Member postings for AndyP

Hi Chris,

That certainly takes more off but neither the instructions or the video mention resetting the bit between grinds, the video clearly shows doing one then the other all in one camera shot. It doesn't look right to me :-

I got one of the Holzmann drill bit sharpeners mentioned today and have been playing with it this afternoon. Seems a solidly built unit and the "plastic" bits are thick and hard rather than flimsy. There is a video on the German parent website here .

I am not sure about the angles it produces though, the first grind, I'll call it cutting looks too shallow to me and the clearance angle grind which is done second barely touches the back of the cutting edge.

First picture shows after the main grind of the cutting edge...

And after the clearance angle has been ground

Not sure whether to return it or not.

Andy

Cowells use that short No. 0 Morse taper in the tailstock so their rotating centre should fit but sit down before you see the price !

Andy

I have had my Sieg X21 mill for over 8 years, it didn't come from ArcEuroTrade but the long table did - made a huge difference. It has done everything I have asked of it. I regularly use my 6" Soba rotary table on it and it is still on the original plastic gears so maybe I am a magician or maybe some of the "facts" about these mills are not too factual. If it vanished tomorrow I would buy another one but from Arc this time.

Andy

I have found pla burns out nicely when printing lots of precious metal items (it's the day job) but more importantly things like this:-

or

which is the pump body for a sweet pea so I could practice on one before butchering the the real thing on the left since it is for the new club loco.

This shows the model sprued up ready to invest with another scaled up model and the original brass cylinder with a 1 to 1 copy in pla. All steam passageways are cast in but I should leave some meat on the valve openings to clean them up.

cast in gunmetal as a test and the brass pair now adorn my MarieE, it is the normal method of address for my particular SWMBO.

Now if I could just melt cast iron .........

Andy

Edited By AndyP on 19/02/2015 21:43:00

Larry

Google for recipes for greensand, at its simplest it is just sand, bentonite and water, depending on where you are bentonite can be easy to find (drilling contractors or farmers suppliers are possibilities) or not.

For small castings and especially where more details is required I like Delft clay which is an oil bonded mix that I haven't managed to replicate yet largely because the sand is very fine, more like a silt if I remember my college soil mechanics properly.

It is possible to cast in plaster of paris, a club member did so for a dome for a 5" gauge Heisler in a plant pot on his drive but I admit I always use proper investment powder. If experimenting please remember that molten metal + moisture = PAIN and that can include the moisture remaining in apparently dry and set plaster - a normal investment casting flask will do a 4 hour or more cycle up to 580 deg C before pouring metal.

Lots of good web resources for home foundry.

Andy

Welcome Jesse, do you mean this sort of thing?

Andy

The best on line list of clubs I have seen is here anything useful among them ?

Andy

I have always been confused by the assertion that metric lathes read in diameter mode on the cross slide since I have 3 metric lathes, a Boxford AUD, a Sieg C1 and a Cowells ME90 all of which read in radius mode on the cross slide - anything else would annoy the hell out of me!

Andy

Ketan, thank you, that gives me a start, I too got some individual imperial collets from you when you had them on clearance and they fit my MT2 holder which indeed came from Chester with my Cobra (X1) mill. The mill has now sprouted an X1L table from you - vast improvement.

Andy

Can anybody suggest a current source of the 'Chinese non-standard ER style' collets as individual collets to make up my set ?

Andy

I don't know about interference, it doesn't wreck the radio in the workshop unlike the 3d printer and the family haven't complained so maybe not.

Andy

I have built and used a simple spark eroder and although it is not the same the capacitors in mine that perform the same function are 2 off 150uF 220v electrolytics wired in parallel. Mine works best at around 36v but it is fed by a variac so that is a little vague.

Andy

I am not a subscriber as I prefer to support my local newsagents with a regular order for both magazines but sums I can do.

Surely if one gets 3 magazines for £1 and then 13 for £42 the relevant sum is 43/16 to give £2.69 per issue, reverting to £3.23 after that.

If it were my offer I would go further and say the first year consisted of the 3 magazines for £1 and three quarters at £10.50 since there is a good chance one of those quarters would be the 4 magazine one. The sum now becomes 32.50/13 which looks even batter at £2.50 per magazine.

Sorry, got my pedant head on today.

Isn't the small end of an MT3 taper less than 7/8" ?

By my reckoning the small end should be about 19.8mm (depends on the length) which is cutting it fine for 3/4" at 19.05mm.

Andy

David

The MESNI might be a useful contact - shorter commute at least

Andy

The fans sold as ex military for forced cooling of valve radios by steamfittings and others are described as 6v to 24v. I use one on 12v for MarieE with no problems, apart from forgetting the rag when taking it off

I concur, top edge.

Andy

Brian,

I am building Rob Roy as a first loco so welcome to the club. It is true there are several mistakes on the drawings, some of which are detailed here but for me the availability of the book and a set of blow by blow build instructions outweighs these errors. I suspect any other suitable loco is going to have errors as well.

I am at the air running stage and ready for platework so it is possible!

Andy

Thank you for an excellent description of the geometry of the jig Clive, I may have finally got my head round most of it. Just to be clear when talking about "offsetting the trough" do we mean that measurement that would be affected by placing a washer in the adjustment position on the jig - the one calibrated as 49 deg 59 deg etc

As it stands my jig is going to cut a huge amount off the heel of a new, presumably correctly shaped, drill before getting to the cutting edge so I think I need to experiment with greater projections or look at making Gray's eccentric pivot and render the offset adjustable - it is 7mm at present.

Andy