ATTN: "Back Again Phil"

are you the person looking for home power pdf"s

Seymour Swarf wrote:

Not me, I was just posting a follow-up msg to an earlier call for interesting model engineering urls.

cool thanks Seymour. I have just picked up my new Boxford, well new to me, its a mkII AUD on 3 phase. but its a pity I didn't check it propley as when I finally got it down the 1mtr side ally, up a step and up onto a platform, all this in very heavy rain.lol. I turned the big hand wheel and it moved about 40mm so I stripped the apron down only to fine that the apron rack pinion has a tooth turned over. but it gave me a chance to clean it propley. I have found a new one for £21 for the hole part of the pinion assembly so im a little happier now. I need to ask question on inverters now.hehe.

What a wonderful collection of programs. I've had to write similar things myself in the past. For example when I was designing IC engine pistons I wanted to turn approximations of elliptical shapes on a lathe by offsetting the work in the chuck and doing one side at a time. I wrote a program to calculate the offset required to generate a particular ellipse and then another to calculate the packing piece thickness required to generate that offset in a 3 jaw chuck. He has exactly the same on his website. Straight into the top ten of chaps I'd like to have a beer with.

It also brings home how important maths is and how badly our education system lets people down by teaching them bugger all of it before they leave school. My best mate in Aberdeen is a wonderful car mechanic but has only the faintest idea what pi is and even less idea how to use it. Square roots baffle him and cube roots are just things rocket scientists use and no normal bloke needs to know about. It frustrates the hell out of me but such is life.

A few months ago I was up there on holiday and himself and a mate were trying to measure a suspension bush but neither had a vernier. They needed to know if it was the 60mm diameter one or the later model 63mm diameter one so as to order the correct replacement. Squinting across a ruler wasn't doing the job accurately enough. "Got a tape measure or even a bit of string? I ask. They were well puzzled by this request. They found a tape measure, I wrapped it round the bush, read the length, divided by pi and told them which one it was. Such a simple thing to do but way beyond what either of them had learned in 10 or more years at school.

I should add that the bush was bobbin, or cotton reel shaped, with flanges at each end so you couldn't just measure across one end of it. The reference diameter was the bit in the middle which was impossible to gauge accurately by squinting across it with a ruler. Parralax error doncha know. There are probably dozens of ways of measuring such a thing without a vernier but the easiest was with a tape. Parallels, DTI's, gauge blocks and various other things spring to mind but we got the job done.

Thanks for the kind words, Dave. I'll take you up on that beer the next time I'm in lovely old England.

Like you, I deplore the state of education here in the USA, particularly in mathematics. It's now to the point that it's fashionable to advertise one's mathematical incompetence. Statements like, "Oh, I could never do that. I'm a complete dummy at mathematics." are readily offered to prove that one is an ordinary chap, one of the real people, dumb as a box of rocks.

Note that I'm always on the lookout for ideas for new programs. Most of the good suggestions I've gotten in the past have come from the UK, Canada, and Australia.

Regards, Marv

Home Shop Freeware - Tools for People Who Build Things

so why didn't they just get two spanners and hang them over the table, put the bush in between and then a measure, there's 3 mm difference which is like a mile.lol. logic mind needed I guess......................... that's me buggered.

I'll get my coat and got fix my motor.hehe

Phil.