Member postings for John Hinkley

Everybody will chime in and suggest Steve Cox on 07836 736496 or email landylift@aol.co.uk so I might as well, too. I used his services to move my VMC mill, 9x20 lathe, bandsaw and perfecto shaper on its stand from Leighton Buzzard to near Doncaster last year. Highly recommended and, if I remember correctly, he charged me £400, which I thought was very reasonable. Well pleased with all aspects of the move.

John

Edit: forgot the bandsaw!

Edited By John Hinkley on 19/05/2019 10:13:18

Not knowing where you are on the planet, it's difficult to advise, but, when I lived in Leighton Buzzard, Beds, a couple of years ago, I helped a friend who was rebuilding a Lotus Elan with some machining for the window winding mechanism. This involved sourcing some odd flavoured specialised captive imperial nuts. I went to a local firm. I think it was these people :

Alfast Fixings

I offered a contribution to their tea fund in exchange for 40 of the nuts. No paperwork involved. You miht be able to persuade a forum member living nearby to visit for you?

I suspect if you want thousands, they'd be willing to take your money, too. There doesn't seem to be a type of fastener they don't manufacture.

John

P.S. It might equally have been : Astraeus Fasteners Ltd, Milton Keynes, but I can't find a web site, although the Google Earth location looks vaguely familiar.

Steve K5,

I assume that you have read Ian Bradley's book "The shaping machine"? I don't know whether it is still in copyright, so I'll only reproduce a snip of a drawing which appears in it, showing the general form of a finishng tool.

It's not very clear because it's from a larger file but you get the general idea. (Those figures are 20° and 5°. ) The full book is available in sections for download on the NEMES web site in the 'States:

Nemes book resources

http://neme-s.org/Shaper%20Books/The%20Shaping%20Machine/

It's up to you whether you download it or not, of course. Far be it for me to advocate piracy! I did and combined the sections into Word and pdf files.

It is a pretty comprehensive, if a little dated, book but it contains a lot of information that I found useful as a shaper novice.

John

Yes. Hearty congratulations, Mike. Well done.

John

Did I go to the same show as you lot? RDG were there with a brand new 'Myford' Super 7 on display, with a price tag of £2495 (+VAT). Not that I'd be interested; not at that price. So it can be done.

I enjoyed having a jostle around the various stalls and picked up what I consider to be some useful bargains - 2 rotary broaches, for example, £3! A box of CCGT inserts from JB Cutting Tools, at a discount for 10 and a couple of Indian stones for £6.

I must admit that I'm not into steam engines of any sort, though I can appreciate the skill and ingenuity, not to mention the hours that people have invested in their models. I agree that the rotary Bentley engine and the scale 3-litre straight-four were spectacular, though I saw no sign of a blower on it.

Perhaps it might be possible to have demonstrations of the large scale aircraft in flight at some point. There's no shortage of airspace outside, even if it is restricted by its proximity to Doncaster-Sheffield airport.

All-in-all a pleasant experience and one that I will be repeating next year.

John

Often, the gear set-ups are not always 4 gears. My lathe, for example, (not a Warco - but geared head one ), can cut a choice of threads, both metric and Imperial. Some have four gear-trains and some have just three. The three-gear trains are simple with one gear engaging with the following. When using four gears, the middle two are keyed together. Could it be that your lathe uses a similar arrangement and the arrow merely means there is no gear in that position.

I fear I haven't put that very well - but I know what I mean!

Here's the gear chart that goes with my lathe:

John

Bazyle,
I'm about to slip out to the workshop to continue with cleaning the engraver, prior to a few practice cuts. The documentation includes a section on setting the ratios and a separate piece on intermediate fractional ratios. All it says about the table markings is, quote -

"These are to assist in positioning the workpiece and copy holders relative to each other."

Not very helpful! Send me a PM with your email address and I'll pop a copy into the ether for you. Let me know whether you want a Word document or pdf. (They are 9.5Mb and 6.1Mb respectively.)

John

David,

I'd probably have more of an eclectic mix, too, if I hadn't had to metricate when we retired to France. It's bad enough trying to source small metric fasteners there, let alone stuff from the Empire!

Still, back in Blighty now and the world is my lobster, thanks to the internet and fast broadband.

John

Went to pick up a pantograph engraver the other day and today I have been running an oily rag over it, prior to trying it out. Unfortunately, I've found a couple of sheared 2BA countersunk screws which need replacing. I'm all-metric as a rule, so I've had to order some from the internet. I hope that they will arrive before the weekend. Until then, I'll continue to work on the operating instructions. Having failed to find a manual of any sort on the internet, I was delighted to discover when I picked it up, that it was complete with operating instructions and some publicity material, too. The instructions were dated 1969 and were typed on what must surely be a manual typewriter. I have nearly finished re-writing them in Word, incorporating all the other material with it. This has meant redrawing some of the illustrations, so it's taken quite a while. When it's finished, I'll have it in .doc and .pdf format, so if anyone wants a copy, PM me and I'll send it to you. Might take a week to get it completed, though!

Here's what it looks like, squeezed into the only remaining bit of space left in the garage:

John

It also rather depends on the material you are trying to machine. If it's round, I'd clamp it in Vee blocks with a fixed end stop to butt up against and do all the measuring from the end. If it''s flat, just clamp to the mill bed, again using a fixed end stop to locate it and reference from the end again. More food for thought? This all supposes that the material is accurately machined to length to start with.

