What Did You Do Today 2021

From time to time I was busy with repairing rotary vacuum pumps for a a guy who is servicing these.

This was usually involving making stellite ball valve seats to work with ceramic balls.

Such valve is virtually indestructable.

Hovever I got one small old fashioned pump which had spindle damaged and was completely naked.

He gave it to me as "irreparable - do with it what you want".

So I have enlarged damaged working bore a bit (turning and honing), made from scratch new spindle which is of very interesting construction, made sliders which fit into a slotted section of spindle, replaced valve seats and balls as usual into stellite - ceramic set and pump was assembled.

Also bearing bore was lapped and a flange used for bolting of pump to its oil tank was repaired by welding.

So really I can say that I have made new pump from castings.

Spindle and sliders were made of 45 HRc material.

Already tested and it easily goes down to 0.01 mbar - pretty good.

Taken quite a while to make it - few linear dimensions had to be made up to a single thou tolerance.

Edited By Martin Dowing on 18/03/2021 21:42:51

Edited By Martin Dowing on 18/03/2021 21:49:03

Edited By Martin Dowing on 18/03/2021 21:51:24

Continuation:

Few more photos:

Commissioned my Worden Tool & Cutter grinder. At last!

As advised in Hemingway's instructions, I took it outside into the sunshine for the Wheel Dressing Ceremony, followed by putting a shine back into the edges of a slot-drill and an end-mill, and truing an off-hand ground single-point threading tool.

Though I made and fitted the optional feed-screw mechanism, and used for the wheel-dressing, in practice I found it easier to manipulate the slide directly by hand, resting both my hands on the machine's sides so as to give plenty of control.

Another user had queried why the lathe-tool holder seems too high, but I had worked out, and proved to myself, that it isn't. It holds a lathe-tool across the cutter slide axis so you can grind its flanks without swinging the slide right round to odd angles.

The cam-shaft that sets the table slope is very stiff but I think that's me not quite getting the last one or two "thous" off somewhere. I've also not calibrated the angle-indicator as on the drawings. I think using an adjustable-square or simple templates, would be easier, for the few and not super-critical tilt angles likely to be needed.

The red rings are ordinary fibre-washers - my addition, for better friction-locking with less paint-stripping.

'

One thing I'd not realised I'd missed until picking out a couple of cutters for my little practice session, was making a holder for 12mm dia shank cutters. The drawings (or the edition I bought anyway) are for an Imperial set but I chose to make a metric set in parallel, indicating those with a marker groove as on Clarkson 'Autolock' collets. Evidently I missed the 12mm one.

Otherwise... I now have much less excuse for my machining errors being inaccurate and poorly-finished!

'

The paint-work by the way is just ordinary gloss from Wilko's finished with a rub down and couple of sprays of gloss-white acrylic car paint. The black-ish finish is Birchwood Casey 'Gun Blue', followed by spray-on furniture-polish as these chemical-colour treatments are not rust-preventatives.

The photograph shows it with the lathe-tool holder mounted, though not clearly. The extra brass thumb-screw protruding from the side of the cutter-holder base, is part of a slitting-saw sharpening attachment that still needs one or two details finishing.   

'

Then found an area of kitchen work-top where it can live, reasonably far from any cooking activities.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 22/03/2021 20:23:02

Made a house for an abandoned baby squirrel out of a Warco DH1 vice box. He seems to like it.

Dom

Started to plan out a steam plant for my two lockdown built Stuart engines. Decided to incorporate an economiser/condenser although it's probably overkill.

Dom,

Is the little fella in your workshop, he looks happy enough.

Martin P

He's actually in our kitchen in that photo - but has since been moved to our utility. That said if you look carefully in the background of that picture you can just make out an ME boiler, Stuart 10V and a set of Minnie Rear Wheels which have also taken up residence in the kitchen. The wife showed a picture of the boiler to a colleague recently and was asked "why is there a bulb of garlic in your workshop?!"

In other squirrel engineering news - I have been finding it hard to feed the critter milk from a syringe without accidently squirting it too hard and choking him. So I have 3D printed a screw dispenser to help feed the syringe in more gently. After a bit of running in, it is as smooth as silk and I'm genuinely amazed how well 3d printed threads can work. I wish my lathe dials worked this well!

Dom

Dom You do realise that it will be illegal to release him into the wild. ( Unless he's a red one and it doesn't look like it )

Roy

Dom, it is also illegal to keep grey (or red for that matter) squirrels in captivity without a license (which is now next to impossible to get).

https://www.rspca.org.uk/documents/1494935/9042554/Living+with+-+grey+squirrels+%28V2.0%29+-+2015.pdf/4a8dc4a9-8461-7dfc-2ac5-420832d08cb5?t=1553171457866&download=true

Steve

I went to use my on-demand hot water handwasher earlier; water everywhere, except out of the spray head.
Spot the deliberate error.

The screw head was rattling around in the outer casing, but I manage to drill out the remaining self tapper shank with a small carbide bit and re-threaded the case M3.
All leak free now.
 

Edited By peak4 on 26/03/2021 22:12:49

I spent the day on the hacksaw chopping an 8" long piece from an 8" x 20mm steel bar and then making the resulting square approximately round as the basis for an interstitial plate between a Colchester L.0 lathe mounting and a cheap Chinese chuck. It took most of the day, off and on. I then spent the next hour rubbing Voltarol into my right shoulder!

Edited By Chris Crew on 26/03/2021 23:32:51

Plasma profiler is your friend, and surprisingly not all that expensive. Friend who runs an engineering business reckons it's cheaper than buying plate and doing it yourself as they have nesting programs which optimise the cuts to minimise wastage.

