What did you do today? 2023

Attempted to get into the workshop, but for the 6th day on the trot got family visitors. You can have too much of a good thing!

Went to club's track day, needed to stay to the end to count takings and take them home, ready to bank and got soaked for my trouble! Given that the annual public Liability insurance, monthly electric and water Direct Debits together equal £100 per track day, we made quite a loss on the day. That doesn't include the council's rent and other more minor costs. Teabags, coffee cakes and goodies all supplied free by members. Surprising how many people turned up later in the afternoon when it was getting wetter. Third poor or non existent track day - first it wasn't safe to operate with so few members on site, next track day also cancelled, not safe to run with a broken elm tree branch hanging by a piece of its bark about 12ft above the track. When council contractor's cut it down, I counted 10 rings then estimated total must have been 60+, so you imagine the size of it. Took them 4hours to do. Today, we were on the point of cancelling due to the weather but very young passengers arrived in slowly increasing numbers. Nothing like a normal day of course. Cold, wet and windy, quite a horrible day.

John

Bazyle -

Thankyou!

The stretch I walked is from the West edge of Portesham. I saw only one hut, which appears rather oddly as if recently re-roofed, a bit crudely but reasonably effectively. It's about a third of the way to Abbotsbury, maybe less, and on the left. It could be the splodge that Google Earth shows, by two opposite field entrances.

I'm intrigued by Google Earth marking the Goods Shed as a now a museum ("temporarily closed". I don't know what that was about!

It is also noticeable that the station was rather short of the village but there is a vague hint of the line starting to curve away to the North-West there, as it would have needed do to have continued to Bridport.

I hope the roof repairs have succeeded!

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Tea-and-natter morning at the club, with rain stopping any outdoor activities, apart from a locomotive's steam-test in the vague lea of a building.

''''''

Spent the last couple of days replacing to top,back,bottom and both ends of a large multidrawer wooden cabinet my wife bought at a "bargain" price. It is 6ft x 3ft x 2ft deep. Full of damp rot & wood worm supposedly treated. The timber to replace the affected parts cost a lot more than the"bargain" cabinet. The only bits that survived were the mahogany front frame, the sliding glass doors with mahogany surrounds & the drawers. Just need to finish it off with some fettlin then varnish it. Oh and now it needs wall hanging in her study above the desk.

I was going to post the build of my indexing head but unfortuanatly all the photos taken during the build on the SD card turned out to be corrupt. When I get a bit more time I will strip it down and try to explain how I made some parts and modified other sourced parts to complete the project.

regards

Edited By Oldiron on 22/07/2023 22:55:25

I've been through something similar in recent weeks Nigel. I've a lot of work in TurboCAD that I don't want to lose and decided to re-load TC onto my new laptop. It seemed like a completely different product to the one I remembered. I had real problems with accidently hitting 3D features I didn't want that I simply don't remember being there before. I've managed to get back to the point where I can do simple operations without getting in too much of a mess - but it's not been enjoyable. I'm now working through some of my projects and exporting DXF's so I can being them into Solid Edge - either as Parts or Drafts, often both.

As an aside, because of this, I've also spent more time exploring 2D drafting in SE-CE and there were some things I didn't really understand. 2D drafting is an area that isn't often covered well by most Solid Edge YouTubes/Tutorials, because they naturally tend to focus on the 3D side of SE.

I finally found some 9 year old YT videos about the 'old' free 2D SE CAD system and fortunately much of it is still relevant and useful to 2D drafting within the SE-CE version. It's made use of layers, model space, paper size, scaling and custom backgrounds much easier to understand - at least for me!

SE 2D Drafting - NCU Engineering

So I very much agree with SoD that it's not fun trying to ride two horses at the same time. My muscle memory is now firmly attuned to Solid Edge and it's very hard not to use the wrong button when trying to do some simple operation. Hopefully, once I've got most of what I want over to SE, I won't need to revisit TC too often in the future.

