Possible new ideas for Model Engineers' Workshop

While I have a healthy store of articles for Model Engineers' Workshop, most of these are longer articles and to both fill the gaps and balance/keep up the variety of topics I could do with more relatively short contributions.

An excellent suggestion elsewhere was that we could feature one-page articles on how someone replaced or fixed a broken part. Motorcycles were mentioned but i would say that any form of repair or remaking job could be of interest as long as it involved a bit of ingenuity or working with an unusual material.

But what other topics would make interesting short articles; here are a few things I don't have but I would like to see:

• Descriptions of and the use of unusual tools.
• Straightforward guides to mathematical issues, like how to use a sine bar or work out what size motor to use for a particular task.
• More involved tips - such as how to use a rotary table with a degree scale for dividing.
• Making your own specialist cutters
• More ideas for jigs and fixtures
• A good design for a sensitive drilling attachment that uses a dremel or similar
• A design that successfully mixes 3D printed and traditional parts

But I shouldn't be hogging all the ideas - what would you like to see?

They can be one-offs or potential series

I'd also like more 'One Man and His ..." articles but I throw the field open to cover mills and other machine tools as well as lathes - the rule being it has to be at least partly about you and/or what you make on the machine.

So form an orderly queue, what are your ideas for articles and who's willing to write them?

Thanks

Neil

What about reviewing new machines and attachments currently available? this would help prospective purchasers to make their choice.

Robert Butler

One thing that would be useful in any article, is a simple critique of the design process/part/technique.

For instance: these jacking adapters should have been made in two parts. Instead of turning them from a single piece of 38mm steel, the 20x4mm diameter pin should have been loctited in place. Not only would it have saved time and material, it would have been easier to do.

Teaching myself to do this sort work from books, magazines and videos meant starting at the bottom of a steep learning curve. I wish I had been more interested in this while my grandfather was still alive; some instruction from a skilled professional would have really helped.

Neil, how many words and pics do you want per article?

Neil

A vote for 3D projects as long as they are directly related to engineering projects and do not stray into general 3D printing. If you are considering this, you may wish to think about how the 3D printer files might be shared?

Don't mind articles on repairs as long as they are about innovative techniques and not specific to a product few of us own. JS posts on how he carries out repairs are a good example of the former, mending frying pans is not IMO. (apologies to Des Bromilow).

Other ideas:

Producing a model from a full-size item when no drawings exist. I marvel at the work done by the likes of Cherry Hill but wouldn't know where to start.

Finishing projects. There have been articles on painting etc., but getting a good surface finish and how to best use paint and other coatings eludes many of us judging by requests for help on this forum from time to time.

Hope that helps.

You may have already done some or all of these suggestions in the past, am a relatively new subscriber and may not have seen them.

How about a mugs guide to plastics ie HDPE, LDPE, PTFE, different types of Delrin, Acetal, Pactene, Teflon, transparent acrylic sheets and rods and tubes, (some of these might be the same stuff under a different name I wouldn't know)

links to pages like the mallet made from recycled milk bottles, the thermoformed cross slide nut, diy see through stirling engines

Optics ? There have been past articles on Mill centre finders worth doing some more ? How to make your own telescope ? A summary of what we can learn from all the astronomy chaps who make fancy things to guide their telescopes. A look at people who have made their own microscopes.

Stories about laser cutting and water jet cutting

What are some snazzy things we can make ourselves with laser beams , neodynium magnets and plastic.

Have a (monthly ? annual ? quarterly ?) mystery box event (not a competition) - give 1 guest person ( or several different people) a box with some metal, plastic, magnets, laser, bearings, and tell them to make something interesting in less than 20 hours (variations hand tools only, lathe only, mill only, cnc only, 10 hours, 20 hours, 1 hour, 100 hours -  define what you want them to make ? ie laser guided pantograph)

Bill

Edited By Bill Wood 2 on 05/09/2016 10:33:50

How about a series of very short articles (they need only be 1 or 2 paragraphs) on processes used in industry. Ideally written to inform rather than teach how to. There are many amazing techniques, ideas and machines out there and most of us don't mind having our minds broadened as long as it doesn't take more than half a page. A link or two at the end can satisfy the more curious.

