Which would you choose?

A "lathe" -- yes. :-)

As is my 30-foot "Dr. Who" pattern scarf.

The Taig probably doesn't have the power to be a serious risk, but I'll bet that the Mini Mill does.

Good.

Well ... not when it's cold, but I've experienced FeCl solution in a printed circuit board spray etcher. Someone else (I actually know who it was) left the lid up and the heater on overnight, so there were fumes (not much but there were). And there was a Gerstner lathe-bed style optical bench with several optical bench slides on it, and those were rusted beyond recovery. At least the thing had a safety switch to keep the spray pump from running while the lid was up. :-)

When we moved the PC facility to another building, and and added a thin film integrated circuit facility, I designed a plexiglass housing to go over the new spray etcher, with a sliding front door, to keep

*everything* turned off except when the sliding door was closed and the exhaust fan on the roof was running. It was also located as far from anything with rust potential as possible -- and that was a *large* room.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols
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AH, If only I had one of those as well as the sonic screwdriver...Or if I could rebuild my garage on the Tardis principle - bigger inside than outside...

LOL! I just had the image of standing in the middle of the workshop with the Taig flying around my head on the end of the scarf.

Spray etcher?! Here it gets poured into a Pyrex dish and jiggled by yours truly until the thing is done. Then everything gets doused by NaHCO3. I have been using it since I was 12. Apart from staining my mother's bathroom I got away with it. But then those were the days when a blob of mercury was one of my favourite toys...

Reply to
Michael Koblic

I've been re-reading Erich Hartmann's bio in order to argue on rec.aviation.military. Some Russian cold-weather aircraft starting, etc, tricks they learned from a helpful prisoner:

Pour gasoline into the engine oil when shutting down.

Open lower engine covers, light pan of gasoline on ground underneath.

Dip machine guns in tank of boiling water to remove all grease.

Get vastly oversized boots instead of correct size, stuff with straw. The Red Army used rags instead of socks anyway so they could wrap as much as needed around their feet.

I had "some" involvement in Cold War technology and was interested in the differences between American and Russian equipment. Theirs solved immediate problems in simple ways, ours was a subsidized boost to commercial industry's competitiveness, not that we couldn't also hack things, like a farm boy with an arc welder, if necessary. I modified a high-impedance headset into a modem repair tool and learned to recognise good and bad handshaking protocols and various line distortions, similar to memorizing music.

Even now I listen to my PC negotiating the dial-up transfer rate and retry when it will be below 40kBPS.

jw, 32F

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Most U.S. Air force recieps had a gasoline injection system to thin the oil prior to shutdown.

In the Northern locations engines were heated with special hot air blowers for at least an hour before starting.

I worked on some Russian heavy equipment at a project in Indonesia. Every engine had three separate starting systems, manual, electric and mechanical - pony motor, flywheel, etc. Apparently it gets cold there...

Cheers,

Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Reply to
Bruce In Bangkok

If you like this sort of stuff read Anthony Beevor's books. The Stalingrad one is particularly revealing.

There is a substantial number of people in the US today who prefer the AK47 and its variants to American armaments. Without going into great detail and opening a can of worms more suited to another forum I believe their motto can be summarized: "Do you want to shoot it or do you want to *fight* with it?"

Ah, high impedance head-sets. Another blast form the past! Those were the good days...

Reply to
Michael Koblic

I actually wore those "rags around the feet" in army jackboots, at some point.

The idea sounds very stupid. It did seem to be stupid to me, until I actually tried it.

It turned out to be very comfortable, you can re-wrap the rag several times to use its fresh parts, and it is very friendly to very long distance walks.

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If I had to wear jackboots for an extended time and had to walk a lot, I would use those rags again.

If wrapped properly (something I forgot how to do), they are far more comfortable than socks.

Reply to
Ignoramus25152

Smotri, tovarishch, vot i portyanki!

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and

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NB the instructional video :-)

Now you are ready for a *really* cold war...

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Interesting -- it must have the treadmill controller. There was a modification to the board which disabled that, so you could switch off to stop and then switch back on to return to the previous speed.

We have the same commercials -- but lizards slow down significantly in cold weather. :-)

[ ... ]

Not familiar with that one.

And I steer clear of web-based discussion fora. It just does not feel right not having my preferred editor and the ability to format the text as I wish. (I can't imagine trying to do ASCII graphics on one.

Hmm ... too little horsepower for the viscosity of the lube. I wonder whether that was a gearhead lathe. They are very nice to have, but a crash tends to be more spectacular, because you don't have the belt slipping to make things less disastrous. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols
[ ... ]

O.K. Ever try it with a pair of Telebit WorldBlazers negotiating? Those split the audio spectrum of the phone line into 512 narrow slices, then tested the quality in each slice, and argued over who got to use which slices in which direction. But the start-up sounded like a multi-party catfight. :-)

O.K. It has been years since I last used a modem -- 56K frame relay for a while, then a switch to T1 which is what I am currently using.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

"The Germans went to war with a hunting rifle The Yanks went to war with a target rifle The Brits went to war with a battle rifle"

Gunner

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." Maj. Gen. John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in 1864 at the battle of Spotsylvania

Reply to
Gunner Asch

That *would* be wonderful. As would the sonic screwdriver.

