What Did you do Today 2022

Michael,

Yes, it's me! I suggested this arrangement in response to a query on the forum for design suggestions for a die filer, as per your second link. The idea was to get a slow filing motion on the downstroke and a quick return on the upstroke, "à la shaper".

If it's of any interest, I just went out into the garage and temporarily connected a 20V power tool battery to it to see how it ran. It didn't run - it jumped, up and down about a foot and scared the life out of me! I've ordered another motor with a reduction gearbox to give approximately 50 - 60 strokes per minute, more in line with my hand filing. I've got an adjustable 24V power supply on the way, too, so fine tuning the speed for different materials should be attainable. Talk about overkill!

John

What did I do?

Not enough! I have these days...

Anyway, eventually stirred myself into action to continue making a roof for a short, narrow external passage, to use as a garden odds and ends store. Or for a bicycle if I obtain one again.

Then after tea....

Investigated rebuilding my drawing-board... starting by exhuming it from behind a stack of other stuff.

Not fully - a professional-grade A0-capacity drawing board has a massively heavy stand with a complicated parallelogram-mechanism for rise and tilt; and I had stripped this down irretrievably. It also takes up a huge amount of room space if used fully. Instead I will cobble together what I can, at a fixed height and reasonable slope for me. (I had tried to sell the unit complete, but had no takers.)

The drawing motion itself is all easy to re-assemble. At the moment it stands on end, wrapped in black bin-bags, in the corner next to my bed. In the very dim light the bundle looks like a mysterious hooded figure overlooking me, and it's a wonder it has not given me hypnagogic nightmares!

I've also an A3 board made by Blundell-Harling - a local firm to me, still making drawing-boards and also a range of special-to-trade slide-rules. This is a much simpler unit, for use on an ordinary table, with a parallel-sliding rule and a basic protractor arrangement.

I recall you could at one time buy a resilient surface material a bit like lino, for drawing-boards. I don't know its proper name. Anyone know if this is still readily-available?

Today I tried inserting an ISO30 taper into the horizontal spindle of my Warco HV mill for the first time and found it did not fit. It's all wobbly. Angst.

Tried another taper, an ER collet chuck. Still no good. Ran around the workshop shouting, "Don't panic" until I was quite breathless.

Eventually tried removing the 2 driving dogs from the spindle nose and in it goes, all snuggle bunnies the way it should.

Why do I do this to myself?

Robin Thats life

Nigel,

One make of the material you mentioned is/was called 'Rembroplast'.

I received an 'Allbrit' drawing board when my then employers closed a drawing office. It had that parallelogram rise & fall mechanism. I had dismantled the board and base for carriage but, on reassembly, fitted the large sector-shaped cast iron weights the wrong way round. When I first depressed the foot pedal, the board flew upwards, narrowly missing my chin. Had I been standing a few millimetres further forward, I'd have been eligble (except for gender ) to perform the actions for that well-known song about 'walking the Bloody Tower'!

In case any reader is thinking of making their own drawing board (seems unlikely in this CAD age ), do take note of the need to slot the screw-holes in the rear battens and to use brass washers under the heads of the round-head brass screws. Failure to do this has resulted in two of the joints opening in our solid teak refectory-style dining table because of shrinkage while parked too close to a central heating radiator. The table was made by my late father - he was a skilled cabinet maker but even he missed it! In this case, lateral shrinkage was too strong, even for Cascamite One-Shot!!

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Yesterday I finished making all the ball handles for the Quorn Tool and Cutter grinder I am building !

Regards to all

Derek

Be aware with ISO 30 taper tooling that there are several different variations on a theme. They all use the same angle and power is transmitted by the drive dogs, not the taper. There are however different arrangements of the drive dogs and different draw bar threads. viz-

• ISO, NT, NMTB, DIN2080 - short parallel section at small end. Equal drive slots.
• CAT, CV, V-Flange, DIN 69871 - no parallel section. Unequal drive slots.
• BT, MAS403, DIN6383 - no parallel section. Equal drive slots.

Care needs to be taken when purchasing particularly is 2nd hand from relatively unknown sources.

John

In adition to those 30 taper shanks John listed is SKF30, this type has no provision for drive dogs and relies on the taper to transmit power, not equipped for draw bar use but is designed for retention by pull stud so is quick change tooling, standard equipment on the Emco F1 cnc milling machine and other Emco machines.
It does have a vee groove to allow the use of auto tool changing.

Emgee

Pretty much designed the layout of my new double garage/workshop, (designed in my head, while going to sleep every night).

It will have two zones, divided by a plastic curtain: The outer half, next to the outer double door, will be the 'dirty' zone; any sanding, drilling, planing etc will be done in this half, with the curtain closed across, and maybe with the outer door open to allow dust and shavings to "vent" out to the atmosphere. And once in a while, I can blow out all the dust with an airline. I will fit kitchen type units as drawers and cupboards for all my tools and stuff.

The air compressor will be in the garden shed, probably powered by solar cells on the shed roof, and away from the house so no noise nuisance, with a buried pipe and control wires to the garage.

