Member postings for Robert Atkinson 2

Helium is not suitable as a welding shield gas for at least three reasons.

1/ It's lighter than air so will float off (unless you are welding in an enclosed overhead postion)
2/ It's a very good conductor of heat so will cool the welds excessively (It's used in small sealed instrumenets to conduct heat away and low cost helium leack detectos usits conductivity to detect trace amounts)
3/ It's expensive.

Robert G8RPI.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 01/04/2019 16:16:17

Hi,
any lathe sold by a reputable UK supplier will run fine on 240V. The whole 220V / 230V / 240V thing is a standardisation kludge. Europe used to specify 220V with a +- tolerance, UK was 240V with a +- tolerence. To harnonise we agreed on 230V with a tolerance that encompassed both 220V and 240V. A lot of Far Eastern kit still lists 220V but modern electrical equipment is very tolerant of supply voltage. As a ex tool mker I'm sure you appreciate the tolerence thing.

Robert G8RPI

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 30/03/2019 15:15:40

Motor capacitors are normally AC rated so take the peak voltage into account. a 270V AC capacitor will be fine on UK mains.

Are you sure the compressor has not seized? they normally run in an oil bath. Most Jun-Air silents have a band clamp on the housing so you can take the top off and make sure it's rurning by hand. The relay is also suspect..

Robert G8RPI.

OK,

This is probably "specmanship" the 3A , 11A or whatener i probly the no load or minimum load current and is given so you can "calculate" a long battery life. I'll bet anyone it closer to 100A when pulling a 180 person uphill.

Robert G8RPI.

Sorry, but there is no dot. The other dots and colons are square and clearly visible.
There are 3 leads on this motor the low current one you mentioned earlier is not the power connection, it's probably a temperature sensor.
This motor is much too big for 265W, it will be 950W output and 2650W electrical input. Peak efficency for a PMDC is adout 65% but that is at 10% load. at rated load it's likel to be 45%. This is a 4 brush motor which are less efficentso the 36% indicated by the data plate for max load is entirely reasonable. We hae no idea what the duty cycle is.

Robert G8RPI.

It's a 4 brush motor with a flat braided strap for connection, despite the spacing on the nameplate, that alone says it's 110A current rating not 11A. You can get speed controllers designed for robots that will handle this sort of current. Search for high current pwm motor speed control e.g. **LINK** (from search no idea if it's any good).
Unless doing sustained drilling a couple of 12V lead acid batteries and a intelligent charger would be easier than a 100A power supply.
Brushed DC motors do not loose torque with reduced speed. Torque is only limited by the available supply current and voltage, current rating of motor / supply and mechanical strength. Normally the winding resistance will limit the current and thus torque, but if you increase the voltage to compensate the torque will go up. A controller with speed feedback will do this automatically. Obviously the available mechanical power goes down if you reduce the speed at the same torque, this is the laws of physics.

Robert G8RPI.

This is an old thread, but it contains a worrying comment from john swift 1

"they provide a practical solution in the form of a switch to disconnect the earth connection from the EMC filter"

You should NEVER, EVER REMOVE THE EARTH from an mains EMC filter for any reason. Doing so will leave the body of the filter (and possibly the entire equipment) "live" and an electric shock hazard.

The manual John linked to describes removing or disconnecting the filter completely (not a good idea as the drive will cause interference and is therefore illegal). However in that manufactures smaller drives this is done by pulling a tab that disconnects the filter.

As suggested by Gary an isolating transformer should prevent the tripping, but it brings it's own issues. The drives are industrial components and should really be installed in a circuit with correctly sized protection. Unfortunately most domestic "part P" electricians (and at least 1 supposed industrial one I've met) don't understand the requirements.

Robert G8RPI

Not for production, that would be two part numbers for otherwise identical parts to make, stock and keep track of. That is extra cost. And the SRBF gear is probably cheaper anyway. But like so many of these things only the original designer knows the real reason. I've certainly designed things where you would not be able to guess why I chose a part.

Robert G8RPI

The broken gears do seem to be made from rod or tube rolled material rather than sheet so will have weaker teeth.

