What Did You Do Today 2019

Nice work there Limpet, I was wondering how to lighten mine prior to moving it, now I know😉.

What are the bedways looking like wear wise after de-rusting?

Expect you will find the odd homeless washer after re-assembly anyway😉

Edited By V8Eng on 09/03/2019 21:49:15

Swarf, Mostly!

Thanks for the parts listing, useful info

V8Eng

I suspect the reassembly may take a little longer - the bedways look good so is worth the effort.

I may even put a few extras in like clutch, ball racees on the feedscrtews and DRO still deciding

Luckily I still have the DB8 to use until it goes when this is working.

I'll post up what's left over so was obviously not needed in the first place :0 :0 :0

Went to Oxford to collect a rotary table that I bought. When I got home, I found a high speed drill press that had snuck into the boot while I was not watching. Seriously, though, I have been after one to replace my el Cheapo drill for some time & the gent that I visited offered it to me at a price that I could not refuse.

The drill is by Multico, but there is no other info that I can see. I cannot find any info on lathes.co.uk about this machine: does anyone have any info about it? The three speeds would be a start!

.

Best known for their Chisel Mortisers, I believe: **LINK**

https://www.scosarg.com/leaflets/Multico/Multico%20mortiser%20range.pdf

But you might find what you seek in the parent directory:

https://www.scosarg.com/leaflets/Multico/

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 14/03/2019 21:59:38

Thanks for providing those links, Michael. I looked through the pdfs, but no sign of my “new” drill. I’ll put a photo in my album tomorrow to see if that stirs any further memories from anyone.

Dave

After many months of fighting bullders, kitchen designers and kitchen fitters I'm on the home leg of getting my new kitchen done and dusted. The main downside is that I've been banned from putting the traction engines back into the new kitchen.

On the plus side I've had some "me" time this afternoon (and also tomorrow) so I've been able to restart on the traction engines. I've started to make some press tooling so that I can form the rear wheel strakes to the correct shape. The first operation is to clean and square up some lengths of hot rolled steel. I thought this would be a good chance to try some of the slab mills I bought ages ago on Fleabay. First operation is to clean up the narrow surfaces:

The HSS cutter is 4" diameter and 4" long. Cutting parameters were 88rpm, 160mm/min feedrate (with 20 teeth about 3.6 thou per tooth), width of cut just over 1.5" and depth of cut 0.1". A bit of vibration but nothing serious. The fuzzy grey area behind the cutter is steam. I tried doubling the depth of cut but the cutter pulled the work out of the vice. It didn't break the cutter, it just carried on like nowt had happened but with a much bigger DOC. Clearly I'm pussyfooting about with feeds and DOCs, but I also need to get serious about clamping the work down before I up the ante.

Once the sides were cleaned up I started on the wider sides:

Same spindle speeds and feeds with a WOC of 2.5" and DOC of 0.02". I've only got about 40thou to play with in terms of bringing the work to thickness.

Clearly I've still got a lot to learn about using man size cutters. I don't think I'm ever going to manage to stall the horizontal mill, unlike the Bridgeport.

Andrew

Started to take the masking tape of all the bits and pieces for my 4" Durham engine after painting all the black bits, ready to rebuild it.

At work. Riveted the strakes on the back wheels which can now be put on the jig ready for the spokes riveting.

I tried to up load photos to my files, which I have not done for a while, for some reason they will not load up. I will try from a PC tomorrow.

BRI

Continued putting my Harrison L5 Lathe back into use.

By today I'd already given it a 3ph conversion courtesy of Newton-Tesla (I told them the machine and they chose the appropriate conversion set.)

The new motor is on an adjustable bracket arrangement on the steelwork for what will be an overhead hoist arrangement, and above the headstock. This puts the motor up into cleaner conditions and allows the lathe to go back close to the wall. I made the adjustable tie-bars involved, from bits of scrap miniature-railway track. The original, large, 1-ph motor was on a massive steel box welded to the back of the cabinet, too greedy of space in a cramped workshop so now very un-welded. I'll also need to chop the original change-wheel guard, or make a custom one..

The inverter and "pendant" control-box live on the wall above the tailstock.

Today's task was adding oil to the headstock and replacing the cover, with a new greaseproof paper gasket cut from the bag inside a cornflakes box. Then oiling round, and carefully testing the machine.

Finally, sorted out the "pre-owned" QC tool-post I'd acquired for it. It needs appropriate stud bushes but they are no problem. However, I discovered the three blocks with it, all have the same clamping and guide grooves but slightly different tool channels and screw-threads! For consistency so I need just the one key I have, I will have to make the replacements for missing locking and clamping screws, with square heads are equal across the set.

So that's the next shopping-list: more QC blocks (2 or 3 more will probably be sufficient), and replacing missing change-wheels.

Ummmm, how can anything be "pre-owned (pre- booked / ordered / existing)? Unless you are Doctor Who?

