What did you do today? 2023

Dalboy,

That's nice work, it really ought to have it's own thread rather than be in what you did today.

I love my Farm Boy. Anytime I get a little depressed about another cock up in the work shop I go to the Farm Boy, put my thumb over the mixer air intake, turn the engine over twice, turn on the ignition, flick a fly wheel and it goes - every time. It's a cracking design.

Rod

Having fitted my lathe with an ELS with the drive to the right hand end of the leadscrew, I didn't want the gears in the screwcutting box churning round pointlessly, so I've been running it with the selector part way between 2 ratios, in neutral I suppose. However there isn't a detent to hold it there, so it was always possible that it would slip into gear whilst whirling round. Now made up a clamp to lock it. Hand sawing a rasher off some 6" UHMW Polythene was hard work, but you use what is to hand

Looks wonderful, but what is it? A gothic commode perhaps?

best

Robin

Nice to see the ELS is still working Duncan.

When I tried to change the clock on my oven after the weekend the display stopped working, just flashing and beeping.

Plus of course the entire oven/grill wouldn't work.

I've had it apart before to replace the grill element so thought "Why not?".

The display/clock unit only has three wires attached, all of 20 amp wire. These consist of a live and neutral input, directly traceable back to the mains input, and an output wire to the multifunction rotary switch that controls everything.

Apart from several discreet components the only thing of note within the display unit is a single pole solid state 20 amp relay. As there is no live connection to anything in the oven other than the above mentioned wire I felt reasonably safe in assuming that a function of the display unit is to energize this relay once the time has been set.

I cut the live feed to the unit along with the output wire and joined them together with a suitable connecting block.

The oven/grill now works perfectly and I have saved myself £350. The clock/timer does not work but I have never used it, and who needs yet another clock.

As a word of warning, the edges of the stampings the cases of these appliances are made of are unfinished and surgically sharp. That's why a job I did on Sunday has taken me 4 days to post. Ouch.

regards

David

Finished some smokebox door hinge pins for the railway's S160s, and last week delivered them the last of the lubricator union nuts.

I measured the pins already in place at 19,55mm dia, so made the new ones to that. The parallel portions are 4.1" long, and are indeed parallel within < one tenth for one of them and about 2 tenths for the other. Considering the WM250V was just plonked down on the garage floor by removal men 2 years ago, and hasn't been levelled by anybody's dad's method, I think that's OK.

The lube union nuts are for a 5/8" shank cone into a M20x1,5 threaded spigot. Mercifully the railway have a plug tap that size, or I'd still be on it now if I had to screwcut 'em. They wanted 32-off, which is a bit of a tedious task for a volunteer on a plain centre lathe - I couldn't go much faster than 2 an hour - so I was on it in spare time for a couple of weeks. I'm trying to instill the idea of them getting a smallish capstan for this sort of work.

Then I found I had a bit of 1" AF Hex phossy bronze left over from some other forgotten job, so I made an extra out of that for fun, for my sample shelf.

Edited By Mick B1 on 02/04/2023 16:32:12

I took a jigsaw table (not the electric sort, the little pieces that make a picture) that I've made for a friend for her to try out. It was very easy for her to fix the table at 30 degrees, and the pieces stayed in place even when the table was tilted to 60 degrees. I then mowed her front and back lawns with my battery lawnmower. I brought the jigsaw table back home to paint it. I didn't want to paint it until my friend had tried it.

Finally began to reassemble the little horizontal mill I renovated some 3 years ago.

At the moment it's just a case of trying to get it put back together so I can claim back racking bays to tidy the workshop, as it does actually occupy less space assembled.

I have been able to claw back about half of the space I'd allowed to become occupied, but still need to sort things better to reduce the number of boxes used.

I am seriously considering making a chest to allow me to move my wood tools into the house, although that almost guarantees that I will then immediately want to undertake a complex woodworking project for the first time in a year or more.

Listened to BBC Radio 4's "Start the Week" programme, entitled "Mastering a New Skill".

One of 3 contributors was Rebecca Struthers, watchmaker, talking about learning to file and turn, collaborating with other specialists, and worrying about losing traditional skills.

Repeated tonight at 21:30, and no doubt will pop up soon online. (iplayer)

All three contributors have new books on offer. Coincidence I expect!

Dave

And got it fully reassembled in about 45 mins, most of which was spent messing with bearing clearances.

