The Home Machinist!

Any experience with the solar powered autodark helmets? About magnets: The powerful rare-earth ones are quite heat sensitive. Alnico magnets are nearly as powerful and fairly heat resistant but will lose strength without keepers. Always store them with a piece of steel or iron across the poles. They...

hoppercar wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:05 pm

How come you never see field corn.blown over....this is the 5th year in a row, the wind has knocked down my.sweet corn....im.sick and tired of screwing with.it. ....why does sweet corn.have such a weak root system

I've seen hundreds of acres of field corn flattened by hail.

If you are going to turn between centers (as you should) I think that would work fine as long as you take off more material than the error in the drilling.

Are you going to turn the shaft between centers?

Just a caution to Jack's method with drawings. I once tried that with some dimensioned tender truck drawings from a loco cyclopedia and found that the drawings didn't scale out vis-a-vis the marked dimensions. In other words, by determining the scale based on one of the drawing's dimensions, that s...

Whenever I see "Superscale Locomotive" I visualize a Yellowstone built 4:1 instead of 1:4.

Thermite is an iron powder which reacts when potassium permaganate and a piece of magnesium ribbon is activated with glycerine. I've done this to weld some steel together; very hot. Don't try it at home. Thermite is usually a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

The specific gravity of prepared (alloyed) magnesium will vary from the pure element. The description provided indicates to me that it is, indeed, magnesium. Unlike most aluminum alloys, it's "crunchy" when machined. You haven't lived until you've witnessed a magnesium fire. The dazzling white flam...

On the bearing races, rather than sleeves on the axle, how about boring the end of the axle and pressing in purchased hardened dowel pins? (axle is shorter of course) That would create a stress concentration at the step where the pin goes into the axle. The pin diameter would need to be large enoug...

Be one heck of a 3d printer too. I’m a terrible salesman, but I gotta believe it’d be overkill for 3D printing. So what? Nothing wrong with a bit of overkill. At $300 it's probably the cheapest way by far to get that combination of working volume, stability, and accuracy. It could also double as a ...

The switch will work with 220. You wire it the same as with 120 but using L1 and L2 instead of line and neutral. You don't connect up the neutral at all (but connect the ground, of course).

I've used plain keyway cutters in my vertical mill with no trouble.