Author Topic: Bon Soir (Read 6487 times)

latheman · « **on:** January 03, 2011, 04:21:16 PM »

See, tri-lingual! English, French - well sort of, and er... Well I'm sure you can guess.

Ok A bit about me.

Ex-grammar school, apprenticeship at a very large telecomms company from which I took early retirement a good few years ago. Did a bit of taxi-minibus driving then gave up all forms of paid employment.

Did a bit, not much, engineering type stuff at school, then none at work, but then decided about 20 years ago in conjunction with No.1 son that we needed new wheels for a 00 gauge loco. This, of course, meant a lathe, and well, here we are still learning. For those of you who know what exponential curve and time constants are, I reckon I'm about 0.1CR up the learning curve. Possibly 0.2CR.

Equipment is a Warco 220 lathe. Warco MiniMill, NuTool cH10 drill, Clarke 5" D/E grinder plus all the usual bits and pieces. Interest is in teaching myself to use the equipment - not easy when all you can do is read and ask questions, and to make additional tooling. At the moment I've more or less just completed a major strip down, clean up, re-lubricate and readjust of the lathe. Amazing how much better it is, but it still needs more. The minimill also requires a lot doing to it, a heck of a lot. Workshop is the cold and draughty garage.

How did I get here? Well you can blame Bog-Standard for that - he posted something on the "cough-cough" forum which lead me to here, liked what I saw, and so here I am.

That'll do for now.

Regards,

Latheman aka Peter G. Shaw

Brass_Machine · « **Reply #1 on:** January 03, 2011, 04:24:17 PM »

Bon Jour Peter!

Comment ça va?

Welcome to the collective

Watcha into?

Eric

spuddevans · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2011, 01:28:10 AM »

Hi there Peter

welcome to the club, pull up a chair and join in the fun.

Tim

Bogstandard · « **Reply #3 on:** January 04, 2011, 03:28:44 AM »

Peter,

Welcome to the anything (well almost) goes forum.

You will find on other forums that they tend to get a bit too technical for anyone to understand, here we tend to use just plain English (but sometimes it has to be a bit of tech jargon), so almost anyone can follow along and enjoy the multitude of projects that go on here.

So show us what you get up to, and you will be guaranteed an audience.

Just follow what you like to, step in and ask a question if you want to and help if you can, but always try to enjoy it.

Bogs

HS93 · « **Reply #4 on:** January 04, 2011, 03:50:47 AM »

yes welcome, as Bogs says can be less Technical I for one have a selection of hammers and bogs has his shifting spanners, I have even seen some waterpump pliers in Pictures at times but not seen any stilsons, well not in my pictures as they dont make them for BA nuts

Peter

Stilldrillin · « **Reply #5 on:** January 04, 2011, 04:22:36 AM »

Hi Peter.
Welcome to the Collective!

We are a really mixed bunch on here. Everyone knows something about what you want to know.
But we want to know what you know...... With pics! We like pics......

Join in. (Even if it's only, "ooh, that's nice!").

Above all...... Enjoy!

David D

Divided he ad · « **Reply #6 on:** January 04, 2011, 06:57:59 PM »

Hi peter

In the interests of being partly lazy and just noticing that I have work in 7 hours..... What they said

And BTW, The other Peter... I have a great collection of stilsons 6"-24"

Some for work/ some for just incase

Have fun

Ralph.

scrapman · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2011, 02:18:08 PM »

Hi Peter

Welcome to the forum.

Ray.

latheman · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2011, 05:03:53 PM »

Thanks everyone for the kind welcome.

As I said, I'm in this purely for self-education, ie how to use the tools, and how to make more tools. I honestly don't have any other objective in mind.

One of the problems is deciding when something is good enough. Why do I have this problem? Because I have not had any training whatsoever on engineering. So it's experiment, make a mess, try again, and eventually discover what works and probably more importantly, what doesn't work. So, I may well be tapping peoples brains, after all, Bogs (thanks already Bogs) has shown the light on circular squares and on his tramming tool. No doubt there are many more similar gems to be discovered.

