What Did You Do Today 2019

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

Fancy dumping brass or bronze swarf !!! It can be melted down to make something useful, if only bar stock. Ns.

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 19/12/2019 20:17:35:

Posted by JasonB on 19/12/2019 17:09:17:

Would you have more luck with pyramid rolls? I suppose ideally you would need the lower two to move horizontally to form a vee and the top to come down more on the narrower end. Would a wooden former be upto it?

There was a video online showing a 4 roll in action; basically a pinch roll but with free rolls in front and behind the pinch pair. But that doesn't help me.

I'd considered wood, but I've no idea what to buy or where to get it. I just tried an online shop; for 100mm by 100mm by 500mm long of American Ash I was quoted £13852.

Think I'll stick to steel!

Andrew

Andrew, chimney for my 6" was supplied vaguely round and coned but the wrong diameter / taper. I managed to persuade that into shape over a length of 50mm steel supported on a pair of axle stands while pulling it in to diameter with a couple of heavy jubilee clips! If you have a rough shape you may be able to do similar. I also put a joggled edge on mine so the rivetted seam gave a flush fit in the chimney base and cap rather than a step of an ordinary lap joint. I used one of those air powered car body edge setters – was right on its limits! Riveted using flat head rivets put in from inside and a formed round head outside, again supported on the 50mm bar. I think I put a bit of info and pictures on TT, was a while back now though!

Paul.

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

Andrew – ..just food for thought, but having slept on the idea, might it be easier to form a shallow cone by starting with a plain cylinder (and removing a long thin fillet) rather than a flat sheet? ..you'd have a bit more control of the metal..

[Anonymous]

Jason: I found some beech on Ebay for about £40, but it was spalted. Needed to look that up! Seems a shame to use wood though as once the job is done the wood is redundant. At least with steel the swarf can be recycled and the former cut up and used elsewhere on the engines. My new kitchen worktops were not real wood – way out of my price bracket!

Paul: I've looked at your TT build, thanks. There seems to be very little about chimneys on TT, and many people seem to get them rolled outside. Being a paid up member of the awkward squad that means I want to do it myself instead. I've tried something similar to your trick with the round bar. I've now got a chimney that looks roughly right. But I made a mistake with the pattern – didn't allow for the thickness of the metal. So it needs a bit taken off the one of the straight mating edges. I've been wondering about the rivets and whether I can close them from the outside. Where did you get the flat head rivets? I've got pictures of the chimney on two full size engines. One has no rivets, which I assume means it was cast. On the other there are two columns of rivets, so an internal strap is used. That's what I plan to do to avoid the need to form a joggle.

Diogenes: Interesting idea. Since I already have the sheet I think I might do the reverse, ie, roll a "cylinder" from sheet and then pull it round a former as Paul did to get the cone shape.

Nowt is going to happen until the New Year in terms of ordering material. So I'll sulk think about it over the break while I have a go at hot forming the spectacle and front plates.

Andrew

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Andrew,

Mine needed trimming too, it was a test one I think that Edward kindly threw in with the castings if it was any use to me. I clamped it to a length of wood laid inside after roughing down with the nibbler (I think) and finished with a file. I don't think I posted any pics of that bit, will have a look in my archive when I get chance and see if I have any other pictures not previously posted. I can tell you exactly where I got the rivets, Port of Spain, in Trinidad, big "hardware" store at the top of the main drag from the lighthouse just before the church. I am guessing that won't help much though! I was looking for some csk rivets for the tyre mod I did on the Fowler ploughing engine. I was working out there for a while. I think I had their last box!

Don't forget the chimney cap. Mine goes on from the bottom of the taper, thus the top rivet of my seam is too tall to allow it past so has been made as a threaded one with a thin nut inside.

Paul.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

> I found some beech on Ebay for about £40, but it was spalted.

Nice for making musical instruments…

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

A lot will depend on how far the spalting has gone, if too far you may as well make the former out of balsa. had I known you might have needed it Andrew I could have bought some offcuts with me when I saw you the other week.

None of my natural timber off cuts go to waste, I generally give them to a couple of clients for their fires, it's the manmade boards that are a pain (cost) to get rid of as well as sawdust.

If you are not averse to a bit of moisture then green (fresh) cut wood would do but cover the lathe. that way you are re purposing something that would either get fed through a chipper or cut into logs.

I had a look at that 4 roller machine and they also do one with 3 all tapered rollers

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 19/12/2019 16:52:38:

Today I've debunked another model engineering myth. Rolling a cone by tilting the third roll on a set of pinch rolls plain doesn't work. Of course if one thinks about it, it would be obvious why it doesn't work. Slanting the third roll changes the diameter being rolled along the length. But the pinch rolls feed both ends of the pattern at the same speed whereas the larger diameter end needs to be fed faster than the small diameter end. Looking online it's clear that the professionals use special cone rolls to form proper cones.

