Stuff you have fixed today

[finyuk2005]

i have a Britool set in metric and imperial, they are bloody brilliant spanners!
Although the metric set is newer style unfortunately, they have much sharper edges and a shiny chrome finish, so aint nearly as nice as the older style Britool stuff

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

This old school plane came my way, to be honest I have no need for it. But it was going in the fire wood bin.

It took some pipe frezzer spray to make the fixing bolt contract enough for me to remove it. Dirt had seized it into the body.

Cleaning the dirt, wax and sap was done with Meths. and wire wool.

Hand scraper was used to clean the body.

Finished.
The blade was sharpened and took a good edge.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

This wonky oil can was part of a bundle.

It was bent, the plunger was seized and a seam was clearly split.

Jizzer was used, but the modern stuff is poor compared to the old.

The spout was removed, cleaned and filled with wax.
Then with gentle hands it was brought back to as straight as it would go.
The wax was then melted out.

That dent refused to push out, so I left it.

The spilt seam was re-soldered and it took the new solder very well.
The plunger was cleaned and it now works.

Finished.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

I got this, as I hoped it would be come a Christmas present.

But getting it home it did not work.

The 3v motor had lost it's drive gear.

This slot car gear was used, some size.

Even this did not make it work.

Issue 2.

The gear was found, but.......

Using blue tack I pressed the gear into it, this allowed a 2 pack glue to hold it, then when it was on the shaft a blob on top.

Fixed and working.

I even got the box.

 

[arther dailey]

Please educate me, what is an aviation spanner.

an extra long spanner, very very usefull , burgen make a good set , I was lucky got some snap on ones second hand , recomended.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

This BR Rail Mans lantern came my way.

It is a puzzles as it is stamped BR (sc), but is a pre war design.


The fuel tank is original, the wick gear is stamped BR. But the design is post war.

It has the 3 glass's, red, green and clear.

The glass holder is a WW2 design, as indicated by the flip out glass holders. It made replacing the glass quick and easy.

Stripping the paint showed it was Dark green, then black. But the front lens holder was tin plated brass. A pre WW2 design.

The main glass lens is odd as well, it looks like it comes from a post WW2 lantern.

Black heat paint, as advised.

Assembled and working.




Many thanks to the Staff at Steam Swindon for all their help on the history of this.


We think it was assembled from old stock when BR was formed. As the Oil lanterns were of similar designs. They have a few like this, but all a bit differant.

 

[Dr.Al]

A (hopefully) more reliable spindle speed display for my mini-mill:

It doesn't look like much, but that feels like quite a big deal to me. It's been flaky as hell for several years now (going blank under any minor vibration, not always showing all the digits even at power up and sometimes taking multiple power cycles to get anything on the screen). I'd always assumed it was a bad connection on one of the looms that snake their way around the inside of the machine. I'd tried hot-gluing the more accessible connectors but that didn't help. Today I decided it was time to do something about it, still assuming it was one of the loom connections. First job was to move the milling machine so I could get access to the back (no small feat in itself, and the first time I'd done that since installing it new).

Once I'd got it moved and the rear panels off, the loom connections at the back looked quite robust, so I concluded it couldn't be a loom issue. That meant it had to be a PCB issue, so out came the display PCB:

All the solder joints got desoldered with some solder wick and then I resoldered them (using proper leaded solder, which is a lot more flexible and less vibration-prone than modern lead-free nonsense).

Once it was connected up on to the mill and powered on I shook it vigorously and tapped the edge of the PCB with the shank of a screwdriver to shock it a bit, but the display stayed constant with no flickering or display corruption. Hopefully it'll last a lot longer now.

 

[Moose McAlpine]

My mobile box sheared a rivet for the cantilever hinges. It's sheared one before, hardly surprising as it's 12+ years old and had a hard life. Replaced all the others likely to fail with stainless rivets.



Surprising what you can do with a portable set.

 

[Barking Mat]

My mobile box sheared a rivet for the cantilever hinges. It's sheared one before, hardly surprising as it's 12+ years old and had a hard life. Replaced all the others likely to fail with stainless rivets.

View attachment 422329

Surprising what you can do with a portable set.

View attachment 422330

Wire cutters ? Where ?

 

[Moose McAlpine]

Wire cutters ? Where ?

There's side cutters in there, and a pair of cheap wire strippers/crimpers.

There's more in there than you can see in the pic.

 

[Pete.]

