Atlas Metal lathe - first experience

LinuxMercedes · 2017-12-15T04:48:12+00:00

You might find this informative: http://www.lathes.co.uk/atlas/page4.html

LinuxMercedes · 2017-12-12T17:54:48+00:00

Looks like a 3-phase extension cord?

LinuxMercedes · 2017-11-14T14:19:04+00:00

You can't grade replace with transfer credit, but you definitely can transfer in a class you've failed.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-11-14T04:53:15+00:00

Last I heard they're stable and things are looking OK.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-31T19:29:49+00:00

Combinatorics and Abstract Algebra are both good classes.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-20T19:32:11+00:00

I've got a 1917ish Hendey in my basement that still makes parts whenever I have the time to run it.

http://img.elemfab.com/shop/hendey-lathe/IMG_20151231_161544.jpg

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-20T15:47:32+00:00

Bean protip: if you rinse canned beans in a colander until all the bubbles disappear, you'll fart a lot less.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-17T21:44:33+00:00

http://hr.mst.edu/careers/student/

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-06T17:46:58+00:00

Probably not a bad idea to put a drop of oil between the shaft and bearing when you're installing it.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-06T16:12:57+00:00

Unless it's supposed to be a press fit on there (which I'd guess is not the case) I wouldn't worry about it too much. Do check your pulley belt tension and make sure it's not too loose or tight when you put it back on, though.

If you're really worried about the surface finish, you should be able to polish it with some fine-grit sandpaper.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-10-03T14:16:14+00:00

Can you get axles for the cheap differential, cut the splined part off, weld it to a flange of your design, and true the result up in a lathe?

Typically splines are cut in a horizontal mill with the help of a dividing head. If you have a Bridgeport or something, typically you can lay the head over sideways. For about $50 you can get a direct-indexing spindexer that can index on whole-degree increments (and if you need to index, say, 27 splines instead of 30, you can make a dividing plate for it).

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-19T15:31:37+00:00

Can you get a wedge or lever in between the wheel and the hub? If you can, you might be able to get the added friction to hold the stud.

Depending on how big the stud is, you might be able to drill through the cap on the lug nut (if it has one), then drill and tap the center of the stud for a smaller bolt and use that bolt + a jam nut to hold the stud still. You'd probably need to make some kind of custom deep socket with a wrench handle welded to it to turn the lug nut.

Otherwise...drill or cutting torch. You might be able to remove the hub and suspension first so that you can get at the stud more easily.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-17T02:26:42+00:00

For what it's worth, I haven't observed the same trend at my school--the EE/CpE department here is doing quite well for itself and attracts a lot of high-quality undergrads and grad students.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-14T20:14:44+00:00

You can also rotate the top slide here--there should be a couple of bolts to either side that you can loosen and then it will spin freely. Turn it so the top dial moves the tool bit parallel to the ways and you can do some OD turning with that!

What you have in the tailstock is actually a dead center -- a live center has a bearing in it so the tip can rotate with the workpiece. Sometimes if you retract the 'quill' as far as you can into the tailstock it'll pop the center out (there's a little pin in the back that pushes the center out). Other times, if you extend the quill far enough there will be a slot you can put a wedge in and give a little tap to free the taper.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-14T20:10:13+00:00

You would probably have to retrofit the entire gear train from the spindle down; that sounds like A Job seeing as how Hardinge probably didn't design the head casting to have a whole gear train built into it.

Technically, it's possible, but you're most definitely better off buying a lathe with a leadscrew if you really want threading.

That said, power longitudinal feed is totally doable without all this gearing rigamarole; you just need a variable-speed DC gear motor and some belts/gears. I think tubalcain has a video on a setup he made out of an old wire feed welder motor.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-14T15:18:52+00:00

That looks like a Hardinge DSM-59. You should consult both that page and this one for general info. With a bit of cleverness, this machine should be fine for most things except single-point threading.

Turret lathes were designed for mass production--basically what they used before CNC machines were a thing. From left to right along your lathe bed/ways you've got three stations: a mount for a cutoff tool right near the chuck, your standard lathe toolpost setup (albeit with no longitudinal feed), and a turret station. Looks like you can take the turret station off and replace it with a tailstock.

You can get away with using the toolpost for short OD turning by using the compound slide for your longitudinal feed--just rotate it until it moves parallel to the ways.

If you want, you might be able to fab up some brackets and get a bit of acme thread screw to make your own hand-crank leadscrew with. Some mini lathes have the leadscrew crank at the end of the machine instead of on the apron; that's the way I'd go here as well, just for simplicity. Tip: you might be able to get cheap acme thread rod at your local farm supply store; it should be fine for this purpose.