The indoor half of the garage will be the clean zone; where I will have my electronics bench, my 3D printer and other dust-sensitive tools and equipment. That way, dust will be kept away from the sensitive tools and the house, and it will also help keep the heat in the house.

If I need to bring a car in to work on; I can open the curtain to allow the full area of the double garage.

.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 27/09/2022 19:23:58

SNAP!

I'm literally in the process of doing the same thing to my workshop.

In my case to create a 1.8 x 3.2m welding bay right by the main door where I can create sparks, jets of molten slag, and plumes grinding dust with impunity, without risking it contaminating the machine tools at the other end of the garage, between the curtains and a sort of DMZ of shelving and storage, I'm hoping to be able to have machines and grinding co-exist in the same building ok.

I think this is going to mean that any woodworking gets booted outside though.

Swarf, Mostly -

Thank you for the information. I'll see if anyone around here sells 'Rembroplast' or an equivalent.

My board is laminated chipboard, about 20mm thick, on a parallelogram mechanism with a very complicated brake, between two columns on a square-steel tube base - and very heavy!

I spent this evening trying to re-assemble the link-motion that supports the board itself, but as I'd envisaged never doing that, in fact plundering the steel parts for material; I'd made no sketches or photos. It's not gone together correctly, but it is potentially capable of being modified to lock it in place.

I think though I will remove all the mechanism again, leaving just the base and two posts, and fit a simple metal or wooden frame to hold the board itself at a suitable height. I don't have house-room for folding it out to any more than about 10º off vertical, and it'll be only me using it.

It did not use weights as counterbalance, but a very powerful tension-spring on a long adjusting-screw inside one of the columns. If you were not careful. and failed to slacken the spring first, removing the very heavy board would cause its underframe to leap up violently, rather dangerously.

.

Re your aside about the "CAD age " , people do still use drawing-boards. Possibly not by many engineers or architects, but they are still being made and sold. The main buyers might include artists of one sort or another..

Why am I gong to all this trouble to rebuild something I had virtually destroyed? I'd been too hasty, taking it all to bits, before discovering I cannot learn its computer-bound replacement to any serious level!

+++

AHA! Not 'Rembroplast' but an equivalent, called 'Papyroboard' , sold by a company called Orchard.

Their web-site shows a wide range of drawing-boards including A0 size with parallel-motion rules, plus light-boxes, plan-chests, etc; the publicity suggesting a wide range of work still needing these things,CAD or not.

I once used mine for taking off sections from a geology-map. Such tasks can only be done by manual plotting.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 27/09/2022 23:47:43

Impatient as I am, I just ditched the other jobs I was partway through doing to put the curtains up, in the hope I could begin to move forward with a bigger reorganization more easily that way.

I think I've done a decent job of getting the curtains installed, and the layout works well for maximising effective use of space (there's a 210A oil cooled arc welder in frame, but totally hidden.

The whole job was about 95% moving stuff around and 5% actually installing curtains.

Need to finish the other side and trim the excess off the baffle at the top in my lunch break tomorrow, then I can really make some space.

Nigel, plenty of Papyoboard for sale on the net which is the green/ivory faced board covering.

Jason -

Thankyou! In fact I found it by trying to find that 'Rembroplast'

It may well have been 'Papyroboard' that I used to have years ago, on a crude board that was just a sheet of 16mm plywood..

My drawing-board is beyond full re-assembly but I can put it back into something serviceable. The actual drawing-board and parallel-motion are all intact. It's the very complicated stand that is beyond reconstruction because I don't know how it's supposed to go together, and I may have lost some parts, though not deliberately!

A CAD model might help?

Very droll, Nicholas!

A Cardboard Aided Design model, perhaps?

or Cannot Assess Design,

Cannot Analyse Details,

Completely, Absolutely Destroyed (well, part of it is)

How true. I have BT and NT tapers left over from the wild buying spree I went on while I waited for the mill to arrive.

All part of lifes' rich tapestry, I do like the low overhang variety.

I need more than one collet chuck because the machine has no spindle lock and 30 taper does not come with spanner flats. Thank goodness it is a non-retaining, there is precious little room for a sledge hammer between draw bar and ceiling

Robin

John Doe 2,

I am interested in how many solar panels you reckon it will take to power your compressor, I fear that your shed roof may not be large enough to accommodate them all. Dave W

My life improved greatly when I became old. I have no problem complying with the "old" stereotype. It is so undemanding

Completed a dozen Gauge Frame Valve Spindles for the railway's S160s:-

They're in 304 stainless - which sort of half-deserves its 'free cutting' description, but workhardens locally. Mercifully not very deeply. The only bit I didn't do on the WM250V was the 3 right-angled flats at the little end - the divvy head on the Bridgy clone offered too easy an alternative to setting it up in the vice on the vertical slide. Cutting the through-slot in the major diameter was not too difficult, but a bit time-consuming - I tried three ways using jobber drills, slot drills and four-flute end-cutting carbide endmills, but none of 'em were significantly better, quicker or easier than the others.

Major diameters I was trying to hold within +0 -0,01 mm - they go into a sort of squashable bush that I'm not really familiar with, but seems well-established in steam circles. There're one or two of them that go to -0,02 or 3, but I think they'll still be OK.