Talking about Bogs' circular squares from tubing does actually give an insight into my personal mental, if you like, ability. I realised a long, long time ago that I was not capable of original thinking, or even sideways thinking, although I have proved on many occasions that given the basic knowledge and the requirements I can take a project through to conclusion. But the original idea? No! So, although I already knew about circular squares from Harold Hall's book, I was unable to make the leap to using tubing as per Bogs. What this means is that I can only contribute, if indeed I do, what I know through experience, if you understand me.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Peter G. Shaw

Bogstandard · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2011, 01:05:39 AM »

Peter,

There is very little new in this world, most things have been thought of before, but the technology at the time held them back. As new technology becomes available to the masses, then those old ideas can now be realised.

Also, old techniques get forgotten about by the advent of new technology and 'gizmos'. All I do is read old volumes, and look at the techniques they used then. I reckon that most problems with machining can be got around by using these old methods.

My personal view is that people nowadays want instant results or fixes, and aren't willing to take time out and solve problems by using their brains. Once you can get thru that barrier, the whole world opens up and you can see things more clearly.

So why not use a bit of old tube to make a precision part? The only main differences between the two are the surface finish and accuracy, if you are capable of doing those two changes, then voila!

It isn't rocket science, just common sense and perseverance.

Bogs

latheman · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2011, 08:47:36 AM »

Bogs,

I actually agree with you, and believe that some of the old ideas may actually be better than new ones, purely because the old ideas will have stood the test of time. But in my case, I have learnt over the years that I simply don't make the connection. It's not that I'm lazy, or that I'm thick, but that I just don't see it. It's happened so many times in the past that I've missed the blindingly obvious. Let me give you an example from my career.
In the early '70's I taught myself how to design reasonably simple transistorised switching circuits from a pair of books. I became reasonably good at circuit design. Part of this design always covered the possibility of inter-electrode leakage - the so-called Icbo leakage. As a result my circuits never failed due to that problem. Fast forward a few years and we had a number of pieces of equipment assembled by a local firm, the agreement being that I would get those that failed, to work properly. Apart from the usual ic's wrongly inserted, there some that failed due to Icbo leakage. It took three or four of these failures before I twigged what was going wrong, and yet I knew all about the problem. You see I had never experienced the problem in real life and so couldn't make the immediate connection. The end result was an immediate modification to the circuit to overcome the problem.

And a more immediate problem. Yesterday I was repeating the "leveling" of my lathe using the hefty bar stuck in the 4-jaw chuck, two turned barrels, and measure followed by tweaking the tailstock end bed support posts. I had three or four attempts to get it to less than 0.02mm difference, each time tweaking the relevant support up and up and up - in fact I failed. Sitting and looking at it, I then stuck the clock on the bar, and pushed the bar. And got an immediate large movement. Changed to the large 4-jaw chuck and found an immediate improvement in stiffness. Problem solved, but at the expense of having to do it all again to get back to where it should be. I got there in the end, but have never come across this problem of flexing before, although I was aware that all things flex to some extent. Hence I did not make the immediate connection, instead carrying on tweaking the support.

Still, it's all grist for the mill. And I'm learning all the time.

Regards,

peter G. shaw

ieezitin · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2011, 08:28:46 PM »

Peter.

Hello and welcome to our forum.

I have read your posts and let me say I think you possess the necessary skills to quickly grasp the essence of our world, machining, building, constructing is a syntactical process, the machine will speak, the drawing speaks, and yet you are speaking just by interacting by what you have done. Math is the language of the universe and I safely assume you have that knowledge , so all skills are in place, please keep us informed on your projects however insignificant you think they maybe,people on here freely give their experiences and knowledge willingly with the sole purpose to share.

God bless Anthony.

