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Project Logs / Re: Building a New Lathe
« Last post by tom osselton on March 06, 2026, 06:54:26 PM »Nice
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Project Logs / Re: Building a New Lathe
« Last post by vtsteam on March 06, 2026, 12:17:48 PM »Well after a slight pause of uhhh 5 years I FINALLY completed the ELS for my homemade lathe. For me, where I got hung up was in making the brass plate for a thread table. I was unable to do a good job of that using any type of printer medium as a screen for putting down etching resist. I finally lost patience half a decade ago and simply ran the lathe manually, and continued relying on taps and dies for threading.
This winter's snows and cold here have stopped all my normal casting activity, and put a damper on shop time as well (it's been COLD in there!). Searching for something to do indoors I finally said to myself, finish that ELS threading table plate, test the electronics in place, and finish the damn thing -- you can at least do that indoors!
So out with the printer and various new transparency films, and dry resist film, pieces of scrap test aluminum sheet, a UV blacklight, PC Board etchant, etc and.......nope. I simply could not get a good image of the resist on metal -- there were always bad areas or the exposure was wrong or the contrast wasn't high enough.
I decided finally the problem was probably due to too much of a DIY head on my shoulders. I simply could not get a good enough transparency to expose onto the dry film resist. I had tried every method known to YouTube for this and I could not get their poster's printer results either with an inkjet or laser printer.
I finally thought, what about having it printed at Staples on transparency film? A check online showed this would cost under $2, I could upload the image directly and pick it up in a day. Past experience with the their local printing dept wasn't promising for the other large blueprints I sometimes get, but for two bucks I thought, why not?
Well, the product was perfect. Really solid black. Really clean edges to the admittedly tiny numbers letters I was using. A test run on aluminum showed good masking with the resist film. So I repeated on brass, and all went well! Two bucks. I don't know how much I'd invested over time for special papers inks, toners, etc. to try to get a decent transparency, but it was substantial.
I guess I don't have to DIY everything.
Well sorry to waste space here with the above long-winded chagrin-ology, but the positive side of all this is: I NOW HAVE THREAD CUTTING CAPABILITY WITH MY (mostly) DIY LATHE!!!
This kinda means my lathe is um, finished....!
(ELS unit and thread table lower left:)
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
well, maybe not -- I'm thinking about making a new milling attachment...........
This winter's snows and cold here have stopped all my normal casting activity, and put a damper on shop time as well (it's been COLD in there!). Searching for something to do indoors I finally said to myself, finish that ELS threading table plate, test the electronics in place, and finish the damn thing -- you can at least do that indoors!
So out with the printer and various new transparency films, and dry resist film, pieces of scrap test aluminum sheet, a UV blacklight, PC Board etchant, etc and.......nope. I simply could not get a good image of the resist on metal -- there were always bad areas or the exposure was wrong or the contrast wasn't high enough.
I decided finally the problem was probably due to too much of a DIY head on my shoulders. I simply could not get a good enough transparency to expose onto the dry film resist. I had tried every method known to YouTube for this and I could not get their poster's printer results either with an inkjet or laser printer.
I finally thought, what about having it printed at Staples on transparency film? A check online showed this would cost under $2, I could upload the image directly and pick it up in a day. Past experience with the their local printing dept wasn't promising for the other large blueprints I sometimes get, but for two bucks I thought, why not?
Well, the product was perfect. Really solid black. Really clean edges to the admittedly tiny numbers letters I was using. A test run on aluminum showed good masking with the resist film. So I repeated on brass, and all went well! Two bucks. I don't know how much I'd invested over time for special papers inks, toners, etc. to try to get a decent transparency, but it was substantial.
I guess I don't have to DIY everything.
Well sorry to waste space here with the above long-winded chagrin-ology, but the positive side of all this is: I NOW HAVE THREAD CUTTING CAPABILITY WITH MY (mostly) DIY LATHE!!!
This kinda means my lathe is um, finished....!
(ELS unit and thread table lower left:)
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
well, maybe not -- I'm thinking about making a new milling attachment...........
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Project Logs / Re: Electronic Leadscrew for the New Lathe
« Last post by vtsteam on March 06, 2026, 11:48:26 AM »It took a long time and a lot of tries to sort out, but I finally was able to etch a brass thread table for the ELS.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
It was then painted to fill in the hollows.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
And mounted on the body of the change box housing I had made, which was in turn mounted on the lathe. Very happy with the result!
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
It was then painted to fill in the hollows.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
And mounted on the body of the change box housing I had made, which was in turn mounted on the lathe. Very happy with the result!
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]
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The Water Cooler / Re: usb stick
« Last post by Muzzerboy on March 06, 2026, 06:01:17 AM »You might find they are simply damaged and unrecoverable. I spent several hours recently trying unsuccessfully to reformat some 8 and 16 GB USB sticks.
There are some pretty powerful tools for doing so (partman and beyond) but when these fail, you may simply have to conclude they are scrap. When the built-in controller sees a permanent hardware failure it may lock the device (ie read only) to prevent further loss of data, no matter what tools you deploy.
Luckily they are almost ten a penny these days and they are often given away free, loaded with demo software.
There are some pretty powerful tools for doing so (partman and beyond) but when these fail, you may simply have to conclude they are scrap. When the built-in controller sees a permanent hardware failure it may lock the device (ie read only) to prevent further loss of data, no matter what tools you deploy.
