What Did You Do Today 2026

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

I used a scrambler front shock absorber boot and a piece of scrap ali to protect my Tom Senior screw and nut from swarf for less than a tenner.  Just lift the ali to add oil.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Second attempt.

Changed from ABS (Which warped badly on the table) and finally made a birds nest of plastic and “crashed” the print head.  This one had minor dimensional changes and I decided to use PETG instead. The run time reduced from 9hr 20min to 6 hr 40min and turned out as I wanted it to.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Non magnetic washers?  Having machined the old and face with bevel how do I successfully hold to do the reverse. I know about wax chucks/ superglue etc but it’s soo slow. Any ideas.

?

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Pot chuck/soft jaws?

How thick / what’s left to hold?

 

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Non magnetic washers?  Having machined the old and face with bevel how do I successfully hold to do the reverse. I know about wax chucks/ superglue etc but it’s soo slow. Any ideas.

?

Have you tried using the traditional Shellac, instead of that new-fangled superglue performance ?

MichaelG.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Washers are 20mm diameter 8mm hole and 2.5mm thick with a45deg chamfer that covers half the thickness. I have thought of using the surface grinder by having a magnetic plug in the 8mm hole and a 20mm diameter fence round the outside but am frightened that it could still be picked up and then disaster.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Cut your softjaws 2.25mm deep and away you go.

Simple split stepped bush would also work. These are doing 2mm thick parts 20mm dia

 

 

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

I think shellac chuck

is better as you can then break the sharp corner as well

will give it a go tomorrow

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Still enough sticking out to take any burrs off the corners if done to the depth I said and no problems with getting the washer running true radially or axially, so your easing is equal all round.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Have made some shellac sticks today and experimented with the non magnetic blanks. Good results and shellac gives a very firm hold. I made the chuck with spigot so the washers were automatically centered. Interesting day!

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Having just been out to get some firewood from my non-draughtproof porch I am reminded that the weather is going from cold to warm and wetter. Everything that got cold is now dripping with condensation. Those of you who think it is a good idea to have permanent ‘ventilation’ in your workshop will now have soggy rusting machines.

[Bazyle]

On Bazyle Said:

Everything that got cold is now dripping with condensation. Those of you who think it is a good idea to have permanent ‘ventilation’ in your workshop will now have soggy rusting machines.

..some of us have no choice; best plan is to keep using them!

This weather is getting very tiresome tho’ – haven’t had three dry days in a row since before Christmas – must be pretty soggy where you are?

 

[Julie AnnParticipant @julieann]

Finally got my investment casting set up finished last night:

Now I’ve just got to learn how to use it.

Julie

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Set up and test run today, results are encouraging. File was coarse perhaps fine would be better.

[Julie Ann]

On Julie Ann Said:

Finally got my investment casting set up finished last night:

Now I’ve just got to learn how to use it.

Julie

Please do keep us posted if/as you have the time – looks a handy little set-up and it’s always good to see a less-common process carried out in a H/WS setting

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Me? Oh, far too little engineering and far too much fighting “technology”.

 

I need visit somewhere about 50 miles away. I have the post-code and a couple of landmarks. “Right”, thinks I, “charge the TomTom” – used too infrequently to maintain its battery charge – “and enter the post-code”.

Surely, just type in the intended destination and press “Enter”. No. Too obvious, too logical. IF you stumble across how, it displays a “Drive” sign instead. Press that and start driving. You find this only by fluke or induction into the deepest secrets of the Closed Order of the TomTom. (Roto-toms and tympany excluded).

I have no idea how I managed to list about twenty places in it, because it’s so long since the last. They were all extremely difficult to enter. No comprehensible, or simply no, instructions were supplied with it.

 

So, search t’Net for instructions – How?

– Model unknown: not marked on the case, not revealed by a magic button, and I have lost the carton.

– Those I subsequently found on line proved for a different model.

A new search found instructions that nearly matched.

 

Only – they did not cover the most important function, typing in the destination in advance of the journey. Instead, either :

– Select it from a crude digital map, but if you don’t know the area you cannot find the location on a map with more hair-salon than street names anyway. Well, I need my hair cutting….

– Reach your destination then enter it: clearly absurd to all outside of the domestic-appliance IT trade.

– A couple of other options, also useless.

Then press a quoted virtual-“Done” button I do not recall ever seeing.

 

The TomTom website has a “feedback” form. I fed back, civilly but frostily telling them the whole nonsense defeats the point of these contraptions.

I suppose that was marginally better than crushing the instrument on my concrete yard. That lump-hammer’s been loitering in the kitchen for months. Tempting….

