What Did You Do Today 2020

[Anonymous]

DD is correct, it's a hydraulic copy unit. The tool on the back of the cross-slide is driven by a double acting piston. The T-shaped extension below the tool slide carries a stylus that replicates the shape of the tool. Through a series of valves and channels the tiniest movement of the stylus unbalances the piston so that the tool slide moves until the pressure on both sides of the piston is equalised. The effective gain is high so there's almost no error in following the path. The movement of the tool in and out is controlled purely by the template. The axial movement is controlled purely by the lathe feed mechanism. The slide is at an angle to the work so that at the end it can move perpendicular to the work. If the slide was perpendicular the feedrate would need to be infinite.

The shape and, to some extent, surface finish is determined by the quality of the template. Although my template is filed as I don't need great accuracy it would be surprising if I'd got a small ridge almost exactly every 5mm. Especially as I finished by draw filing in short lengths.

I've used the unit on other parts and not seen the same effect, albeit the parts were much shorter.

The mystery remains unsolved.

Andrew

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Andrew,

Many thanks for the pictures. I have seen a similar effect previously on some questionable grade material so my guess would be an inconsistent material, several of your comments would support that particularly I think where you referred to the roughing cuts and a similar change in performance with the 'torn' finish. I doubt it is anything to do with your machine given you have not noticed a similar effect previously, I am sure I have read accounts of instances where you have used the hydraulic copy attachment for other components previously on TT? The fact that it appears visually regular but when measured confirms it is more random would tend to support that. I don't remember if you have a hardness tester but it might be interesting to take some comparative hardness readings between the more pronounced areas of the finish? I can't really think through how impurities may be unevenly distributed through the bar from melt to final rolling but I suspect it could be to do with the composition and the action of the working to produce the bar.

I have a friend who has a business running several automatics and he has commented in the past of having batches of bar, supposedly of a standardised quality that gave this kind of finish on the components which caused them to be rejected which was fixed by nothing other than changing the source of supply without any resetting of the machines (this was all bright bar). On tracing back the material the poor finish batch was from an Asian source, the good replacement from Germany. There is often comment re steel from Asia being poor due to its recycled origins, I do find that difficult to understand sometimes as a solid with the supposed same chemical composition from different sources (according to the material certs) but there does seem to be something in it – behaviour of boiler tubes in service with unexplained rapid and localised pitting being another example.

Just my thoughts.

Paul.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Tried to do some more programming of the Omron inverter. Did a few hours on autocad. Went to bikers café with friends. Now on here.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Posted by Paul Kemp on 12/01/2020 22:29:50:

Andrew,

Many thanks for the pictures. I have seen a similar effect previously on some questionable grade material so my guess would be an inconsistent material, several of your comments would support that particularly I think where you referred to the roughing cuts and a similar change in performance with the 'torn' finish. I doubt it is anything to do with your machine given you have not noticed a similar effect previously, I am sure I have read accounts of instances where you have used the hydraulic copy attachment for other components previously on TT? The fact that it appears visually regular but when measured confirms it is more random would tend to support that. I don't remember if you have a hardness tester but it might be interesting to take some comparative hardness readings between the more pronounced areas of the finish? I can't really think through how impurities may be unevenly distributed through the bar from melt to final rolling but I suspect it could be to do with the composition and the action of the working to produce the bar.

I have a friend who has a business running several automatics and he has commented in the past of having batches of bar, supposedly of a standardised quality that gave this kind of finish on the components which caused them to be rejected which was fixed by nothing other than changing the source of supply without any resetting of the machines (this was all bright bar). On tracing back the material the poor finish batch was from an Asian source, the good replacement from Germany. There is often comment re steel from Asia being poor due to its recycled origins, I do find that difficult to understand sometimes as a solid with the supposed same chemical composition from different sources (according to the material certs) but there does seem to be something in it – behaviour of boiler tubes in service with unexplained rapid and localised pitting being another example.

Just my thoughts.

Paul.

You have just quoted something that I said on another thread. Yes the steel from other countries can be rubbish. It has all sorts of crap mixed in with it. China buy every bit of scrap they can & recycle it & so do India & others. We buy things made there & get along with it , but at the end of the day it is substandard.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

All steel producers use remelt as much as possible, since it saves a lot of energy compared with reducing virgin ore. It's rather jingoistic/xenophobic to assume that 'foreign' product is likely to be worse than Port Talbot of Scunthorpe product…

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

I was thinking more of West Yorkshire foundry in Leeds where I worked on electrics for a few years & yes Chinese steel is crap & so is Indian steel. Xeno or not. Don't know if you go that far back but Mexico started making the body shells for Ford around 1985. They fell apart in a few years. I know I spent many hours welding them back together.