Regards,

IanT

Finished this last night I had to revert back to woodworking mode, not that a lot of woodworking involved.

This was done for a friend of the wife's. I am no means a sign writer by any stretch of the imagination. But they are very happy with it.

IanT -

I have wasted a lot of money, including electricity, and countless hundreds of hours trying to learn what I thought originally, would prove genuinely helpful. Instead, beyond a very low level, it proved genuinely impossible.

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IMSI seems to make many changes to TurboCAD with each new edition, not just more features; but the major new additions are all architectural, artwork and commercial file-sharing. The basics are all still there but I think like Microsoft with 'Windows', IMSI loves to tinker around the edges to suggest Doing Something Useful, without improving anything. Also, each edition's versions differ by the commands available.

SoD is right. It is hard to try to use two very different systems but unfortunately necessary if we change from one to another, but still need the original drawings.

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Any CAD tutorial is better than none at all; and I completed Alibre's own exercises reasonably successfully. However, following step-by-step instructions does not guarantee learning.

I still need my basic-level TurboCAD, orthographic-only, project drawings; but am still faced with its baffling, "WYSIWYDG" printing system. (D = "Don't" .)

I have no "real" drawings in Alibre anyway. A failure. Tried it recently, but what looked very simple proved beyond me.

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In the workshop now I use mainly, rough freehand sketches; often even only measurements "on-the-job". CAD is only for the few, formal elevation drawings necessary. I want to get the things built.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 23/07/2023 12:25:29

Well I'm sorry to hear that Graham. I used various versions of TC for 20+ years, so I was fairly well versed in it.

I've now been using Solid Edge CE for about three years and definitely struggled at first. I'm certainly not an expert user but I can now do most of what I need with SE, although it did take time and effort. Until recently, I might have believed that (for 2D drafting) TC would be easier for me to use. That illusion has now been completely dispelled. The 2D sketching in SE is pretty much the same as when sketching in 3D and I am now very comfortable with that (SE) environment.

What has really suprised me is how quickly I've lost my TC skills. I'm now pretty sure that part of my early problems with SE were in 'unlearning' TC and that is exactly what I seem to have done. It was a still a shock when I tried to go back though.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 23/07/2023 13:14:31

Thankyou!

I'd only ever regarded CAD as a tool, a means to an end, like the lathe and milling-machine, but had not bargained for how hard it would prove to learn.

One trap many here warned me to avoid was trying to think in one make of CAD while trying to use another, and I did take that warning. TurboCAD, SolidEdge and Alibre are all very different in style and controls even for drawing the same thing.

'

I was also too hasty, from misplaced optimism, to dismantle my drawing-board. I can re-assemble it after a fashion but not how it should be, so though all the parts are still there its complicated, parallelogram lift-and-tilt mechanism will never work again! I am considering cutting from its enormous, very heavy A0 size to a more sensible A1, trimming the draughting-head rails to suit, and making new parts to fit it on the stand at a convenient but set height. Only I have gone and accidentally broken one of the two plastic rules, which does not help!

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Anyway, after yesterday's tempest, it's sunny outside so (typing this while dinner cooks) today's focus is on the model-engineering itself, making and fitting bits from real steel to correspond with the real bits already made, rather than trying to draw them on the computer.

Noticed my live centre has a drawbar screw in the back but couldn't find any M8 screw in tangs for sale anywhere...

But we have the tools, we have the power!

That seems small, M8. ARC Euro sells M10 and 3/8" BSW ones for MT2 tools.

Otherwise, if the spindle or tailstock barrel is clear right through use a drawbar instead.

I tend to use the centre in an extension sleeve to give myself a bit of room and thought it'd be nice to be able to drift it out nice n easy...

Good point - the top-slide on my Myford ML7 is at some odd angle at the moment so I could bring everything close in. Though normally the less overhang the better.

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Otherwise.....

The usual suspects...

