What Did You Do Today (2017)

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Ian Phillips on 15/06/2017 21:04:25:

I still have about 3" left of a 4" long bar of Magnesium I bought from Whistons in 1968. I am a hoarder but doubt I will ever use it as I have only used 25% in 40 odd years!

What diameter Magnesium are you looking for Michael?

Ian P

.

Thanks for the thought, Ian

To be honest, I'm not really 'looking for' anything particular just now … it will probably be several months before I get to do anything in the workshop [but I have at least managed to spend a couple of days this week re-discovering it].

John mentioned that he has a substantial quantity for disposal, and bemoaned the fact that his previous offer of free steel went largely un-noticed. … I was basically trying to keep some interest going on the forum, regards the magnesium alloy, and also thought I might buy some as 'come in handy sometime' stock.

At the right price, I would probably have bought a metre or so, in 200mm & 400mm lengths.

MichaelG.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Neil, if your bar is too big , cut through untill it bottoms out, then lift the saw and rotate the bar a bit over 90*, line it up to the saw cut, tighten up and start the saw, you might need to do it again, but I have sawn a 6.5 " bar that way.

Ian S C

[brickyParticipant @bricky]

Just finished making a depth stop for my SX3mill.The article by MikeHavard was in No158 2009 .I had no alluminium so I made it from 90mm bar stock ,tons of swarf for such a small item.It works a treat and I no longer have to keep my eye on the digital readout when drilling .I think that the makers should take up his idea and fit to all new SX3,s.

Frank

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

I don't know about You Guys. If there would be an offer of free steel here, John would have had His toes stepped on in the rush for Me to haul it off. Would have bought a Tea of His choice with Me and offered to sweep the shop. As it is it is hard enough for Me to resist the temptation to book a flight over and collect what is left.

[OldironParticipant @oldiron]

bricky. My smaller mill is a Chester Conquest (Sieg clone) and that has a manufacturer fitted depth stop that slides up and down the vertical dovetail. I set it for accurate hole depths using a stack of gauge blocks and then lock it off.I find it very handy even though I have fitted DRO to the mill.

Gary

[brickyParticipant @bricky]

Hi Gary, I couldn't think of a way to make a depth stop for my mill.I had a clear up of magazines and came across the article by Mike Havard which solved the problem .At first sight it looked simple but was more difficult than I anticipated .I broke two 3mm taps the first I have broken for a few years .The two rings I made as one and parted off,But when I slid them onto the revolving part of the handle this part was fractionaly larger than the fixed portion I then had to dismantle the handle and reduce it to allow the fixed ring to slide over the fixed ring on the mill . I then set up the dividing head to engrave 72 divisions as the quill has 72mm of travel on the revolving ring and slid it into position on the spider.I got a result this morning and I am grateful to Mike for this solution.

Frank

[Old SchoolParticipant @oldschool]

John What would a bar of 2.5" magnesium cost collected. Would be an ideal material to make tether car chassis from.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Apologies John S. I had got it in my mind to give you a call about your surplus steel, but Father in law was needing full time care (Then popped his clogs). The Lad bent the car on the way up to the Doncaster show, Then Mother in law needed help, yada yada yada.

What is irritating is that I spent all Saturday at Sawley village hall two weeks ago and could have popped in…

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Today … I have read this:

http://www.popsci.com/entangled-particles-record-china

From a Chinese satellite drifting through suborbital space, a laser beamed pairs of entangled photons to two separate locations on the ground. Although 746 miles separated each member of the pair, the light particles remained mysteriously connected. …

and been reminded how little I [and most of us ?] understand.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 17/06/2017 07:07:55

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 17/06/2017 07:03:40:

Today … I have read this:

http://www.popsci.com/entangled-particles-record-china

From a Chinese satellite drifting through suborbital space, a laser beamed pairs of entangled photons to two separate locations on the ground. Although 746 miles separated each member of the pair, the light particles remained mysteriously connected. …

and been reminded how little I [and most of us ?] understand.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 17/06/2017 07:07:55

Einstein didn't understand it either! If you're a common-sense kind of guy who likes to think the world is simple, keep well away from quantum mechanics.

Dave

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Quantum computers produce every single possible answer instantly

If they ever actually figure out haw to make one every digital security key in the world becomes obsolete overnight

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

Maybe they already have.

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Started collecting material for my next project… Vertical Cross single… from plans by Stuart Hart, that should keep me busy for a bit …

​George

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

My d1-4 can locks turned up from gloster tooling. Now I have 80 MM 3 jaw chuck and a 6" four jaw that are sensible proportins to the work I do. The Chester lathes come with monsterous chucks.

Time for swarf making

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Spent 4 hours with my 80+yr old assistant holding the ladder putting up 25ft of gutter on the Men's Shed. He measured the length in metric and drop in inches, and I went for length in imperial as the wall is 4ft panels but used metric for the drop 'cos I could more easily calculate 50mm/7 than 2in/7. At the end we stood back to admire our work and wondered why it took more than an hour.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I've been stirring the s*** again – literally. The sewage pipe from the new toilet / utility room / garage was backing up. Finally I lifted the inspection cover to reveal a cauldron of excrement and unspeakables. It cleared easily enough with a couple of strokes of the rod. The root of the problem is clear, now that I can actually see to the bottom of the gulley. The builder rather predictably cut corners (almost literally). The new pipe comes in from the bottom left. The kitchen comes in from the right and the connection to the street disappears off to the left. So he's got the new flow doing a hairpin bend almost. Not much benefit in digging up the patio blockwork and reconfiguring it now. Bloody typical builders. It's not as if digging the ground here is difficult, as it's literally just sand, so wouldn't have been a big job to do it right in the first place.

