Thread: Hello, my name is Esko and I am a hobby machinist

Here at the nordics the summer is already a distant memory. It is dark, wet and cold as it is always in October.
Despite the bad climate I feel fuzzy and warm and very optimistic. After all, winter lasts only 8 months, rest of the year it is tolerable or even nice.

So I have been breast feed with wet snow, what else have I been eating?

Most of my life I have been working for IT industry as a data warehouse consultant. However, there has been a side note playing all that time with focus on working with my hands. It has been electronics, wood- and metalworking and diverse activities with food. Lately I have started to make videos on my ramblings.

After retiring from my daily job I have had the time and resources to do whatever I want to do. I have a small workshop with capable machinery looking from hobbyists perspective. The machines are old, my milling machine is actually older than me as it left the factory in Switzerland 1955. I was a teenager when my lathe was produced in Germany and not much older when the drill press saw the daylight in Sweden. Despite their age or origin, they are in perfect working condition.

All my machines are manually operated. This is exactly how I want it to be. I don't have any DRO:s or any digital calipers or micrometers. All that is mechanical. They seldomly run out of batteries

Latest "job" is to make a geared rim on a flywheel for electric stater. The flywheel is for my neigbours outboard motor. The task will have really interesting workholding problems. I need to make a tapered mandrel for the flywheel to hold it correctly. Luckily that flywheel is only 200 millimetres in diameter so it fits comfortably into my machines.


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Hi FinnoUgric,
Welcome to the MetalWorking Forum.
You will find that there are plenty of members here, who have your same interests.

We have great bunch here very helpful and supportive of one another. You will find many like minded folk here with same interests as you.

If you explore our pages you will find bits and pieces of interesting things all over the place.

Go to the FORUM box at top LH corner and click on it.

A drop down menu appears and you can select Forum Home at the top of the drop down menu list. Scan down through the pages to look at what we have.

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Its anti spam thing.

There's a number of sub forums forum that might be parallel with your interests, found as described above.

If any questions contact me via PM and I'll try to help you.

Grahame

Welcome Esko!

That is a nice workshop.

Interesting that you list electronics as a hobby, but have no automation or DROs on your manual machines?

Originally Posted by nigelpearson

Welcome Esko!
Interesting that you list electronics as a hobby, but have no automation or DROs on your manual machines?

Believe me, after working 40 years in IT industry all automation and programming starts to taste like chicken.

Yes, I would not have any difficulties installing digital equipment into my machines but after that I would loose the "feeling" which I have developed under all these years.
Well, actually the lathe has a microcontroller inside there. This microcontroller (AtMega32) is programmed to fluctuate the VFD control voltage cyclically (frequency and depth are adjustable). This would be used to eliminate chatter in some rare cases. In fact the cases are so rare that I have never needed the functionality.

And yes, there are electronics inside those old ladies. The Schaublin has not one but three VFDs in there. One for spindle, one for feed and the last one for coolant. Those are not used for speed control but merely to allow soft start and fast stop. That Schaublin has stepless variators for both spindle and feeds.
The lathe has one VFD which I use frequently to fine tune the speed.

The fifth VFD is in the drill press.

Welcome aboard!

Steve

Hello, my name is Esko and I am a hobby machinist

Sounds like the opening lines of a "Hobby Machinists Anonymous" confession

Nice shop. Something to do on cold winters days. Is it in a basement?

Originally Posted by FinnoUgric

Believe me, after working 40 years in IT industry all automation and programming starts to taste like chicken.

I was a computer scientist for 30 years. Ended up hating IT and business politics (especially Agile), but I think I still like programming (though not many programming languages). I still see automation and scripting as a tool.




All my workshop machines are currently manual, and I would always want a simple manual lathe and drill press, but I can see the benefit of some automation. Especially if the user interface is good.


No DROs, however?
They are just better measurement. In the same way a micrometer is a better way to size something than a vernier, and that is better than a ruler!

G'Day Esko,

Welcome to the forum from the centre of Australia.
Where the cool weather is just a memory, only about 11 month of hot weather to go.

Originally Posted by BobL

Is it in a basement?

Nope, it is at the same level as the rest of our house. Only one floor. There is a reason for this. The house is sitting on top of bedrock. It is hard granite. Makes an excellent basement for machines.

That’s a lotta VFDs! Cheaper by the dozen? Was that to convert them to single phase operation or for some other reason? I have a baby Schaublin mill and small Weiler lathe and when I moved from a three phase workshop to my present single phase one, I considered converting them to VFDs but went with a rotary phase converter. It was quite expensive and I wonder if it would have been better just to buy a crate of VFDs instead.

Leigh


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Welcome to the forum.

Originally Posted by FinnoUgric

It has been electronics, wood- and metalworking and diverse activities with food.

That's me too. Welcome.