Member postings for Oven Man

I picked up one of these from Aliexpress in China. Don't know how the accuracy compares with the real thing but better than a broken one.

Peter

If you are just looking for the centre the ball diameter cancels itself out and can be ignored. Or am I missing something?

Peter

We used to use a single phase in / single phase out VSDs at work for driving sub 500 watt permanent capacitor single phase fan motors but to be perfectly honest they were not very good. We only used them as a retrofit on motors that were already installed and it was too much hassle to change them. We did a lot of investigating such drives and came th the conclusion that nobody produces anything that is any good. Single phase in and three phase out is the only way to go with everything except maybe fan drives.

Hello Mark, welcome. Like you my workshop is an internal garage. It's not perfect but has the advantage for me of not having to go outside to get to it. Probably the biggest downside is no windows but its good for security.

Peter

Be interesting to see what the divorce rate does as well.

Peter

Thankyuo SM for that information - very useful. They were collected by my father and somewhere I have the list he made with all the dates of the collection. I will have a look and see if there is anything valuable.

Peter

I've still got a pile of old shillings. A use for them at last?

Peter

Please can someone explain why plugs on appliances come with a plastic cover on the pins. Seems like an example of single plastic at its worst.

Peter

All commercially made laboratory and industrial heat treatment ovens going up to around 600C have stainless steel liners to overcome the dust problem. As most have a circulating fan the abrasive effect of the air on any soft insulation is disastrous. For high temp use back the stainless with 25 mm of ceramic fibre and then a layer of mineral wool slab about 50 mm thick. If you want a nice cool exterior build a double skin case with a ventilated airgap. For a simple home built job vermiculite board is probably as good as it gets for non shedding material. If you are using stainless for oven building go for ferritic 430 rather than austenitic 304, it doesn't expand as much.

HTH Peter

Welcome along Russell. Get yourself a copy of "The Amateur's Lathe" by L H Sparey and/or Neil Wyats book on the Mini Lathe and have a good read.

Thankyou very much Neil. Looking forward to reading it.

Peter

Project Gutenberg is an excellent source of out of copyright free books, both fiction and non fiction. Just been reading a book from PG on how to make nitro explosives. Seems you need to build the factory on a hillside as everything is done by gravity to eliminate sparks from motors and pumps.

Have also been reading "The Age of Wonder". It is a book about the "scientists" Joseph Banks, William Herchel, Machael Faraday and others aound 1750 to 1840. Its interesting how literature and science were so intertwined at that time. People like Wordsworth and Colleredge were also very interested in science.

Peter

According to the ISPs evening use is 10 times the daytime use so they see no problem in coping with the extra load.

Peter

Welcome Wrinx from another inhabitant of Chesterfield

Thank you NDIY and John MC for that information. I didn't realise that there are other alternatives on the market.

Peter

The chart above shows the output from my 3kW system located in North Derbyshire. The interesting thing is how consistent the output is over the years. The supplier said it would take about eight and a half years to recover the costs and I've done it in eight. I've got a solar boost unit on my wish list, interesting to read comments about it. Not so sure about needing to clean the panels, unless you can do it for nothing. I doubt you would recover the costs if you had to pay someone to do it.

Peter

The larger sizes of Dormer drills are/were made in Brazil. We built a quite sophisticated heat treatment furnace for Dormer when they were manufacturing in the UK. When they shut the UK plant and shifted everything to Brazil one of my colleagues went out there to recomission it.

The power supply for stepper motors is an important consideration. I have a NEMA 24 4Nm stepper directly driving the Z axis on my Champion V20 mill. I use a 40volt DC home made linear power supply and the system has more than enough power to lift the head without any other assistance.

The move to biofuels is a good example of the law of unintended consequenses.

Andrew, Yes indeed. looks like a late 1970s model. You can tell the age from the serial no. - month and year then a sequential number for that year. We've still got the records of almost all the units we have ever made since about 1960.

Peter