MadModder

vtsteam:

The base is a 470x550x30mm piece of laminated phenolic plastic, with a kraft paper core and what, if I'm remembering correctly, were known as canary covers.  On my bathroom scales that chunk weighs in at about 25 lbs.  In the mid to late 70's I was working in a plant that produced them, in the maintenance department.  Every once in a while a sheet would get rejected, this one has about a 0.010-0.015" high spot about 200mm from the LH side, I suspect that was one the reasons for it's rejection.  I'd keep my eyes open for any rejects that I thought might be usable in the future.  Since they were bound for the landfill anyway, I'd get permission from the production supervisor to take them. 

The only ones I wouldn't take were the epoxy/fiberglass sheets, those you can't cut with carbide blades.  You have to use a diamond saw on them and basically grind through them.  At that time, carbide saw blades for home use were EXPENSIVE, a diamond blade was the stuff of dreams.  We had one guy in maintenance whose sole job was to sharpen and repair the carbide saw blades.

Picture time...


This is what things look like now, doesn't look a whole lot different than this one does it?


If you answered no to that question you'd be absolutely right.  But there is one MAJOR difference, the frame is now bolted to the base and living in its' new, and permanent, home.

Next step?  Get the bed mounting brackets designed/fabricated, and get the bed mounted to the X axis bearing blocks.  If you look closely at the base below the second mounting bolt for the X axis linear rail on the far side you'll see the access hole for greasing the X axis bearing blocks. (There's a similar access hole on the near side that's hidden in the view.)  Once the bed is mounted I can get to work on the X axis lead-nut mount.  I really need to find mt ToDo list and get it updated, this should check off at least a couple more items.

Yes, probably. But I use Linux so not sure how to do it from Win. If you have one writeable USB drive, you could possibly put a Puppy Linux or EasyOS on that, reboot to it, and then use the program gparted in them to reformat the others.

If that doesn't work a disk imaging program should be able to put a new image on it. EasyDD does that in Linux. Once re-imaged you should be able to run Gparted on it and reformat to any type of disk. Probably FAT32 to keep compatible with most thumbdrives.

Yep, it's back.

Not due to my efforts! It just fixed itself!

Apologies, I was busy all weekend & didn't even realise it was down....

I'll try to keep a closer eye on it!

The first train over. In the last picture I posted the embankment in the background is a BR line to Honiton and Axminster so the big train passengers can see the little trains.