I wanted a PSU for guitar effects pedals, should be 9V. Found a lovely old 10V 1amp nominal transformer PSU notable for having both a thermal fuse in the mains line and a self-resetting thermal trip on the output, as well as oversize laminations. Lovely little bit of kit, but 15.7V off load. Luckily the inside was also well laid out with a neat cradle for the transformer and the rectifier circuit board and not remotely crowded so plenty of air-space for a regulator. Digging in the bits box found a 7805 and a 3.6V zener, so with the zener on the middle pin I got a nice solid 8.6V which will be fine.

Nice neat job of piggybacking the extra components on the existing PCB with some insulation tape and heat-shrink tube to avoid any risk of a short out.

The pedals all consume about 10-15mA except one with a tuning readout that's 85mA in 'daylight mode', so max about 120mA so no worries about overheating.

Very simple job, but satisfying to give such a well made bit of kit a new life.

Spent the day nailing up a bit of plasterboard to finish a built in cupboard location and then stripping wallpaper for the rest of the day. Desperately waiting for the delivery of some 6-32x1/8" grub screws from Emkay so I can retreat back to the safety of the shed...

More progress on the press tooling. The parts were machined to length on the vertical mill, and the curved surface on the press tool base machined on the CNC mill:

The CAM was set to leave a scallop height of 0.05mm. That's probably ok as it is, but a few minutes with a fine file will knock off the peaks. The finish feels better than it looks:

It's most likely that I will be forming the strakes hot so whatever the finish it isn't going to look pristine by the time I've finished.

I also made a threaded spigot to hold the moveable part of the press tool in the flypress. The thread chosen was 3/4" BSW at 10tpi, screwcut at 180rpm with a full form profile insert:

Back to work tomorrow, so the press tooling is now on hold.

Andrew

Was supposed to have had a visitor but he'd fallen ill.

My model-engineering society was to have had a Magic Lantern demonstration this evening but the speaker (himself a society member) had fallen ill.

Spent some hours trying to progress my Hindley wagon-engine's design.... I'm not sure which is harder, designing an enclosed, inverted-vertical compound engine with Stephenson's Link Motion, or learning to draw it by CAD!

Looking good Andrew, have you made the former to the wheel rim radius or a bit tighter to allow for some spring back?

I've set the radius of the press tool to 10", whereas the radius of the wheel is 11.75". I used CAD to determine the radius as it means the strakes will be curved 2 thou or so too much at the outer edges. I hope that means they'll be a nice fit on the outer edges. The rivets may pull the parts together as well. The strakes are 1/4" thick and to match the wheel radius only need to move about 20 thou at the edges, so I suspect that springback would be a real problem, especially forming cold. That's why I think I'll need to form hot. But I'll experiment once I've finished the tooling.

Andrew.

One of the lads had the same problem when we were apprentices, it put some savage gashes in the job as it hauled it out of the vice, Slab cutters have a long cutting edge so they are probably one of the biggest single loads for a mill, like you say you are probably not going to run out of power as the machine is probably speced for gang milling so one slab mill is not going to bring things to a halt. It might be worth swinging the Kurt round so the cutting force is against the fixed jaw, it looks as though the vice is big enough to clamp the job endways to still cut in one pass.

Mike

As I have a strong interest in mechanical speed machines I went to Elvington Top Speed meeting today.

Little did I know I was being set up by friend Roger, Andy Lincoln Smith and his wife Helen.

Andy brought his BSA C10 and let me sit on it then Helen said your riding it doing the measured Top Speed mile.

A group of speed nuts had brought the riding gear for me.

I had not ridden a motorbike for 40 years

What a nostalgia trip on that 2 mile runway a bit more sedate to 1974's 207.9mph run.

That model BSA was my first motorbike bought in 1969 for £10 they now fetch £2600.

You have to watch out 40mph can be achieved ha,ha.

Then back home and got back in the workshop to do some work on my pumps.

The competitors you meet some are involved in ME and full size projects connected to speed

A skip gave me a defunct 100w LED floodlight. Chip dead of course and I wouldn't want something so big. The psu is good but 36v constant current 100w is potted so not worth trying to modify. What use is it except driving LEDs? A new smaller floodlight is cheaper than a replacement lower power psu so I think the heavy alloy casting is best melted down. Must get into this home casting aspect of the hobby.

An excellent day, Paul!

Neil

I've just finished this for my lathe. laugh if you like, once a biker always...

(I'm a better biker than machinist).

Today I started test flights on a new Free Flight model from a 1952 design that has kept me busy in the workshop for the last month (Aussie Nats in April). It's looking promising

Only use of the C3 Mini-lathe was to manufacture the fuel shut-off and tweak the ports of the equally ancient FROG 150 model diesel engine.

If anybody is interested in such things, here is a linky **LINK**

* Danny M *