Somewhat belated thanks for that, Dave

… Not on iPlayer, but on BBC Sounds

MichaelG.

Took apart and primed the jigsaw table (see above). Mowed the rear lawn, Dredged some of the silt from my pond and found a newt alive and kicking, put him back in the pond and put the small fountain back in that I took out when winter started to freeze the water. That should aerate the water for the newt. Removed the weeds from my rhubarb patch. The rhubarb is growing very well at about 18" tall. I will pick some soon and give it to a friend, she cooks little treats for the local food bank.

I have gone for a second bite of the cherry vis-a-vis workshop activities and decided to have a good old fashioned panic about where the hell I'm going to put my new mill.

I hadn't fully considered quite how much room a 1982×2648mm [6'6"×8'8"] operating envelope really takes up until I went to lay it out this evening, so whilst there is a space available if I want the workshop to remain even vaguely ergonomic I am going to need to move everything around to accommodate it...

Edited By Jelly on 03/04/2023 20:57:15

I've been working on building a digitizer to scan parts, unfortunately, the touch probe I have isn't suitable (I'm measuring very delicate and expensive parts and my probe require a little bit too much force, I'm afraid to use it!)

I've ordered a new one from the far east that operates on the 6 balls+3 shafts principal. It'll not be here before I go away next week, and I want to take my digitised parts with me to work on!

So.... the evening before yesterday I decided to design and 3D print a simple Z axis touch probe using materials available in my scrap bin, mainly, a single microswitch..... and nothing else really useful.

We're on version 3 now, I'll set it off printing first thing in the morning. The first version printed yesterday was more traditional, featured a plunger that rode up and switched the switch, spring return and while it worked, I wasn't happy with the internal friction, even after cleaning up the bore with a drill. A total rethink was called for, why did I think inside the box to start with!?

V2 started printing this morning while I was at work... but my printer died half way thought, so I took the opportunity to tweak the design a bit.

V3 will commence tomorrow morning as shown below. The outer diameter is the same as the spindle in my Sainsmart 3018 cnc router, so motor out, this assembly in. The inner cross carries the brass needle which acts as a weight (more weight may be needed but it doesn't take much to switch). This inner cross pivots in a bore through the outer with a slight clearance, once in the spindle bracket, it can't slide out either side. As the machine moves down, it trips the switch, breaks the NC probe circuit and the the software records the XYZ at that location.

Obviously it just measures Z, the probe I've ordered will sense in any direction and is much more precise. It can be used for edge finding, not just scanning a height map.

Edited By Russ B on 05/04/2023 21:07:17

Successful rehomed the Trident-Pallas Horizontal Mill to a new owner, I wonder if I'm actually just running a machine tool rescue center and just don't realise it...

Like the Cats Protection League but for ancient metalworking equipment.

I have to say it looks kind of comically small on the trailer there, although was still bloody heavy to load (and unload) using a sack trolley.

Dipped my toe into the world of paint spraying, using a somewhat knackered tent as a temporary spraybooth.

I have long avoided it as being too complicated, but in fact it's probably far easier to achieve a good finish than brushing in a fraction of the time.

Going forward I think it will be my preferred method of painting anything which needs even a half decent finish, I may even be drawn into working with 2K paints.

I successfully trepanned for the first time, a 5mm deep groove in steel. The last two attempts ended with a loud bang, so I was pretty much s*tting bricks the whole time.

Jelly, that tent idea is superb, why hasn't it come up before?

bob

I'm with you on the brush; anything I do looks like it was done in the dark, by a drunk holding the brush with his feet. Spraying is far better.

And 2k paints add a similar improvement. You need far less of it so it's cheaper, it's much higher solids so 2 coats is enough to provide a good finish that withstands polishing, and it goes off in far less time - so much so that you could filler-prime in the morning, block sand after lunch and top coat the same day. You do need to upgrade to a proper filter(although an air-fed hood is cheap enough), but you ought to be using something similar with cellulose.

I would guess the expense, I bought that tent for £30 in a partially broken state on eBay (it gets used a fortnight every two years at a festival I help organise and is held together with duct-tape and hope) so I don't really mind if it gets a bit painty or further damaged...

Brand new they're about £800, so a cheap and cheerful marquee makes more sense for the same purpose.

Has worked extremely well however.