There was a recent thread on the MEW forum about Noga tools. It led me to download the Noga catalogue as a PDF. I am amazed at the technology that Noga produce to just remove burrs.
They are lovely tools and well worth the investment. I particularly like the external Rotodrive EX18 countersink. This is very handy for cleaning up the end of a newly threaded rod so the new thread will ‘take’. So quick and easy.
What really took my fancy in the catalogue on page 51 was this combination tool. That’s certainly one for my Christmas list.
No affiliation to Noga. I just like their technology.
“Better to have it and not need need it than to need it and not have it” – Jimmy Diresta.
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There are many ways to set a tool centre line on a lathe. The most basic is just to trap a 6″ rule between the workpiece and the tool edge and adjust so the rule is vertical.
One gizmo I picked up at a trade show from the Machine DRO booth is this very useful tool by Edge Technology.
Edge Technology Lathe Tool Alignment jig
It is simple but clever. You mount the rod in the lathe chuck and then rest the bubble anvil on the tool edge. Edge Technology also do a more refined version with a calibrated scale.
It is not something that you use every day but every now and then I have a session with it and go through all my QCTP tooling and tweak them.
(If it has been one of those ‘not settling to anything’ days you can at least switch the workshop lights off with a warm glow that you did something useful …)
(I have no affiliation to Machine DRO or any other manufacturer or supplier I might mention in my write ups but I will mention any nice pieces of kit I come across or use).
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While investigating four facet drill sharpening, I came across John Moran’s website which detailed his design for a four facet drill sharpener. Four facet sharpening is popular for providing more accurate starting of a hole, less drilling pressure, more accurate hole size and better retention of drill point sharpness. John’s design is intended for sharpening 2mm to 12mm drill bits.
I have a Quorn grinder but it is not something that I can quickly pull out from under the bench to sharpen the odd drill. John’s design looked easy to set up and use and certainly easier to carry. I have been working with him to produce this hybrid version. I recommend that you read John’s write up before embarking on either his original design or my 3D printed hybrid version. He also presents a YouTube video on how to use the sharpener.
Here is a picture of John’s finished design. Very nicely finished and presented.
Here is a picture (not quite so pretty …) of my 3D printed hybrid version. A new baseplate might be in order to smarten it up.
The concept of combining 3D printed components with essential metal parts works very well and the resulting sharpener appears to be stable and repeatable in its results. There is a huge advantage in combining technologies in this manner. All the ‘boring’ or ‘dreading to make / leave until tomorrow’ parts are easily produced on a 3D printer and the remaining metal parts are straightforward to produce with conventional resources and skills.
Rather than go into details as a blog post, below is a link to a ZIP file that contains my full write up, 2D PDF drawings of the metal parts, STEP files of the 3D printed files and the raw Fusion files for those wanting to tweak.
If you can’t work with STEP files then let me know and I will run STL versions. STEP files are more accurate than STLs and also have the advantage of being more easily editable than STLs.
I think you will be impressed with the end result of John’s design.
If this write up or my general waffle is of interest then please subscribe to receive notices of new posts. If you build the sharpener and it works let me know. If it doesn’t work and it’s my fault for not providing enough information than email me so I can correct things.
I have already had some feedback on the 3D printed design so some of you are quick off the mark.
This feedback related to the friction of the collet holder shank in the block and also the print roughness against the depth setting screw. Both of these will relate to the print quality from your printer.
As an experiment I ran a new version of the block with a larger bore and then lined it with an aluminium sleeve that was a smooth fit on the shank. I also turned a flange on the end of this sleeve so that the adjuster nut had a smooth metal surface to ride against.
The addition of the sleeve looks promising in solving these two issues. I admit it is going against the concept of a 3D printed set of parts but the sleeve is easy to turn up on the lathe and the new block in PLA is still much easier to produce that trying to make the block totally in metal.
You can download the edited write up, new collet chuch holder block STEP and the sleeve drawing in this add on ZIP file.
Each of the axis locks on my VMB mill uses two M8 cap head screws in association with a lock nut. This works OK if the hex driver is in reach …. but it never seemed to be …. so I decided to remove the cap head screws and fit lock levers instead. Lock levers come in male and female format and various thread sizes. The M8 versions all have 40 to 50mm long lever arms. This length doesn’t work comfortably in the space constraints on the VMB X and Y axis but is fine for the Z axis. Similarly I also had to reduce the length of the lever thread.
