What Did You Do Today 2021

Finished a three cylinder radial engine from a John-Tom design, but modified to suit the bits that were in my offcuts box. To my delight ran first time on assembly. Now just need to strip it down and polish out the few remaining machining marks and perhaps paint it when the workshops a bit warmer.

Barry

That's an interesting looking engine, i've not seen that before. Looks well made too.

Jim

Hi, well today I had a Friday the 13th kinda day on Thursday the 13th, or in other words I had a tad of bad luck and drat! I busted a 13mm drill bit with my pistol drill.

I did drill a hole successfully though, but it was in situ and in a bit of a cramped space in an additional piece of steelwork that I've put in my garage roof space, and I only had about 300mm of space to get my head and shoulders above the drilling position. The breakage happened while I was withdrawing the drill from the hole, where upon the pistol drill swung round slightly in my hand and my figure just touched the trigger and the drill bit spun in the hole and being it was skew-whiff in the hole, it snapped like a carrot, it was a good cutting drill bit to boot.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 13/01/2021 19:47:06

I've put the wood away and, to get myself back into the swing of machining metal, I thought I'd spend a couple of days making the precision level whose base casting has been hanging around in the workshop for the last thirty years. The only recent purchase was the vial from Amazon.

Has a slight hump in the middle after milling which I don't really understand.

An hour or so scraping has left it flat enough

Stay well,

Rod

Slightly convex... Lengthways or across? Or both?

A stress-relieving effect?

Slight wear dropping the table in mid-travel so that on long traverses, it follows a very slightly concave path (so very slightly less metal removed from the centre)?

I've noticed similar faults and not really been able to pin them down, but my mill may have a harder life than yours.

Nigel,

I think that's a good analysis. The casting is pretty much at the limit of the travel on my X axis and is stiff at both ends.

Cheers,

Rod

If anything, I would have expected the casting to deflect at the ends (Being slightly less stiff because of the taper at the end of the central rib )

In which case the ends would spring back UP to leave a depression in the middle.

But the "bent" condition has already been corrected .

It is going to be a far neater and better job than mine.

Howard

If anything, I would have expected the casting to deflect at the ends (Being slightly less stiff because of the taper at the end of the central rib )

In which case the ends would spring back UP to leave a depression in the middle.

But the "bent" condition has already been corrected .

It is going to be a far neater and better job than mine.

Howard

Those were certainly my thoughts.  I should have made it clear that it is the travel on my X axis that is stiff at the ends. 

The info that you sent me shows a lot of superfluous machining on the casting but, being from College Engineering Supplies, I guess it was originally intended more as a machining exercise for a student. I'll be going my own way

Rod

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 14/01/2021 22:47:56

Assembled a new king sized bed yesterday.Couldn't get in the garage today because it was full of huge cardboard boxes. Sabre saw decimated them to recycling centre size in two hours. After lunch watched dog crash to floor as she tried to get into "her new bed" (she sleeps at the bottom of it) so spent the afternoon making a step-up stool so we can get a quiet night

Bought a 40mm shell mill from ARC but the MT2 hiders are out of stock, so decided to make my own.

Turned up between centres and used the Boxfords taper turning attachment. Also put on a screwed ring to extract the taper from the quill.

Barry

I finished the level today:

I was fortune to have in my collection a thin brass tube that was a nice snug fit over the thicker tube into which the vial is mounted with the traditional plaster of paris.

Not sure what I'll do with it now - probably put it in a drawer and forget about it.

Stay well,

Rod

Fitted tachos to the lathe and drill, both of which have VFD motors.

One thing that I frustratingly learnt was that these devices seem to need rather more than a 12V power supply before they will work consistently

Of course, I've managed for years without them but I'm the sort of guy who needs data.

stay well,

Rod

Actually a couple of days ago... MOT fun. Not a bad fail - brake pads and a suspension ball joint - the removal tool and a 35mm socket to fit it cost as much as the parts. I also used it as an excuse to get a proper brake wind-back it after decades of bodging it, plus a 30" breaker bar (one online video showed someone using a bodged up bar about eight feet long... while someone else used a stilson 🤣

I changed the brake pads, let's just say only the French could decide to fit the handbrakes to the front wheels. Took me ages to work out why the caliper was clamped solid...

As the light faded I tried to shift my lower suspension balljoint with a specially sourced 30" breaker bar.

With an impressive pop as the boot popped off the inner CV joint fell out.

Next morning, thanks to a video that showed the use of a ratchet strap to keep everything put (and my steplad who actually had an unused ratchet strap which we found after an intensive search) getting it off proved to be surprisingly easy.

More complex was putting it all back together with only two hands. Mercifully the CV joint was OK when lined up, and I was able to push the boot back on.

Hardest bits were putting the little sheet metal heat shield on doing up and doing up the nut on the balljoint. Unlike the old one the replacement didn't have a hex socket for an allen key to stop it turning. Had to jack up the wishbone to get enough grip.

Then with the lack of back and forth driving and multiple starts on the drive, went to start up to take it for retest... and the bloody battery was flat.

All good fun, but at least I'm street legal

Neil

And what about the car?

Yesterday; simple small job, small drill sharpening attachment...from MEW article..

George.

I did a steam test on my William. I was only checking some plumbing so it didn't really need it, but do we need much of an excuse?

Gave my little jig a try out today with some small drills, 1.5 - 3mm, didn't take any pics.. yet but it seems to do the job & produce new cutting edges that look ok.

George.

Started to fit a Machine DRO to my Sieg SX3