ME/MEW Articles?

In another thread one Stub Mandrel proposed a thread that would list topics to be considered for publication. So here goes! First though a little background. I have had two articles published in MEW, one on hydraulic copying, and one on installing and using a CNC mill. I've never had any feedback, good or bad, on either. When I write for publication I would expect to provide the exact words, drawings and photographs for publication. Part of my revision process when writing an article is to read through, and for each drawing or photograph ask oneself what it adds to the article. If the answer isn't much I take it out.

Here are some possible titles:

1. Design and CNC machining of true bevel gears - this has been written, and has been with MEW for nearly a year now; my assumption is that it isn't going to published as it involves CNC, and so would clash with current ongoing CNC articles

2. Fitting, repairing and using an Ainjest high speed threading unit - repairing because I was an idiot and broke the unit

3. Machine taps and tapping under power on the mill and lathe

4. Short note on repairing an 18" shaper

5. Notes on electronic tool setting and power drawbars

6. Thread milling

I'd hazard a guess that none of these topics are of interest, as they involve 'industrial' processes and equipment? Mind you, some of my machinery is rather older than me, so it's certainly antiquated. What does the jury think?

I don't think there is ever going to be a happy medium, as articles need to cater for the complete beginner as well as the experienced machinist, and from the basic workshop to the well equipped. My assumption would be that ME is aimed squarely at the model engineering fraternity, while MEW aims at a wider audience of those with workshops, but not necessarily involved in model engineering.

Regards,

Andrew

Andrew,

To me all sound of interest but in particular the Shaper article, without revealing too much what kind of repair?

Regards

Paul

Could clash with the repairs to a shaper in the current ME, don't want people complaining about the same old subject being done over again

I haven't actually repaired the shaper yet, so the article isn't going to be written any time soon. Given that it's an 18" industrial shaper it's in a rather different league to the one being described in ME. It's the main drive rocking arm that is broken; pretty fundamental. The first problem is getting the thing out, it must weight about 200lbs. I'd anticipated that the article would be short, probably no more than a page or so.

I've got quite a collection of Coventry dieheads from 1/4" to 1-1/2" and use them regularly, if infrequently, but assume that they would be of little interest to the majority of model engineers. I recall that there was a short article on Coventry dieheads a few years ago in MEW. However, the author did state he hadn't used one for 60 years?!

Bazyle: Certainly within the fraternity building larger scale traction engines most equipment is ex-industrial; all of mine is, except for the CNC mill. However, I wouldn't have said that this was reflected in MEW. If I recall correctly there was a recent post on this forum that claimed that building larger scale engines didn't fall under the auspices of model engineering anyway.

Regards,

Andrew

1. Design and CNC machining of true bevel gears - this has been written, and has been with MEW for nearly a year now; my assumption is that it isn't going to published as it involves CNC, and so would clash with current ongoing CNC articles

This sounds more like the sort of CNC article I would be interested in -  a 'how to apply CNCto a real world job' article, rather than 'How to setup your CNC and machine a pocket'

2. Fitting, repairing and using an Ainjest high speed threading unit - repairing because I was an idiot and broke the unit

Always interested in 'problem solving' articles

3. Machine taps and tapping under power on the mill and lathe

Sounds useful.

4. Short note on repairing an 18" shaper

As long as its a different repair to the recent example!

5. Notes on electronic tool setting and power drawbars

I now nothing of this. Basic theory and a how two ratehr than a too specific example preferred.

6. Thread milling

Covered twice in ME (Tubal Cain and George Thomas, I think) - but both a long time ago and both times a custom cutter was used and the job was a music box worm gear. A larger example would be interesting, and you would be in illustrious company.

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 07/09/2013 16:22:04

While I agree in general with respect to the magazine itself, I don't think that every article has to fulfil all these conditions - that would be way too restricting. So I don't see this as a limitation particularly.

> 4. Short note on repairing an 18" shaper

"Short" meaning no more than 3 instalments?

> When I write for publication I would expect to provide the exact words, drawings and photographs for publication.

I don't agree there! I aim to get it right, but have to accept the magazine may change things.

The magazines employ an editor and a designer; if articles are too long, rambling or unclear then the editor is at liberty to, well, edit! Similarly, the designer needs some flexibility in page layout, image crop and size at the very least. All drawings are retraced, and my experience is that this identifies more errors than it introduces!