John

I've used these in the past when I was located near them. I don't know how their prices compare with others, but they supplied me with the small quantities I needed quickly when I ordered from them:

Link to Westfield Fasteners

John

I bought a cheap set off eBay a few years ago because I didn't know any better. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't be "accurate". I just got on with using them. For the accuracy that I aspire to, they are perfectly satisfactory. If you are only laying out £20 or so, buy them and see how you get on, I say.

John

Bill,

Logic? I don't do logic! The first figure was plucked out of thin air and the following ones were calculated to give equally divided spacing between the holes. I could just as easily have chosen a smaller initial angle and had a different layout. So long as the holes in the other plate are offset by one degree, the progression is the same. Try it in a CAD program. That's how I trialled it.

John

Chris,

You are quite right. The quote I received was for two castings (in case I messed one up!) including the making of a pattern, itself £100. Then add VAT, delivery and so the price mounts up. I moved here to near Doncaster a year ago, so I expected to be within easy reach of a number of foundries. Unfortunately those whom I contacted for quotes did not respond - even one that claimed to specialise in one-offs. Companies like that don't get a second chance, in my book.

When we moved back to the Uk, I either sold or gave away all my wood working tools, which makes mould-making difficult. As it happens, I think the stock material route is a better solution. Even if it's not as pretty, it's practical, functional and reproduceable.

Neil - thank you for the winkie surgery. (Sounds painful!)

John

Thanks, Michael. Those blasted winkies are back. They don't appear when I use the iPad, only when I use the PC. Now it's too late to remove them.

John

This project started as a way of getting the hang of the Alibre Atom 3D CAD program offered a couple of months ago in MEW. I'd tried a number of 3D packages before and never got to grips with any of them. Somehow and for reasons unknown, I seemed to "click" with this one. Once i got the idea of building up an assembly of parts in my head and put them together in a co-ordinated way, it seemed relatively simple to create the parts in the computer. To start with, I "made" a few simple objects and quickly moved on to more ambitious designs. Then I decided to actually create something that would be useful in the workshop, so I cast around for a tool or fixture that I didn't possess but was on the "nice to have available" list. Thus, this indexer was conceived. I decided that I would limit it to providing division by single degrees and not fractions of a degree. (To be honest, I thought I could do the former, but couldn't think of a way to acheive the latter!)

So, basically, the rotating part was a straight shaft with an ER25 collet chuck on the end - because I had one on a shelf. This had to be supported somehow, so I designed a casting. When I got a quote to produce two castings in aluminium, it was going to be the thick end of £200! Back to the drawing board - or rather the mouse and computer. It made sense to construct the tool in materials which are readily available from most stockists, so that's the way I went.

The collet chuck is mounted on two supports and runs in oilite bearings, the whole being mounted on a base plate.

Opposite the business end of the shaft sit two circular plates, the inner one free to rotate on the shaft, the other, outer one, keyed to it. There are 36 holes at 10° spacing on the inner side of the floating plate (what I called the "reference plate" ) in which a removeable detent engages, through the shaft support. On the other side of this plate are eleven holes, one at 12 o'clock (representing a zero degree position) a second at 79° and subsequent holes at 30° spacing proceeding clockwise.

The outer plate (I call this the "indexing plate" ) has a similar layout of (threaded) holes on the same PCD but at angles of 78° and 29° respectively.

This arrangement allows the holes to be rotated by one degree per pair of holes in much the same way as a vernier scale works. By using a combination of a selection of 10° and 1° divisions, any angle can be obtained.

I foresee its use in a number of workshop applications in addition to the usual ones. For example, in another thread posted this evening, I notice that a member requires assistance making a camshaft. Jason has suggested a method involving milling the profile in a number of stages by rotating the blank a few degrees at a time. Use this and it can be done in one degree increments, if needed.

By substituting a rotating handle, such as used on a cross slide advance screw, and removing the reference plate detent screw, it can be converted into a rudimentary rotating fixture for basic cylindrical grinding,

The possibilities are only limited by one's imagination.

Here is the prototype nearly finished. It's working but needs the graduations engraved and a couple of little tweaks before I'm perfectly satisfied with it. You can compare it with the Alibre output, above.

There are a few more pictures and brief construction details in my album ("A degree of indexing" ) should you want more info.

John

Edited By JasonB on 06/04/2019 06:52:01

Gray,

I like the look of the middle one; it's the sort of size to which I can relate, both in construction and use terms. Have you, or do you intend to publish the plans anywhere? I've already built my version of the one described in your book.

John

Jason, I followed that link to the Warco saw - Blimey what a price! The fact that the Chester site invites you to enquire for their prices rather leads me to believe a small mortgage will be required, too. You (Choochoo-Baloo) could get an awful lot of laser- or water-cut plates for a hundredth of that outlay. Unless you are going into production, of course.

John

And thank you, David. I tried Jason's tip and it worked fine. Also saw the article about custom templates and resolved to do that later this evening.

John

Thanks, Jason. I knew there would be an easy answer, if only I knew where to look! I'll try it in a moment when I've finished my afternoon tea and cake.

John