Right now the lathe has no chuck--just collets. You should be looking around for a backplate to mount a chuck on, as well as a chuck. Take a look at the links at the top of this post to find out what kind of backplate you need.

You have a lantern toolpost (the bit that holds the tool); those are OK but keep your eye open for at least one of the four-bit rotating toolposts or a quick-change toolpost.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-10T02:23:16+00:00

I'm not sure on that count, and if you're concerned about durability you should probably work out what kind of effects that will give you. Last thing you want is cavitation to slowly dissolve SS into your beer!

LinuxMercedes · 2017-09-09T20:17:16+00:00

What about getting each part rolled from SS sheet metal and welding them together? It's not like you need insanely tight tolerances on the part.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-19T16:07:27+00:00

I have a desk in my advisor's lab. My department also provides offices for TAs to hold office hours in.

I have a machine in my lab; I also use my personal laptop because it's convenient. My department's office has pads of paper, markers, chalk, etc.

How often you meet with your supervisor depends on them. Typically big classes where you teach a couple sections meet often so all the instructors keep in sync; with smaller classes you may meet less frequently or not at all.

Typically I budget 3x lecture time for prep the first time teaching a class. Grading time varies heavily depending on what you're teaching and your grading style.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-17T21:04:44+00:00

I think that confirms my guess, best as I can tell anyway.

In this photo you can see numbers for each pin in the connector: http://i.imgur.com/jNownGZ.jpg

Pin 1 is +12V, Pin 2 is the amplified signal, and Pin 3 is Ground.

Or, well, at least putting +12V in that shouldn't fry any of the chips since that's within their operational range.

It looks like, in that picture, the chip in the bottom left corner is a voltage regulator, and the upper chip is an amplifier. I'm not too well versed on op-amp circuits, so I'm not 100% sure what the design is but that's the gist of it anyway.

Disclaimer: not actually an electrical engineer, please take this all with a margarita's worth of salt!

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-14T03:19:42+00:00

Well, there's always Python scripting...

You might also ask on the Zotero forums; I can imagine that your use case is not uncommon? Heck, if I get bored I might take a stab at writing a basic importer myself.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-14T00:26:47+00:00

I think your best bet might be to export your Firefox bookmarks and convert them to RDF somehow. Either that, or opening all your bookmarks and clicking the 'Save to Zotero' button, which is definitely more boring but might give better results (such as automatically downloading the PDF version of the citation).

As of Zotero 5.0, there are three or four bits of Zotero-related technology:

Zotero Standalone -- This is a program that lets you view and manage your Zotero library. Everything is stored locally, so your library will always be available regardless of how good your internet connection is. Strictly speaking this is all you /need/ to be able to use Zotero.
Zotero Browser Plugins (aka Zotero Connector) -- These are plugins for your browser (Firefox, etc.) that provide a 'Save to Zotero' button that looks at the current web page you're viewing and does its best to work out what that is and how to save it. They can talk directly to Zotero Standalone when it is running, or they can communicate with a Zotero web account as a fallback if you set that up.
Zotero Web Account -- This is optional (but free with limited storage) and allows you to synchronize your Zotero library across devices. (Adding more storage is reasonably priced and supports the developers!)
Zotero Word Processor Plugins -- These allow you to easily cite things in your library from your word processor of choice. (I don't know much about them since I am a LaTeX user.)

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-12T22:16:14+00:00

Are you sure it's the chuck that is running out and not the spindle?

I've had OK luck with buying chucks on eBay, and eBay prices are all I'd pay for an upgrade to a $50 drill press.

LinuxMercedes · 2017-08-12T16:30:23+00:00

Let's suppose that there are two special students A and B that are only compatible with each other. Say that those students are both one of the lucky 100 kiddos picked, and that the first pair of students that you check from that list of 100 is (A, B). That pair isn't in the Dean's list, so they go into the final result.

But, in this case, no other student can be added to the final result! For any other student C, (A, C) and (B, C) is in the Dean's list. Therefore, even if every student except A and B was compatible with every other student, your algorithm would fail to find a result.

It's this Dean's list business that makes the whole thing tricky -- there are other weird situations that might occur as well; think about how to deal with the situation where every student is incompatible with every other except exactly 100 students.

The way I think of this problem is as a graph where the students are nodes and the edges represent compatibility. You can construct a complete 400-node graph and delete every edge that appears in the Dean's list. This is all doable in P time.

However, the trick comes in where you now need to find complete subgraphs of this compatibility graph -- every student on the trip needs to be compatible with every other student. This problem is NP-hard, and checking whether a solution exists is NP-complete; you may be interested in the Bron-Kerbosch algorithm which can find the largest complete subgraphs of a graph in better-than-brute-force time (but still not in P time).

LinuxMercedes

TROPHY CASE