Recent content by 76dave

If you look at the last photo in my original post, you will see that the lathe controls are on a pendant, with a cable which connects to the inverter. This is located on the bench at the tailstock end of the lathe, so well out of the way. Before investing in the 3 phase inverter system, I had...

In case you are wondering, the switch on the front of the yellow box is for the coolant pump.

I am in the process of upgrading my Clarke CL300 mini lathe (Sieg) to 3 phase. The new, bigger motor is mounted to the rear of the lathe with an intermediate spindle mounted in the original motor housing. This simplified the drive arrangement. A new control box was built containing a NVR switch...

It would appear that "hermaphrodite" calipers are a marking out device, whereas the "oddlegs" are more for measuring/setting dimensions. I would think that both can be replaced by the modern digital caliper ( or even a vernier one). As I previously posted, I have had the ones I have been told...

To mark a line parallel to a straight edge, something like this is so much easier. The 2p is for scale. Centre of round bar- use a centre square. Hex or square bar- scribe diagonals corner to corner. To mark out really accurately you need a surface plate/height gauge with scriber.

Whatever they are called they are pretty useless anyway.

The attached picture shows what I have always considered to be "Oddlegs". These came with a set of calipers, dividers etc, that I bought over 40 years ago. In all that time,I cannot recall ever using them.

For a blind hole, have you considered using a rotary wobble broach. A simple design for one is shown at "mikesworkshop.weebly.com"

What confuses some people (including me, initially) is the fact that BSP fittings are specified by the BORE of the pipe and the actual thread which goes outside the pipe is bigger. Thus, a 1/2" pipe thread has a OD of 0.825" or 20.96mm. Also confusing is specifying the old imperial PIPE by the...

I have a dual boot machine using windowsXP and ubuntu. Initially, this was very slow until I installed drivers (in windows) for the GF6600 video card. Windows XP is now OK. I now need to find and install drivers for Ubuntu. Don't know if yours is a similar problem?

Regarding your slow computer it is sometimes a symptom of a failing hard drive. This is quite possible as you appear to be using a very old machine (nothing wrong with that. I do the same myself), but every Hard drive WILL fail eventually, being an electro-mechanical device. Even though you...

27Gb is crazy. Windows XP with sevice pack 3 will fit comfortably into 4Gb. You must have had a awful lot of crap on your hard drive to fill it up that much. I hope you backed up your files before you wiped them installing Linux.

I have used a dual boot system using windows 7 and Ubuntu for years, without any problems. First install the windows O.S. and only use half the hard drive. When finished you can the run Ubuntu from the DVD or USB media. At this stage nothing is written to the hard drive but you are given the...