Member postings for Anthony Knights

I have considered getting one, but at the moment I have too many other things to do.

Completed a few more bits for the beam engine. It's slow work as with it being flipping cold, I have to keep breaking off to get warm. The parts are- main con rod, two cross arm assemblies (not 4 as per drawing) and the flywheel hubs.

It gets worse - "Why are there no asprins in the jungle"

"Cos the parrots eat em all"

The quote at the top of the December page of my calender (on which In write all my hospital appointments) reads-"No man is ever old enough to Know Better"

I suppose I had better contribute.-

"Why don't elephants like penguins?"

"They can't get the wrapper off"

The last time I used SpecSavers, they wanted to charge me MORE to use my existing frames. Naturally, I told them to stick it. I don't need opticians any more, as now I've had both eyes done for cateracts, I only need cheap, off the shelf glasses for reading/close work. My long distance vision is probably the best it has ever been.

Still got mine, although not used it for a while

I used to do that (still have the piece of bar) but sometimes I found I needed 3 hands.

Well it's plan "B". The lathe already had the collet chuck fitted, so I decided to make a start on the con rod for the beam engine. The picture shows the progress so far. The bit in the middle was done with the ball turning gadget I made during the last lock-down. I still have to saw off the excess bits on the ends and machine and drill the cross heads. That is tomorrow's project. Once done that is sheet 5 of the drawings completed. I have already completed sheets 3, 7 and 8.

I recently broke an 8BA tap in a work piece. Why is it always the last hole?- in this case the last of 6. As I don't use BA sizes very much, I knew that the tap I had bought was carbon steel. ( does that make me prudent or a cheapskate?). So chucked the whole thing in the fire and retrieved it from the ashes the next day. The tap was nicely annealed so I drilled it out easily. I did drill oversize, fitted a plug of steel and the re-drilled and tapped. Job done.

Edited By Anthony Knights on 01/12/2020 10:45:51

This is a double ended spring centre I made to use in my mini-mill. It has about 15mm of travel and you can fit either end in the drill chuck depending on whether you need a male or female centre. It's made from 8mm mild steel bar, although it could be scaled up for people with BIGGER machines.

Since my last post, I have made some more bits for the Stewart Hart "Grasshopper" engine.

These are - Eccentric assembly, Main axel and crank, Piston rod assembly.

I have also done some of the "fiddely bits" which seem to have taken forever.

These are - Cylinder base, The "A" frame assembly, The valve linkage assembly.

They all need "fettlling" to tidy them up a bit, but I don't want to make them too perfect as the original machine was probably made mainly from castings. The cylinder base is made from aluminium and is a bit too shiny for me, so I'll have to treat it some way (paint?) to tone it down.

Next job is the cylinder and the end caps.

Using the figures mentioned in previous posts, I make an over night charge to be about 50Kwh. As a matter of interest, can anyone tell me how far you could travel on that (approximately).

Some types of sealant emit acetic acid when curing. That may be what has happened to you.

Regards Anthony

I wonder how many terrorist organisations are investigating this right now and how the Security services are responding?

The previously made post regarding distribution of power is probably correct. I imagine that if even half the houses on my street attempted to charge electric cars at the same time, the safety devices in the local sub-station would operate to stop the distribution cables melting.

Hi there Ian. I do have the Dave Fenner book, which I bought when I got the lathe about 12 years ago. I haven't looked at it for ages but it's probably where the thoughts about the taper gibs originated. I will dig it out and have a look. Thanks for the information.

regards

Anthony

That is a really good idea, obvious when you think about it. I did things the hard way and cut down the Allen keys to fit without removing the lead screw.

I did wonder whether anyone had come up with a design for taper gibs to replace the present arrangement. If not, I might have a look at that when my current project is finished.

The other day I noticed that the front of the carriage on my CL300 lathe had a bit of vertical movement. For those who don't know, the adjustment comprises a metal plate (front and back) which clamps under the lathe bed ways. Adjustment is via 3 clamping screws plus 2 jacking screws to set the amount of clearance. In my case the jacking screws were redundant as they had to be backed right out in order to clamp the other screws sufficiently to adjust out the vertical play. It is now OK but when it needs to be adjusted again, I think I have 3 options.

1 Remove the plates and machine them flat.

2 Clean up the other side of the plates and turn them over.

3 Make some new ones.

If I went for option 3, what would people advise I made them from. Mild steel, cast iron or some form of bronze?

Linux has a command line application called "TestDisk" which I downloaded and used to recover photo's from an SD card This worked well and even recovered photo's from the card which I had deleted. I imagine Windows has similar software available (although you may have to pay for it).

**LINK**