Hello

Hello,

I am interested in making models to demonstrate physics principles such as hydraulics, moments, electromagnetism etc. I am a physics teacher.

I have a lovely little Perris PL100, given to me by a neighbour, it works well enough, but the headstock spindle clamps are cracked.

It would be a shame to have to consign it to the parts bin.

I suspect that these parts are unique to each machine, like the stoppers in lead crystal decanters.

Perhaps someone more skilled and better equipped than I could repair it.

Interested to hear of any physics demos that have been made.

Mark -- photos and your location may help !

See this link for adding photos --- **LINK**

John

Welcome to forum

H

Mark,

If anyone is to be able to help repair your lathe, we need your location.

Once you have told us, "Anytown, UK" there may be someone near to you to help.

Photos will help folk suggest how the damage may be repaired; either by you or some one nearby,.

Howard

Hello Mark and welcome. I never thought of lathework to teach physics, what a good idea. As stated above, an approximate location and some pictures would greatly help in finding a solution to your lathe repair.

Brian

Looking at your lathe on lathes.co website it would be a shame to consign it to the scrap bin, hopefully someone can help you.

Thanks for such swift replies, I am based in N London, in the shadow of Ally Pally.

Posting a picture is posing a challenge!

A Perris is well worth saving.

Single-split bearing headstock lathes often suffer such failures when they wear and are over-tightened to compensate. They can be bodged with simple metal straps. Possibly the most effective option is to machine off the old bearing sections, screw on new blocks and bore new bearings in place on a larger lathe.

Neil

Thanks for your advice Neil, I will look into these two options.

If your school still has some sort of metalwork class there will be machines that can do the job. Otherwise there is a a club North London SME based in Finchley whose members may be able to help.

I popped into my school's Design Technology Department. Plenty of drill presses, but no Mill. I have reached out to the NLSME, it would be great to meet like minded enthusiasts. I did wonder about brazing the headstock.

Thanks for your interest Bazyle

Hi Mark Recently my granddaughters class was doing a project on resistance and lamps so I made 6 units with a wooden block with a battery holder a switch and three brass terminals to connect different resistors and different lamps and led' s. They had one per group and I had a great time turning the brass terminals and screws and bits.

David

Welcome Mark.

I am also in north Londdon and have a Cowells lathe (successor to the Peris). If I can help let me know.

Another club you might like to look at is the Society of Model and Experimental Engineers SMEE.

They are based in south London but easy to get to from your area. When things get back to normal we will start Saturday afternoon meetings, training courses and more.

David, those circuit blocks sound like a brilliant way to get students to safely learn about electricity, I bet they looked great too. So much of the stuff we get to use in class is clearly and poorly made.

Hello from a fellow physicist Mark.

I'm retired now (I was in tertiary education) but I sometimes take on AS/A level students studying the AQA syllabus on a private basis. Something I made on my lathe as a demo was a chaotic, or double, pendulum. It's not on the syllabus, but for able students who were also studying maths and wanted to go beyond the curriculum it made a great jumping off point for discussing boundary conditions, non-linearity and all that.

One of my frustrations with that the AQA syllabus I was teaching was that it was allowed students without mathematics to enter to AS/A level  physics- I found that tough, but I think that your plan of making physical demos is good. I had a student who couldn't understand the tipping point of a block from the equations, but 'saw it' from a demo, then understood the maths.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/09/2020 00:30:37