Member postings for John Hinkley

Bill,

Here's another variation on the theme. I have the 70mm version of the Arc precision vice on my shaper and the slot dimensions are very similar to those on your larger version. To hold it to the table, I made four toe clamps using a piece of 8mm steel rod to act as the pivot, like this:

The clamp itself was made from a piece of 12mm x 25mm steel stock with a 6mm high x 7mm deep cut out at one end to fit in the vice groove. A 15mm long by 8mm wide slot was milled to accept the hold-down bolt. Clamping two together as below, I drilled an 8mm hole along the join about 13mm from the end. The pivot rod sits in this recess and the dimensions gives the slightly nose-down attitude required to hold the vice in pace. Works for me.

The quality of the photos is quite poor - I'm using a phone too close - but you get the idea.

John

Well, with a combination of help from here, a deep re-think, a reset to factory settings and a night's sleep later and it's sorted. Everything is back together and working as it should. Except I have mislaid the 4mm key that drives the spindle gear. It would be the smallest one, too. I'll have to wait until Monday when the key steel I've ordered arrives before I can do any cutting under power. Manual feed only for the moment.

A big thank you to everyone who responded either on here or by PM for your help.

For the benefit of anyone following in these tracks, these are the settings I used with reference to the manual page 9 in Peak4's post:

Pn01 = 1 Displays instantaneous frequency

Pn02 = 50 Starting (base) frequency

Pn03 = 3 Selects remote pot wiper as source for frequency control

Pn04 = 2 Selects remote forward/remote switch for direction selection

Pn07 = 2 Enables the start again function from external source

Pn08 = 2.5 Seconds My choice of acceleration to speed - I always reduce to zero speed on the pot before switching off.

Pn09 = 2.5 Seconds. Deceleration time see previous note

Pn10 = 60Hz Maximum frequency set in the software.. Again, my personal choice to prevent chuck overspeed in highest gear ratio.

Pn12 = 50Hz. Motor rating frequency

The rest are as per the manual.

Remote wiring connections reference page 5 of the manual referred to above:

Potentiometer: "low" side - to GND, "high" side to 5V OUT, Wiper to 5V IN

Forward/Reverse switch: GND to one side of the switch, the relevant lead to the respective FOR and REV terminals on the VFD.

Hope that helps someone.

John

Bill,

Yes, that's the same manual as the one that came with the vfd, same manufacturer. My problem is getting my head around the parameters and my fingers around the wiring. I'll go back to square one parameter-wise and start again this morning. At least I can make it run forwards and backwards.

John

David,

Yes, I'm using (or at least trying to) voltage variation to adjust the speed.

Michael,

That isprobably explained by the fact that my manual cover two different VFDs- one with and one without a panel mounted potentiometer. Which only serves to confuse matters even more. I'll get there-maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the day after, but sometime. I won't be beaten. Think I'll check out the internal fuses, just in case. The manufacturer thoughtfully suoolied three spare ones inside the terminal cover. They must have know I might do something stupid!

John

Double post removed!

Edited By John Hinkley on 25/09/2020 19:27:38

Michael,

I haven't tried that yet. My vfd is the type that has up and down buttons for frequency control, not a potentiometer. It's a cheap unit! I'm beginning to regret being tight-fisted, but I thought that it would be as easy to connect up as the HuangYang one.

John

Dave,

I'll have a closer look at your suggestion and maybe try it out tomorrow. I've received a PM with some other suggestions, too, so more food for thought. To be honest, I've tried so many wiring/parameter combinations that my brain is a bit addled. I have found, however, from watching a youtube video, that to remotely switch between forward and reverse, there has to be a connection from COM (ground) to the respective FOR or REV terminals - but not at the same time, of course!

John

As documented elsewhere on the site, I've been working my way round the workshop converting my machines to 3-phase motors with VFDs one per machine. I started with the mill with a HuangYang VFD. Easy, peasy. Then the shaper with a a cheap import controlled from the panel - no problem.