And made an electric tool setter for my CNC machine. This will allow me to automatically populate the tool table using the macro provided. It plugs in to one of the controller inputs to let it know when the tool has touched off on the piston surface. A spring allows the piston the depress, thus avoiding shattering the tool. Seems to work well enough for my needs.

Sorry about the orientation – Windows 10 caught me out again.

Murray

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 18/06/2017 14:41:07

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Turned 8 lengths of 42mm galvanised tube down to 1 5/8" so I can weld them into the holes I've cut in the square columns for my shed's bridge crane to allow the cabling in the dado trunking to pass through.

Then did some machining on a ball bearing equipped curtain-string-tensioning-weight for Mother-in-Law.

Then did some work on fittings for some flexible conduit for SWMBO's workshop.

All this while the house was 30°C, the garage 32°C, the greenhouse 37°C, and the workshop was 19°C…

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

[john carruthersParticipant @johncarruthers46255]

I made three modest thumbscrews for an AE telescope mount finder bracket.
3/8" Whit thread to match the originals, someone had replaced them with rough old hex head bolts.
Got paid in spring honey

Edited By john carruthers on 18/06/2017 09:11:28

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

I've just noticed that one of the most powerful tugs/anchor handlers in the world has moved very close in to our village on the Moray Firth. She's the Norwegian-registered Siem Ruby – 300 feet long and 28,000 horsepower. She's been around for the past week or so, but never this close. She's clearing rocks and ploughing a trench for an undersea cable which will bring wind farm power from Caithness and points north, and feed it into the grid via a sub-station about ten miles inland from here. Sorry, guys – I don't know much about electricity, but this electricity is transmitted as DC – apparently less voltage drop over long distances.

[Joseph Noci 1Participant @josephnoci1]

Mike, you are correct – less voltage drop, due to the only losses in the cable carrying DC being due to the cable resistance, while carrying AC, the cable also exhibits an Impedance, due to the cable inductance, which grows with cable length and AC frequency. DC is far more efficient in cable transmission, but has to be converted back to AC for consumer use, and losses are incurred again in the conversion process – hopefully the sums indicate the latter losses are less than cable losses!

I wonder what these DC cables do the the earth's magnetic field and the near-local effect on magnetometers, especially in the aviation industry. With AC transmission these is a net 'zero' static magnetic field, but these high-power DC cables must have a very high magnetic field indeed.

Joe

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Thanks for the explanation, Joseph. My dear old dad must be turning in his grave over my lack of knowledge – he was an electrical engineer. The cables will make a landfall just west of our village, and run underground for about 10 miles to the small town of Keith. Can you tell me how they will get rid of the heat? Just out of curiosity I have asked the contractors, but haven't had an understandable explanation. Your mention of the effect on the aviation industry is interesting, too – we are just a few miles from RAF Lossiemouth, one of the biggest fighter stations in Europe.

[JonParticipant @jon]

Being a bit different to every one else creating or producing something, here goes.
Leadscrew sheared off at 17mm dia.

[Anonymous]

Nineteen aerotows, from the tug end. I made the mistake of wearing sunblock, which promptly mixed with the sweat running down my forehead and into my eyes. It don't half sting. Not easy reaching for the hanky when you're trying to fly the aeroplane, talk to the local airfield on the radio, look out and make sure you're towing to a sensible place.

I was going to finish machine the slot in the brass block this evening that I roughed out yesterday evening, but too cream crackered.

Andrew

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Needed to chamfer some 42mm holes in 8mm steel prior to welding bits of pipe into the holes. Half round and rat tail files were slow and painful. mounted points were effective but very slow and wore out very fast. The carbide burrs I've got for the dremmeloid worked, but were were slow. Only had polishing points to use in the electric die grinder.

Decided that what I really needed was a decent burr to work in the die grinder. Started to look on the interweb to see what it'd cost, then had an idea…

When the MBAs decided that manufacturing would be better and cheaper in Mexico and Croatia than the UK Midlands (Wrong on both counts), I aquired a couple of hundred milling cutters from the heap that went to the skip. Amongst them were a number of 6mm, 6 tooth, fast helix carbide milling cutters.

Tried one of them in the die grinder. It's absolutely incredible! you can almost carve steel like it's wood. Made more progress in five minutes than I had in the two hours before. Half an hour later and 8 holes were chamfered. Not high precision, but the welds will cover that up. The only possible drawback is that much of the workshop is now covered in surgically sharp slivers of steel that are, however, quite simple to Hoover up. That'll give me an excuse for another tidy up, so another benefit.

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

Posted by Ady1 on 17/06/2017 09:57:48:

Quantum computers produce every single possible answer instantly

…

I find that I want THE answer to the problem I'm posing, not 'Lots & lots of answers all of which may be correct, but not necessarily in this universe'. I imagine it makes sorting the correct answer from all possible answers a significant problem. I wonder if it would need a quantum computer to do that?

Regards,

Richard.

[Author]

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