What Did You Do Today 2020

[Mark Gould 1Participant @markgould1]

I almost melted today, we have now had 8 consecutive days with temperatures above 30 C here in the Netherlands. This has never happened before. The previous record was 6 consecutive days above 30 and that dated from 1975.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Back at the club track!

Still very limited of course but things have eased to the point of allowing us to form small work-parties to keep the garden tidy, resume track maintenance and the like.

No access to the club-room itself, so no tea-making (take a flask), but we can open the separate converted concrete garage that is a very basic workshop and also houses the toilet.

We'd just finished for the day when the downpour hit, after a practice spotting with rain to establish range and bearing.

+++

This evening, resumed converting the Myford mill to 3-phase. Delighted to find the motor feet pattern matches the mounting-plate, but I've to make a washer to lift the motor pulley 5mm into line. There is no vertical adjustment on the motor-mounting.

While I was it I removed the fat wobble-worm from the intermediate-pulley swinging-arm. It had only made threaded parts work loose, luckily.

Whether I can sort out that problem with the over-stiff quill, is another matter. I've a sinking feeling that, no, I will have to live with it.

+++

Yesterday…. had a haircut! Almost had to think what's it called when I rang to book it.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Glad to hear you are back on site
EDMES had a work day too today with a massive crowd of 6 spread out all over the grounds as pairs and a whole load of restrictions on behaviour to maintain safety. Yet some local decided to complain that they couldn't make a phone call becaue of the noise and suggested social distanceing was not being observed. Must take their cue from the idiots who get on TV moaning about every govenment initiative.

SADMES have had several days of activity over a week or so as it was found that the tunne was BER and needs removal. However a it is needed for passenger truck storage another one is planned on the other side of the station. Some work has been done on this with concrete posts installed. Each day set for tunnel digging keeps getting stopped by bad weather forecast yet on the day turns out to be baking hot.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

After many days thinking about the next clock I made a start on the first wheel for the new dial. This is a 60 tooth count wheel to drive the minute arbor, stepped by a pawl operated by the motor that will drive the second hand. I found this hiding inside a piece of 1.5mm brass plate after an hour or so of milling on the CNC. Profile formed with a 1mm cutter, G-code produced by spreadsheet.

Now to generate the code for the hour wheel, similar but with 48 teeth.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Now made the other one.

I used a slightly modified way to mount the plate for milling this time. Made a backing plate of Valchromat (posh MDF), stuck blue masking tape down to its surface, spread B&Q's finest superglue on it, laid brass down on the superglue. After cutting, removed the brass bits by carefully sliding a sharp blade underneath. They come away with the tape attached, so boil for a couple of minutes after which the tape just slides off leaving a clean brass surface.

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Not just today, but spread over a couple of days – as the parts arrived.

I have long considered that the ram speed on my Perfecto shaper was too fast, despite using the lowest ratio combination of pulleys available. A recent small windfall has enabled me to purchase a 0.3HP 3-phase motor at a considerable discount along with a VFD at a similar knock-down price. Add a length of 4-core cable and a few hours work and, hey presto! – a completely controllable shaper. Unfortunately, the original belt used was, I found, the wrong section for the pulleys, so a new one is on order. That should be here in a couple of days. In the meantime, the temporary set-up is working and the VFD has been programmed with the appropriate settings.

John

[Anonymous]

Spent part of the day roughing out the LP cylinder liners. The extruded cast iron was turned 0.1" over on OD and 0.1" over on length. It seemed a shame to machine away the central slug so I chain drilled from both sides to remove it. A simple spreadsheet allowed me to select a drill size that would give about a 2 thou or so overlap between holes. The drilling in progress:

After drilling from both sides a couple of sharp taps with a hammer and the core broke away. The two LP liners roughed out, OD is just over 4":

In total 104 8.4mm holes and 3" deep. Thank gawd for the bolt hole function on the DRO and power down feed on the quill. I chose a conservative 3 thou per rev at 800rpm. Each hole took just over a minute. I did try the 6 thou per rev feed but it seemed a bit much driving an ~8mm drill with no pilot hole. In addition, by repute, the quill power feed on the Bridgeport is a weak area, so no point in pushing it. Next job, tomorrow, is 60 holes for the HP liners.