That said, I have provided plenty of pictures in the past, and more were used than I expected I wasn't pleased to see some forum members suggesting authors pad their articles with pictures to make more money. Now I play safe and limit the number of pictures

Neil

I'd like to read 1, 3, 4 and 6. Especially 3.

<The magazines employ an editor and a designer; if articles are too long, rambling or unclear then the editor is at liberty to, well, edit! >

Sadly on MEW that doesn't appear to happen, the standard is pretty poor at times. It would help tremendously if the originator submitted their article to friends, colleagues, wife/partner for review before publication. The review can be technical and non-technical.

In that context, could I make a request to whomever (author, editor, ?) that the first picture(s) they include in an article in is/are of the final, finished part/assembly for orientation purposes (i.e. so we know what the article is talking about). Simply stating in the title that we are going to make a dooflippy doesn't guarantee that the reader can picture what is meant.

Some magazine articles take a very simplistic approach: pictures are arrayed in strict manufacturing sequence from start to finish with the final part or assembly only shown at the end of of the article (which we may not see for 6 months or more) - if at all. I've seen articles where final pictures were never shown.

I hasten to add that ME/W are not by any means the worst culprits in this respect (although they've had their moments in the past). Much worse are the American stable of metalworking mags.

Even worse are the articles that show you drawings of all the individual pieces but don't have a GA or assembly drawing.

Looks like I could win some friends but also loose others.

On the builds I post on the net I usually start with a picture of what the original looked like such as this or this so that would get me into the good books.

Unfortunately the Galloway has 176 photos and I'm not finished yet. The E&A has 289 photos and judging by how many installments its got on MEWS would likely stretch to 20 parts which may loose me a few followers.

On thing that I did mention before, possibly when I posted my Firefly build here was the possibility of additional photos being posted on the forum, maybe in the "articles" section. This could cut down the accusations of padding things out but maybe not all contributors would be happy to have their photos made available without payment?

J

I woudl be pleased to make extra files, including video, pdfs and possibly spreadsheets. Much of it would be too 'rough' for proper publication, but I feel that if you get something published it's no skin of your nose to let folks see the stuff that didn't or couldn't fit in the magazine.

Neil

My lathe is a Warco 220 of which there are only a few around. It follows then that if I submit anything for my lathe either it is only going to have limited interest unless there is something out of the ordinary which may interest other people. I have had three articles published for this lathe of which two did have information which may have been useful elsewhere.

I have also recently submitted what I freely admit was a bodge up and only suitable for my lathe, nevertheless it does work. Because it is so very simple, I haven't bothered with either a drawing or any measurements: in fact it is made to suit.

I have also had two other items published, one via Scribe-a-Line and the other as a half-page article. Neither are particularly technical, neither are ground-shakingly novel: they are simple ideas, and show how I did ithem.

In addition I have submitted two articles for my cheapo drilling machine. One was an experimental idea to make drilling to a specific depth easier and was actually based on a friends drilling machine whilst the other was an explanation of, and how I overcame, the problems I encountered when modifying my machine to someone elses design. Neither have been published.

The fact that it does seem to take a long time, years in fact, before articles are published doesn't really encourage me to submit articles - especially as there is never an acknowledgement of receipt or even a rejection note. I do have another three possible articles lined up: two are for the lathe and are really nothing more than existing ideas modified to suit my lathe, whilst the third is a project I took on to repair an item of furniture which in the end was successful and demonstrated just how much I had learned given that I am not an engineer by profession. This latter article also included all the mistakes I made. I am also slowly improving my milling machine. Should I be documenting and photographing it for publication? Again, the techniques used are only basic and the only reason I can see for doing it would be as encouragement for people who know less than I do, ie raw beginners, especially as I suspect that one of the ideas will be a bodge up to make the machine work easier. Should I be publishing bodges?

From my point of view, what I do is for me, and whilst it is nice to see my name in print, I'm not that bothered about submitting articles. I don't even get any money out it as I have arranged for all payments to go directly to my choral society. (I think it's fair to say that my choral society will most likely want me to submit as many articles as possible!) But at the same time I recognise that at least some of the projects I have done, have only happened because someone else has submitted an article which has triggered off an idea, or has included an explanation of how to do something. So maybe I should submit and be damned!

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

OMG: For the shaper I was thinking short, like one page to include a picture of the broken part, and a discussion of why it broke. Then a brief description of the repair scheme, possibly a picture of the part being machined to illustrate the alignment of the broken parts, and a picture of the repaired item.

