Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

The problem with any sort of interchangeable battery scheme even if the batteries and vehicles are all sufficiently cloned to allow it, is that vastly more batteries than vehicles would be needed; and they'd still need augmenting by chargers for the cars themselves.

A point lost on those pushing to have us all drive battery-only cars, is that presently we enjoy the opportunity and often the need, to travel where and when we wish, sometimes at short notice. Going all-EV will curtail this freedom drastically, and even for those fortunate still to be able to have a car at all, schemes like battery-swapping or car-borrowing (hiring, more likely,??? ), would only worsen that situation.

Eventually, fossil-sources of fuels will run out, via scarcity that pushes the price way up, but with such depletion will also come the loss of so many materials we take for granted that our loss of being able to drive freely will seem a minor point compared to the far greater losses overall.

I foresee society reverting over the next century or so to something closer to 200 years ago now: very isolated communities with limited creature-comforts and little mutual contact. Someone a while back here wondered what the portable 'phone might transform into by then. History, I think, there being nothing left to make it from.

Yesterday actually, but the log-in routine on this site was being especially obstinate!

Ordered, after a good deal of shopping around, the worm and wheel for my steam-wagon's steering-gearbox. I don't know what was actually inside the casing showed in rather low detail on the archive photos of the original.

It's actually the corresponding gearing for an M.J. Engineering 3"-scale Fowler.

With a copy of the wheel & worm's drawing kindly e-posted to me, I started designing the box itself to resemble the prototype as far as I can discern from the photos - so in spirit more than precision to something that looks different in each picture anyway.

Nothing new in re-badging. My own club, and later I, owned a 6" x 30 BGSC lathe with IXL embossed on a plate rivet-screwed to the headstock.

6" centre-height that is. I don't use the diameter convention.

According to Mr. Griffith's excellent site, "IXL" never made anything, and the lathe was actually a German-made Ehrlich, probably of 1930s vintage.

I donated it to Lynton & Barnstaple Railway workshops quite some years ago now, and I hope it's still in service if not there, in another caring home!

Simiarly, I have seen a small horizontal miller badged (if I remember aright) "Patrick" or something similar; certainly not a name listed on lathes. co; but I am pretty certain it's an Denbigh H4 of which I own an example. Denbigh did make machines or others, and it seems to have been quite a common practice long before the days of Axminster / Warco / Clarke et. al.

Thank you Jason, for the explanation.

"Wink" indeed.....

You raise a point I've wondered for a while.

We all know conventional screw-cutting on the lathe, a thread coarser than the lead-screw is very unfair to the machine; but does that apply to thread-milling? I'm assuming light cuts of course.

It would also need thought about the thread-ends: whether a radial run-out groove would be acceptable or you the spiral needs a "sudden" end as on this engine. The latter probably would involve disconnecting the normal drive and turning the lathe by hand, from either the spindle or the lead-screw.

If rapid-lead threading is possible in this way, it should not be too difficult to produce not only coarse multi-start single-way threads, but also single-start reversing-screws. (The motion is carried by a circular pin or lozenge-shaped follower.)

Superb work - challenging too, and I noticed something I suspect many of us (mea culpa!) overlook - close attention to cutter and tap types best suited to operation and material.

I'm a bit puzzled: You did not link the table travel to rotation, for what is effectively thread-milling, by gearing or digital control? So all by manual travel / angle setting? If so, as Ron says, the patience of a saint!

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I recall some years ago an ME contributor saying faced with an equally repetitive operation, thinking it best he did just a few increments a day to keep up the standard. He was filing the triangular ports in locomotive piston-valve liners, where obviously the lengthways extremities matter. He told us he would get up a bit earlier in the morning and file two or thee of the already-drilled holes before going to work, leaving the next two or three till next day. After all, there was plenty of other work on the project for the evenings.

A few people have mentioned ground-source heat pumps, and a thought has occurred to me.

This should not be confused with geothermal water plant such as in Iceland, and I think experimentally in Cornwall.

If you drill a water borehole, you risk abstracting water faster than the aquifer can be recharged naturally, creating a funnel-shaped volume of drier ground which if I recall correctly is called something like the "cone of depletion". The natural rate of recharge depends on the local geology and of course weather; but will be affected if there are many other boreholes in the vicinity.