....new parts made in all good faith only to find them or the sub-assembly they are in, unsatisfactory;

- parts made ages ago now found unsatisfactory or giving problems for neighbouring parts yet to be made;

- fasteners fouling each other, internal corners of angles, or other components;

- slot-drilled slots both irregular and out-of-parallel to the edges even over less than 1/2" so needing filing to fit...

Nowt new there then! Just part of the challenge of a major project built from no more than old advertisement photographs - no drawings, even drawings as proverbially full of errors as many published model-engineering ones are alleged to be.

I never said I was after the heady heights of "Commended" , let alone Bronze Medals.

Been meaning to make a small vice stop for those odd jobs to save some of the set up time. I used some offcuts of ali from the rounds I cut up for the Farm Boy I am making. I had a spare day as waiting for some material for the farm boy so knocked up this little stop to clamp to the vice.

Spent most of the day trying to work out the ins and outs of lathe gears, I bought some for my new to me faircut and realised that although the bore is the right size the teeth arent, I can get around that by replacing the drive gear with a bored out one of the ones I just bought so not too many worries there but it seems there is a gear missing from the headstock spindle so I spent several headscratching sessions first of all working out wether it was really missing or not and then trying to work out what size it should be and what it does....that brought me here ...Hi!!

I think it might be the spindle lock but .....what do I know I only just bought the thing..as you can see I am not any nearer yet lol

Just some M8 thumbnuts for the railway - this is the last half-dozen. Think they hold some kinda QD screen over something or other.

Material was a bit of 7/8" brightdrawn steel, but I don't know the spec. It was nasty - grumbling when cut, hard to get a decent finish and trying to work-harden when parting-off. I needed quite a bit of WD40. Last time I met anything like this it was alleged to be EN8.

My old push-type knurling tool still works, despite it's cheesy-soft sideplates, if you angle it slightly towards the chuck so as to make it bite on the nearside without having to put too much pressure on the crossslide. But I think its retirement is approaching.

Oh, the nut on the far right with the coarser knurl is the sample I was copying. 

Edited By Mick B1 on 27/07/2023 10:20:54

If you canm't find M8 screw in tangs, it doesn't matter.

Just crews ina length of M8 studding, as far as possible (Loctite it to sure that it won't come out.

It only needs to protrude far enough for the drift, or the ejector in the tailstock to make comtact.

(Make the projection the same as that of an existing tang )

Similarly, if a taper now comes with a M12 thread for a drawbar, My standard is 3/8 BSW ) A piece of M12 studding is screwed / loctited in place before the fitting is reversed in the chuck, faced and drilled and tapped 3/8BSW.

Trying to tap a 3/8 BSW thread in M12 studding out of a fitting, often ends in disaster. Being screwed into the fitting provides the support that stops the thin wall thread from tearing.

This works for me!

Howard

As an update to this I rubbed it down ready to varnish and to my surprise all the drawer sliders and front end faces of the cabinet were brass. It had been stained and varnished so many times on top of the brass that it looked just like the wood. So there is about 7 mtrs of 1/2" brass bar in total. I had to polish it all up and now the cabinet looks great.

regards

You wouldn't think working out a new location for a small plug-cock in a big chassis would be awkward, would you?

Oh yes it can!

Nothing ventured... Finished this evening screwing its support hangar to a handy bracket, all of four inches from its original spot using some slots originally cut in a chassis member for Something Else subsequently scrapped as unworkable and horrible; and there it is - one Mounting, Valve, Injector Water Inlet.

The valve appears to be an old motor-cycle petrol-tank fitting: I fitted the operating-spindle with a slotted steel bush to fit the cock handle.

I could have used the DRO to drill the bracket and hangar, but to keep my hand in, elected to use all those little lines and numbers, to space 3-each 4BA tapping and clearance holes.

Lo and behold! They all line up, none broke out of the material (nor broke taps) and none of the screw-heads or the spanner foul on anything !

Just got back from the Welland rally, brilliant!

Usual delay getting in but well worth it. AND the sun shone! Super turnout of engines and assorted kit.

One happy chappie.

Mike