Stub: I didn't explain what I meant by thread milling. I have the equipment, but not the cutters, to thread mill worms, but I was referring to milling screw threads which are either specials for which taps/dies are not available, or are on parts where conventional methods cannot be used.

On the issue of copy for articles we'll have to disagree. When I write an article everything is intended to hang together exactly; I'd be right p*ssed off if it was hacked about by the editor. Of course spelling mistakes need correcting, and photographs may need cropping or contrast and balance adjusted to suit the printing process. If it's rambling or unclear I'd expect it to get rejected, or returned for a re-write. I supply drawings as DXFs, and a PDF for reference, which should be ready for publication. If I recall correctly the illustrator does not have an engineering background? Unfortunately in my article on the hydraulic copier errors in the drawings were introduced by the illustrator.

Most of my article writing in the past has been for international reseach journals. There you get a 'camera ready' copy of the paper for proof reading. Of course these papers often contain quite a lot of advanced mathematics, which if printed incorrectly is nonsense. I have seen this; years ago I needed to design some analogue filters based on arbitrary pole/zero positions in the complex s-plane. I found a research paper discussing an opamp circuit topology that was suitable, but sadly the proofreading wasn't up to scratch, as the given transfer function was wrong. In the end I had to derive it independently from first principles.

Fortunately I did include a picture of the equipment being discussed, and an isometric view of the parts being made in my article on the hydraulic copier. That raises an interesting point, given the entrenched views expressed elsewhere on this forum about what should, and shouldn't, form the basis for articles. While a hydraulic copier is an industrial piece of kit, I believe that they are pretty much obsolete in industry, having been superceded by CNC lathes. So should the article have been rejected because it discusses an industrial process, or accepted because said process is obsolete and therefore counts as antiquated?

Peter: Just because you're lathe is not common doesn't mean that an article based on cannot be useful. After all, even for a Myford lathe I don't suppose many people will have the exact model being discussed.

Personally I'd like to see some practical articles on surface and cylindrical grinding. I'm getting on ok with my cylindrical grinder, but I'm having issues with my surface grinder. I have reached the tentative conclusion that the spindle bearings on the surface grinder are badgered, but it's quite a lot of work to re-design the spindle to use angular contact bearings; especially if the problem of wavy finishes is actually down to operator error.

Regards,

Andrew

I think

refurbishment,

modifications to machines you have could make, forums are full of people asking these questions

those old tips workshop tips that are becoming forgotten ,

history of tools/manufacturers

things like custom tools .plans drawings ,was reading Geo H thomas book the other day , boring bars homemade?

might make good articles / might not

Here's an idea... would anyone like to design a surface grinding attachment that could be fitted to the head of a mill? I'm sure a very basic design would be a boon to those of us who would not consider investing in the 'real thing'.

Mike, you're not from my homeland are you? I'd love to see some articles along the lines of the old 'Traction Engines Worth Modelling'/'Locomotives worth modelling'. I'd vote for anything unusual; some stationary engines and a nice Loco or two from the Barry Railway. Advantage of these articles is you only need a good three view, not full working drawings.

Another idea - "Scrapbox Challenge" - short articles, a page or two, perhaps, on making either a useful gadget (e.g. a toolpost guide for letter punches or a centering aid) or a simple model (a bucket, or a hand tool).

What about a practical guide to making small pressure gauges and boiler fittings. LBSC did some good stuff on the latter, but with the advent of small, accurate o-rings and PTFE there must be some new ideas?

I have considered a series looking at the component parts of stationary engines and their variations and proportions to assist and inform, those designing freelance models or working from poor information.

Neil

I'll let you know about the pressure gauges when, and if, I manage to design a working one for my traction engines. I've got the copper tube, copper shim and a secondhand deadweight pressure tester to see if I can make a usable Bourdon tube without the need for gearing, as a start.

I've got a gripe about the design of boiler fittings. They often show very short thread lengths that go right up to a shoulder. How are you supposed to make that without undercutting the thread at the shoulder, or counterboring the mating part? If these features are needed they should be shown on the design. Rant over, back to the workshop and more machining.

Regards,

Andrew

Could I put in a plea for short articles? Just a page is interesting on almost any engineering or model topic. Once it goes to five pages on something I'm not really interested in a publication loses value for me.

Variety is easier achieved in this way. More satisfied customers...??

SteveW