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Now, does a similar depletion rule apply to extracting heat from the ground? Very little, if any, of this heat is from the Sun, except only in the surface soil - and that is obviously greater in Summer.

Most subterranean heat is conducted through the Earth's Crust and overlying cover rocks from the Mantle far below, which is heated by radioactive decay. It might be augmented very slightly in a few areas sitting on huge granite intrusions, like Cornwall, due to scattered traces of uranium still decaying in that rock; but these are exceptions.

So recharge of heat is not rapid, but slow and steady.

The volume of the ground, consequently heat held, is obviously enormous; but will estates of houses or large district-heating schemes with their ground-heat pumps all purring virtuously away, create similar depletion cones around themselves by extracting heat from their volume of ground faster than its replenishment? And of course, this will be when everyone needs that heat - in Winter, when any augmentation the Sun might offer, is minimal!

Jason -

It doesn't let me either log in or stay logged in, consistently and reliably. To do this now, I had to close the lot and come back in.

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Neil -

Thank you, but I tried what Alibre seemed to be offering a few days ago. It waited until I'd loaded the programme, then said the trial period had ended. I was surprised at first then realised I should have expected that.

Trying again would be a big gamble. It won't be any use if I can't produce orthographic workshop drawings of what I want to design and make, but whilst 3D CAD may be a useful option if was capable of learning it, Alibre puts that huge barrier in the way by default.

I'd only be able to complete whatever trial it offers by hours of successfully fighting a new but slimmed-down package from scratch before it expires. Then I'd have to buy the full edition if I felt I could take it further.

If I buy it then it becomes too hard, I will have wasted a lot of money and time. The whole exercise would be so desperately frustrating and discouraging it may even damage my interest in the model-engineering I had hoped it would support.

Oh typical!!!

I posted the above, and it made Gary's post appear!

Anyway, Gary -

You had the benefit of proper training and professional experience. My training, at work, was only an introduction to using MS' ordinary Office programmes, though including the nightmare of Access.

I think the edition of TC you used was earlier than mine. The User's Guide with TC 19 Deluxe is very haphazard, and the quality of instructions with each tool very variable from sufficient to practically non-existent. Sometimes it even gives a heading above a different topic.

Making a printed index certainly helped because a pdf document can be searched only by page-number. I was surprised though that I could make that index, as I'd always thought pdf files are locked images. (I know Adobe offers a converter but only by costly rental.)

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I find that Model Space / Paper Space business very confusing, worsened by the " Viewport " routine and TC's printer-settings menus. They differ in the paper sizes they offer, and at least one lacks ISO A sizes.

Dimensions: I think you can set the dimensioning in TC so changing the entity changes the annotation automatically; but I don't know how. Not vice-versa though. The dimension system is very confusing, but at least I can alter dimensions' labels to my intended values!

TurboCAD uses Snaps extensively, but you often have to turn them off for tools you assume would need them.

TC's equivalent to Fusion's " components " seems to be Boolean Adding / Subtracting. TC offers no animation.

If my edition of TC has that " Drafting Pallet ", it might be among the many tools I have not used.

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It odes not surprise me Fusion's 2D mode is weak, because AutoDESK wants you to use its industrial-grade orthographic AutoCAD. No " layers "? I thought they are a fundamental CAD drawing principle, so does it hide the concept in those other methods?

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You say you could not change that revolved mug lid in TurboCAD. For a quick test, I drew a simple, chamfered quadrilateral like the section of a lathe dovetail, turned it into a polyline; then Revolved it to a cylinder with a countersunk end. Now the real test: and yes, I changed its overall length and diameter. I doubt it's possible to change its shape though.

This is strange. My e-mail list shows Gary has replied to the above, and I can read it there, but it just does not appear on this site.

I've noticed too that just because your notification gives you the link, it won't necessarily go to the thread indicated. Nor will logging-in above a given, open thread, keep you on that thread. Instead it goes off to any other you've used.

Is that so?

