Member postings for Greensands

I am building a 5" gauge locomotive which will be fitted with a couple of injectors feeding water into the boiler via a top feed arrangement but in addition I am also considering fitting a tender hand pump for use as an emergency back-up. Problem is finding the best way to connect the water supply from the hand pump into the boiler given that the only possible location for an independent clack valve on the current boiler is make use of one of two wash-out bushes mounted low down on the backhead which would not ideal in terms of accessibility.

As an alternative I have been considering the idea of inserting a Tee piece into one of the injector feed pipes leading to the top feed fitting but would like some assurance that this would be a practical solution. Does any have firsthand experience of such an arrangement?

Hi all - I once heard it said that draw filing was a chargeable offence in the RAF but I have never had it confirmed that this was in fact the case. It may have been part of official policy adopted by the RAF training school at Halton, Bucks but when I mentioned it to an ex Halton RAF apprentice he was not aware of it. The mind set behind such a decision if true has always baffled me as it seems a perfectly proper and professional technique to me. Can anyone here through any light on the subject?

The two pics show the arrangement of my current top slide drilling attachment running from a mains operated motor fitted with a 5/16" dia o/p shaft via an electronic speed controller. It works well at the lower end but as said in the OP it struggles to drill 3/32" Dia in PB.

I am currentlyturning up a smaller diameter pulley wheel for the motor shaft in order to help improve the torque. In practice I would never wish to go much above 5/32" in drill size, anything larger being transferred to the milling machine.

Thanks for the link but apparently the design is not suibable for use with piston valves or where they cannot be mounted in the horizontal mode

Nigel - Do you have a link showing details of the Bill van Brocklin type of drain cocks?

Joseph - I like the look of your top slide drill attachment, it is just the sort of arrangement I have in mind. Could you please post the maker/details of the green coloured motor you have used in your box set. Details which would be useful include Voltage/Speed range/ Shaft dia etc.

I currently have a top slide drilling attachment driven by a small mains powered electric motor driving a spindle on which is mounted a 0-1/4" capacity Jacobs drill chuck.. It is fine for carrying out spotting and light drilling operations using small drill b its up to 1/8" diameter or so but the motor struggles and will stall when used for a job requiring a bit of grunt e.g. drilling 2.5mm diameter holes in a 3/32" thick phosphor bronze flange. I have fitted an electronic speed controller which does help but under any serious load conditions the motor will stall.

I have a 12V/5A PSU on hold but before commiting to buy I would interested to hear of any recommendations for a suitably small ( 2" dia say) DC motor which could be made to fit the bill. An ebay search will resuslt in many possibilities but further guidance would be much appreciated.

I have also wondered if a12V ex scooter motors might fit the bill although I have only seen 24v models listed. Any help and useful suggestions would be most welcomed

Hi all- In the absence of a DRO system on the carriage of my lathe I quite often resort to a DTI for monitoring the extent of movement towards the headstock as for example, when parting off to length using either a DTI with a 0-0.5" travel or for longer movements, one with a 0-1" travel. This has served me well until recently when I noticed that when parting off to a length of 0.941" (work +tool) there was a surprising discrepancy of approximately +0.020” between the read-out on the 0-1" gauge and a steel rule.

I would be interested to hear other people’s experiences when using DTIs in this manner. Perhaps DTIs are not designed to be used in this way but they are very simple to set up.

I now have a copy of Borlands C++ working under XP and from what I can see it is happy handling (simple) programs written in C and so at the moment it seems to be doing what was required..

Perhaps I should explain what I am trying to achieve. In my innocence I thought it would be a useful exercise to write some simple programs in C with two objectives a) to get a grip with the language and in the process be in a position to re-write some of my existing workshop routines currently written Borlands Turbo Basic into a more “modern” language and b) to write some simple programs for development as future Arduino sketches.

I have succeeded in downloading Borlands Turbo C++ on my XP machine and armed with a copy of the starter book "C Programming in Easy Steps" by Mike McGrath have tried to work through some of the basic exercises described in the book only to discover that they are not compatible with Borlands C++

This surprising as I thought that C++ being a development of C it would be able to handle any written in the earlier formats but obviously this is not the case.

In the absence of finding a copy of an IDE for C I will be quite happy to take up the baton using Borland C++ for my Basic program conversion exercise but it would be useful to find a means of getting programs written in C++ to be able to work as Arduino sketches.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't C (as opposed to C++) the language used for writing Arduino sketches? A Windows copy of the 32 bit Turbo C++ is certainly available as a download and that runs quite happily on my XP laptop. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me on this matter.

Miracle C was one of the downloads I tried but without success. Have also tried MinGW but again with no joy.

A plea for help. I am having great problems in finding a download copy of a Program C Compiler to run on my Windows XP laptop which for various reason I have not been able to get connected to the internet . I have tried various means of downloading versions available from the webb via my W10 machine but nothing seems to work when copied over to the XP machine. Hence I am left with the only option of hopefully being able to locate a CDROM version of a C compiler and install from that. Would anyone just happen to have a copy of a CDROM which I may borrow? All expenses to be covered of course.

Problem now solved - Following a YT video (should have done this first) the answer was found to be: Check "Text always inside" option via the command DIMSTY. Easy when you know how!

Thanks for all the input

Whoops! -Sorry about that - finger trouble - misplaced topic - since corrected

Andrew - Like the idea of your coolant drip feeder. How controllable is the flow?

Andrew - Like the idea of your coolant drip feeder. How controllable is the flow?

An AutoCad 2000 query - Can anyone tell me how to arrange for the “Text” of a linear dimension to always be inserted on the inside of its associated arrows. In practice I find that in most cases this is what will happen (system set-up?) but in other cases dependent upon the relative sizes of text and space available, the text will be placed on the outside of the arrows.

When this happens it is easy enough to set Modify/Properties/Fit/"Text Inside" to ON which will always give the desired result but can the system be arranged to ensure that this will be the default setting irrespective of relative spaces available.

Am I right in assuming that there is a file buried somewhere in the AutoCad folder showing the defaults settings? If there is, I have not been able to find it. Any help would be most appreciated.

Jason - Have followed the link as suggested and thin aluminium as well as paper have been used to overcome the problem. Thanks for the tip.

I have had a number of instances where the QCTP on my Myford S7 has shifted under load and I just wonder whether a thin paper washer inserted between the base of the unit and the top slide might help resolve the problem. I have always rather been careful to avoid applying excessive torque when tightening up but I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had similar problems.