Now the lathe. Again a cheap import supplemented with a forward/reverse switch, E-Stop switch and Speed pot in a remote unit bought from the Internet. I thought it would be simply a matter of following the same steps as with the mill (also has remote), but oh no! I can get the forward/reverse switch to work despite an incorrect wiring diagram supplied with the remote. Can I get the VFD to recognise the remote potentiometer? Well, no, actually, I can't. These are the connections additional to the mains in/3-phase out in the manual:

My dilemma is where to connect the pot leads? The obvious connections are GND and 5V out to either end of the pot track and pot wiper to the 5V in terminal. Combine that set up with parameter changes Pn04 to 2 (External signal control) If I set Pn03 to 1 (Pot frequency control) it runs but no speed control. Set Pn03 to 3 (External 0-5V) the lathe doesn't run at all and the pot doesn't alter the displayed frequency.

Any bright ideas, chaps? I've been pulling my hair out over this for two days, off and on and I'm reluctantly resigning myself to operating the lathe from the onboard panel for the time being, or buying another HuangYang unit.

John

Hope the manual scan is legible.

To quote (and paraphrase) "The Fast Show" -- "Today, I have been mostly fitting a new motor to my lathe"

As part of a program of improvements to the workshop, I#'ve been working my way round it, gradually replacing all the machine single-phase motors with 3-phase ones, each one fed from a separate VFD. First to receive the treatment was the mill, then a couple of weeks ago, the shaper. Yesterday the new motor for the lathe arrived and I've now mounted it on the lathe. The new motor is slightly uprated from the original, from 0.75HP to one HP, so consequently has correspondingly greater dimensions. Luckily I was able to use the majority of the original mountings with just a little bit of jiggery-pokery and re-drilling of a few holes. Annoyingly, I ordered the wrong size taper lock fitting for the gearbox input spindle, so I'll have to wait a little longer to get it running. But, no matter, the VFD doesn't arrive until tomorrow and anyway, I have the plumber in to replace a leak damaged set of units as well, so no workshop time for me tomorrow.

No pictures - to be honest, I'm a bit ashamed of the bodge nature of the mounting. Ideally, I'd have welded up a new one, but as I don't possess a welding kit, that will have to wait. Fortunately, my back burner is looking pretty bare at the moment. One for another day.

John

Told you!

To be honest my "rant" was a bit of tongue-in-cheek banter, to illustrate the silliness as I perceived it. If I knew what a tongue-in-cheek emoji looked like, I might have inserted one of them, but I don't do emojis.

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 18/09/2020 09:47:03

Whoa! Isn't this getting a bit silly? The OP got the answer to his query in the first reply. A quick look at his postings show a few posted from October 2015 involving, mostly, queries about his Bantam lathe, then sporadic posts until December 2016. Then a gap of 2½ YEARS 'til the next in July last year. It's was14 months prior to this post that his last appeared. I don't recall anyone enquiring of his whereabouts in his long periods of absence. Click on his single photo and all I get is a blank page, so presumably it's been deleted already.

When I snuff it, I don't expect my executors to go through all my log-in details and let everyone know I've exchanged metal-pushing for daisy-pushing. I'll just quietly fade away and no one will miss me, either.

I'll probably get lambasted for this rant, but, hey, I've been casigated and criticised on here before and no doubt will again. Hurt pride may be the result, nothing more, and I've been given boll***ings by professionals.

John

Practice, practice, practice. Then some more practice!  'til it becomes second nature.  If it's any consolation, I don't "practice" what I preach and often have to think about it!

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 16/09/2020 19:17:09

Greg,

You don't give any clue as to the age of your kit, but if it's really old, this publication has lots of words and pictures.

Link to VintageMachinery.org

It looks to be more geared towards publicity than operating instructions etc, but interesting, nevertheless, I thought. Covers a couple of grinding machines, too.

John

Thanks, Baz. I think I've got a blunt hss cutter or ten lying around in the drawer. I'll mount the diamond wheel on the surface grinder and have a play with that. Might try some carbide, too.

