What Did You Do Today (2017)

[Anonymous]

Posted by Muzzer on 27/10/2017 19:04:22:

Hopefully I'll get back in the workshop this weekend, once we've been to dump this little lot off at the tip

Hang on, where there's muck there's brass, well copper. That stuff is worth money, flog it to a scrapie and you'll be able to buy more tooling.

Andrew

[paul raynerParticipant @paulrayner36054]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 27/10/2017 23:04:53:

Posted by Muzzer on 27/10/2017 19:04:22:

Hopefully I'll get back in the workshop this weekend, once we've been to dump this little lot off at the tip

Hang on, where there's muck there's brass, well copper. That stuff is worth money, flog it to a scrapie and you'll be able to buy more tooling.

Andrew

Just weighed some copper in yesterday the price i got for heavy copper was £4.10p per kilo

Paul

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Just completed another successful lost-PLA casting. This one had three 'risers' and the two I didn't pour metal into rose nicely.

Massively over-estimated the amount of metal needed. Brass melts a lot like ice, it seems to spend a long time as it gradually pools out, then heats rapidly again. <looks it up> specific heat of melting is about half that of ice, and about 7 or 8 times that of lead. Interesting (to me anyway!)

That's good news for casting as it's likely to stay fluid longer.

Neil

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Take it to the scrappie, it will just about pay for the replumbing job, what's the laundry, and bathroom like.

Ian S C

[NigeParticipant @nige81730]

Finally made the trek from Aylesbury to Leicester to talk to Ketan at Arc Eurotrade and very glad I did. The decision on a milling machine has been made, the Sieg X2.7 with the R8 spindle Ketan took the time to walk me through the machine and show me loads of necessary 'stuff' about draw bars and R8 spindles and arbors. A demo of the machine running and its various facilities followed; all in all a very worthwhile visit plus a cup of tea on arrival. Much impressed as a customer. thank you Ketan

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

As luck would have it, there is a non-ferrous scrappy right next to the plumber's merchant that offers cash for copper, loominum, etc. It's also closer to our home than the tip by quite a distance.

That's settled then, so I need to start planning what tools to buy with my new found riches….

Murray

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

I use old immersion cylinders to make fuel tanks for my stationary engines, I now know why I'm having difficulty obtaining old tanks.

Martin P

[Alan Waddington 2Participant @alanwaddington2]

In the never ending quest for more workshop space, i decided to take the wheels off my mig welder and hang it on the wall above my welding bench………..sounds easy but it was a 4 man lift ………Once it was up there i managed to finish the garden gate that had been kicking around for weeks……..another job ticked off the list Apologies for the sideways images, but this forum insists on rotating them when i upload from my ipad ?

 

Y

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 29/10/2017 18:43:49

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I'd argue it's because your iPad rotates them but doesn't pass the information on to the forum…

[Alan Waddington 2Participant @alanwaddington2]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 29/10/2017 18:44:55:

I'd argue it's because your iPad rotates them but doesn't pass the information on to the forum…

Won't argue with your logic on that one Neil ………thanks for sorting though

[RobinParticipant @robin]

I like the red white and blue colour scheme, very patriotic

[Alan Waddington 2Participant @alanwaddington2]

Posted by Robin on 29/10/2017 19:08:52:

I like the red white and blue colour scheme, very patriotic

Ha ha…….never noticed that …..Although i guess the origins of the welder are kind of at odds with the concept !

Edited By Alan Waddington 2 on 29/10/2017 19:16:59

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

And the Miller's red glare, the welderrs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

Or something to that errect.

PS:- Bloody IPads only change the meta-data, not the file itself.

[Anonymous]

Amongst all sorts of odds and ends today I decanted the home brew wine (home grown grapes) into large bottles this evening to settle now it has finished fermenting. Then spent an hour clearing up.

