All, Just posted some pix of the procedure I used to cut this glass tubing. I had tried just about everything, and tried a lot of different suggestions, but just wasn't having any luck. Received a diamond disk, made an arbor for a small motor for it, clamped motor to lathe carriage, chucked the glass tube in the lathe, added a water feed (hand held/controlled siphon tube out of a gallon jug), and fed in the cross-slide ..... SUCCESS. Only had to touch up the ends a bit with a diamond hone and it's finished. The last picture in the dropbox is of the "uncompleted" oiler for a Hit n Miss engine just a little over 2" high. The top glass is the oil reservoir, and there is a tiny tube of glass in the bottom for the "drip" to go through. Thanks for all the suggestions/help from everyone. Glad *this* part is done :-) If you want to see my crude setup, the link is:
You consider that crude, you should see some of the lash-ups I have come up with from time to time. If it achieves the desired result and nothing gets broken, then success is sweet. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
Could you tell us a little more about the setup? The diameter and thickness of the diamond disk, and the source. Could it be that HF has them? They seem to have a nice variety of diamond coated tools.
And dont forget bailing wire. It binds the universe together.
Gunner
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell
This is a drip-feed oiler, yes? Have you set up an adjustable needle valve for it, on the top?
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
In my case it's blue poly-twine. In '85 I supervised an underground electrical installation where the first thing through the duct was twine fed from a commercial boxed source. Once used it was to be discarded, so, being supervisor with time on my hands, I bundled it up for latter rewinding on spools. I gave away about 3/4 of that salvage, then in '97, after retirement, I worked as labour on a local job for the same contractor. This time I was working so the twine went into garbage bags in the shed. I still have 4 of 6 of these - enough to last another 20-30 years! Gerry :-)} London, Canada
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell
No, Michael, I think "crude" is appropriate :-) .... I'm not one to spend a week making a setup so it is pretty and perfect - I just need it to do the job, and as such, sometimes it's crude even if just temporary. This particular little motor had a mounting plate (just like a downsized dryer motor for example) and I just took the toolpost off the compound, set the motor on top (on the flat area), clamped the backside of the motor mount with a pair of visegrips and the front side with a "squeezeable" bar type clamp. The motor was solid, and in correct alignment and there really wasn't going to be much stress/strain on it - so that's the way I went. Yeah, I guess crude would be right. But it worked and was only needed to be set up that way for about 15 minutes, then got torn down. Ken.
That's kinda the way I was looking at the job, Gerry. I didn't want to spend a lot of time, especially not knowing how well the disk was going to cut anyway...... Yeah - sweet is a good word :-) Ken.
Yeah, DoN, sorry 'bout that.... Not until Tim mentioned it in this post did I remember some previous posts about spaces... I apologize (and honestly will try to remember for the next time). Thanks for the post Tim, the motor is a little Robbins & Myers that I picked up at some kind of a salvage place (5/16 shaft, 1650 RPM) for a cool $5 and I have used that little sucker for all kinds of stuff - I even have a flexible shaft that I drive from it. It's only 1/12 HP, but it's kinda handy. Sure worked good for me this time. Ken.
Jim, It is a "downsized" oiler for a small hit n miss engine and the entire engine is only about 12-1/2" long with 6" flywheels. I've never had to do any work this small before - and I've screwed up a lot just learning how to "work small". Even got a couple of pairs of those "headband magnifiers" recently to help out. I never had to make anything this tiny/accurate and it's a whole new learning experience. And, yes, since I now have the tubing cut for the reservoir, I made the needle valve/spring and toggle handle this evening for the operation of the drip. I haven't done much to the main engine castings, as yet, as I mentally thought working on the tiny stuff would hone my skills a little, so I would be ready for a little more accurate work on the castings (like machining the valves, valve seats, bearings and bearing caps, etc). I think my reasoning is "panning out" :-) Thanks, Jim and all for the compliments - although I just wanted everyone to know the purpose for "fighting with such a short piece of glass tubing". Ken.
I didn't comment on this -- because apparently Steve changed the filenames while checking the uploads. At least, they were proper underscores when I saw them. (I had to go to the "sort by date" option to find them, after "wget" failed to download the first two.
It was only that which showed me that there was more than one image.
Since you did not list the filenames in the ".txt" file, nothing had to be fixed there, either. :-)
No need to apologize to me -- I didn't post anything about it. I know how to work around the spaces -- but they are a pain. Someone new to unix may not -- or may not realize how bad an idea it is to leave the names with spaces unmodified until the crontab operated housekeeping programs hit the files. :-)
Thanks for the compliment, Harold - it's appreciated as I certainly don't qualify as a machinist by any means, but I manage to get a few things done - and I'm learning every day. The glass tube is a "Pyrex" type (borosilicate ?sp) from McMaster-Carr and is 5/8 od with a pretty heavy wall. All my other methods failed and resulted in shattered tubing, etc. I received this diamond disk, with a .010 edge, which cuts a little over .040 deep and has a .750 bore (made from aluminum). Had to make an arbor for it, but that really didn't take that long. The glass tubing was wrapped in *one* single layer of masking tape so it could be held in the 4-jaw on my lathe. Carefully indicated it to 0 runout (or let's say as close as I could get to 0 ), and mounted the motor to the top of the compound. As the compound has a t-slot in it, I swivelled it around so the slot was parallel to the ways of the lathe (in line with the crossfeed), and extended the compound out far enough to have a little overhang on the backside so I could clamp the backside of the motor mount to the compound. The front side of the motor was secured with a squeeze type bar clamp (down to the handle of the compound) with just enough tension to hold the motor securely. A gallon jug of water, with a small length of 1/8 tubing for a siphon hose was to supply the water and it was to be controlled simply by squeeze pressure with my fingers. Water jug set on top of the belt cover on the lathe gave me enough height for the siphon to work. At this point - I didn't actually know if I was going to have any luck or not, but rolled the carriage over to the end of the broken tubing to make a clean-up cut. Advance the cross-slide to the almost touch-off point. Fired up the disk motor, the lathe power, and started to let the water run. Carefully fed in the cross-slide to the touch-off point and just carefully kept feeding/watering/hoping. Going slow, as I didn't know what to expect. Shortly, plink - the rough/broken end simply fell down onto the paper towels I had laying on the ways for protection. Ya could'a *heard* me smiling.... Indicated over the 11/16 I needed for my second cut - and it worked as nicely as the first one. The lathe was turning at 164 RPM (I calculated 5/8 tubing to be about
26.8 SFPM) and the motor speed (fixed) for the disk is 1650 - with the OD of the disk being 2.190 (should be about 946 SFPM). I didn't want to spin the glass too fast, and didn't really have any simple means of disk speed - (and I couldn't find a feed&speed for cutting glass tubing :-) ) - but it all worked out. It's just another operation I now have a little bit of experience with - and just knowing I can do it, is what feels so good. Ken
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