What did you do today (2015)

 

Clive.

Re.  Waiting now for the next trip out! We have been free of any for some days now.

Just a thought... A long while ago a friend of mine had a similar problem - we traced it down by isolating various circuits in the house. We narrowed down to the garage and workshop. Consequently cutting the story short - I found that a leg of the lighting circuit had a low insulation to earth. This was traced back to some old fluorescent light fittings. The one which was found to be causing the problem had a strip of resin synthetic bounded paper insulation with terminals connecting to the other components mounted on a blast choked. It turned out the problem only occurred after a wet/damp spell where the SRBP absorbed moisture hence reducing the insulation resistance! When we found this I can remember the amazement that that a piece of insulating material had become hygroscopic.

Another area to check is insulation to earth with the neutrals isolated for each circuit. Low resistance when isolated will cause an imbalance to the RCD.

I hope this might help with the fault finding - please excuse me if I'm telling you 'how to suck eggs'!

John

Beware of old fluro fittings, one member of this forum lost his workshop to a fire traced to a faulty fluorescent fitting.

Ian S C

I used to do something similar, essentially touching off each tool on the work. Fine for HSS tooling but being a butter fingers I found that going a gnats wotsit too far with carbide tooling resulted in a chipped cutting edge. Even worse I wasn't automatically saving the offsets, but writing them down and manually applying them each time I changed tools. Inevitably I forgot sometimes, or forgot to press 'Enter', and had a few wobblies involving broken cutters.

Preventing damaged tooling was one of the main drivers for me getting an electronic tool setter. It's also quite a lot quicker.

Andrew

I prefer the Tormach screen - BIG buttons with a clear indication of function. When you're in a "oh fudge, shouldn't have done that" mode you want a big, obvious, stop button to hit before disaster strikes!

Andrew

Yep, that's definitely me. I want to design and make parts, not get bogged down in creating the means to produce parts.

Mind you it would be unfair to label me a cheque book engineer; I normally use my credit card instead.

Andrew

I have played about a bit more with the Duality Lathe, After trying out the reduce diameter conversational programme on a bit of Aluminium I tried it on a large chunk of EN36 2 1/2" diameter . Initially the chatter was horrible so I decided to take the piece out of the chuck, machine out the chatter pattern, centre drill it and then return it to the Duality lathe with the Tailstock providing extra support. This time it worked and I turned it down to 3/4" dia with a 1/4" radius at the shoulder and removed the tailstock. With the tailstock out of the way I faced off the end until the centre hole was machined out and cut a taper.

Next operation will be to drill a through hole and cut a taper in the bore to suit the end of a magneto. This will be followed with the cutting of some sprocket teeth.

Here are yesterdays efforts.

Edited By JasonB on 30/12/2015 16:11:47

Bob,

Don't know if you know this but there is a nice free program for designing sprockets on the web called Sprocketeer.

**LINK**

I know a lot of CAD programs can do it now but it's really a heads up for everyone.

Re. Sprocketeer

That's brilliant ... Thanks, John.

The 'online' version even works on my [v1] iPad.

MichaelG.

Hi John,

I have "Gearotic" which is a brilliant bit of software for all sorts of gearing and pullies. It has loads of different gearing types, spiral bevel, plain bevel, straight tooth, Helical as well as all types of toothed pulley forms, clock making stuff and more. Sprocketeer looks good though and it's free.

bob

Now you can Thai up a few loose ends

Have a long and happy retirement!

Neil

The new 2016 What did you do today thread is now available to use