Oh yes, I also 3D printed "models" (twice full scale) of the balanced valve and holder I have designed for the Pickering governors on my traction engines. Here are the parts:

And the parts assembled, showing the valve fully open:

Steam enters around the central annulus and exits top and bottom. The sizes, and areas, have been carefully chosen to be at least as big as the steam passage from the regulator cavity. The valve moves downwards to close; total movement in real size will be ¼". The large cup on top on the valve body isn't strictly needed. But I puzzled over how to fix the valve body into the cylinder. Attempting to cut a custom internal thread in an expensive casting (nearly £400) didn't seem like a good idea. So I brought the valve body all the way to the top of the cylinder block so it can be clamped by the governor. I will also be fitting a Scotch key. According to my plan the balanced valve will be made on the CNC mill and the valve body manually on the lathe and vertical mill.

As a side issue I have had to alter the steam passages from the regulator cavity to the HP valve chest. Ideally I'd plug one set of holes, and drill some more through the plugs. Obviously the plugs would need to be sealed properly. Loctite 5770 seems to be ideal, but I cannot find anywhere in the UK that sells it. In the US no problem, the UK forget it. All I can think of is that it contains something nasty that the EU has banned. An alternative is Rocol Steamseal which I can get locally, but it is not clear if this is simply a sealant, or whether it also cures to provide a threadlocking function?

Anybody got any ideas?

I am happy to ackbnowledge that the design of the valve is not all my own work. It is based on drawings from a forum member – thanks Martin.

Andrew

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 30/10/2017 21:25:52:

Loctite 5770 seems to be ideal, but I cannot find anywhere in the UK that sells it. In the US no problem, the UK forget it. All I can think of is that it contains something nasty that the EU has banned.

.

Looking at the MSDS … You may well be right

**LINK**

http://hybris.cms.henkel.com/henkel/msdspdf?country=US&language=EN&matnr=1138284

MichaelG.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Hells bells. I'm just back from the scrappie who paid me £128 for that pile of old pipes. 35kg @ £3.40 for the grungy old copper and 8kg @ £1.10 for the short length of lead pipe. There was me about to drive about 3 times the distance to chuck it in a skip. Apparently it would have ended back at that scrappie anyway. Stakes are raised – where is that tool catalogue….

Murray

[sean logieParticipant @seanlogie69385]

Posted by Muzzer on 01/11/2017 16:21:36:

Hells bells. I'm just back from the scrappie who paid me £128 for that pile of old pipes. 35kg @ £3.40 for the grungy old copper and 8kg @ £1.10 for the short length of lead pipe. There was me about to drive about 3 times the distance to chuck it in a skip. Apparently it would have ended back at that scrappie anyway. Stakes are raised – where is that tool catalogue….

Murray

Result there Murray

Sean

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 30/10/2017 22:40:53:

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 30/10/2017 21:25:52:

Loctite 5770 seems to be ideal, but I cannot find anywhere in the UK that sells it. In the US no problem, the UK forget it. All I can think of is that it contains something nasty that the EU has banned.

.

Looking at the MSDS … You may well be right

**LINK**

http://hybris.cms.henkel.com/henkel/msdspdf?country=US&language=EN&matnr=1138284

MichaelG.

I'm glad I don't live in California. It seems like almost everything is carcinogenic there, I think the Governor must read the Telegraph…

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Finished off the painting of my bungalow; just waiting for the last of carpets ( lounge ) to be fitted on Fri. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I went to a local auction on machinery & tools mainly to eyeball a Myford 10 that was advertised. I don't think that it had ever been run, not a mark on it, not even any running grease on the gears…spotless, mounted on a ( I believe ) Axminster bench, looked the bees knees, everyone commented on it…' that's never been used'… it went for £800, a bargain for it's condition. Funnily enough the person who bought it was an ex work colleague whom I hadn't seen for years, bought it for is sons garage, who restores vintage & custom bikes. Needles to say we caught up on a few years.

​At the same auction a precision drill caught my eye, never heard of one before…' Ronson'… it ran sweetly & looked well made so I bid for it… & got it for £70… whether that was a bargain price… ? but it is extremely well made & smooth action. The head is fixed & the table moves on a rack & pinion system. There is no play on the head bearings that I detected & it's ideal for drilling tiny holes in cylinders & the like…

​Has anyone seen / used one of these, I suspect it's part of a watch makers workshop…?