A couple of people have rubbished "Tufnol" however Tufnol is the manufacturer not the product. They make a wide range of materials, but we are talking about laminated phenolic resin materials. Within this product there are paper and fabric types. What most people call Tufnol is the fabric material. Even then there are different grades. The classic ones are Carp, Vole, Whale and Crow. Carp is the premium fine weave material. It has excellent properties and is frquently used in aerospace, both on aircraft and even more for jigs and fixtures.
Don't compare cheap imported material with a premium British product.

Robert G8RPI.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 18/03/2019 22:49:40

A PM DC motor will never make an alternator of any kind. The commutator rectifies the rotor output so they produce DC. They don't even make good generators as you cannot control the output voltage for speed or load variations. I guess you could use a 230V one with a switchmode step down voltage regulator but its a bit of a weird approach.

Robert G8RPI.

+1 for NFU Mutual. I have always found them very good for odd stuff like modified landrovers and gas turbine (jet) engines. They seem to be pretty pragmatic about things.

Big professional ones still exist too

www.zoro.co.uk/shop/power-tools/power-hacksaws/ajph200-hydraulic-hacksaw-machine-400v-3ph/p/ZT1028546X?

Lot of money £6000-£18000 for a saw though!

Robert G8RPI.

As it reverses by swapping the supply it is 99% certainly a permanent magnet DC motor. It looks like a PM. The odd 1% are the same as a "universal" (AC/DC) motor that has a full wave rectifier connected to either the field OR the armature winding. I've seen this on a couple of motors, it allows you to have a remote reverse switch with only two wires to the motor. It can be retrofitted to a standard universal motor. As you probably kinow to reverse a universal you have to swap just the field or armature.

Robert G8RPI.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 16/03/2019 22:54:31

The obvious answer to me is to ditch the gearbox and direct drive the leadscrew with a servo motor (or stepper) with a controller that is driven by pulses picked up from the headstock spindle (reluctance sensor off existing gear teeth or a new opto.). Any decent controller will be able to electronically gear the servo to the head at whatever ratio you need.

Then again I'm an electronics engineer.

Robert G8RPI.

Hi,

If there are 24 LEDs in the light then there must be 2 series strings of 12 wired in parallel. 1.7V (40/24) is not enough to light a white LED. For 10W wee need 0.25A at 40V So for resistor value (if we work on the peak voltage for a safety margin) the resistor needs to drop 320V - 40V at 0.25A so Ohms law gives us 320-40/0.25 = 1120 Ohms.
So say a 1000 ohm resistor. However the power rating of this resistor is 78 Watts (280x280 /1000) so it is not a practical solution unless you want a heater as well.

Robert G8RPI.

Two valves in series in liquid pipework have a potential issue that if you leave them both closed with fluid in the system thermal expansion can cause severe damage. The gauge will allow some expansion but if the pipe volume between valves is much larger than the volume of the bourdon tube in the gauge even normal UK daytime temperature changes could damage the gauge. One valve between pump and gauge will do all you need.

Robert G8RPI

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 03/03/2019 21:54:30

Most likely for a measurement indication point that was relatively distant from the adjustment / setting location position. Now we would just use a electronic sensor with a remote display.

+ 1 for Devcon repair putty. As Clive said, drilling shallow damage is a good idea. I've seen a magnetic base drill with large cutter used on a big machine to turn spot damage into round or chain drilled depressions with sharp transitions from base metal to filler.

Robert.

Last thing you want is a published article on where to put a tracker, it will tell the theves where to look. Power for a tracker is a problem. Those in cars have internl batteriws kept charged from the main battery. Most steam models do not have a battery and generator. A hiding place where th antennas still operate is difficult on a metallic model. One thing every one should do is to to make a mark or number in a non-obvious place known only to you so the model can be identified if recovered. Don't forget to take photos of the marking.

This is not a "IBM/Simplex Synchronous Correction cycle" clock as suggested by SOD, it's a minute impulse with sync. Normally 1 ppm on red back pair but if out of sync a (normally manually initiated) series of rapid pulses on the white / black fast forwards until the cam switch opens. A capacitor discharge as suggested by Bazyle is a good idea. charged to between 12 and 24 V by a series resistor and discharged by a transistor through the coil.

Note that the IBM system is different in detail to the British ones.

I could be persuaded to do a circuit for you if you wanted. For a little extra I could put an rubidium standard in it so you would have your own atomic clock with 1 minute resolution

Robert G8RPI