Andrew

It's a bit late, but you need to have the pinch rollers looser on the small end of the cone. Otherwise they will drive the sheet in a straight line, rather than the curve you need. You will also need to guide the sheet so that the small end moves more slowly, at least to start with.

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Recently sold our house, currently living with our son in his house, meaning all machine tools and most hand tools are in storage until we find a new place and can get a workshop set up again. In the meantime I needed to do a little sheet metal work making up some small mounting brackets from 0.8mm sheet steel. Started with a hacksaw but found it a little hard to hold the sheet metal without access to a vice. Ended up clamping to an old table top using vice-grips which worked ok but distorted the sheet metal so had to be careful I did not damage the areas needed for the brackets. Anyway, part way through I spied a pair of ordinary scissors lying in a drawer, and though 'why not?'. Scissors were extracted from drawer and put to use, and to my surprise and relief cut through the steel sheet almost as easily as the proper metal snips would have. Only 6 cuts so did not blunt them at all, although if it had they would have been easy enough to sharpen again.

Then I had to bend the brackets through 90 degrees, but no vice! What to do?? Spied my old Falcon 12" wood plane in the same drawer as the scissors, it has a nice solid body with a straight 90 degree edge, so clamped the sheet metal to the body of the plane using the vice-grips, a couple of gentle (and not-so-gentle) taps with the hammer and the job was done! As they say, necessity………..

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Son doesn't have a workmate or vice? Christmas presents an easy choice then.

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Bazyle, having the tools is only half the story, he needs to have an interest in the use of them as well, which is much harder to 'gift'. Still we can only hope……

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Perko (well, anyone faced with a similar sheet-cutting problem) –

I have successfully hacksawn thin sheet and plate by clamping it as you say, along a horizontal surface; but with some scrap plywood or hardboard below both sides of the cut, and suitable batten or length of steel angle between clamps and material.

The effect may be helped too, by small clamps gripping the underlay to material on the off-cut side.

Obviously too, a fairly fine blade and low cutting-angle.

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

Spent most of the weekend sorting out in the garage to make room for my Denford Triac 200, then dismantling the machine and getting in home – brought about by having to move it from the storage location it has resided in for the last 12 or so years. Just the stand to get home now, which can live outside for the time being. As an ex-industrial machine in rather grubby condition it needed to come apart for a clean & check over before getting a new PC + stepper motor control system added, so no extra work done getting it out this way.

Forgotton how awful rancid coolant and old oil smell & still picking swarf out of my hands, but the precision bits are now in my garage. I weighed the bits out of interest & found that the heaviest casting – the column – is 59kg, so no wonder I was puffing a bit carrying it to and from the car. Probably going to feel that over the next couple of days ! The basic structure of the machine, excluding the counterbalance weight, comes to around 210kgs – quite a lot for a compact 600×200 table, 320mm x 150mm x 320mm XYZ travels machine.

As a result of the tidy-up, I now have a bit more room to move around the garage than before the arrival of the Triac, but not enough to work on it. Something from the "projects I will probably never get a around to" collection will have to go next year to make more room. I do seem to do "acquiring" rather better than "disposing" though.

[Joseph Noci 1Participant @josephnoci1]

Spent some leisure time reading old Wireless World magazines, and then the thingy broke, so knocked up a new one out of polyprop..

Joe

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

That's a work of art Joseph. How did you make the 'spring?

I spent the day slightly thinning out the bookshelves. There are now 250 books and 50 maps and atlases in the car. They'll be taken to the local charity and recycling shops and I hope I won't have to go to the tip with them. meantime the bookshelves in the front room look slightly less cluttered, but I haven't started on the stores of, less often read, books in the cupboards and the garage.

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

I can see the connection, the spring is vaguely modeled on a colon

Ian P

[Anonymous]

Paul: Thanks for the note on rivets; although I can't see myself going to the Caribbean just to buy some rivets! I have a casting for the chimney cap, but I plan to spin my own from copper sheet. Once I've got a chimney made I'll leave the top few rivets blank until I know whether they're going to be in the way or not.

Mark: Useful tips on using the rolls. Once I have a former made I'll put them into practise as it would be good to use the rolls for at least an initial bending.

This morning I refitted the mirror in the bathroom. Some idiot fitted it last night but 100mm too low.