George.

Edited By mechman48 on 01/11/2017 20:43:32

[Anonymous]

Posted by Muzzer on 01/11/2017 16:21:36:

Hells bells. I'm just back from the scrappie who paid me £128 for that pile of old pipes. 35kg @ £3.40 for the grungy old copper and 8kg @ £1.10 for the short length of lead pipe. There was me about to drive about 3 times the distance to chuck it in a skip.

You owe me a beer!

That'll pay for a nice meal, and several good bottles, for the domestic accountant. Must be worth it to earn the brownie points.

Andrew

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

Feeling quite pleased with myself after making up the crankshaft bearing brackets for my 1 1/2 inch Burrell-Boydell engine.

These are bolted to the boiler using 5BA screws (scale for 1" dia.).

They are not quite finished as they need a bit of fettling once used as jigs to position the holes in the boiler.

Brian

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

I've felt the urge to do some home metallography for some time. Ebay turned up a suitable microscope last week – a Prior dating, I guess, from the 1960s. Metallographic microscopes are a bit specialised in that the illumination needs to be incident so the light is squirted into the microscope tube at right angles, where it hits a 45 degree plain glass reflector and goes down through the microscope objective, is reflected off the specimen back up to the eyepiece.

The light source is a rather specialised bulb with a grid filament:

These do not seem to be easy to source these days and the technology has moved on to halogen and LED systems. Very bright LED torches are readily available for not much money **LINK** and have an LED that is a similar size and shape to the grid filament of the original bulb. The torch has a plastic lens on the front so the beam can be focused, which unscrews, and the torch also has 3 power settings so the illumination can be adjusted. I thought it worth a punt

The screw thread is uncertain, could be 26tpi or 1mm pitch, could be 55 or 60 degrees – my thread gauges couldn't really differentiate so to keep it easy on my imperial machine I cut a 26 tpi 55 degree thread in a lump of ally to screw on to the front of the torch and slip into the microscope holder – seems to work. The diameter of the lens was too big to go into the microscope holder so I turned away the ally surround and reduced the lens diameter by sticking it to a chucking piece with some double sided sticky tape.

The lens was a push fit in the adapter and it sits on a slight flange.

The torch then screws on

Illumination way brighter than the tungsten bulb and has the advantage that there is no orange colour cast. I'm pretty pleased with the result

The next trick will be to find some suitable etchants that are readily available. Some pretty exotic cocktails are specified in the books – some using HF and I'm not going down that route

Cheers,

Rod

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Last year I bought some bits and pieces from John Stevenson and when I was there for the cup of special coffee and chat, he gifted me the 4th axis he'd made for his Beaver mill some years back. It was in a bit of a state and had been partially dismantled. My CNC controller has a 4th axis output, so I was planning to connect up a rotary table and stepper drive at some stage. So yesterday evening I stripped it right down, cleaned it up, regreased everything and reassembled it. It's pretty heavy, comprising a 10" table, a massive stepper motor, a couple of brackets and some toothed wheels. There was also an old, sorry looking chuck mounted via an adaptor plate.

It's a very well made table and there are very few signs of wear where it matters. He obviously chopped off the original bolts slots.

It was all back together by the end of play yesterday although I will have to wait for the L series toothed belt from beltingonline (£6) and the Leadshine stepper drive (£40 from HK). I used a sort of velcro cable tie to estimate the belt length and then identified the next standard size above that.

Inevitably it felt like a sort of homage to the old boy and I hope I can do it justice when it is put to work soon. I hope he would have approved!

The chuck has had almost its day but as long as I am aware of its limitations it will get me going for now.

Murray

[Anonymous]

Ah ha, overhead crane for lifting bits of equipment? Now that's a real workshop!

Andrew

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Roderick Jenkins on 04/11/2017 19:51:46:

I've felt the urge to do some home metallography for some time. Ebay turned up a suitable microscope last week – a Prior dating, I guess, from the 1960s. < etc. >

.

Nicely done, Rod

I recently bought a Reichert MeF … but it's going to take a lot of restoring.

MichaelG.

[Author]

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