It differs significantly from an announcement several weeks ago now, that new houses built from a certain year ( which I forget) will not be connected to the mains gas network.

The question of the source of all that extra electricity is too difficult for most politicians. That will be for their [great-]grandchildren's generations to solve, assuming future schools bother to teach anything related to science and engineering.

Tracy Tools make a poster-size chart for hanging on the wall - dimension conversions one side, thread tables the other.

I suspended mine from an ordinary hook, via an old twin-clip, straight arm clothes hanger; so quick to turn round to view the other side; and these are the two data sets you are likely to use more often than the rest put together.

Just re-read the OP, suggesting this lathe has come without change-wheels.

If so try G & M Tools, or Home & Workshop Machinery, for a start, for replacements as well as that 127T wheel.

Also for a thread dial-indicator if that's missing.

I own one of these, and bought the photocopied version of the Operator's Manual from lathes.co

Apart from anything else it will mean you are less likely to be caught out by that small gearbox on the headstock. (Yes, I have been...)

Norton Gearbox or not, and mine doesn't have one, you will still need a 127T wheel for cutting metric threads, but you may also have to reverse the lathe to wind the saddle back still in gear for each pass. I am not sure if you can use the lead-screw reverse gear to avoid running the spindle backwards - I think that would lose the correct meshing.

BEWARE though if you do run the lathe backwards under power and it has the same screwed spindle as on my lathe, you do risk the chuck unscrewing itself from the nose.

You might get away with a 63T wheel instead of 127, but it introduces a small pitch error and is best used only over short threads.

A light-hearted look at real examples of a strange but common experience, inspired by another thread about simple mistakes.

Can sometimes we be too clever for our own good?

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1) I worked in an acoustics laboratory with standard test-rigs used by scientists making experimental equipment. One visiting group became convinced their device had failed, for no clear reason.

Tactfully - these were people way above my educational and professional station in life - I suggested tracing the signals through the system. Each unit was chained through a patch-panel, allowing simple diagnosis by oscilloscope... Sure enough, a nice healthy transmit-side sine-wave from the signal-generator, cut into blocks by the pulse-generator, etc. Credible, low-level received signal, but not reaching the measuring volt-meter.

Hmm. Then the Eyeball, Mark One, spotted it....

The received signal was cleaned by an adjustable band-pass filter, with high-pass and low-pass halves. Normally the decade range switches would mirror each other's position. This time they both faced the same number, so the filter stopped all below, say 10kHz...., and everything above 10kHz. A stop-all setting revealed by mere switch-pattern!

Sighs of relief and several red faces among those of the Exalted Stations In Life.

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2) My turn to be caught.

I helped a friend and fellow model-engineering society member restore a water-mill to flour production; but it suffered from strange surges in the stream, shock-loading the machinery, breaking wooden cogs (proper name for mill-gearing teeth), about £12 each.

We realised the sill needed a simple choke board of adjustable height for appropriate powers while diverting surges over the weir...

... so sketched arrangements of screws, wheels, bevel-gears, shafts, journals ....

On my next visit, my mate says, "Done it", pointing to the window-sill. Thereupon reposed the necessaries for setting the choke for milling, idling (demonstration-only) and driving the grain-cleaner...

... Just labelled pairs of plain wooden blocks.

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3) Please take this as NOT undermining the memory of some very able, thorough craftsmen no longer with us. Instead it crystallises the above, showing how considerable shared and individual experience can mask the obvious, and prevent conceiving having made basic mistakes.

My society built a 7.25"g, all-fabricated version of LBSC's 'Juliet' for portable-track duty. It was assembled in the club workshop on the usual Tuesday evenings, by some very skilled people; but when they tested it on air, the chassis just would not run.

Things were re-measured, re-fitted; Reauleaux Diagrams sketched... the chassis could still only ooze round half a turn then violently leap the rest.

Some of us also used the workshop on Saturdays. On one such, by chance only I turned up, but I set the chassis running lest fresh eyes spot the oddity. My hand did: air puffing from an exhaust fitting's over-deep cross-drilling. LBSC recommended plugging such with a "weeny" brass screw anointed with sealant.