Edited By Steviegtr on 12/01/2020 23:33:11

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Posted by Steviegtr on 12/01/2020 23:02:22:

Posted by Paul Kemp on 12/01/2020 22:29:50:

Andrew,

Many thanks for the pictures. I have seen a similar effect previously on some questionable grade material so my guess would be an inconsistent material, several of your comments would support that particularly I think where you referred to the roughing cuts and a similar change in performance with the 'torn' finish. I doubt it is anything to do with your machine given you have not noticed a similar effect previously, I am sure I have read accounts of instances where you have used the hydraulic copy attachment for other components previously on TT? The fact that it appears visually regular but when measured confirms it is more random would tend to support that. I don't remember if you have a hardness tester but it might be interesting to take some comparative hardness readings between the more pronounced areas of the finish? I can't really think through how impurities may be unevenly distributed through the bar from melt to final rolling but I suspect it could be to do with the composition and the action of the working to produce the bar.

I have a friend who has a business running several automatics and he has commented in the past of having batches of bar, supposedly of a standardised quality that gave this kind of finish on the components which caused them to be rejected which was fixed by nothing other than changing the source of supply without any resetting of the machines (this was all bright bar). On tracing back the material the poor finish batch was from an Asian source, the good replacement from Germany. There is often comment re steel from Asia being poor due to its recycled origins, I do find that difficult to understand sometimes as a solid with the supposed same chemical composition from different sources (according to the material certs) but there does seem to be something in it – behaviour of boiler tubes in service with unexplained rapid and localised pitting being another example.

Just my thoughts.

Paul.

You have just quoted something that I said on another thread. Yes the steel from other countries can be rubbish. It has all sorts of crap mixed in with it. China buy every bit of scrap they can & recycle it & so do India & others. We buy things made there & get along with it , but at the end of the day it is substandard.

I think that is a generalisation, I also said I find it difficult to understand why that should be so! I don't believe that all steel produced outside of Europe is "crap". As to car bodies, is it that all bodies made today that don't rust are made from 'new' European steel? I find that hard to believe. I think that is more to do with improvements in paint technology and probably assembly standards. It's many years since I studied metallurgy and it's not an avenue I persued in my career so most of what I learnt I have forgotton! I do believe standards can vary between batches even from the same mill but I don't believe that every piece of steel originating outside Europe and the America's is substandard. There were operations in the UK (Sheerness Steel being one) that operated entirely on recycling scrap granted though they produced mainly low grade materials such as rebar and not bright products destined for machining operations. I do believe however there are variations in standards (and that can be form whatever origin) but only a full analysis would provide any evidence to support Andrew's experience and my hypothesis and the source of origin would need to be determined. Who knows where it was really manufactured!

Paul.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

An interesting analysis. Car bodies do not rust anymore because they are zinc bath dipped. They used to say the best cast iron was from Detroit.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Material certification is no guarantee that the material is what it purports to be, aircraft manufacturers have been scammed with substandard material submitted by so called preferred suppliers. You have to rely on instinct, if a material comes from a source that you have had no problems with in the past and it machines as you would expect it to do, then that is really all you can hope for.
Dave W

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Paul Kemp on 13/01/2020 00:42:29:

[…]

Who knows where it was really manufactured!

.

In the real world … for Steel, this is probably as good as traceability gets: **LINK**

https://www.aisc.org/steel-solutions-center/engineering-faqs/2.1.-material-identification-and-traceability/

MichaelG.

[John MCParticipant @johnmc39344]

Posted by Steviegtr on 13/01/2020 01:09:50:

An interesting analysis. Car bodies do not rust anymore because they are zinc bath dipped. They used to say the best cast iron was from Detroit

Not quite true, car bodies are pressed from Zinc plated steel, "Zinctec" being one name for it. Along with much better joint sealants, better design and very much better paint systems car body corrosion is no where near as bad as it was.

Having said that Porsche, some years ago, hot dipped (galvanized) the bottom 6 inches of complete body shells to stop the appalling corrosion they suffered from. The last 100 (150?) Reliant Scimitars also had galvanised chassis.

What Detroit did with cast iron was to develop techniques to enable casting in very thin sections, they probably used good quality iron but the skill was in their casting techniques.

