, and as we consider ourselves engineers, we do not blame the tools!

{Post edited to clarify.}

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 05/04/2020 12:21:36

Thank you Ian and Tom.

Sorry about the long delay!

I can now use sufficient of TurboCAD to produce reasonable prints for my own use, though at A4 size for the moment because a set of the ridiculously tiny cartridges in my HP 7510 A3 Printer / Scanner, costs nearly £100!

Oh, and it is not an A3 scanner. The scanner bed is some vague size smaller, as I discovered when I tried to use it for a specific archiving project.

I use the grid only as a guide or in Snap mode, and don't use the mouse alone for positioning lines; but generally the drawings I produce all respond to the tool-bar and snap commands anyway.

I cannot understand how to set up Layers. I have tried but it just ignores me, and I've no idea why. I use the obvious menus and the Layer editing form but I can't make it save the entries. Although frustrating and inefficient to do so, all I can do is draw everything on the default layer and edit the lines and annotations individually.

'''

I've not attempted 3D drawing for a while now. It's too difficult and since I need orthogonal drawings anyway in the workshop, I draw directly in 2D. The main difficulties I find with 3D are:-

- Each of the several ways to represent a solid object, has its specific reactions to the standard tools. E.g., trying to change the size changes the position by the chosen increment instead. Or it dissolves the solid into a myriad adjoining, individual polylines.

- Baffling work-plane and co-ordinate systems. An object may seem in the right place, but viewing it from a different direction shows it is anywhere but.

- No clear idea which viewing angle is which, despite a label appearing at the top of the screen - placing a little indicator sphere on a significant corner helps.

- No simple way to Assemble 3D objects - the supposed 'Manual' does not tell you how to make objects meet at defined points on their surfaces.

First things first - the goods arrived!

Thank you Live Steam Models and Royal Mail for efficient service in very difficult times. I had ordered the fasteners and a pair of safety-valves only 3 days ago.

'

Had a break from brain-bashing over the steam-wagon by resuming work on the workshop hoist's travelling beam.

This entailed drilling bolt holes at already-designed distances symmetrically from the centres along a pair of angles some 6 feet long, to take joining-plates already drilled on the mill.

By spotting through the first, middle plate on one angle, then careful marking out and drilling the angles as a pair clamped back to back against an angle-plate on the bench-drill, I achieved sufficient match on these unwieldy components to need only minor enlarging of holes here and there. What will matter is the erected beam's 4 spars being parallel, so the crab rails are level and parallel.

(Industry has rather better facilities than me, but still uses slotted or over-sized holes!)

Supporting the work is the awkward bit. It lies diagonally across the drill table and sticks out of the shed doorway, - resting on a plate G-clamped to one of the hoist track columns, and a timber post clamped to the chassis of the wagon parked temporarily outside. Well, the hoist will be used in erecting the wagon, so one good turn etc!

My guess is that is a dividing attachment designed to be fitted to the back end of the spindle, and held though the spindle.

If so it assume the intended workpieces are of forms - such as gears or clocks wheel as Hopper suggests - that do not penetrate very far into the chuck or faceplate.

Difficult to see what that elaborate handle and link mechanism does - it seems a bit involved for simple indexing. I wonder if it was something to do with ornamental turning, using special attachments on a conventional centre-lathe.

" Lot of extras ". Do those include anything that looks related to this device, so might give a clue?

I once worked for a small electronics company that made a lot of equipment for Government labs, the Royal Navy etc. One year it gained a couple of contracts for making some special test-equipment for the old Central Electricity Generating Board's R&D lab, and our designer visited the customer to discuss what was needed.

he returned very impressed with two things he saw on a tour he was given. One was a flash-over test on a 132kV transmission-tower ("pylon" insulator. The other was a battery made to give a high direct voltage at very low current and even less noise to drive for some particular experiment. It consisted of a great stack of PP9 cells all linked in series!