I left the air on while hand-drilling the tapping-size, to blow the chips outwards (exhaust side, remember). The drill broke through; the chassis nearly leapt off the bench!

Calm restored, cautiously edging the air back on made the engine run, roughly, but somewhere-nearer. Puzzled, I removed the exhaust branch-pipe... corrected the mistake, refitted the pipe, added the LBSC-approved weeny screw. Now it ran somewhere-much-nearer.

I think the ghostly chuckle was only the compressor water-trap.

May I be forgiven for arriving early on Tuesday so the main builders arrived to find me innocently engaged in my project while Juliet peacefully ticked over within tuning of all-correct.

With due modesty, I showed them the original paper gasket, with a tiny relief cut by moisture and pressure where the central hole wasn't.

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Still, they say, the man who made no mistakes, made nowt.

I've certainly made many! Sometimes by not thinking sufficiently ahead.

At an exhibition, I was admiring one 3" scale traction-engine as a happily well built, well cared-for romper around the rally-field. The man next to me merely moaned about some minor solecism. Extra rivet...? No, I didn't ask, "Which one's your engine, guv?"

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Tiredness is one of the main causes of simple mistakes.

Yet it's strange how the more experienced we are, the less we notice the simple and obvious when things go wrong; and instead look for the most abstruse / expensive / inconvenient solution first!

I am told by medics, medics are even worse. A few sniffles and a headache and it's death's door with agues, plagues and bad humours of the spleen; when all they've done is catch a cold.

Best Wishes Plasma!

We two, as I'm convalescing from a knee replacement. I had the other done last year.

I've spent a little time rather as Meunier suggests, though with TurboCAD. Next bit of indoor-engineering though, I think, is finding a suitable worm and wheel for my steam-wagon' steering-gearbox. Ackermann steering but with the connection to the steering-column being enclosed I can choose between worm-and-wheel (commercial items) or screw-and-nut (made here). I have some Acme taps, but the former's easier and with less surfaces to wear.

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Hmmm. Nude loft-insulating. I hope he wasn't using glass-fibre matting! Sounds like one of those things best not done au naturelle, like picking blackberries, frying, and clearing nettles.

I can't see it working, either, for the reasons others here have given.

I wonder how the big-bore boy racers would fare if they were involved in an accident, however caused, even if they were the innocent party, because they have "modified" the car. If there is one thing insurers cannot cope with, it is a "modification" even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with safety, vehicle performance or your driving record.

It it's not all-original it doesn't fit the database, and if it doesn't fit the database it can't exist, to the insurance-company filing-clerk. Note I didn't say if the database is on a server or where other humans have a brain...

Oddest I had went like this:

Me: "Hello?" (I never quote my name or number outright.)

Him: Is that Mrs. G...?" - the caller had a British accent.

Me: "No, Mr. G-"

Click!! I'd barely finished saying my name before the bloke rang off abruptly, without a further word. God knows what he was trying to sell, or whatever he'd intended.

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I have received one of the false HMRC calls but failed to fall for it, which may be why I've received no more like it. I think if you reject enough, word gets round and they leave you alone for a while, until new gangs come along.

I have told a few of the "This the Windows Corporation and your computer's reported a fault" liars, liars by that word, my finger on the switch-hook ready to end the call faster then they could.

The "survey" types may be real, engaged by advertising-agencies, and I demand to know who wants the information. That question alone usually floors the caller, who probably does not know anyway but seems unable to grasp the point of my question. They tend to hang up quite quickly.

I found this rather amusing, thanks to the last sentence:

Come learn with us!

Thank you Peter.

I didn't find deleting OO difficult, just very laborious thanks to the sets of great long command-lines needed to winkle out even just one file! MS-DOS didn't let you delete a directory plus its files in one go.

At the time I was on various second-hand PCs. OO crippled one computer completely. I replaced that and tried again but spotted things were going wrong early enough to rescue the poor computer. It's this second one that I cleaned out by DOS.

I'm afraid all that OS manipulating and programme-translating you describe would be far beyond my IT knowledge and ability. It would be too risky - even after copying all my data first, I'd end up with an unusable computer, dead programmes and no internet access.

Regards,

Nigel