What did you do Today 2018

Report what you have been upto here ( preferably engineering related) Actual workshop progress can be reported here

Previous 2017 posts can be found here

I repurposed a clamp or is that dual purposed a clamp into a Bultaco clutch spring compressor.

​Cheers Michael.

Kids gave me a dji mavic pro multirotor for Xmas. It took all yesterday and today to discover how to activate it without logging in to dji China and bypass all the Chinese spyware that logs all flights and reports back home about every flight.

Wireshark reports that it tried to connect to 27 servers in China. Why would it want do this to a country that claim that they are our friends?

It's a nice toy but pretty sneaky so be careful if you fly one!

* Danny M *

It's probably because the PRC want to know where people in China are flying them, not what you are doing.

My cheap phone came with thr Chinese filtered version of Google pre-loaded and Weibo etc...

Expect UK ones to require flight logging of larger drones in the future...

Neil

Ran a test cut on my Tom Senior after completing wiring in yesterday only to discover my vice is crap, jaw lifts - hardly surprised, can't expect much for £25

Dismantled what I believe is a bike spoke threading machine to replace the spindle with a standard die holder. I used Tinkercad to mock up the spindle and am 3D printing to check the fit before attempting to turn the spindle for real

I've been tidying up the shed and have got to the point that I've got a few things that, to be brutally honest, are consuming more in space than their value in usefulness . So I made a little list and decided to start getting stuff ready to list on EBay...

First one was an 8" Abwood style milling vice. It'd spent its working life on a Lumsden grinder, so hadn't got any of the war wounds that milling vices normally pick up, also hadn't got any paint left due to the rather aggressive environment.

Decided to clean a light layer of rust off it, get any abrasive grit residues out of it and then list it. Unfortunately, when disassembling it, I discovered that the bronze nut is sheared off the post that held it into the base casting:-

Before I cut it up to get useful cast iron stock from some of it and chucking the rest, Does anyone want a 65kg milling vice that needs a new nut making. To quote Badfinger/Paul McCartney:- If you want it, here it is Come and get it. Make your mind up fast.

Available free for pickup from Rugby to anyone that needs a large milling vice and is happy to make a new nut for it.

PS:- It's too large for a Bridgeport sized mill and it weighs 65kgs.

Edited By Mark Rand on 01/01/2018 16:09:08

As our American chums would say, "Heads up!". Today i bought a Casio fx-451M calculator NIB from America on that auction site. If you ever had one you will know why this is amazing. Solar powered but there is an internal battery to retain mode selections, you have to know where to make the incision if it goes flat. He has 4 more

Hi Neil, it is more involved than that. **LINK**

If I want to fly in certain places then the equipment must be cyber-clean, it's in the contract.

* Danny M *

Still use my second one after some scumbag stole my original, a very useful tool.

Mike

Setting up to use my Stevenson endmill grinding fixture for the first time, I discover that the grinder spindle is bent at one end! ( it's a single phase Clarke double ended grinder modified to fit a Union T&C grinder)

I may have a go at straightening it, even if it means remachining it and sleeving , after all, what have I got to lose? its scrap as it is.

Brian

Had an hour free before the grand-kids arrived so made up some little brackets to mount the Mk2 side control springs for the pony truck on the loco. These will replace the Mk1 version which was fingers of spring steel strip bearing against the frame of the pony truck. Worked ok for the first few weeks but the constant flexing caused cracks where i had bent them to fit onto some existing mounting holes, so now doing it the 'proper' way using coil springs which i should have done in the first place.

That nut will silver solder nicely and the heat doesn't soften bronze (at least not enough to notice).

Neil

The end of the articles seems inconclusive... was it dodgy - or not?

Neil

Today’s plan was to spend some quality workshop time roughing out a crankcase. The plan worked this morning, but it has all gone wrong after lunch. I managed one cut in the mill, stopped to check a dimension, and now the spindle motor refuses to do anything.

To be fair, it has been showing signs of distress for some time, with the speed of the DC motor “hunting”, so the escape of some blue smoke was not unexpected. I have a spare controller board, but I would rather not have had to rip out the old wiring to fit a new, different board.

Sigh!

DrDave - with the DC motors and controller boards one failure mode is that an over-driven motor overheats and blows a winding. You barely notice. Next time it overheats (a little more easily) it blows another winding, essentially splitting the windings into a long and short set. Depending on the lengths of these the engine runs rough or barely at all especially at low speeds. The strain of running the unhappy, electrically unbalanced motor crocks the control board.

Neil

That’s an interesting point, Neil. I had assumed that, because it is a few decades old, the electronic bits would have gone geriatric, not the motor. This might take longer than I thought...

Dave

Had the motor apart and double checked the spindle..... it's not bent!

Took the opportunity to clean and check the ballraces, they're fine and have been refilled with grease and refitted.

The cause of the wobbling grindstone was tracked down to a less that perfect spacer that was not parallel on the ends.

Put it all back together and ground my first slotdrill. Need to practice a bit more to grind the cutting edge without missing a bit. Still, quite pleased.

Brian

Hmm. Hadn't even thought of that. It's so much work to get rid of things that are cluttering up the shed!

The (Chinese) manufacturers were doing exactly what (non-Chinese) governments were demanding. Ensuring that no-fly zones were enforced and updated. Fairly small beer compared with the damage that the Stuxnet worm did to Siemens PLC controlled plant at the behest of the US a few years back...

Edited By Mark Rand on 02/01/2018 21:21:31

My 3rd spindle 3D print seens to be the right one to make out of steel, I've modified the original spindle design to incorporate interchangeable heads so I can re-use the tail stock die holder ones and simplified the spindle itself rather than making a straight copy of the original

Well, that's what I think at the moment...