More like climbing up the scarf to try to get to your throat. :-)

[ ... ]

Small PC boards I do in a large beaker with a magnetic stirrer keeping the FeCl solution stirred up. That works better for double sided PC etching than the tray does.

Or are you using it for something other than printed circuit boards?

Why? At least for printed circuit boards, a water rinse was quite sufficient.

:-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Very nice. I saved this instruction just in case.

This is way cool. Spasibo.

Reply to
Ignoramus25152

Most of my dial faces are etched. Well, the good ones, anyway. Sometimes I cheat. And guess which ones sell?

I never used to bother with the PCBs. All there was to etch was etched away. But if you leave it on stuff it is said to continue etching even when washed off. I am not sure I believe that and the last few times I did not wash the plates in bicarb without anything bad happening. However, for cleanup of utensils I spray everything with bicarb. Makes for a nice sediment.

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Eto nichevo :-)

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Well, you know the Chinese - mine is probably a re-painted treadmill...

And their body temp gets colder - hence colder breath, hence less condensation.

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I only went there because of the recommendation from here. But like anything on the 'net, you have to sift the data with care. The guy who bought it and started the thread thought it was "way better than a mini" yet seemed to have done little with it partly because of the said problem with oil. Having said that, at the price it is still in the running provided I can get the additional financing, find a space for it and get it home from Vancouver. I am still not sure about the speed-swing mismatch though.

Oddly enough this one:

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is actually 22 kg lighter if their web site is to be believed (not always the case in my personal experience).

Yes it is - right as usual :-)

Reply to
Michael Koblic

It's funny.

I build prototypes of advanced technology, such as

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a gigahertz optical communications link that might have been used between Iridium satellites, etc, but at home most everything I depend on is old, simpler and ~repairable.

Next repair project - make a new steering sector gear for the tractor. Sears no hay.

Jim Wilkins

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Regarding the Busy Bee 9x19 model, it's the basic 9x20 that's been around for years. They don't seem to offer it without the cabinet/stand, although most other sellers do.

Since the 9x19 lathe is a benchtop model, and not very heavy, you might ask someone at Busy Bee if you can get the lathe without the base cabinet/stand. I have read comments regarding that cabinet/stand, and several owners complaints were about the need to raise/block it up because it was too short.

I got my 9x20 without the cabinet, and found that a plywood and 2x4 table approximately 24x42" (glued & screwed) was adequate for placing it on. This table height is 32", and then the lathe bed was on two sections of 4" square tubing risers. This is a reasonably comfortable working height for someone about 6' tall. It could be better a little higher, to get the spindle at about elbow height.

Without the risers under the lathe bed mounts (shown near the bottom of the webpage), there isn't much space under the center of the bed for hand tools and miscellaneous stuff.

In comparing the 9x19 model to the 10x18 (without a stand), notice that the

9x19 has a quick change gearbox, while the 10x18 does not. The lever on the apron of the 9x19 has two feed rates/speeds for turning and threading.

When someone had mentioned the 10x18 earlier I thought the price they referred to was a fairly good deal (I for get who that seller was), and I checked to see if Grizzly had the 10x18 but they don't. That's when I noticed that it didn't have the QCGB. The 10x18 is a gear head lathe, so it would be fairly important to examine the number of ratios for the longitudinal feedscrew, and to see if the apron lever has two feed rates/speeds for turning and threading.

The 9x20 is a popular model, as I think you have already found out from the DC motor discussion, but has one big problem. The plate that mounts the top slide/compound feed is a bad design (which leads to a lot of tool chatter). This problem has been addressed in many ways (which are available on various personal webpages), and this was the wasy that I corrected that particular problem:

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The second problem is the minimum speed being about 160 (Busy Bee shows 130 for the 9x19). I haven't converted the 9x20 to a DC motor yet, because I purchased a larger lathe shortly after getting the 9x20, and began using the larger machine which led to converting the larger model to DC.

Reply to
Wild_Bill

The power switching for the mini lathe is the same as your mill, Michael, pertaining to the need to set the speed pot to minimum before restarting.

That may prove to be a menacing problem when I start using the lathe, and I might investigate if it can be bypassed without increasing the likelyhood of damaging the output devices.

I believe the intention of this requirement is to avoid too much instantaneous current to pass thru the semiconductor output devices. With the speed pot at the 100% high speed position, switching to the run position would be more stressful/demanding on the output devices. So, instead of needing to replace the fuse frequently, the design requires the speed pot to be reset to minimum. This is speculation on my part, as I haven't actually done any real work with the machine yet, and I probably won't be doing any real stress testing on the variable speed circuit (unless it fails or requires repair).

I did a close examination of the mini lathe's Sieg circuit board (I always inspect new and used electrical stuff before using it), and found it to be fairly good quality. The board, assembly methods and components appear to be much better quality than some other electrical stuff from China, but not of good industrial quality.

Reply to
Wild_Bill

Given the current economic climate it is a thought. However, I am not holding my breath. Getting deals in Canada is notoriously more difficult than in US as is any sort of flexibility.

Some people made big deal about the 3/4 spindle bore on the CT039 as opposed to 1" on the B2227L. OTOH I am not sure that I do not prefer the belts to gears.

Does this picture (about half way down the page) help?

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It is only 115 for the B2227L.

Still, thanks, this is all good food for thought!

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Why is it a problem? I use the pot as an on/off switch. The main "emergency" switch is a pain to use.

Reply to
Michael Koblic

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