What Did You Do Today 2019

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Danny M2Z on 21/03/2019 08:12:34:

Today I started test flights on a new Free Flight model from a 1952 design that has kept me busy in the workshop for the last month (Aussie Nats in April). It's looking promising

Only use of the C3 Mini-lathe was to manufacture the fuel shut-off and tweak the ports of the equally ancient FROG 150 model diesel engine.

If anybody is interested in such things, here is a linky **LINK**

* Danny M *

I have a KeilKraft Ladybird made in 1952 by my late father in law.

I flew it once (at Sutton Park) when it was 50 years old using a DC Merlin. I do keep meaning to re-restore it and perhaps add micro RC for rudder, just to keep it in sight!

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Terry Kirkup on 20/03/2019 21:53:13:

Who needs a VFD, eh?

[Ian Skeldon 2Participant @ianskeldon2]

Great day so far……

Day off from work , MEW mag dropped through the letter box and shortly after that the Vertex rotary table I bought second hand from forum member David Corner arrived.

David I commend your packing sir and I can't thank you enough for being such a gent to deal with.

Many thanks,

Ian

[Terry KirkupParticipant @terrykirkup37827]

Clive India I was hoping to find an old 1950s Raleigh type pedal with a loose central spindle, removing the rubbers and the end shells would have left me with a lovely chrome plated handle!

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

I'm making a pallet for my rotary table. Lots of M6 tapped holes. With this in mind I bought an Archer auto reverse tapper from ebay.

 

 

Rod

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 21/03/2019 21:25:18

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Examined my Myford VMC mill to see how best to fit the Allendale DRO magnetic-strip profile. Not easy to find anywhere suitable, really!

If I put it directly along the front edge of the bed I will need either to make little dovetail nuts or drill and tap the back wall of the slot in which the bed stops work. Only they won't be there any more.

A fraction too high and the profile and its cover are above the bed surface. A fraction low and it fouls the oil-nipples. Also if for any reason I had to remove it from the bed, I'd have to destroy the strip itself as that is stuck on, and hides the mounting-screws.

So thinks on…. Machine a set of cross-pieces to be screwed into the bed face, outside the profile which would be screwed to them? Not much room available, but it might be possible. I'd still lose the bed-stops, probably also the locks, and risk the oilers being inaccessible.

And that's even before I think about trying to fit the cross and vertical travel encoder profiles on a machine not designed for such luxuries!

By now my stomach was telling me to forage for food, and my brain was fading from all that thinking! So I locked up and retreated to the house for the evening.

[Anonymous]

Posted by Mike Poole on 19/03/2019 21:28:16:

It might be worth swinging the Kurt round so the cutting force is against the fixed jaw, it looks as though the vice is big enough to clamp the job endways to still cut in one pass.

Indeed it is; the vice will take 8.5" between the jaws. Although given the ends were sawn I wonder if the work might have tilted over instead? Clearly I've still got a lot to learn about man-sized milling on a horizontal. On the high speed range the motor power is 5hp. The spindle is driven by a gearbox so at 100rpm that's a lot of torque. I suspect 'orrid things might happen before the spindle stalls. Thus far I haven't got the motor to sound like it's even working.

Andrew

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Good investment Roderick, saves a lot of work, like your quick clamp method.

Emgee

[John ReeseParticipant @johnreese12848]

Today I found the Mitutoyo digital mike that had been lost for 10 months. The one I bought as a replacement came yesterday.

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Finished the pallet. I don't think my dodgy shoulder would have let me tap the holes by hand.

One half of the disc has holes on a rectangular array and the other half is radial. Not sure if this was a good idea or not. I've got a pallet on the CNC mill that's also waiting for an array of holes.

Rod

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Andrew, could you arrange a method of holding the pieces direct on the table and doing away with the vice, a 1/4" bar across each end, and maybe something each side, I use that method when facing similar bits with the face cutter on the vertical mill and don't have any trouble with the metal getting thrown out side ways ( I thought that might be a problem). I'v only got the useless tilting vice that came with the mill.

Ian S C

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Spent some time trying to figure out how to re-arrange my stuff ( take 'trying 'as optimistic ) ended up making an adaptor plate for my compound slide handle to allow me to use cordless drill as auto feed for tapers etc …
not designer chic but hey ! it works…

Didn't have any 8mm hex bar for the centre drive & wasn't going to cut down a piece of 12mm just for a 'make do' set up so used some 8mm screwed rod ,couple of washers, nuts & some thread lock… Bob's your auntie… summat like that.

George.

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

George – I really like that idea – turning the top slide handle to take a cut is a pain at the best of times…….

Chris

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

If you need to turn lots and lots of tapers, I wonder how feasible it would be to fit a secondary change-wheel train to the saddle, and linking lead-screw or rack to cross-slide, thus generating the taper?

In fact I have seen several You-tube videos of lathes apparently built with this facility – all were in Russia, being used to make large-diameter, quick-taper "wood-screws" the videos went on to reveal are log-splitters.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

John Reese:

AWOL micrometer? One knows how one feels….

Awkward steam-engine design calculation a bit beyond my brain and paper-and-pencil range, and before I had a computer.

