The Workshop Progress Thread (2017)

'Silver Machine' is one of my favourites & always takes me back to my mis-spent youth!

Martin.

Jason - Mr Sieg's gear cutters - what supplier/s stocks these?

Chris

From China via e-bay They are no connection with Sieg.

I did wonder if it might be e-bay - many thanks for that Jason

I am getting a bit fed up of having to put a kink in the airhose to alter the speed of my engines when run on air particularly when trying to hold a video camera in the other hand. So today the postie dropped off a couple of jiffy bags of push fit pneumatic fittings and some hose.

I sawed a 3/4" piece off a bit of 3x1 ali, flycut it down to size then poped it in the 4-jaw to drill a 10mm hole 140mm deep then opened up the hole and tapped 1/4BSP. Back onto the mill and drilled M5, M6 and 1/4BSP for the flow adjusters and jobs done.

A quick test of the Jowit and they are a real improvement, the adjusting screws have a fine metric thread and the "needle" anout a 4 degree included angle which makes for a very fine adjustment, takes 4-5 full turns to go from off to full flow so very easy to tweak the speed of the engine.

Jason, where did you get your flow adjusters from, I've seen them on ebay but all from china, did you get yours in the UK ?

E-bay but UK companies Wrekin Pneumatics and Hosemaster

As most of my existing adaptors are threaded 3/8" x 32 to suit an airbrush hose I had to make up some new ones to suit the 1/8" BSP push fit connectors before I could test the manifold on a few engines. Quite happy with the result as it is easy to tune each engine's speed and there is no noticable drop in speed of one engine as the others are opened up.

My 1858 Burrell Boydell engine is coming along. Fitted the chimney base, chimney and part of the boiler levelling system this week.

The Acme threaded rod and nuts arrived from the US of A so am battling with worms and wheels. I have ordered the appropriate booklet by Ivan Law in the hope that it makes more sense than the rather old and technical books that I have.

Brian

Edited By Brian Hutchings on 18/02/2017 13:19:52

Made good progress removing the bearings from the X and Y axes of the CNC machine. The X axis bearings were moaning louder than a Daily Mail reader on the Jeremy Vine program and sure enough the bearing surface was visibly shot. The Y axis bearings didn't sound too bad but it seemed like a good time to check them. As it would be otherwise exposed, the Y axis ballscrew has those conical spring covers to keep swarf and coolant off it. I knew it would be easier to get them off than to get them back on but obviously that didn't hold me back. So now I have the challenge of getting the thing back on.

Sounds easy enough but the large end has to fit into a cylindrical hole that is smaller than the spring wants to be and it is a spring ie wants to be longer than the ballscrew. So it's going to involve coiling it up from the fat end and trying to stop it jumping out as I go. Just to make matters worse, it's as greasy as a very greasy thing and could potentially be quite sharp (=gloves). Being quite sizable, there will be a fair amount of potential energy bound up in it when finally confined.

Does anybody have experience of doing this? I'm sure we all have ideas how we might do it but hard earned (bitten?) experience would be helpful at this stage. I don't see any instructions on the few websites that sell them but I may have missed something.

In the absense of any btter suggestion, I'm visualising a broomstick and possibly some cable ties to progressively confine it as I gradually cram the genie back in the bottle. Possibly a piece of plastic pipe the right size if I'm lucky. Finally I would feed it onto the ballscrew and release the ties once the bearings are back on. I'm sure it will still be somewhat fraught....

Murray

Murray, it's a cop-out but cncyourmyford uses Dyson Van moses to cover the leadscre and keep the swarf out - maybe just replace it?

.

That's looking lovely, Brian

MichaelG.

Many thanks Michael.

Brian

Telescopic spring leadscrew guards come wired fully closed. Put it on the lead screw and assemble completely then release the wire and fit the ends into or over there location.

so your first job is to slide it over something, a broom handle and collapse it to wire it up, plastic cable ties may be risky on the sharp edges.

+1 from me too. I wish I could produce such good looking work!

An unusually productive day today.

I've stripped my lathe down and have been Wyattising it

This fairly nasty piece of work is to keep swarf out ot the saddle gears. In my defence, I broad my fretsaw blade after doing the outside and can't find the 10 I know I have somewhere. The inside was done with a dremel hence the erratic nature (I know - bad workman and so on).

The next thing on the lathe is to replace the spindle which I probably mucked up when removing it to replace the gears in my first act of machine destruction.

To do that I'm making a press. A bit of 12 inch girder from the scrapyard is the starting point. Chop out some of the middle...

A strikingly challenging task which has consumed 2 angle grinders half a dozen milling cutters, a hacksaw blade, a considerable amount of time and a very large amount of bad language.

Today I was boring out the hole in the top with a core drill. The girder *just* fits under my mill, so I was able to mill a flat on the top, but no way will it get a chuck there. and I'd burn out it's little motor.

This worked much better than I expected, though it took 20 minutes or so. I'd managed to get a 10mm hole through with a milling cutter, so I made an 10mm/ .25 adapter for the arbor which work quite well (which is what I've been waiting for to get the lathe back together).

core drill top right, core on the left and the adapter (the drill bit wasn't in of course) at the bottom.

I did try and cut an M20 rod on my lathe, but this was not a success, so I invested in one made by a professional.

I've got another scrapyard steel block which I will mill out to take an M20 nut and bolt it into the recess. Hey pressto! (sorry).

Iain

Thanks Howard, I guessed that was how they came. So I will focus on getting the genie back in the bottle before letting it loose in situ. I have some giant Tyraps and the edges aren't actually very sharp.

The other side is slightly messed up from when I pulled it back to examine the radial bearing (floating, no thrust) at the far end of the ballscrew. I have a feeling that won't be entirely straightforward either.

Murray

Wow, lots of great things happening - well done folks!

Neil

Muzzer,

How about Jubilee clips to compress the end?

Muzzer,

Re: your spring cover dilemma. If you put a rod in your lathe (assuming you have one!) "floating" in the chuck and passing through the spindle to provide lateral support to the spring, slide the uncompressed spring onto it and the secure the other end in a tailstock chuck. Use the tailstock to compress the spring to its limit and tie off with strong wire. Wind the tailstock barrel back in and move the tailstock up to where you left off. Secure the tailstock and repeat the procedure until the spring is sufficiently compressed to go over the mill leadscrew. Would that work? You might even be able to firmly attach one end of the spring to the lathe chuck to impart a bit of windy-uppy action at the same time, should it be needed.

I think that's how I'd at least try to do it. Mind you, I'd make sure I used some hefty wire to secure it once compressed. One of those going twang at the wrong time could do some serious damage to you or the surroundings, or both.

Good luck!

John