Luckily they are almost ten a penny these days and they are often given away free, loaded with demo software.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on March 06, 2026, 01:55:39 AM »Ah, the Sock'n a Sock and a Shoe'n a Shoe bit, I think about it every time I put on a Sock'n a Shoe and a Sock'n a Shoe.
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by tom osselton on March 05, 2026, 06:08:09 PM »I?m afraid the ? Meathead Award ? died with Archie Bunker.
https://youtube.com/shorts/h8o-61uvYbw?si=afbKmCy9Org_1DXl
https://youtube.com/shorts/h8o-61uvYbw?si=afbKmCy9Org_1DXl
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CNC / Re: It's new to me
« Last post by ddmckee54 on March 05, 2026, 05:20:06 PM »Bill, that's the stuff. But I had a reason that I didn't need to model the bed - explained below.
Is there a Meathead of the Month award? If there is, then I'm nominating myself!
I was down in the shop taking enough measurements to allow me to model the bed. I found that I've got 5.28mm between the bottom of the bed and the top of the frame. OK, now how far does the head of the mounting bolt protrude above the bottom of the bed? I measured the top of the bolt at 11.62mm down from the top of the bed. A little head-scratching later and I determined that a 5mm deep notch would give me almost 2mm of clearance. Hokay-fine, now how wide does the notch need to be? Better make sure the bed is centered first. Why is there such a LARGE gap on the far side of the bed, how wide is the bed anyway? Survey says: Bed width - 300mm, space between frame rails - 400mm. (Insert head smacking Homer Simpson DOH moment here.) Wade-a-minut-here, why is there only about 10mm of the bed sitting on the mounting bracket? (Insert another Homer Simpson moment here!) Some dip-stick forgot that the horizontal leg of the bracket needed to point to the center, not the outside, of the machine.
I still need to trim a few mm off the vertical leg of the bracket. But, I can actually gain a couple mm of usable Z height out of this - instead of losing height as I originally feared.
I didn't model the bed because it CAN'T interfere with anything. Despite my original panic, this turned out to be tempest in a tea pot, a much ado about nothing, a Rosanna Rosannadanna "Nevermind" moment.
Is there a Meathead of the Month award? If there is, then I'm nominating myself!
I was down in the shop taking enough measurements to allow me to model the bed. I found that I've got 5.28mm between the bottom of the bed and the top of the frame. OK, now how far does the head of the mounting bolt protrude above the bottom of the bed? I measured the top of the bolt at 11.62mm down from the top of the bed. A little head-scratching later and I determined that a 5mm deep notch would give me almost 2mm of clearance. Hokay-fine, now how wide does the notch need to be? Better make sure the bed is centered first. Why is there such a LARGE gap on the far side of the bed, how wide is the bed anyway? Survey says: Bed width - 300mm, space between frame rails - 400mm. (Insert head smacking Homer Simpson DOH moment here.) Wade-a-minut-here, why is there only about 10mm of the bed sitting on the mounting bracket? (Insert another Homer Simpson moment here!) Some dip-stick forgot that the horizontal leg of the bracket needed to point to the center, not the outside, of the machine.
I still need to trim a few mm off the vertical leg of the bracket. But, I can actually gain a couple mm of usable Z height out of this - instead of losing height as I originally feared.
I didn't model the bed because it CAN'T interfere with anything. Despite my original panic, this turned out to be tempest in a tea pot, a much ado about nothing, a Rosanna Rosannadanna "Nevermind" moment.
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The Water Cooler / Re: usb stick
« Last post by Brass_Machine on March 05, 2026, 08:05:32 AM »You could try deleting the partition through diskpart and then re-creating and formatting if you don't care about the data.
To delete a protected or hidden partition using DiskPart, use the delete partition override command. This forces DiskPart to bypass protection that prevents standard deletion, such as for OEM, recovery, or system-protected partitions.
Steps to Delete a Partition with Override:
1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
2. Type diskpart and press Enter.
3. Run list disk to identify the correct disk.
4. Select the disk: select disk X (replace X with the disk number).
5. List partitions: list partition.
6. Select the target partition: select partition Y (replace Y with the partition number).
7. Execute the override: delete partition override.
8. Type exit to close DiskPart.
Warning: This command permanently deletes data. Ensure you?ve backed up any important files. You cannot delete the system, boot, or active paging file partitions using this method.
To delete a protected or hidden partition using DiskPart, use the delete partition override command. This forces DiskPart to bypass protection that prevents standard deletion, such as for OEM, recovery, or system-protected partitions.
Steps to Delete a Partition with Override:
1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
2. Type diskpart and press Enter.
3. Run list disk to identify the correct disk.
4. Select the disk: select disk X (replace X with the disk number).
5. List partitions: list partition.
6. Select the target partition: select partition Y (replace Y with the partition number).
7. Execute the override: delete partition override.
8. Type exit to close DiskPart.
Warning: This command permanently deletes data. Ensure you?ve backed up any important files. You cannot delete the system, boot, or active paging file partitions using this method.
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The Water Cooler / Re: usb stick
« Last post by kayzed1 on March 05, 2026, 06:29:30 AM »Thanks Steve, i will give it a try 