John

I watched a couple of YouTube videos about hardening and tempering as well as re-reading Mike Cox's how-to on his web site. Fired up the blowlamp (a Butane-fuelled one) and got the broach tool as hot as I could. Nowhere near as cherry as I thought it should be, but quenched it anyway, Straw coloured also eluded me for the tempering so I decided to try it out, anyway. Nothing to lose, I thought. The result is shown below:

Not a complete failure, but, as you can see from the state of the broaching 'bit', my efforts to harden and temper it were, shall we say, "less than optimal"! Perhaps I should have invested in a considerably bigger blowtorch rather than the frippery of the 6-jaw chuck! Doubtless the latter will get an awful lot more use than the former, however.

Despite the slightly disappointing result, I'm quite pleased with the outcome and will continue to experiment with other shapes and sizes of cutters from time to time and try to improve my heat treatment skills, or lack thereof.

Hope you've found this little project of mildly amusing interest which, by the way, I put in its own thread so as not to clutter up the "Workshop progress" thread and make it easier to ignore for those not into this sort of thing.

John

Latest instalment:

I decided to try out my latest extravagance - a 6-jaw chuck - to hold the stock for the cutter tool blank.

I just screwed it to the backplate with no particular attempt to true it up and the TIR was minimal - about 0.02mm at 25mm from the chuck jaws. Pretty darned good for a chuck that cost me a gnat's under a hundred quid brand new including postage! One of my better buys! Anyway, back to the plot:

I eventually settled on using a Stevenson's milling cutter fixture to hold and index the cutter. The standard angled faces meant that there was a ready-made 2° angle available for the side relief on the cutter.

Grinding in progress:

The finished cutter tool:

Finish on the ground faces wasn't up to much using the white oxide wheel. I'll try using a diamond wheel next time.

I couldn't find my radius tool (see above), so I freehanded it (badly) to partially stress relieve at the join. Time will tell if I've done it well enough.

My first real attempt at heat treating - hardening and tempering - tomorrow, followed by a gentle introduction to broaching in brass to start with.

John

Good point, Rod. I'll give some thought to how I can achieve that. I think I've got a small hss radius tool somewhere that I made for a job I did for a friend a couple of years ago.

John

Hospital appointment later than I thought it was!

I've knocked up an Alibre Atom 3D image of the cutter. Hopefully make one in silver steel tomorrow.

This to make a cutter 6mm tip to tip diameter, for scale.

John

Yesterday I did do the drilling and then gardening duties interfered. Hedge trimmer battery recharged overnight and finished the hedge this morning, so moved on to grinding the side and rear face of the tool block to give the 1° faces such that the cutter is presented to the workpiece at an angle and allow the tailstock to abut the rear face perpendicularly and not try to skew the block as pressure is applied.

Grinding the block side face:

It's slightly out of focus as its a still from a hand-held video shot on a phone, but you can see the set up I used. Basically just a one degree angle block sitting on the base of the vice. I understand that the exact angle is not hyper-critical, it just has to be less that the relief angle ground on the cutter.

All ground and assembled, waiting for the cutter(s) to be made:

That will have to wait until tomorrow as I've a hospital appointment to attend this afternoon. That'll also give me some time to mull over the machining of said cutter and its subsequent grinding. I have an idea to use my Stevenson's ER32 sharpening fixture to make use of the built-in angles and indexing facilities that will provide. I intend to make just one cutter at first, and this will also be a rare foray into heat treatment. I just hope the plumber's blowtorch is up to the job.

John

P.S. Gawd, I hope it works after all this!

Further, steady progress today. I've finished machining the dovetail in the mounting block, drilled for the height adjustment screw and made the height collar. Mounted on the QCTP, it was aligned with the lathe centreline, the outer side being parallel to the piece of silver steel rod used for the purpose.

Next job will be to drill the hole for the spindle. To that end, I set it up as below. With one hand, I'll be moving the cross slide, with another I'll be providing the thrust with the tailstock and with my other hand applying lubricant!

This is the set-up I'll be using, though with a drill, or series of drills, not a piece of drill rod.

Tomorrow will see me doing the drilling and I think I'll put in a grub screw to retain the spindle in place and maybe add some sort of thrust bearing. The design is evolving as it progresses.

When that is complete, I'll need to for an angle on the outer and rear faces by 1° using the surface grinder to obtain the angle of dangle for the cutter.

But for now, it's dinner time!

John