Find calculator. Oh, can't find calculator.

Slide-rule? Can't find my slide-rule.

Nothing for it: logarithms, with a quick self-taught refresher lesson.

Next day, bought new scientific calculator (surprisingly, significantly larger than the lost one).

Three weeks later, opening a drawer to retrieve something else, there was the absent calculator.

I'd swear homes and workshops develop black holes. Tiny ones, without the power of the cosmic sort so unable to sustain themselves, consequently dispersing fairly soon and dropping their "eaten" hence temporarily invisible items unharmed wherever they happen to have drifted as they dissolve.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

I know its not model engineering but my wife and I both engineered the concept thirty eight years ago and yesterday evening our Daughter presented us with our first little engineer and stationary engine lover, a Grandson.

Martin P

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Posted by martin perman on 26/03/2019 21:28:51:

Gentlemen,

I know its not model engineering but my wife and I both engineered the concept thirty eight years ago and yesterday evening our Daughter presented us with our first little engineer and stationary engine lover, a Grandson.

Martin P

… after the initial planning , modifications / upgrades come later.

George.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Posted by martin perman on 26/03/2019 21:28:51:

Gentlemen,

I know its not model engineering but my wife and I both engineered the concept thirty eight years ago and yesterday evening our Daughter presented us with our first little engineer and stationary engine lover, a Grandson.

Martin P

Just returned from Granddaughters birthday weekend.

Cannot wait to see them again but always so grateful to get home afterwards!

IanT

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Yesterday actually, have re-sited 5m strip of LED lighting to add more illumination to the bottom end of the garage / workshop; quite effective … as one of the bulk head side fittings has blown… will have to call in Screwfix / B & Q for replacement… ho hum . usual disclaimer.

George.

[Anonymous]

Here's the finished press tooling for the rear wheel strakes installed on the flypress:

As expected trying to cold form just resulted in the strake springing straight back. So I had a go with the strake red hot (800°C). That worked well but the set wasn't quite right. So I tweaked the curves in the CAD model and then on the CNC mill. Second time around the strake was nicely formed:

And the strake is not a bad fit on the rear rim:

Especially given that the rear rim is not perfect due to weld distortion.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 28/03/2019 19:51:57

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Looks good, do you have anything to hold the strake at the correct angle on the former or are you just doing it by eye?

J

PS don't get carried away and bend them all to the same hand!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Finished the special V-nuts needed, and fitted the long-axis magnetic strip for the DRO to the Myford VM-C milling-machine table with them.

This means the table no longer has travel-stops because the only way to fit the profile was by the V-nuts in their slot, and of course the stop-block had to come off too.

These strips have to be fitted to quite close parallelism but I think I managed it eventually. The drawback with that design of encoder strip is that you cannot remove it from the machine without destroying the magnetic strip itself, because it is stuck on across the mounting-screws.

While at it I tried adjusting the gib. That proved problematical, with very little available travel on the adjusters, and the two locking-screws doing nothing at all. I took the screws out… Someone had sawn them short!. I made up little steel slugs to take up the space, so I can now lock the table's long travel at least.

The Myford mill is not designed to take DRO encoders, though a 2-axis system is listed in the service-manual as an accessory. My thinking with the Y and Z travels is to put the strips on backing bars screwed to the machine outside the profile's width, since there are no machines surfaces available for them and I will probably need to make special spacers. The Z-axix encoder strip will be the worst thanks to the shape of the machine body.

There is another advantage to that approach. I can assemble the profile and its backing bars(s) in comfort and good light on the table, rather than in the very awkward, cramped, gloomy and grubby conditions around the machine.

[Martin Shaw 1Participant @martinshaw1]

Made a new bench for the lathe. The table it's currently on is too low, causing backache if nothing worse, however I was reluctant to spend the time, money, or effort until I was happy the lathe would work ok, it seems to.

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Posted by Perko7 on 05/03/2019 08:25:20:

Made the other two buffer housings a couple of days ago, spent this afternoon making the blanks for the buffer heads from 50×50 squares of 10mm mild steel. Trimmed the corners to make roughly octagonal shapes, drilled and tapped M6 to mount on an arbor in the lathe, then started trimming to size. Interrupted cuts make lots of noise and the chips varied in colour from blue to bright red. Impressed by the resilience of HSS tools doing this, only had to re-sharpen once. Blanks were too hot to handle when done but the tool tip was not hot at all! Now need to re-mount on the arbor and turn to required profile before mounting on shanks (also threaded M6) with a smear of retention fluid.

Finished the buffer heads earlier this week and mounted them on the shanks. Also finished the housings and gave all a squirt with spray can of primer. Got some suitable springs this arvo from Bunnings and assembled the units, went to mount the first one on the headstocks and found I only had 7 x 5BA nuts so could only fit one buffer. Ordered some more so now have to wait until they arrive before I can finish that part of the job. Still, plenty of other things to work on…….

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Gave back garden it's first cut of the year. Can any one tell me why strimmer nylon cords snap, even when wound on in the correct direction, & you always end up with a one sided cutter… … ?

George.

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