Please educate me, what is an aviation spanner.

A long-handled spanner with very little crank. So-called 'aviation' because the extra length allows for easy bolt shearing then the spanner gets sent flying.....

 

[droopsnoot]

Please educate me, what is an aviation spanner.

I thought "aviation spanner" meant it was made of aluminium, to prevent sparking when you drop it in an environment full of fuel vapour.

 

[Hopefuldave]

I thought "aviation spanner" meant it was made of aluminium, to prevent sparking when you drop it in an environment full of fuel vapour.

Traditionally bronze for flammable areas, when I worked on BT we had a kit we could draw from stores for the likes of oil and gas refineries, footway boxes full of vapour from leaking petrol station tanks - the storeman was very possessive about it, not surprising at the price!

 

[DanZac]

I thought "aviation spanner" meant it was made of aluminium, to prevent sparking when you drop it in an environment full of fuel vapour.

I've spent most of my career in Aviation, and in all that time I've rarely, if ever, come across an "Aviation Spanner".

99% of the time there's not room to get a normal spanner in the space, let alone a long one. Your'e more likely to come across the extra offset or bent handled spanners for getting in tight spaces, and its pretty rare that you need the extra leverage, because things don't tend to corrode like cars do.

And I've definitely never come across Aluminium spanners either. Aviation fuel (jet, not the 100 octane stuff they used in spitfires) is less flammable than diesel, so whilst power tools can be an issue, sparking associated with hand tools etc doesn't tend to be.

 

[julianthegypsy]

nowadays you'd Photoshop the hand out. Actually, thinking about it I have written user manuals that had step-by-step instructions with pictures, and I copied and pasted lit lamps over unlit ones to make the representations look right.

I always wanted to build a panel like the cockpit of that spaceship in Hitch-hiker's Guide... it had black bulbs with black lenses that lit up black on a black background.

Reminds me of a guy I knew who built specialised software for oilfields. It was specific to each field and generated reports which the name of the field in the heading. Every so often he'd get customers complaining that the screen had gone blank. It was his protection. You could change the name of the field in the heading, but then you were essentially using knocked off software, so he put a tiny bit of code into it. Everything carried on working but it changed the font colour to the same as the background so you couldn't actually see it...

 

[Robotstar5]

Reminds me of a guy I knew who built specialised software for oilfields. It was specific to each field and generated reports which the name of the field in the heading. Every so often he'd get customers complaining that the screen had gone blank. It was his protection. You could change the name of the field in the heading, but then you were essentially using knocked off software, so he put a tiny bit of code into it. Everything carried on working but it changed the font colour to the same as the background so you couldn't actually see it...

When I was building robot welding cells my boss had an idea a customer wouldn't make the final payment once it was installed so I put a timer in the PLC (industrial computer) software set to disable the machine a couple of weeks after payment due date. Sure enough boss gets a phone call "my machine's stopped", my boss tells him once the payment's cleared he can have the password to restart his machine - money appeared in the bank within the hour

 

[julianthegypsy]

When I was building robot welding cells my boss had an idea a customer wouldn't make the final payment once it was installed so I put a timer in the PLC (industrial computer) software set to disable the machine a couple of weeks after payment due date. Sure enough boss gets a phone call "my machine's stopped", my boss tells him once the payment's cleared he can have the password to restart his machine - money appeared in the bank within the hour

Far simpler than chasing payment from a customer who has a working machine and no incentive to pay for it!

 

[Robotstar5]

Far simpler than chasing payment from a customer who has a working machine and no incentive to pay for it!

That particular customer was a pain, we commissoned the machine with decent quality welding wire which they replaced with the cheapest tat they could find then tried to blame us for poor weld quality.

 

[julianthegypsy]

That particular customer was a pain, we commissoned the machine with decent quality welding wire which they replaced with the cheapest tat they could find then tried to blame us for poor weld quality.

Isn't it predictable that they'd be bad payers too. Always the way.

 

[Onoff]

When I was building robot welding cells my boss had an idea a customer wouldn't make the final payment once it was installed so I put a timer in the PLC (industrial computer) software set to disable the machine a couple of weeks after payment due date. Sure enough boss gets a phone call "my machine's stopped", my boss tells him once the payment's cleared he can have the password to restart his machine - money appeared in the bank within the hour

A crowd I know did similar but to generate income through regular equipment " breakdowns". They got caught when the client noted the regularity of the callouts.