Good pieces of work, Anthony & Phil.

I like the idea of the bolt on the saddle-stop, for swarf clearance.

@@@

Me? Today?

Tired to place an order with ARC Euro only they have closed for the duration. Let's hope they - and so many other businesses including my local bakery - weather this storm.

After a late start resumed making my wagon boiler's lifting-cradle. It's a plywood fabrication that locates inside the firebox, with steel side angles drilled for Maillon Rapides (or equivalent small shackles) on four rope slings. A cord tied round the slings just below the top of the firebox keeps the boiler steady, and to my delight and surprise the load was in balance when suspended on the block-and-tackle.

The cradle also holds the boiler sufficiently stable to stand it on one of those "skateboards" on 4 castors - Aldis or Lidls, and I bought two, joking with the cashier about panic-buying trolleys.

The slings are lengths of ordinary 8mm dia. 3-strand hawser-paid polypropylene rope. (Polyprop is one of the stronger rope plastics, but has the lowest melting-point and has low UV resistance.)

I tried to splice the eye in the lower end as a splice is far more compact, better-looking and stronger than a knot, and better for the rope. Eventually I gave up in frustration, made a brew, and tied bowlines instead. The top end is clove-hitched (easily-adjustable) to a triangle folded and welded from 12mm stainless-steel rod. I had picked that up somewhere as something useful somehow.

(I learnt those two knots while in the Scouts - bowlines were also once a near-universal knot used in caving - and they are among the barely dozen knots I have ever had to use for all manner of things.)

Splicing is of the hermetic arts. The basic eye-splice in 3-strand rope starts with a move that very easily makes the rest all wrong. Intuitively, it weaves three strands through two gaps with no two ever sharing one gap or leaping over two adjoining strands. No wonder Escher stuck to drawing staircases and mill-streams.

Ironically my stock length of rope came with a professionally made, thimbled and seized, eye-splice at one end.

They are.

As I found this morning when preparing to place an order!

Edited By JasonB on 03/04/2020 07:38:09

Or , presuming the drill has a tanged Morse taper spindle as is likely on a pillar-drill, a smaller chuck with a taper-adaptor.

Old Mart -

Would you also recommend turning a run-out groove at the end of the threaded portion first? I prefer to do so on external threads, but I have rarely tried internal thread-cutting.

That was last year, but unfortunately, this year's (2020) has been cancelled too, as expected of course.

That "vandalism" was by a bunch of so-called "travellers" who did in fact leave Tewkesbury before the rally weekend, leaving a wrecked gate as well as the usual mess, but too late to restore the MSRVS event.

Looking at this thread as I may need cut a square threaded nut and screw for a particular project, I note the advice on the tool's side clearance.

Would it be feasible to use a semi-circular section tool, ground rather like a D-bit, with squared-off edge a few thou deeper than the diameter, and an axial rake? Such a cutter could also work for trepanning or face-grooving (e.g. for an O-ring seal), because the side-clearance on a cylinder is innate. I ask because I don't recall ever seeing this suggested anywhere.

By corollary I use a die to trim the top of a cut external thread.

It's worth remembering that an insert tool or a chaser will only cut true rounded crests if the thread requires the full depth of the tool.

A tip for depth-gauging. If possible make the part a bit over-length and turn the surplus section to a few thou' above (male thread) or below (female) root diameter. When the threading tool just starts to scratch that, you are almost there. Take a couple of spring cuts then test with the mating part - or if a standard thread, a new screw. Or finish the thread with a tap or die (preferably a die-nut?)

Spring-cuts - I normally take one every couple of passes to ease the growing load on the tool, especially when using straight-in cuts.

Also, I do question this matter of carbide tips "needing" to be run at high speeds. They are indeed made to clear metal at alarming rates, but in industrial production conditions on massively-built CNC machines; and their individual designs are to suit particular materials. I have not had unduly poor finishes using insert tooling at modest rates. If the finish is poor I blame my tool-setting or using a slightly worn or mis-chosen insert, or using "new-to-me" steel of unknown provenance, before the tool per se.

