The Home Machinist!

You can run it back to your feedwater storage tank, if you have one, and use it to preheat feedwater. You need to be sure that the feedwater tank is vented. If the steam exhaust vents low in the tank, the steam bubbles totally condense out. Preheating the feedwater also degasses the feedwater a bit....

A couple of thoughts on the controls. The key is a way to measure the temperature and to control it. A basic way to measure would be to get some type K thermocouple wire and read the voltage with a digital multimeter. Crydom has a nice proportional controller brick that is set with a potentiometer a...

One thing that does avoid surface decarb is to take the part and heat treat in a metal box packed in charcoal. The charcoal will not significantly raise the surface carbon, but the charcoal will combine with any oxygen to reduce decarb. I also used to put a couple of blocks of wood in with parts in ...

The last time I did something like this I used a 60 degree large dovetail cutter I made ub by nickel silver brazing a triangular cabide insert into a steel shank. On the Bridgeport, I'd stand the steady rest up on end and dial in the flat base surface and then cut the angles by rolling the head of t...

Only problem is it is "hippopotami" pronounced hip-o-pot-uh-my. Singulars and plurals they're so different, bless my soul. Did it ever occur to you that the plural of half is whole. A parallelogram is not a pair. A pair of mouse is mice a pair of moose is meece. What's half a pair of sciss...

Starrett used to provide replacement domed crystals that came flat. The OD was larger than the bezel. When the edges were squeezed in, the crystal formed a dome. The material was .030 acrylic plastic and the way we preformed the crystal was to turn a tube ID to just a few thou above the bezel should...

LN is colder than LOX. In the Navy, LN was often used to establish freeze seals in pipes where there was no isolation valve available. One of the cautions was that it was likely that LOX would drip from the exterior of pipes where LN had been used to establish the freeze seal. The LOX would condense...

Plates very well.

A few insights on cooling rates and hot short materials. Several issues cross over with casting cooling rates. These include: hardening in the alloy ductility and grain size (they're related) cracking in the cast alloy hot tearing For hardening, carbon steels and irons in particular harden when quen...

I've been considering using an inexpensive digital caliper as a basis on a lathe. there's no reason not to mount the scale portion to the carriage, but what I'm considering is attaching a rod to the slider and run it to the headstock end of the lathe with a quick release between the slider and the r...