What did you do today? 2023

Finally managed to get the 3D printer kindly gifted to me by Steve Bright working, no thanks to the manufacturer whose lax approach to model numbers and version control leads to their website suggesting you should install entirely the wrong firmware.

(For reference to anyone facing issues with a Wanhao D9 in the future, there's a Mk1, an Mk1 upgrade, an MK2, an MK2 BLtouch, an early MK3 which was sold as the MK2 BLtouch for a while but needs MK3 firmware, and an MK3 proper).

This said, once the maintenance and updates are done, it's very simple to use, runs well and the print quality was pretty good for a first run set up with generic settings by a relative newbie...

On the point of being a relative newbie, as the picture demonstrates I may have been a tad overenthusiastic in scaling the model down to reduce print time.

And the bits arrived to finish the Jerry-Can Adapter.

Seated quite easily with a couple of firm blows with the big Thor hammer, at which point I noticed a joke from the friend who gave me the spare nozzle...

Oh Dear, I won't be following that instruction.

Today it was a busy morning. Four 1200x20mm stainless steel bars, four 20x20x160 HSS bars and a five-liter can of way oil ISO 68 arrived.

Restoring a friends 1961 tractor and i want the valves out to inspect and de carbon.

Normal valve compressor will not touch it so i have turned and milled up a "C" section mandrel for my 3T arbour press.

i can then use that to compress the springs and extract the collets through the C opening with a magnetised screw driver.

Test day is next Friday , i hope it works.

Made a couple of new hinges, for an antique wardrobe, to replace a well worn and broken one

Craig,I had a mate who used to do that it must be very satisfying to bring things like back to life.

Finally got round to commissioning the stepper motor long travel on my Unimat SL.

The controller I fitted has several useful functions beyond just backwards and forwards but I am struggling with the auto-translated instructions.

Also tidied up and finished the 4-way lighting system.

regards,

David

I have been making a Farm Boy engine at the same time as a Rob Roy loco. So spent yesterday and to day shaping the front body. Still more to go before this part is complete before moving onto the rear body.

I have just started an album for this as I have already prepared some parts into plain blanks to work on. Sorry for the sidways photo

Today I've mostly been feeling a bit old, firstly I caught sight of the new M.E cover with an article that the LBSCR Terrier Fenchurch is 150 years old, I helped restore it ready for it's 100th birthday when I was a 15 year old schoolboy!. Mostly menial tasks, I remember a lot of wire brushing ,red lead primer and grime, come to think of it I've rarely been ungrubby in the intervening 50 years.

To compound my ageing realisation, the forms to apply for my state pension arrived this morning, surely some administrative error the brain still thinks I'm 20.

Interesting job for my nephew who is competing in a bicycle race in Italy this weekend. The bracket that holds the front derailleur on to his super light carbon framed bicycle has broken for the 2nd or 3rd time at twenty odd pounds a go. (At the top in the first picture). Everywhere is out of stock and he was in a panic that he wouldn't be able to take part so asked if I could help.

I tried bending one up out of some aluminium sheet of the same thickness but it was quite difficult because of the opposing bends and everything angled by 5 degrees. When we tried it out it was obviously too flexible so I machined one from solid increasing the thickness to make it stronger and more rigid.

He messaged me earlier to say that the gear shift has never been as positive! I'm not surprised because obviously with the original flimsy bracket most of the effort was wasted by flexing the bracket. Might have cost him a couple of extra grammes but I told him he'll just have to pedal a bit harder!

I fixed our central heating that broke down during the coldest part of the year, (of course), and which had about six separate faults - some of which masked each other - and which involved cutting out blocked pipes - (we inherited a system that had not been maintained and was iin a terrible state) - so all good; except...... ....as I was clearing up; the sheet I had put down to protect the carpet next to the airing cupboard where all the gubbins was located turned out to be porous, so there are now black splodges all over the light coloured carpet. Bugger!!!

Popped over to see Ian (of this parish) in my lunch break and then sorted out my lathe topside this evening with the dovetail bolts he kindly made for me.

Followed up by going to turn down some socket headed cap screws to replace the existing wallered out ones on the lathe, and immediately breaking my last insert of the type I wanted... I went rooting around in my drawer of HSS toolbits and couldn't find anything with a suitable grind, so decided to quit whilst I was ahead for the evening before inviting a third disaster over on the grinder.

At which point I narrowly dodged the third disaster again, after deciding to give the lathe a birthday with new oil in the headstock, but realising just in time it would be a supremely messy task done as I initially envisaged...

The position of the sump plug is such that the extremely thin (ISO2) bearing oil would go jetting out the side and splatter absolutely everywhere if I used an oil-pan, so better done using a transfer pump (or at least buying a dedicated bucket which gives me a fighting chance).