Had a little break from making steam-wagon bits, to carry out a couple of catch-up tasks -

Placing an order by telephone for fasteners.

Tidied the workshop. So that's where the dividers went!

Then started to make a lifting cradle for the boiler, which is a heavy and awkward thing to manipulate.

Anthony -

What you've shown suggests a use for one of those old, small Vee-blocks that have long lost their partners, and seem to appear from I know not where. Without affecting the Vee itself, too.

Not long ago I needed a carriage stop "now". I simply drilled a hole in the middle of a bit of steel bar and held it to the bed with the clamp-bolt and plate borrowed from the fixed steady not itself needed for the particular task.

It does need tidying up to make it look the part, but it solved the immediate problem.

Its one drawback is that swarf trapped between the bar and the carriage retards the stop point, though at least that error is on the curable side. A quick waft with a brush sorts that.

I have made two young relatives my Executors and willed my model-engineering and caving-related possessions to the relevant clubs, save only any money from models to be for the Estate , as they are potentially more valuable than the tools and machines). I am preparing an instruction-sheet to accompany the Will, with names of societies and other useful details. (I've not mentioned how to move a Harrison L5 lathe and Myford VMC mill through a 2-foot doorway and across a lawn...)

In my own ME society it has become established now that when a member meets his own maker, one or two fellow-members act for the family in disposing of the workshop contents as best they can. Even If not raising a fortune it will still be a lot more than the clearance-firms will offer, and at least the family know the assets are going to people who will appreciate them (often, within the society).

This does not affect only model-engineering either. A number of Mendip Hills-based cavers have organised the Mendip Cave Registry Archive to collate and store for all manner of relevant, original literature (exploration histories, surveys, photos...) that would otherwise have been simply thrown away by uncomprehending relatives or house-clearers.

Steady (ish! by my standards of progress) on the steam-wagon, completing the two longitudinals to support the boiler. At each end is a short of piece of angle bolted along it, over-stepping and screwed down to, a cross-member . (Vertical firebox, 7" dia outside, horizontal shell 6" dia; distance between chassis rails 12" increasing aft past the boiler.)

These are to be trimmed in height for appearance, leaving a low flange for stiffness, but it occurred to me that if cut to the appropriate shape and size they would also make ideal lifting lugs for the boiler; an awkward problem I have yet to solve satisfactorily.....

.... Later thinking revealed they would not. Plenty strong enough but not the right way to go about it for other reasons.

At least thinking is free, unlike metal and electricity, and still legal!

Nice piece of work Nicholas, but though I would not call that "cheating" I would not like to try turning anything, even soft plastic, with all that overhang!

Assuming material available I think I'd prefer to make such an item from round rod and cut the flange square, but I realise you made have had only square stock to hand.

Johnboy: -

Hear! Hear! To the moment of admiration.

My workshop and home are full of safe places. Trouble is, they are automatic ones and don't allow me to know their locations.

Anyway. What Did I Do Today?

Progressing with the steam-wagon's boiler-mounts. The boiler is a good deal smaller than the chassis, so needs two longitudinals within the main frame for the firebox lugs to sit on. It's a lot of extra metalwork, all the while trying to think ahead enough to head off potential problems like inaccessible fastenings, obstructions to fitting other components and losing the plane surfaces which hold the footplates and bunker floors. .

We are still expected to keep the vehicles in a safe condition!

I live just off the busy maim road to Portland that is part of Weymouth's busiest bus route - about 10min intervals on weekdays. Presently it is on Sunday times, but some of the bus services around Weymouth have been suspended completely. I saw two buses this morning, in opposite directions, with only 3 or 4 passengers each.

(It's all right - I was combining authorised exercise with essential shopping - a stroll to the Co-Op for scran.)