Another thing in the same vein would be odd or clever patents. Again no need to write pages and pages. Just what is it and what's clever about it.

Regards.

David.

dunno if of interest but making load of adaptors at club for my clarke.

the main one will be adaptor to use my southbend chucks on it including the 3c collets.

also adaptor for using my ml 7 collets on it.

and fitting a different motor with speed control to it.

its slow going as only get hour or so a week at it.

but hoping to get new place with garage after xmas.

I hesitate to suggest this, but short items on "neat ways to use CNC method to make...". Aimed at avoiding the obvious but demonstrating how CNC can make things almost impossible or very hard without CNC.

Neil, I recently completed a refurb on a vintage horizontal mill. It was originally powered by a line shaft so no existing drive arrangements. I made a frame, mounted on the machine to support the motor and countershaft , fitted an inverter, made an adaptor to fit a Bridgeport M head to the round overarm, replaced the table feed screw and nut and fitted an Align table feed. I don't have any pictures of work in progress but I can do a brief description and photo's/ sketches if you are interested.

Dave

I for one, am very positive about the future of ME, MEW and the hobby in general, i don't think the formula needs changing. Alot of people have commented before that they reckon it'll peter out eventually. But i think there are still plenty of people out there ready to take up the gauntlet and get involved.

Before the age of the internet i would've said the skeptics were probably right, but i think the internet has done wonders for reviving hobbies like this.

New people will discover new ways of working and tools (like cnc,electronics, imported tools) and people will also continue to appreciate and venerate the old ways of working and quite rightly enjoy both. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 05/09/2016 16:41:02

Thats true - I doubt I would have ever considered metal lathe and mill if internet did not exist.

Change the name of the magazine to Home Shop Machinist...

(Or basically take the "model" out of the title).

Neil, how many articles do you currently turn away as "not suitable for MEW" due to subject matter?

Reason for asking is that it is all very well changing content or the direction/title of the mag but if you are not getting articles then there is not much you can do as Stubby can only come up with so much. Fair enough suggesting a monthly motorcycle repair article but who is going to provide the 13 articles per year if there are none comming in at the moment?

J

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The problem with that is [I suspect], that MEW was a 'spin-off' from Model Engineer, and there may some "parental" connection between the two.

For many years, 'Model Engineer' produced a 'workshop number'

The first reference I can find indexed is:

1933 vol 68

issue 1659, page 169

Percival Marshall

Our Workshop Number

It was flatly denied by a previous Editor, but I think the 'Model Engineer' in the title of the MEW magazine is actualy a reference to that magazine, not to ourselves.

MichaelG.

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P.S. fans of pedantic punctuation might like to offer a combination of [possessive] apostrophe, and [defined-term] quotation marks that clarifies the family relationship.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 06/09/2016 08:57:00

"Home & Model Engineers' Workshop" or "Hobby and Model Engineers' Workshop" could get over that problem.

I seem to remember Neil saying something about top brass wanting to keep the title MEW when the subject cropped up before.

J

It's branding. Model Engineer is the long-standing brand, worth a lot of money and a lot of sales. It's not going to go away. The MTM marketing department will never allow it.

Any old hack with a computer in his spare room could start up "Workshop" magazine. But "Model Engineer's Workshop" carries 100+ years of cred in the title. Marketing professionals will never let that cachet go. It is regarded as marketing gold.

Whether or not the actual readers of the magazine actually build models in their workshop versus restore vintage motorbikes or whatever using the same tools and techniques comes a very distant second consideration.

When Percival Marshall proposed to start the magazine as "The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician" in 1898, the sceptics told him it wouldn't last more than a few months. I thought similar when MEW started.

One thing I did see change from the original, by 1910, the title had changed to "The Model Engineer and Electrician", a journal of practical mechanics and electricity.

Ian S C

Thanks for the thoughts so far. A name change is less than likely

I have limited internet access for the next week or so, apologies therefore if I don't appear too frequently.

Neil

P.S. the apostrophe goes after the 's' suggesting the title belongs to 'model engineers' rather than 'Model Engineer'.

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Yes, it does ... That was the context in which we discussed it last time.

MichaelG.