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel Graham 2, I’ve only ever used a Tom Tom once, never again, as I found it one of the most useless things I’ve ever used, even my old mobile phone was better, when my Navman gave up halfway to a place I’d never been before. I’ve used Garman’s ever since, though I gave the first one to my daughter when I bought a better one, and never had any trouble with either, and both are still working and get updates, even after ten years or so, of use. Oh the Garman’s don’t stay charged for very long when not in use, but they work straight away when plugged in the car, I think the battery in them to maintain your current use when you stop for a break , or when in a filling station or shop etc.

Regards Nick.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

Very nice job on the filing attachment Bernard, something I’ve been considering, doesn’t take up too much room, would be very interested in how you get on using it. I did borrow a Butterfly die filer from a friend with a view to buying it but it took up a lot of bench space and was too heavy to lift on and off repeatedly, besides the seller missed it and wanted it back!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Good morning, Nigel

For your convenience [or perhaps not] … I am putting a copy of the TomTom Reference Guide in my “gallery”

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/mediapress/members/79913/678121/TomTom-EU-non-LIVE-RG-en-gb.pdf

 

MichaelG.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

I have used a Tom Tom Rider for a lot of years all over Europe and the USA (about 40,000 miles) and it works for me

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou Michael.

I examined that link, but I’m afraid it is for a very different model. The photograph of the unit itself suggests that is the same externally, but all the displays and controls are completely different. Probably a newer and higher-specification version with totally re-written software.

……

I don’t usually find my TomTom a problem to use for a definite place in its library. It is a bit awkward but it does work. It is adding places to the library that is so damnably difficult.

It can sometimes send you on strange detours, it cannot keep up in dense, fast moving urban traffic between closely-spaced, difficult junctions; and an unexpected road-closure has it as lost as me. I imagine these can happen with any sat-nag system. (The second of those made me vow never to drive in Doncaster again, even for a model-engineering show.)

 

My beef with it is that firstly I cannot identify its model because the unit is not labelled, and I have lost the original packing. And secondly the nearest instructions, are not near enough.

I used some highly-complicated test-gear at work, where I also learnt Microsoft (for better and often worse) from MS-DOS upwards, complete with ‘Word’ and ‘Excel’, to a useful level. I gained some insight into BASIC programming. I even typed a book manuscript on an Amstrad word-processor.

Yet it seems many makers of domestic electronic devices like sat-nags and microwave ovens typically supply very poor, or no, instructions, despite the intended users being anyone whose technical knowledge ranges from high professional to barely knowing one end of a 13A fuse from the other.

Indeed, this is one reason I kept my “smart”-‘phone for only a few months before replacing it with a simple one: apart from its expensive contract the fancy-phone came without instructions even for simply answering a call.

 

I did succeed in putting this new location in the thing, but I am not sure how other than chance. At least, I think it’s there.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Nigel, to save paper modern devices often only come with a Quick-Start Guide aimed at getting the purchaser up and running, then they can view or download the full User Manual in their preferred language..

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Still helps if the preferred-language, full, User Manual covers the model in question!

I found my way there, anyway. The landmarks I’d been told made it easier than I’d feared. The sat-nav was not really very much help even though I had somehow managed to enter the post-code.

Luckily I do not need drive in very large, very busy towns such as Bournemouth, Bristol or Birmingham, where the sat-nag would be as confused and lost as me. I would never attempt penetrating the M25 Corrall, congestion-mortgage or not.

 

A lot of digital maps are quite poor at pinpointing. Those tear-drop symbols pointing to specific businesses etc. – I assume the owners pay for them – are often vague and inaccurate, even putting the establishment on a different road.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Worked out how to hold a five-foot length of 50 X 50 mm square steel tube for milling the ends square…

Determine the milling-machine’s table height for the task, then set the tables on the next two machines along to the same height, and clamp an angle plate to the far one to give the length stop.

Sort of works! Easier than angle-grinder or file? Not sure….

…..

Then an hour or so wrestling with 4BA screws and nuts holding one of the bunkers on the club’s “Wren” loco. I helped build it, a long time ago, but not that area of it. Two were particularly keen to emulate modern automoive design practice for inaccessibility.

When will model-engineering discover rivet-bushes, a.k.a. “hank-bushes”? I have never encountered them mentioned in the magazines, never seen them on the exhibition sales-stands. Yet this is the sort of work for which they are ideal.

(I am not sure if you can still buy them in hexagon form, let alone BA sizes too, but where they will be hidden, such as the underside of a footplate, their outline is inconsequential.)

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

Besides hank bushes there are clinch nuts.

John

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