Tomorrow will hopefully be a more successful day.

Edited By Jelly on 15/03/2023 21:13:31

Took 2 hours to do a 20 minute job. For reasons too complicated to go into I decided that one particular double socket in the workshop would be better if it were switched. Most of mine are, this one was re-used from a previous workshop. Easy thought I, I'll just swap 2 sockets whilst I'm waiting for the dinner to cook. It's never that easy, after I'd swapped over the wires I found the back boxes were different, so I had to swap them as well, but they are surrounded by shelving so not easy to get to. Two hours later I'm thinking it would have been easier to just buy a new switched socket, at least I'd only have had to mess with one.

Edited By duncan webster on 15/03/2023 22:58:47

Finally got round to doing something I've been meaning to for ages, and made a holder for all my toolholders.

Did a test fit on the floor, because mounting it is going to be a right arse, and glad I did, the studs in 4 of the positions are either marginally too close or marginally too far apart, so I will need to remove them and file the holes out slightly then refit using gorilla glue.

That might be a tomorrow job though, nothing about threading M8 studs into 6mm holes in 19mm ply thirty two times in a row was particularly fun...

Turned a slice of scrap 4" steel bar into the beginnings of a backplate for a new to me 6" 4 jaw chuck for my Boxford lathe

[Kind of] finished fitting the Tool Library for the Lathe in my lunch hour, switching to using 80mm M6 bolts with penny washers and T-Nuts (the spiky woodworking type) has mostly solved my misalignment problems

Although I could only get 30 of the required 32 T-Nuts today, and one hole needs to be widened slightly and the bolt refitted.

To say it was a nightmare to put up would be an understatement, but now it's done it's clearly an improvement.

Whilst the three brackets holding it are up to the job, definitely thinking some additional bracing wouldn't go amiss, 16 Multifix C holders is not an insubstantial amount of weight so it bounces a little currently.

Edited By Jelly on 20/03/2023 15:00:17

Some more done to the Farm boy today.

Spent the morning setting up the rotary table with the part secured to it. The afternoon was spent with a little machining as that part did not take as long as the set up. This means that the majority of the main machining on this part is complete just some holes to do and then onto the rear part which attaches to this. Not so much setting up.

Hi, I made a couple of Abrafile links to fit the only hacksaw frame I could shorten, which could be reverted back to take a standard blade. I had to make the links, because the clip-on links that I've had for years, won't fit this frame.

The hacksaw frame was easy enough to shorten, by replacing the RHS that goes between the handle and the front section, and I just happened to have a piece the same size which was long enough to be cut to the length required, so that I could use the 8" Abrafiles I recently acquired. This piece of RHS was retrieved from a busted office chair many years ago, and is just swopped out when needed.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 22/03/2023 19:27:42

I sneaked off for a nap...

Finished the backplate to fit a Sanou 100mm 3 jaw chuck to my Super 7.

The backplate was an RDG pre-machined cast iron item that is a nice fit on the lathe spindle nose. At the time I bought it, the least expenesive option was a "seconds" 5" backplate that had 24 "indexing" holes drilled incorrectly. around the outer edge Turning this down to 100mm got rid of the offending holes, at the expense of the generation of a suprisingly large amount of swarf.

Drilling the 3 mounting holes had to wait until I got the second of 3 scales for the DRO mounted on the mill, which happened yesterday. With the hole pitching function on the DRO, pilot drilling, size drilling & lightly countesinking the 3 holes was very straight forward & the chuck fit on as would be expected.

The backplate spigot to chuck fit was not as tight as I was aiming for i.e. not a "snug" fit, but no obvious play. On the lathe the chuck body was running around 0.05 TIR, but that could be "tapped in" to 0.02 before fully tightening the bolts. The remaining error appears to be that the chuck body OD is not exactly round. A piece of 12mm silver steel clamped in the chuck shows 0.05 TIR runout close to the jaws, increasing to 0.08 around 100 mm out - not in Griptru territory, but not too bad for a £40 chuck & it feels noticably tighter than the OE Myford chuck.

The Jingce DRO works OK, though it would work even better if the top horizontal segment on the X axis "10s" display hadn't first gone dim then subsequently failed altogether after about an hours running out of the box. And given that my glacial work rate in the workshop means that it was sat in its box for 3 or 4 years before I got around to fitting it, no hope of any warranty (even assuming that an Ebay purchase DRO actually came with a meaningful warranty in the first place ! ). Hopefully a dry joint, but if it is a faulty component & I can't identify a suitable replacement green 7 segement display I'll swap out the duff one for one of the higher count displays - I only have 370-ish mm travel & won't use the 1000s upwards display capability.

Nigel B