The obvious solution was to cut down the length of the lever arms. The trouble with this was the raw open end of the arm looked naff and did not sit easily with my usual perfectionist approach. The solution via Fusion 360 was to create some 3D printed end caps which I then bonded in place with Araldite. This finished the job properly.
Fusion 360 modelled end cap for the shortened lock lever arm open end
The Fusion 360 3D modelled end cap printed in under 4 minutes with a further 5 minutes for the Araldite to cure. I now have a much more elegant looking solution.
Full length lock lever and the truncated version with 3D printed end cap mounted on my VMB mill
All of which has led to a rethink the lock levers on my Quorn tool grinder. I get in a real mess with these clashing with each other. Where did I put the Araldite ? …..
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First of all some background and then the techie bit at the end.
Some years ago while we had extension building work undertaken on our house we opted to install a large underground plastic water storage tank (>3000 litres). This was supplied complete with tank and submersible pump from Rain Water Harvesting. The tank is topped up with water from all the house roof down pipes. The water stored is used for all external water demands such as garden watering and car washing etc. We get a discount on our local authority water rates for having such an installation.
The house is fairly old and some months after the extension work was completed we began work clearing the garden. In the process of this clearance we discovered a cast iron manhole cover buried deep in the vegetation. On lifting the manhole cover we discovered … another underground water storage tank. This was of brick construction with a cement skimmed surface and doing some quick calculations appeared to be a similar volume to our recently installed new tank. The tank appears to have perhaps fed a hand pump or similar but it is unclear where the incoming feed originated. We added some new guttering to an adjacent building and the run off from this roof now tops up the old tank. Here is a view to the murky depths with the new pump and incoming feed installed.
The original pump suppled by RWH eventually began to give problems and started to blow the electrical breaker. RWH were very helpful and a new pump was supplied and installed. After some period of time it also began to become erratic in starting up when it saw demand. A third pump was then bought and installed. I also bought a maintenance kit for the second pump and then installed it in the old brick tank. The maintenance kit was very good and includes a new Hall Effect switch to sense flow demand. RWH support fitting the maintenance kit with some very good instructional videos. The second pump worked for a good period in the old tank but then started to blow the associated electrical breaker.
Rather than buy yet another RWH pump I opted for a more expensive solution from Pump Technology who are a local company servicing industrial pump applications. The new pump (Divertron 1200X) was more expensive but does appear to be of a much more professional build quality. It stands vertically in the tank and has a floating inlet pipe which ensures the water is drawn into the pump at surface water level rather than from the murky depths where all the accumulated silt sits. So far both new pumps are behaving well and have been a boon to keep the veg plot irrigated in the current very hot period.
The important issue that comes to light is the logic of the pump demand sensing logic.
The pumps sit quiescently at the bottom of the tank and look for a flow in the output pipe in order to turn on to meet the demand. They also have protection circuitry that detects against what they interpret as leaks which would lead to the pump hunting and potentially overheating. After a number of hunting starts the pumps go into reset mode and need a power reset. Similarly if the tank runs dry they also switch off. The problem with the logic occurs where you have a dribble irrigation system or a leaking tap union. The dribble irrigation nozzles do not give a full flow so the pump hunts for a number of times to satisfy demand then interpret this intermittent demand as a leak and switches off. Likewise if you have a leaking tap union the pump sees this and eventually switches off. If you are trying to protect your veg plot using timed irrigation both these problems cause the pump to switch off and only work again after a power reset. This doesn’t help when you are out of the country and believe your garden produce is being watered.
Clearly weeping tap unions can be fixed so that clears that problem but a dribble system is more of a problem. My solution is to mask the presence to the pump of the dribble system by having it timed to run in parallel with the main sprinkler system. This seems to fix the problem and no more ‘hard bounces’ are then needed to the pump electrics.
The other method of solving both intermittent demand sources is to fit a pressure vessel in the pump output feed. This acts like a water based ‘capacitor’. The bladder in the pressure vessel fills with water at full pressure and then supports the dribble demands from leaky taps or dribble irrigation systems to mask the effects to the pump sensing logic. I have bought a pressure vessel but not installed it as yet.
My thanks to Rain Water Harvesting for all their support over the years and it will be interesting to see how the new style pump behaves long term. I believe RWH also offer the Divertron 1200 X pump.
Sorry if that was a bit boring but it might help someone somewhere who is having the same issues with erratic pump operation and resulting withered vegetables.
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