Stuff you have made today

[Nick DV]

One of the happiest day of my life.
First day as apprentice in a machine shop.
I was like child at Legoland
Gantry cranes,lathes,radial arm drill, Bridgeport style mill drill,horizontal milling machines, surface grinders, honing machines, slotting machines,power hacksaw, hydraulic bandsaw, mig ,stick,Tig welders , cutting torches.
That's a dream.
I've done so many things today , working , learning and trying to give everything I could.
Employees and employers happy of me and of my approach to work.
Look , think, ask get done.
Example I know they will soon need a tool ,I ask I they need it , and take it where it's needed.
They made me use a oxy propane torch to cut a dozer blade , and they said me that I wouldn't have much to wait prior to start using a lathe (under their supervision because I've never used one)
Essentially I got to say , today was a good day (cit.)

Brilliant, well done

 

[Memmeddu]

They already told me that I might take my projects over there .
Car related things.
My first job on the lathe would be the mag drill chuck adapter.
Because there's not liability , and they will gently give me a piece of induction hardened Chrome bar to work with (old hydraulic cylinder rod)

 

[Arc Tourist]

One of the happiest day of my life.
First day as apprentice in a machine shop.
I was like child at Legoland
Gantry cranes,lathes,radial arm drill, Bridgeport style mill drill,horizontal milling machines, surface grinders, honing machines, slotting machines,power hacksaw, hydraulic bandsaw, mig ,stick,Tig welders , cutting torches.
That's a dream.
I've done so many things today , working , learning and trying to give everything I could.
Employees and employers happy of me and of my approach to work.
Look , think, ask get done.
Example I know they will soon need a tool ,I ask I they need it , and take it where it's needed.
They made me use a oxy propane torch to cut a dozer blade , and they said me that I wouldn't have much to wait prior to start using a lathe (under their supervision because I've never used one)
Essentially I got to say , today was a good day (cit.)

Glad to hear you've found a happy environment to work in.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Nice one, @Memmeddu

 

[Tangledfeet]

One of the happiest day of my life.
First day as apprentice in a machine shop.
I was like child at Legoland
Gantry cranes,lathes,radial arm drill, Bridgeport style mill drill,horizontal milling machines, surface grinders, honing machines, slotting machines,power hacksaw, hydraulic bandsaw, mig ,stick,Tig welders , cutting torches.
That's a dream.
I've done so many things today , working , learning and trying to give everything I could.
Employees and employers happy of me and of my approach to work.
Look , think, ask get done.
Example I know they will soon need a tool ,I ask I they need it , and take it where it's needed.
They made me use a oxy propane torch to cut a dozer blade , and they said me that I wouldn't have much to wait prior to start using a lathe (under their supervision because I've never used one)
Essentially I got to say , today was a good day (cit.)

Excellent news Daniele! I'm really happy for you.

 

[brewdexta]

I've eventually completed the heating system controls that I've been working on for about 2 years, mainly 'cos there's always something more interesting to do. I do IT for a living so I don't like coding at home much but this will save me a reasonable amount in heating fuel, be it wood pellets or the standby gas boiler. The current system came with the underfloor heating system 20 years ago and is carp and on its last legs. All configuration is done via a poxy little keypad with dodgy pictorial LCD screen. I've had bits of the new system up and running for while, but this is first time its all been running on the new system.

The replacement heating controls are less than 200 lines of python code, and a lot of that is comments and debug statements so probably about 120 lines of code that does something.

I did spend about 6 months swearing at creating a nice web GUI for it, I used to write it on the train during my commute to London and I'm sure I let out a few expletives out loud. I was using a python microserver called flask. I dumped that in the end as I found a much simpler solution which helped lower my blood pressure. I shall leave GUI writing for others that enjoy banging their head against a wall

All I needed to do was to expose the configuration of each room that is stored in a memory resident database I use called Redis. There happens to be a nice tool to manage Redis called RedisInsight. Here's part of my youngest daughters room configuration in the tool. nbed is the name used in all commands and is the key to the hash, all the other attributes are fields under that key. From this I have a script that retrieves the IP relay hostname, which relay number on that host as its a block of 16 IP relays, password of the relay, the current temp, hysteresis wanted for that room and the desired temperature for that day and hour. The scripts works out if the temp is lower than desired and if to set the relay to on or not by sending an http get request to it. The scripts are run from crontab, which is a scheduling tool, so easy to change the frequency of checking temps and switching relays on and off, I've set this for 15 minutes currently, not much point doing it faster when you are heating a big lump of concrete.