John

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 11/01/2020 11:37:47:

Over the last couple of days I've been machining the taper on the chimney former for my traction engines. Roughing was done at 180rpm, 50 thou DOC and 8 thou/rev, so quite modest for me. The chips were coming off dark blue though. FInish cuts were at 370rpm and 4 thou per rev, DOC as required, but generally 5 to 10 thou. Here's the setup for a finishing cut, about 15 minutes per pass:

The template was marked out and filed, don't need super precision! Note the chimney fixing ring from the traction engine hanging on the tailstock quill to test fit and size. Although it's only a former I couldn't resist trying it in situ:

I've been in discussion with a forum member, via PM, regarding the purchase of such a relatively large lump of steel. I mentioned that I got a rather odd finish, and promised to post a picture. So here it is:

The material purports to be EN1A. The general finish is so-so. It measures 3.3µm Ra, which is ok but not brilliant. Of course that doesn't matter for my application. The really odd thing is the darker bands every ¼" or so. I can't think of anything on the lathe that is repeating at that distance. Although the template is hand crafted I doubt my filing would produce such a regular pattern. That leaves the material. Each dark band is a bit shiny, which I associate with harder material when turning with inserts. I wonder if this is something to do with the extrusion or drawing process? As an aside, when roughing I had some problems with chatter. The chatter distance was short. an 1/8" or less, and at random places. One time next to the tailstock, next time in the middle. And the tool never chattered in the same place twice. Once I'd done a few roughing pases the chatter never re-appeared.

The former has tarnished overnight in the engine assembly area, sorry entrance hall, which seems to indicate EN1A.

Andrew

Maybe nothing to do with your reason for bands but I have noticed a similar thing occuring myself on occasion. It's never what I would call a bad finish but I always find it irritating when the finish is not consistant. What I have noticed is that on occasion the swarf comes of in two different directions and flips between them. It only happens when I get reasonably long swarf that changes the angle it comes off. It's like having two different curls that swap periodically. It's as if there are two modes the chip can shear from the work one of which gives a better finish than the other. It generally only happens when turning dry and is not so much of a pain that it's worth weeks of experiment to find out why. It may be a build up on the tip which clears periodically or when the coil of swarf gets long eough to 'fold' the helix differently.

regards Martin

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Mark Rand on 12/01/2020 23:24:02:

All steel producers use remelt as much as possible, since it saves a lot of energy compared with reducing virgin ore. It's rather jingoistic/xenophobic to assume that 'foreign' product is likely to be worse than Port Talbot of Scunthorpe product…

+1 for that. Chaps like to believe all sorts of unlikely rose-tinted folklore about quality in the past. The reality is often less glorious!

At present the Chinese make more steel in two years than was made in total throughout the entire history of British Steel-making. Impressive when you know that Britain was the world's largest producer of steel until 1914 when the Americans took the crown. Thereafter British manufacture of mass produced steel went into decline.

Not all British Steel was high-quality, nor was it cheap. After WW1 historic problems in the trade peaked. In 1928, Lord Melchett, Chairman of ICI said "Iron and Steel firms have fallen in arrears. Works were situated in the wrong centres, plants were obsolescent, there was great duplication, and a want of central control." Another quote: "Morale in the steel industry was very low, few had any confidence in the future and large amounts of capital were generally not forthcoming. Those companies which were still able to operate at some profit became ultra-cautious and extremely conservative and unwilling…".

Major customers like Lord Nuffield had a low opinion of British Steel and Steel makers : 'all big cigars and nothing to do'. The rolled steel sheet used to make car bodies has to be of high specification because rolling brings out flaws like no other process. British steel often caused trouble. Although it improved, Nuffield had persistent quality problems with British steel, and was particularly annoyed because it was a third more expensive than steel imported from the US. Bad enough that Sir Herbert Austin and Lord Nuffield both considered setting up their own rolling mills to process slab imported from the US or Europe.

Manufacturing quality has much more to do with production methods and economics than the workforce. The reason US sheet steel was cheaper and better than British steel was mostly to do with economies of scale and the up-to-date plant available in the US. A major steel works needs to be located close to coal, water and ore / scrap. As all the raw materials are heavy, transport needs to be cheap which ideally means the steel-works is in a large capacity sea-port. As the plant takes a minimum 10 square kilometres of land (preferably more), land had better be cheap too! In that context a British Ironworks set up in 19th century Staffordshire to take advantage of local coal and iron ore, exhausted after a century of exploitation, was in a hopeless position. A small, old-fashioned works, fed by coke and ore carried by railway was in deep poo compared a large modern American enterprise built on a continental scale with cheap transport. Today – for much the same geographic reasons – American steel works find themselves at a disadvantage compared with Chinese and Indian steel makers.

The advantages of nationality have also been blurred by globalisation. Under communism Chairman Mao botched a home-grown backyard steel industry in China. This is not how it's done today. In partnership with Western manufacturers, China bought in the best Western technology, equipment, methods and know how. Over the last 20 years there has been a dramatic improvement, and China is pretty much as good at manufacturing as anyone else. No doubt there are a few old or mismanaged steel works and – more likely – process errors, producing quantities of off specification steel, but it's generally unlikely. Steel is high-tech, it's not made by rice-farmers chucking bicycles in a pot and hoping for the best.

Customers do hit problems though. I suspect a likely cause is 'quality' being compromised in the supply chain. Tempting to substitute one type of steel for another when what the customer wants is out-of-stock or a cheaper similar steel is choking the warehouse. There was a scandal a few years back when Boron steel was sold in the UK as mild-steel as a tariff dodge.

