File machine drawings

[squandt]

Hello all,I watched a YouTube video about building a file machine, looks like fun, only thing that is stopping me what are the specs, guy doing the build was mm, am looking for a print in inches, since my scrap box is full of metal I got in the USA. Plus all my tooling is in inches, any one in the great beyond know if a print is out there?

[Harold_V]

Barring the finding of the desired information, it isn't all that difficult to convert the design to Imperial measurements, whereby you substitute sizes with common fractional sizes. No big deal.

H

[squandt]

Thanks for your reply, I do have a conversion chart,forgot about it, I will put it up next to my imperial chart, now for a print,have a small motor, and several small pulleys, being retired have the time.

[Bill Shields]

Biggest headache of those things is the files themselves.

[earlgo]

What Bill says is very true. A file with any taper on the faces end to end will not work well at all. It is far better to find a file with no taper on the faces or sides. Also, the file has to be mounted with the teeth pointing downward or you will have difficulty holding the part being filed from bouncing up and down with the file stroke. Brownell's Shooting supplies (https://www.brownells.com) sells Grobet pillar files with no taper. BSS also lists an Apex pillar file that is parallel edge to edge but not face to face. I bought a Nicholson "Pillar " file that was parallel edge to edge but not face to face, so be careful. You can also buy chain saw files that are cylindrically round if you need that.
The last 'no taper' file I bought was from Sohars, which is a store that sells lawn power lawn and garden care tools. One can also buy die filing files other places, but they are very expensive.
Good luck converting mm to inches. Just divide the mm number by 25.4 and you will have the number in inches. You are going to get a lot of not even decimal numbers so you will have to make 'adjustments' in the overall design. It might be easier to buy a metric mic and scale and make it as drawn up.
--earlgo

[arborist]

Search for 'die filer plans' and a few come up.

This one has non-metric measurements on it:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/die ... lans-80552

Another imperial one:

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/news/a ... hine/18851

[Harold_V]

.03937".

That's one millimeter. With that in mind, it's dead easy to convert from metric to imperial.
Do not expect to find exact material sizes, although some metric sizes come very close. 8 mm, for example, is just three thou larger than 5/16". Bottom line is, so what? Basic compents need not be any specific size. Use what you have on hand, assuming it will serve the purpose. Your model may be unique, but so long as it performs the intended function, it makes no difference.

H

[squandt]

All the scrap in my stash is inch material, so I will make do with what God gave me

[Steggy]

.03937".

That's one millimeter. With that in mind, it's dead easy to convert from metric to imperial.

25.4

That’s the number of millimeters in one inch. Conversions are easy if you remember that value and the .03937 value Harold posted.

BTW, I’ve often used a 13mm box wrench or socket in place of 1/2". Vice versa is iffy, since 1/2" is 12.7mm.

Also BTW, technically the system of inch measurements we use in the USA isn’t “imperial.” It should be referred to as “customary.”

Unrelated to SI (metric) conversion, FPS = MPH × 1.467, where FPS is feet per second. Dunno why, but a fair number of these ratios live in my head. According to my wife, they take up space that should have been occupied by common sense.

[Harold_V]

Also BTW, technically the system of inch measurements we use in the USA isn’t “imperial.” It should be referred to as “customary.”

Hmmm. I'm not sure about that. https://www.cuemath.com/measurement/imperial-system/

In any case, on the outside chance that some of those values may vary from those used in the UK, where it was founded, the system is virtually identical and shares the names of units of measurement.

Of interest, while the metric system makes more sense, when one is trained with what I call the imperial system, the conversion to the use of the metric system is not easy. One of the problems that trouble me is that a given size generally doesn't equate to something I can visualize. In order for it to make sense, I almost always convert to an imperial size (in decimals) that are familiar to me. That probably wouldn't have been the case had I been raised with the metric system. By the way, that's the chief reason I keep that .03937" fresh in my mind. It gets used quite frequently.

Unrelated to SI (metric) conversion, FPS = MPH × 1.467, where FPS is feet per second. Dunno why, but a fair number of these ratios live in my head. According to my wife, they take up space that should have been occupied by common sense.

Chuckle!
Thanks to my years of refining precious metals, I do that with weights. I am quite familiar with the avoirdupois and troy systems and still have that information stored in my head. I often can't find my way home, or I most likely can't tell you what I had for breakfast but I sure as hell can tell you how many grains in a troy or avoirdupois ounce!

How many of you know that a troy ounce (480 grains) is larger than an avoirdupois ounce (437.5 grains)? Or that a troy pound (5,760 grains) is smaller than an avoirdupois pound (7,000 grains)?

More importantly, who cares?

H

[GlennW]

This little free conversion program gets a bit of use around here.

https://www.esbconsult.com/esbcalc/esbunitconv.htm

[Steggy]

Also BTW, technically the system of inch measurements we use in the USA isn’t “imperial.” It should be referred to as “customary.”

Hmmm. I'm not sure about that. https://www.cuemath.com/measurement/imperial-system/

Guess you didn’t see this little blurb on that website:

The imperial system of measurement is different from the US Customary units and the metric system.

In any case, on the outside chance that some of those values may vary from those used in the UK, where it was founded, the system is virtually identical and shares the names of units of measurement.

True, although there are some oddities in both our systems—a customary gallon is slightly smaller than an imperial gallon. Even more fun, there are two “gallons” in use in the USA.

At least we aren’t defining an inch in terms of barley corns.

As for SI (metric), it isn’t “better” than US customary or imperial. I’m plenty familiar with SI due to years of working with integrated electronics (most surface-mount devices are dimensioned in SI) and can do things like pin pitch conversions in my head. However, the fact that a liter is 1000 cubic centimeters and that 1000 is a multiple of 10 doesn’t tell me anything that is of more value than knowing that there are 231 cubic inches in a gallon.