This afternoon I experimented with hot forming some 3mm steel sheet. Here's the partial former, test piece and quick homebrew wooden mallet. Note to Jason: look away now. The theory behind a wooden mallet is that it doesn't mark the hot metal:

Having done an initial trial with a copper mallet I can say that the wooden mallet is much better. Oxy-acetylene was used as a heat source. A close up of the test piece:

And a nice sharp internal bend:

Next job is to add the second radius to the former and then form the spectacle plates for the traction engines. Then I can add two smaller radii to the former and make the front plates. Note that the fullsize engines have different radii on the spectacle and front plates. Gotta keep the rivet counters happy!

Andrew

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Today, just out of curiosity, I removed the focus block from a large Russian microscope.

The coarse focus is quite conventional and moves the stage by rack & pinion

The fine focus has a simple gearbox [spur gears and pinions] , driving a geared sector which is effectively one arm of a 'bell crank' that raises or lowers the whole stage assembly.

Simple, robust, Russian engineering which reliably delivers movement at the micron level.

MichaelG.

[Anonymous]

Finished my annual machine tool maintenance program. Good clean up and hoover round, chuck out the junk and scrap metal. Put things away if I want to keep them. Oil all zerks and check and fill levels for all gearboxes and spindles. Stone the tables on the milling machines. I've been given several sheets of neoprene rubber, so I've cut some mats to put in front of the main machine tools. We'll see how they get on with swarf, but they should keep my tootsies warner than standing on a concrete floor.

Just got the other side of the workshop (bench and hand tools) to sort out. I suspect there's lots of stuff that can be recycled, which should free up some space.

Also CNC machined radii on the remaining three corners of my fixture for hot bending the spectacle and front plates for the traction engine. Tomorrow I'll have a go at forming the real plates.

Andrew

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Spent 3 hours in the Men's Shed. We weren't going to open today but a chap was coming from a Cambridgeshire shed visiting family and arranged to bring in some of their spare screws. I passed the time copying all the entries from the petty cash book into my computer. So much bureaucracy in running a club that is a CIC company. 

Edited By JasonB on 27/12/2019 06:51:16

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I know the feeling, Bazyle! A lot of organisations love bureaucracy and can't tell the difference between bureaucracy and administration!

I am in a major caving-club that went for CASC ("Community Assisted Sports Club – I think) status, which allegedly carries tax advantages. A year later HMRC pounced. We had done nothing wrong, but were caught by a new ruling. To prevent frauds by people forming spurious "clubs" whose only sporting activity is watching it on telly in the pub, the Preventy Men decreed keeping meticulous records of who participated in what activity over the tax year. It has to prove genuine participation above a certain threshold.

That might work in formal sports with leagues of named players using standard venues, but not in an informal setting like caving and hill-walking. For these, the "venues" are anything but "standard", personal participation is by a mixture of opportunity, taste and ability, and "events" are both club- calendar ones and those decided on, often quite spontaneously, by a few members privately.

HMRC gave a few months for clubs to play "Clexit", and as we realised CASC would soon be an absurdly bureaucratic burden impossible for a club and pursuit like ours, we left the scheme. Our Clexit decision and process took only a few Committee and one Annual General, Meetings, and in one year, too!

++++

Not been in the workshop since Christmas Eve, and then only briefly. However I have done a little more designing of the travelling-hoist I am building for it (amidst umpteen other projects and tasks, and such leisure pursuits as meals and housework).

Also assembled a rack from Toolstation, on which will be sited the two tool-grinders I am (too slowly) building – a Blackgates 'Stent' and Hemingway ' Worden' – in the front room that is becoming the overflow tool stores and computer room. That room faces North into the street, the back room faces South into the garden so will become the main lounge / dining-room. The Axminster "micro-lathe" will probably stay on the reinforced worktop in the far corner of the kitchen.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Went to get dome logs and decided the log shed needed a patch. Hit thumb with hammer but bravely persevered until I realised I hadn't started with a red glove. Allowing myself a coffee break armchair hammering but will have to get back to the job before dark.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Spent some of yesterday assembling a present for the workshop. It may not be much but it will be ideal for a lot of pieces.

[Chris Evans 6Participant @chrisevans6]

Spent a few hours today cleaning and sweeping, followed by oiling the machines and adjusting gibs.

Retired to the house to place an order for a lot of workshop consumables. Start making swarf again tomorrow.

[Jim NicParticipant @jimnic]

Derek

Your hearth looks just like the one I got from CuP Alloys a few years ago which I find ideal for the small jobs I do and has served me well.

I don't use the fluffy blanket, I found that parts moved on it too easily while I was applying heat and solder. I got an extra piece of hearth brick and cut a few strips on which to place my unsoldered assemblies for heating.

Jim

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