I also coughed up the money for having rubber tyres vulcanised on one set of wheels for my traction engine. I hope to collect them in the next couple of weeks.

Andrew

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

While wondering what to do with an old suspension part from my Son's golf, i remembered i needed a better cutting oil pot. The one i have keeps falling over, so started to make a better one with a tube down the centre to stop spills if it gets knocked over. Also to get my hand in attempting to alloy weld. I did use too much filler rod,

Steve.

[Anonymous]

Job done:

Followed by a clear up of the lathe, mill and floor. It's amazing how much swarf was created.

Andrew

[Peter SpinkParticipant @peterspink21088]

Wow, extreme chain drilling!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Andrew, any reason you chose the BP over the Tormach which could have been left to it rather than having to move to each co-ordinate with the DRO or was there not enough head room? It's a shame you could not have got the HP from the waste slug out of the LP

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Finished the cutting oil pot. Cost, £1.50 for the piece of Delrin.

Steve.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, today I finished and fitted a protection cover for the X axis encoder scale on my Warco Major milling machine. After folding a piece of used aluminium with my recently made sheet metal V block and T blade Sheet Metal Bending V block and blade

Two ends were made from 10mm ally plate and some low profile S/S screws from old computer hard drives were used to fix them in place.

This morning, holes for fixing the cover were drilled and tapped 4mm for two S/S button head screws.

Although it's not a showroom job, but then my machine isn't in a showroom, it will stop the encoder getting showered with swarf and cutting oil.

Regards Nick.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Fitted LED bulbs and transformer to a Isoma Centering Scope in bought on Ebay couple of days ago.

Works very well, just need to test on the mill now.

Colin

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 26/08/2020 22:44:10:

Fitted LED bulbs and transformer to a Isoma Centering Scope in bought on Ebay couple of days ago.

Works very well, just need to test on the mill now.

Colin

Is that the £20 buy ? if so that's a real bargain.

Emgee

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

I played fair. He had offers accepted so I offered £50 he countered £60. So I snapped his arm off

colin

[Iain DownsParticipant @iaindowns78295]

I've been fed up with the lighting in my shed even after I swapped out the florescent tubes for LED tubes. The shed is a fairly standard 8×16 garage with one window along the left wall (as you walk in). At the top of that wall are 2 90cm tubes and in the centre of the peak is another one.

The mill is at the bottom on the left and the lathe on the right. Neither get natural light.

Dull!

After looking at various options, I found some LED strips on ebay. I believe I'm no longer allowed to put links in, but the ones I found (16ft 2835 SMD strips) were from USA and cost around a tenner with 3 or 4 quid postage. I ended up buying two (well, who wouldn't?) for around 25 quid.

I cut down one strip as follows. in the centre at the end, I put up two strips (150 cm each) – they come with sticky backs which have stuck to the rafters really well. At the front, I put up one strip and drove all three from one of the many power supplies that decades of buying computers and other electronics has left lying around (there, SWMBO, I said they'd come in useful sometime!).

Wired up to the main light switch and the difference is truly remarkable.. It's close to being daylight bright. Brighter for most days in blighty, I would say!

The one in the middle is the LED tube one, nearest are the two strips at the far end is the single strip.. You can see the power supply (black, of course) on top of the rafter at the far end.

In case you're wondering, My workshop is not on a ship, in high seas. I'm just a rubbish photographer.!

I also have half a meter of the stuff left, which is being re-purposed into a mill light to be mounted under the head.

Strongly recommended – the whole let is cheaper than one new tube at a fraction of the brightness.

Iain

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

More-or-less finished a little BRIO-gauge loco for the grandkids. The big depth of flange is to help it cope with the curve radius on the Lidl set they have. It still needs a tender. The coupling rods work well – the pins are 2,5 mm dia. under the heads with an 8BA thread. I had to pivot each wheel independently on the end of each axle – I couln't think of a way of quartering accurately bilaterally – so each side-set of 3 wheels rotates together, but independently of t'other side.

