What Did You Do Today (2017)

Michael G, photos in my album Watch Lathe
BobH

I always thought that the diameter of the thread on watch lathe 8mm collets was 0.268 ". On rare occasions 0.700"

From The Watchmakers Lathe by Donald De Carle

Roy

Edited By roy entwistle on 12/01/2017 16:19:10

For the past two days I have been tidying up the workshop/radio station/editorial desk/reference library after a burst of activity over the holidays. My floor is still there (I recognise the colour) and my books are all tidied neatly away, some thrown out. (Sob!) I found my other tap wrench, my solar powered lighting is back on, and brighter, my cheap electronic voltmeter worked again, then failed, so that needs attention, and I have at least 3 square feet of workbench I can practically (as against theoretically) use. I have been motorising my G1 loco, and written two electronics articles in the last month, and submitted them for publication, as well as Club News. I saved several wall warts, and chucked a tangled mess of odd wires.

Photos are available from 'Scoop' Theasby Enterprises, Sheffield Home for the Terminally Bewildered, Thaxted, Norfolk. Proceeds to Geoff's Aged Volvo Fund.

Deborah is a happy bunny.

Geoff

Ah, young Theasby still has his talent for fiction, I see.

Neil

This time last year my BT internet slowed to a crawl like dialup. 200ft of new string and I got back to nearly 4Mbps. This evening at great expense upgraded to 'infinity' and it just jumped to 42Mbps that's 10 times faster. OK not as good as the 60Mbps I get from Virgin at rather less cost but now I can work from home ....faster. I'm the last house in the village about 1km from the street cabinet so well done VDSL.

That's interesting, Bazyle - I get about 3Mbps down about three miles of old copper wire from the nearest telephone exchange, but there's a fibre optic cabinet at the end of the village now, about 600 yards away. Some folks have suggested that a switch to Infinity would be hardly worth it, but your experience seems to suggest otherwise. Anyone else got comparative figures?

I went from around 5Mbps to between 50 and 70 (50 today which is less than normal, though it's possible that No 1 son is currently taking up a chunk of available with Internet activities I do not care to question).

Upstream is the big change going from around 1 to a fairly consistent 18MBps. Great for uploading pictures to the Model Engineering Forum..

Iain

Hello Mike, we are in a semi rural location 1/2 mile from the box. I now get around 30Mb/s on infinity.
The shed only gets 8 Mb/s via wifi, and that's using a 'cantenna'. I may hard wire it .. sometime...

Thanks, gentlemen - I think you have convinced me!

0.5 miles from the box, 45Mb/s with Talk Talk.

Brian

.

Thanks, Bob

MichaelG.

[only just noticed your post]

.

Edit: That's a pretty distinctive headstock ... I suspect it may be the Polish one, as illustrated here:

http://www.small-lathes.co.uk/8mm-Watchmaker%60s-Lathe-%5BTDA8%5D/734.htm

... I would check your collet dimensions very carefully ...

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 13/01/2017 09:42:22

.

[exceptionally rare occasions, I would imagine]

MichaelG.

Semi rural village here giving a speed of 1.8 or 2 on a good day. Fibre box in next village 2.5 miles away announced with great fanfare. Our village is due next. Good I will have some of that thinks I. Made the enquiry, yes sir it will be available within the next five years. Meanwhile the big towns just get faster and faster services.

1.4 on copper, 42 on fibre, but that's fibre to the cabinet, not the house so can (eventually) be increased, if essential. Very definitely worth it.

rgds

Bill

I'm in a rural village, no idea where the cabinet is, I have FTTP. It's supposed to be 76Mb/s. I run Ethernet from the router to the computer. This morning it measured 13.8Mb/s download and 19.1Mb/s upload. Mind you it is an old computer (>10 years) running XP and distinctly creaky.

I just tried the same speed test on my new computer, W7 and also an Ethernet cable to the router. Very different results; 90.3Mb/s download and 23.7Mb/s upload.

Darn well ought to be fast for the money I am paying.

Andrew

FTTP = fibre to the premises

Slow start to the year, no progress on my engine but, I decided that I NEEDED a scriber. The bent one is a little large but it was what I had. I will sound daft to a proper engineer but I'm quite pleased especially with the hot oil blue using recycled vegetable cooking oil. The straight one was made with my Unimat4, now under the bench some time ago. Week-end sadly busy with 'domestics' Roll on Monday when I shall get on with Brian Rupnow's beam engine.

Edited By John Gardener on 13/01/2017 11:12:56

Edited By John Gardener on 13/01/2017 11:56:31

All this talk of internet access in terms of megabits has made me envious. I live a fairly large town where the fibre is allegedly installed, according to BT. I can, on occasions, achieve the dizzy heights of 500Kbps when watching youtube videos of my favourite machinists. The spinning ring of dots is commonplace. I live in hope of a better connection.

John

Here in N Scotland internet via BT is hopeless. Now got a dish, great improvement and cheaper. We are 6 miles as the crow flies from the exchange, but about 13 miles of wire to connect all the new houses.

When domestic cable modems were first rolled out in the UK 15 years ago100k was considered broadband and people were over the moon to get it. We ran an office of 200 people on 500k. How many modems and computers have gone to the dustbin since then but my 50yr old lathe is still going strong and will do well after I am long gone. Good investment is old iron.

Oh well, back in the early '70s, when we used the acoustic coupler, we got 150 baud (bits per second) and on a good day even 300 which was nearly 40 characters per second !! And then the FAX machine came into popular use after TELEX became "Old Hat".
BobH