Divided he ad · « **Reply #12 on:** January 07, 2011, 02:19:10 PM »

Quote

And I'm learning all the time.

Arn't we all?

Usually in this order if you're like me...... ?

Ralph.

latheman · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2011, 04:54:04 PM »

Right, here we go, Question No.1

How do I insert photos?

I can see the Insert Image icon above but...

I have Paint Shop Pro so can easily load from the camera into PSP, resize, and save in a variety of formats so no problems there. (I can even produce photos that never happened as my son & daughter in law found out when I managed to merge two photos to get one of them both looking forward simultaneously, so no problem with modding photos.) But how can I upload from my computer and presumably place inbetween these

commands?

Also, (I suppose this is Question 2) is this the right place to ask this question? Should be in, eg, the How Do I section?

MTIA

Peter G. Shaw

Divided he ad · « **Reply #14 on:** January 07, 2011, 07:32:41 PM »

Peter,

Answer to question 1....

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=607.0

And 2....
Questions are answered usually wherever they are found

If you look at the home page most topics they tell you what they are for and what kind of stuff to post there. But if it's pic' related then usually the "gallery" or the "Project logs" sections get all that type of question.

But.... Better you ask here than not at all

Ralph.

DavidA · « **Reply #15 on:** January 10, 2011, 09:51:43 AM »

I wouldn't worry about the large image resulting from the single click. It helps us expand bits we want to look at as well as being able to examine the minutia in the background.

Dave.

John Swift · « **Reply #16 on:** January 10, 2011, 11:02:37 AM »

Hi Peter ,

welcome

its good to see you here

and yes you all ready know me from the other place

John

latheman · « **Reply #17 on:** January 11, 2011, 08:10:54 AM »

Thanks John,

You'll have noticed then the self-same self-taken photograph.

David A,

Thanks Dave. I'll leave the photo size as is then.

To one and all, Sometime over the next few days, I'll set up the camera on the garage, sorry, workshop, and let you all see my dump! I'll stick them in the 'Our Shop' section.
Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

Bogstandard · « **Reply #18 on:** January 11, 2011, 11:10:45 AM »

Peter,

The problem with loading pictures as you have, is that they take up space actually on the website.
If you can open your own photobucket account (free), and put your pictures on there, then when the link is posted in your text, and your post is opened, the website goes and gets the picture and displays it.

By doing it that way, the site won't get overloaded and so won't slow down.

If you get too many people posting pics under their posts, eventually, more storage space will have to be purchased to cope with it all, not a burden Eric should have to face, as he pays for this website out of his own pocket.

I was talking with Ralph the other day about this, and I think eventually he will be updating his 'how to do it' post on putting pictures into your posts.

Bogs

latheman · « **Reply #19 on:** January 12, 2011, 04:10:37 PM »

Bogs,

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Now, I used to have an account (or two, or possibly more) which allowed one to upload ones own stuff. It was free with the ISP account. I do know that something was cancelled - possibly on the secondary accounts, but I think the ancient original accounts, because of their age, do actually still work. Oh, well. More to look into. If not, then......

Peter.

latheman · « **Reply #20 on:** January 13, 2011, 02:32:41 PM »

Hi bogs,

Well, I've managed to sort out those accounts I was talking about. What it was, was that originally BT (the ISP) offered webspace for it's email customers, however eventually it was merged with Yahoo. Later, the webspace was turned into, merged with, whatever, geocities which in turn was eventually closed. However, and it took some digging out, it seems that the primary account still retains BT webspace, not much (50Mb for broadband) it's true, but it's there. Which means that with care it can support say about 80 photos at a guess. (Based on the current set of 8 photos taking about ½Mb.) We'll just have to see how I go on.

Anyway, over on "The Shop" I've put some photos for you all to laugh at. No, of course you won't laugh - you'll cry in (sympathetic) dismay! Plus a few comments.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

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Author Topic: Bon Soir (Read 6487 times)