Oh, the angle at the bottom of the buffer-beam is to stop it grounding on the next flat rail at the bottom of the slope from the bridge… 

Edited By Mick B1 on 11/09/2020 20:55:40

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Took load of bits from loft to local car boot.

Cam away with these.

Knocked the cabinets down from £10 each to £15 for the pair.

Knocked machinists jacks and collets from £12 t £5

Cabinets are immaculate. Not sure where they are going as already have a few in workshop but will squeeze them in somewhere.

Colin

[OldironParticipant @oldiron]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 12/09/2020 18:56:02:

Took load of bits from loft to local car boot.

Cam away with these.

Knocked the cabinets down from £10 each to £15 for the pair.

Knocked machinists jacks and collets from £12 t £5

Cabinets are immaculate. Not sure where they are going as already have a few in workshop but will squeeze them in somewhere.

Colin

Those are the cheapest cabinets ever Colin. Great buy. I bought a couple of the tall ones last year and they cost me £50 each. Always room somewhere for another cabinet. The only problem is as soon as you put it in place it is full up. regards

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

They Obviously did not know the value of them. I’m glad to say

colin

Edited By Colin Heseltine on 12/09/2020 22:16:07

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Not what did I do today but yesterday, not engineering related, I was carrying out repairs and modifications to the outside of the workshop, this necessitated climbing over the waterfall to my Koi Pond and squeezing behind some Rhododendron bushes to get access to the workshop wall. The work on the wall went well and then came the time to extricate myself, climbed up onto the waterfall then fate took a hand and I missed my footing, plunged one foot into the waterfall and by then my balance was seriously lost and I propelled myself out of the waterfall, which is about three feet high, and down onto the broken slate surface surrounding the pond, unfortunately my forehead was the first to contact the ground and I ended up streaming blood everywhere. I picked myself up very gingerly and decided that I was going to need the wife’s help to stop the bleeding, I grabbed some tissue and went in search of her, she was indoors drying her hair having washed it. She panicked, as I knew she would, but tended my wounds and managed to stem the blood flow. She was understandably worried about how much damage I had sustained so without my knowledge phoned our daughter who lives in the same village as us, she came round and unbeknown to me had called an ambulance. The first I knew of this was two paramedics in green uniforms came through the garden gate, one of the paramedics is a family friend so there was a lot of mickey taking, they were brilliant and when cleaning my wounds found that there small sharp pieces of slate embedded which they removed and cleaned it up. All this was taking place in the garden because it was a glorious day and was safer from indoors because of Covid. It was deemed not necessary to go to hospital but I was given strict instructions about possible effects from head injury and what I must do if I felt unwell. Today the wounds have scabbed over but I am feeling very stiff and bruised, only to be expected I suppose, my wife has yet again banned me from working at heights saying that I am dangerous enough at ground level, and to think 40 years ago I regularly worked at heights up to 100 feet off the ground, albeit with the appropriate personal safety equipment, any work above ground level means that I must now enlist the help of my son in law who is a lead worker and works at heights all the time, I find it frustrating to be constrained like that but I suppose it’s for the best, I had yet another lucky escape.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Samsaranda, hope you didn't damage the waterfall! Seriously though, glad you haven't seriously hurt yourself, get better soon.

Regards Nick.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Hi Nick

Waterfall is intact, just feeling very sore today, my pride was damaged as well but thankfully nobody saw me make a fool of myself. Wife is watching me like a hawk today when I venture into the garden, I'm definitely confined to ground level for the foreseeable future!

Dave W

[Jim NicParticipant @jimnic]

Hi Dave

Glad to hear that only your pride is seriously damaged. All's well that ends well and by the sounds of it at least you've given your Koi something to talk about.

Which of us has not got up to such activities in our later years, I certainly have fortunately without serious injury.

Jim

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