Personally I think taking comfort in casual racism is dangerous. Assuming British quality was better in the past gets us absolutely nowhere. So what even if the notion is true? Criticism of foreigners is pointless – they're not going to change. What's necessary is to deliver product that the world wants today, which means we have to get our act together. Contrary to some opinion on the forum, that's exactly what British Industry is doing, for example by concentrating on producing high-end speciality steels rather than the ordinary mass-production stuff we play with. The world moves on. There's no value in mourning spilt milk, banging on about past achievements, or blaming others.

Dave

[Anonymous]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 13/01/2020 13:26:45:

There's no value in mourning spilt milk…………

Unless you're machining copper.

Andrew

[Iain DownsParticipant @iaindowns78295]

Yesterday I went into the shed to add another couple of R8 tool holders to my R8 toolholder shelf. The toolholders are 3d printed and screw to a melamine shelf with a hole big enough for the tool. Thus the tool sits on nice clean plastic, but occupies little room.

Unfortunately, when I offered the shelf back up, I realised that I'd put the holders and holes over one of the shelf brackets.

Damn. Not only is the new holder useless, but I will need to junk the shelf and drill out new ones. No pictures because I'm too embarrassed.

Iain

[john fletcher 1Participant @johnfletcher1]

Just been reading SillyOldDuffer and thought this maybe of interest.

Some years ago I used to pass by British Steel Appleby Frodingham plant near Scunthorpe and noticed a new works being built close by, that was before Mrs Thatcher was prime minister. On inquiring, I was told British Steel was building the latest computer controlled steel making plant. Later on certain Mr Macgregor (who later became Lord Macgregor) was instructed by the government of the day to get rid of the now, almost ready for testing, plant. My acquaintance told me China bought the lot, and that a party of Chinese armed with pots of paint itemised everything down to the last washer. I was also told that Chinese ship docked in Immingham and took everything away. How can we compete with worn out equipment, when others have the very latest at knock down prices? Perhaps readers from Scunthorpe might comment on the accuracy of the above.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Time for my whinge: we seem to import iron ore and coal from the ends of the earth to make iron, which we then convert into steel. At the end of its useful life we send this steel (now scrap) to China to be recycled into new steel. Why don't we just stop making iron and recycle our own scrap

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

Worse here Duncan,

We mine the ore, send it to China, buy it back as steel. Then send it back for recycling.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Here in France, the cost of rubbish collection / disposal has rocketed because China doesn't want our plastic and household recycling material. Apparently, they don't even want crushed aluminium cans, but why on earth are we trying to get rid of such 'precious' metals when we are importing it as well ?

[Anonymous]

Third time lucky I've managed to hot form a spectacle plate from 3mm sheet that is acceptable. Here's the plate after forming and cleaning up, with holes drilled in the sides and the bottom shaped with a hacksaw and files:

And the plate in place with previously made BSF nuts and bolts:

Pleasingly the spectacle plate was a nice push fit between the hornplates right off the former. No machining or filing needed, so I must have got the sums about right. The outside of the flanges are a bit pitted where I finished off with the copper mallet to ensure a good fit on the former. I hope that a whizz over with U-Pol will fix that.

Andrew

[Ron LadenParticipant @ronladen17547]

That's impressive Andrew especially with it in 3mm steel and having shallow flanges, can't have been that easy to do.

Looks very good.

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

Andrew, that's really crisp – Is that over the same former as before (the former former?) ? ..if you have the allowances easily to hand, it'd be interesting to know. I'm in awe of your even flanges .D

[Anonymous]

I did indeed use the former former, with one modification. I've increased the radius on the edge to about 3/32". Here's a close up of the former:

The flange is designed to be 3/4" high. I originally allowed an inch bending allowance. This was far too much. For the plate shown I allowed 7/8" on the straight edges and down to 3/4" on the corners. The height of the corners still grew to more than an inch. So I plan to cut the allowances down a bit more on the corners. This is especially so for the front plate where the corner radius is 3/4" rather than the 1" for the spectacle plate. I intend to reduce the corner allowance to 5/8", ie, undersize. It's like school uniforms, we hope it'll grow into it.

Andrew

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

This is the first of some of the odd jobs that need doing around the workshop.

I was given this vice and thought that before I find a home for it that a little cleanup and repaint was in order.

A before during and after photo. Smooth Hammerite paint was pretty close to the original Record colour.

Now it is ready to have a new home

[Henry BrownParticipant @henrybrown95529]

Very nice Derek, you were very fortunate to be given one like that! I've just acquired a Record No 5 that seems not to have done hardly any work. Most of the ones I've looked at have been very worn or have U shaped tommy bars!

It's stripped down and been cleaned up with a power file and some emery cloth and the castings have just had a coat of primer.

[Author]

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