Spent this morning changing out shorted oven element ...

Damage at top left don't ask what caused it... no power cut, it didn't trip any breakers, just stopped working, Oven not heating, but fan still worked & thermostat light on so that's working, I deduced that the element had gone, ordered new one from espares ( Usual disclaimer ) yesterday, arrived today... Fitted working fine, job done. the only downer was I now have an aching back, set off my spinal arthritis, bummer!.

George.

Spent the day first fitting a new set of blades to a thicknesser and finished the wood I started the other day. Decided to sort out the two draws of drill bits that I have and put them in drill stands that I brought for them, turns out I now have two and a half sets of imperial and nearly two sets of metric in .5 increments.

In the near future I will have a day of sharpening them all I will keep one set as standard and the second set I will grind for use on brass at least I will have them ready for use as and when needed

Fabricated the brackets for suspending my steam-wagon's boiler in the much wider chassis.

Brackets Mk.2, less of the Mk.1 confection and to agree with my basic design approach that as far as possible any major assembly can be removed or serviced without large-scale dismantling. (I'd be sacked from a modern car manufacturer's "design" department for that heresy.). Even so, with no drawings available for this thing I have to sort of make it up as I go along, changing Part A made in the 20C because this week's Part C fouls Part B fitted to A modified for Part D three Maundy Thursdays ago last Whitsun.

I had drawn the brackets, "welded" 6mm and 3mm steel plate, by CAD. Its own saga since the drawing was a fairly simple, normal orthographic exercise, I am baffled by advanced CAD techniques like pre-setting line and dimension formats, and more importantly, printing actual-size images on A4 sheets on a system with an ISO library but defaulting to American paper sizes!

'

"Welded"... My MIG attempts failed by my trial-and error setting and its wire-feed not feeding. So used ordinary arc, or rather, squirted erratic blobs of molten steel and flux at the surfaces, hoping enough will fuse to both.

The results look bloomin' awful, even after trimming the outside faces with an angle-grinder, but will be painted and largely hidden below the footplates.

'

Very dispiriting - the lorry will never win fancy medals, but I still want even the hidden parts of fair quality.

'

Very wasteful too, in rods and electricity. Mean yield, < 1/4" fused joint to 1" weld-run. Two or three passes to overcome some of the blobs, one-sided fusing and slag-filled cavities. A large loss to so many arc-strikings, blobs and slag-heaps, and scattering.

I should have designed the brackets as screwed assemblies. I very rarely weld anything because, well, obviously, I can't! Yet somehow I will have to build the prominent engine case that needs look as if cast. I will have to weld it as best I can, and use filler for the crevices and hollows.

Odd - I can see all the other photos but Dominic's squirrel has turned into a "No Entry" sign and a string of characters!

Not so much incriminating as inflammatory. I removed them because I didn't want to be the cause of an off-topic debate in the What did you do today thread..

Dom

Well, no doubt the little furry creature's thriving!

'

I completed the new boiler mounting for my steam-waggon. It took a lot of thinking because it has to wrap round the existing steering-gear and leave room for the permanent replacement when I have designed that.

I thought MIG-welds were meant to be nice caterpillars of shiny steel with neat little ripples right along the joint. Nah - not mine. Not cat- erpillars but the cat- err, products in my garden again. Irregular grey-brown splodges with a curious orange-peel surface; perhaps a quarter of those across the joint actually doing anything ... I knew I should made these all-bolted assemblies.

'

Fitted a new blade to the band-saw. It's one of those everyone-has-one, horizontal and vertical-if-you-dare, Taiwanese machines; mine badged 'Alpine'.

Second-hand to me, it had given me good service until only a few days ago when I noticed the blade was running twisted in the vertical plane, and crossed the work in a shallow arc.

That blade had still seemed OK, so I examined all the possible adjustments, found and reduced the slop in the tension-pulley mounting and thought I set the guide-rollers (sealed ball-bearing races) properly. However, when it then snapped, I discovered the rollers had given it a shallow channel profile so assumed I'd set them too tightly.

Put the new blade on (a pig to do, necessitating removing both guide-assemblies), set the guide-rollers open and tried again. The blade still twists and follows a strange path, does not cut even 25 X 10mm HRS square, and at the end of the cut it rests some 5 mm away from the steel.

I fear it's time for a new machine - though I will salvage the motor I had to fit new only a year or so ago, plus any other parts that might come in handy; and of course the castored trolley I built to replace the original, cheap-and-nasty wheels and handle.

'

The steam-wagon broke me!

Revenge maybe, for inflicting my grotty welded fabrications on it.

While shaping that piece of HRS - part of improving the temporary steering-gearbox - a sleet shower arrived. In moving the chassis back indoors out of the weather, I tripped and fell headlong, crashing down onto on my arm and hip, luckily on smooth concrete, not the chassis bristling with sticking-out bits of steel. My neighbour saw me, and enquired if I was all right, offered help, even gave me a note with her phone number and that of the local hospital. I managed to regain my feet, put the engine away and close the workshop, but in a lot of pain.

The pain is not in the impact site but the groin on that side, so I may have torn a muscle or ligament. Even walking even in the house is extremely difficult and painful. I was relieved to relieve myself without seeing blood I half expected in the urine, but struggling to and from the bathroom and kitchen (both downstairs), using anything and everything for support, was agonising.

I don't reckon I'll be in a fit state to be in the workshop tomorrow...