There's another python script that looks at all the temperature sensors and sets the current temperature for each room in Redis.

And that's basically it, very simple, but took me ages to finish.

All I need to do now is add each room to Redis, I have a script that does that. Then move the underfloor heating zone actuator cabling from the old system to the new IP relays and its done.

There will be a few features I add to the scripts later, for example if the room's "vacant" attribute is set to zero, it will set the temp to the "vacant_temp" for all days/time, ideal for the spare room. I also have a key called holiday, if that is set to zero every room will be set to a whole house vacant temperature. I don't need to add night time setback, I just put the temp I want in the hour and day in Redis.

Its now easy to change temps for each hour of the day to match the families school/work pattern, so should save a fair amount of heating fuel. Pus a replacement commercial system was coming in about a grand, this has cost less than half that.

 

[Lewis_RX8]

Busted this carp Diecast ally die holder a while ago maybe over doing it so a bit of lathe work and welding later a stronger steel replacement is made

Might chop down the handles don't need all that thread aside from that all done

Some photos of in progress

Turned down bar then drilled and bored out to die diameter , parted off and now good fit

Then mig monkeyed on some welded on M8 nuts for the handles and turned down to radius the welds nicely alot quicker than a file lol after that all it needed was cleaning up

 

[Kram]

Added 10mm spaced depth marks on a few boring bars.

 

[Arc Tourist]

Added 10mm spaced depth marks on a few boring bars.
View attachment 322139

That's a good idea.

 

[Memmeddu]

Welded up this ex SDS+ core drill shaft to an old SDS max shank from a busted bit .
The SDS+ shank failed
So I've had to cut it , leaving a piece of shank as "spigot"?(heard from Kurtis CEE) that I should have used it to align the two parts together.
So once found the center on the SDS max shank I've use a centrer punch or better I've felt it digging into the metal while hitting it with the hammer.
But it was just the point getting smashed.
No way to trace the centrer on it, so I didn't even try to drill through it.
So I've just cut more ,used piece of angle iron and clamps to align the two parts together.
Then welded together.
And I'm currently cooking a bunch of E7018 another hour and they should be dried up .
Received a call and the core drill thing I've welded does work fine

 

[Dr.Al]

I made a little brass doohickey - in the middle of this photo:

On the left is the tip out of my soldering iron; on the right is an M4 heat set insert thing. First test in a random block of plastic I had lying around:

 

[slim_boy_fat]

No way to trace the centrer on it

If you clock it in a four jaw chuck you can establish centre.

 

[Memmeddu]

If you clock it in a four jaw chuck you can establish centre.

I'll probably buy a lathe later on the road

 

[slim_boy_fat]

I'll probably buy a lathe later on the road

Can't you use one at work?

 

[Anguz]

Made a bracket to put a camera on a concrete post... all scrap and not much in the way of measuring and planning done

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Made a bracket to put a camera on a concrete post... all scrap and not much in the way of measuring and planning done

View attachment 322209 View attachment 322210 View attachment 322211 View attachment 322212

How far off the ground is that? Looks 'easily-got-at-able'?

 

[Anguz]

How far off the ground is that? Looks 'easily-got-at-able'?

Very getattble... not for security though... its looking at a bird box.

 

[Memmeddu]

Can't you use one at work?

I think that would be little bit too soon

 

[MysterG]

My first attempt at gingerbread.
Who says dinosaurs are not Christmassy

 

[Hitch]

Last batch of pens before Christmas... probably.
Unless someone asks for another custom one in the next week!