The Home Machinist!

Mine was scrambled eggs too; I bought it second hand "unused". What got me over the hump was finding the factory reset command, after removing all the errors the previous owner put in there that my settings went successfully. The VFD is a huge improvement to my ancient lathe and drill press.

Air is being drawn in (obviously). The most likely is a bad shaft seal on the pump. You could pressurise the inlet tube slightly by using an overhead tank; that will probably result in fuel leakage past the bad seal. I don't know anything about your burner, but in most cases rotary shaft seals are s...

Always interesting to read the sagas of other machinists.

That's how we all learn new things, so thanks for your post.

We expats in India used to say; "Standards are low". My machinist friend was rare, in that he knew what he was doing and took real pride in his work. Many machinists (and other professions there) are just fake; they set themselves up with the gear and make a mess of things because they don...

Bill Shields wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 8:41 am it depends on where the lathes were BUILT

At that time, the lathes in India were all built in India;
Import of used machines was not allowed, and new machines had 300% import duty, so that didn't happen often either.

In the world is "Swiss" lathes with sliding headstocks, there is a 50-50 split of main spindle on the right vs main spindle on the left. Generally there is a rule of thumb If the machine is made in Europe, the main spindle is on the left. If the machine is made in Asia, then the main spin...

You got to lean over the top...
Don't wear your good shirt for that.

Guy I worked for in the 80's had one he was trying to sell. It wasn't quite junk, but was no longer competitive so I don't know what use it could possibly have had. None the less, he was asking $50,000 for it. He started it up in the shop one day just for kicks; nitromethane wasn't available in our ...

hydrogen18 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 23, 2024 8:28 am
I drilled the holes for the M6 screws first with a 5mm drill bit.

Then I swapped over to a 9mm drill bit for my M10 thread.

5mm drill is correct for a 6mm thread, but for M10, you want to drill 8.5mm

I can't remember the numbers, but I didn't find the parts expensive at all; I bought 2 pulleys and a cogged belt to drive around 5HP at a fairly low speed. I simply found the appropriate parts using the graphs in the catalog, then ordered the parts from an online bearing shop. I don't recall any cal...

I found quite simple charts in the catalogs of belt manufacturers. Hp/ rpm/ pulley size.

The country of manufacture is a poor predictor of quality.

Chinese factories cut metal all day long, and my Chinese end mills are working just fine for me too.
I bought an assortment box with 20 of them for $40 or something.

I broke one; boo hoo, no worries, I have more.