Member postings for Roger B

In an attempt to add more confusion. The FF/PF 400 (FF was freestanding, PF mounted on the back of the PD 400 lathe) appear to have had two types of collet. The early one looks a bit like an OZ but I think was a Proxxon own design is shown here as part number 24252.

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The later machines used normal ER20 collets. The changeover from the old style is mention at the bottom of this site:

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A German owner of an older PF 400 ordered the newer ER20 spindle from Proxxon complete with bearings and tolerance washers for around €100 (in german).

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The Proxxon spares site (in english) is here:

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Roger

That's an impressive engine. Did you run it much? Is that a fuel or oil pump next to the carb? Is the camshaft chain or gear driven?

Excellent, One of the rather rare IC locomotives powered by a home built engine.

Thank you. I have seen your video on YouTube.

I am also working (slowly) on a 20cc two stroke full diesel based loosely on the Field Marshal layout. The details are on MEM:

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Best regards

Roger

Is your Lister the 6/1 that was serialised in ME?

Interesting If I am reading under the radiator correctly it's an Australian maker. I thought that the single cylinder hot bulb/semi diesels were a European thing.

Do you have thoughts for the injection system yet?

Best regards

Roger

You shouldn't have a problem joining the plug leads, but leave as much of the old lead as you can in case you have to remake the joint later.

I have made clips for that type of plug from phosphor bronze sheet that retains it's spring.

I also have an MF70 and decided to check the play and runnout. Measuring on the shank of a 3mm endmill I got a play of around 0.02mm and runout of around 0.04mm.

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So far I have only broken one 1mm end mill when cutting a keyway in a silver steel shaft. This was mostly my fault. The first cut just put a flat on the shaft and the second cut was a full slot and was too much with the depth of cut I had chosen. Reducing the depth of cut resolved the problem.

I have an Angst floating reamer holder like this:

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It has an adjustable centering spring to control 'droop' when used in a turret/automatic machine.

I have used this material, EN AW-2007 AL CU Mg Pb F37, for crankcases and cylinder blocks. It is available up to 40mm square in 200mm lengths. It's a German company and appears to offer shipping to the UK for €6.99.

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I don't know how the prices will compare to UK suppliers.

It turns well with specific inserts for aluminium. I have used threads down to M1.4.

Difficult to say exactly what is going on. There should be a thrust race (33) and a collar (8) held in place with a taper pin. This locates the headstock end of the leadscrew. The tailstock end is located by the hand wheel. There is a simple dog clutch to connect the change gears.

Best regards

Roger

This user has had a similar problem:

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Welcome from near Zürich

You need to check that none of these are being used:

In my university days it was not unkown to replace the fuse with the barrel of a 1/4" jack plug (~160A) so you could run a lighting rack from a 13A outlet for a short period. We soon discovered that you got less overheating problems if you installed two neutral pins

Robert, All modern safety standards have to allow for foreseeable abuse. It is very likely that a four way extension lead will be loaded above 13A so that must be tested for.

Bill, The various fuse values are virtually irrelevant. An appliance that meets European standards and is correctly CE marked will have been designed to be safe when protected by a 16A fuse/circuit breaker (as on the mainland) and so will have a minimum 0.75mm2 lead. There may still be a few old UK appliances around with smaller leads which should have a lower rated fuse.

The harmonised colour coding, Brown, Blue, Green/Yellow, was bought in to deal with a number of safety issues on the biggest being the German use of Red for the earth conductor as they thought it was the most important. As others have said the colours were chosen with colour blindness in mind, especially the bi-colour earth.

Here is example of a melted 13A plug taken from this report by the Electrical Safety Council:

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Lots of things being written on domestic power distribution, not all of which are accurate.

In the beginning properties were wired with a few sockets on radial circuits. Most countries developed their own plug and socket systems. The UK had the round pin 2A, 5A and 15A plugs in two and 3 pin versions. The Germanic countries and a few others had a 16A two round pins to which they later added the side earth connections (Schutzkontakt – hence the name Schuko). The French speaking lands went for two pins and later added an inverted earth pin. You can plug a French plug into a Schuko but you don’t have an earth. The Italians put the earth in the middle and have 10A and 16A versions. The Swiss have a 10A version with an offset earth. The Europeans tended to be a radial circuit per room feeding the lights and sockets. The UK tended to keep sockets and lighting different. In all these cases the fuse for the radial circuit protected the flexible cable against short circuits as long as it was above a specified minimum size. The appliance itself had to protect against overloads, either by making them unlikely or by having an internal fuse.

Then the UK decided to change the system and I will cynically say that this was to make the installation as cheap as possible for the builders and push the costs onto the occupants. Rather than a radial circuit per room (or group of small rooms) they decided on a power circuit and a lighting circuit, one of each in a small property and being duplicated as required in larger ones. To minimise the cost of cable the lighting circuits were 6A with 1mm2 cable and they came up with the ring final circuit for the power circuits. The 2.5mm2 cable with a reduced size uninsulated earth conductor with 30/32A protection was chosen together with fused plugs of a completely new design with rectangular rather than round pins. This left the occupants to buy large heavy 3 pin plugs with an inbuilt fuse to protect the flexible cable rather than a much smaller lighter often 2 pin plug as used elsewhere. The similarities between the mainland systems allowed the development of the 2 pin Europlug which can be used all over Europe except the UK and is ideal for small electronic devices.

The UK carries the legacy of a wiring system which might have been ok when perhaps a couple of electric fires, a vacuum cleaner, a hairdryer, a kettle and the telly were all that were plugged in. Now in the UK the plethora of small electronic devices require a plug larger than themselves and consumes far more materials than necessary. The UK 13A plug is also hazardous due to it’s design. The right angle design means it won’t easily come out if you trip on the wire rather than straight designs. It is heavy and has caused many injuries where people lifted appliances off the top of cupboard or high shelve and were hit by the following plug. Standing on the upturned pins is worse than standing on Lego bricks without shoes. A Europlug is much less unpleasant. Finally the connections to the fuse tend to overheat if the plug is run near it’s 13A rating which can result in the plug softening and the live pin remaining in the socket, still live, when the plug is removed.

Roger

If you want to look at new European Wabeco are an option:

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As are TECO:

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I have the TECO milling head on my lathe and have had no problems with the round column. The guiding key and keyway appear to be very well made. I have read reports of problems with the control electronics on some Wabeco machines but have no details.

Mod's please replace Hymem with Hymek ;-(

I knew I had seen that report when you first posted but couldn't remember where. I was looking through some stuff related to carburetors and it was at the end of a downloaded ME article on a 120cc V8 built to power a 5" gauge model Hymem locomotive.