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What's Paul up to?

PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I'm looking at adapting a small, maybe 3"or 4" chuck to my 5C spin indexer to make it more useful for larger diameter but axially short parts that don't have to extend into the spindle. I have other means of doing this but it occurred to me this might be handy for common rotation angles. I've seen some chucks with integrated 5C arbors, or machinable 5C backplates which could adapt to a plain back chuck - maybe even correct a not-so-accurate cheapo chuck. My 5C Spindex is a Bison which is a better QC than some of the knockoffs. But I'm almost to the point of just dropping the 5C headache & making a dedicated housing block more to my liking. But that would require replicating the typical dividing plate. Hence the question. I will have to think about this some more. Project number 784.
 

DPittman

Ultra Member
Yes, it's all LED. What a difference! My woodshop still has old-school fluorescents, and they are on the list to change out the next time I see the LED ones on sale.
So I've got all led lighting in my shop of a few different styles. When I installed my first one I thought what an improvement (and it was, lighting wise and power consumption) but the after a couple of years I figured I needed to put in a few more strips. So I did.

Recently I thought things in my shop were getting harder to see just because of my aging eyes. I just replaced some of the leds with a different style led and it's an improvement again. After a bit of research I find that leds do get dimmer over time, so its not just my eyesight.

My suggestions when retrofitting for Leds is to either put in more than you initially need or plan to allow for additional lights if and when needed.
 

jcdammeyer

John
Premium Member
Recently I thought things in my shop were getting harder to see just because of my aging eyes. I just replaced some of the leds with a different style led and it's an improvement again. After a bit of research I find that leds do get dimmer over time, so its not just my eyesight.

My suggestions when retrofitting for Leds is to either put in more than you initially need or plan to allow for additional lights if and when needed.
Yes. Cheaper LEDs do get dimmer. Sometimes really quickly. When I was developing this LED lamp fixture I was given a bag of white LEDs to use. For the first month I thought maybe there was something wrong with my circuit and it was spiking the LEDs damaging them. Didn't matter. Even the new improved circuit didn't help. Over a month they had gone to half intensity.
LGB-Prototypes.JPG
Then I was given a bag of way more expensive NICHIA LEDs and tried them on the new improved circuit.

LGB-Lamp.jpg

They were way way brighter and didn't go dimmer after a month of 24/7 operation so those are what we put into service.

That was summer 2009. Figure at least 8 hours per night and 24/7 this summer that will be almost 41,000 hours.

Lions Gate Bridge Pano.jpg

So don't go cheap on LED lights I guess. Although I suspect the technology has improved in 14 years.
 

DPittman

Ultra Member
Yes. Cheaper LEDs do get dimmer. Sometimes really quickly. When I was developing this LED lamp fixture I was given a bag of white LEDs to use. For the first month I thought maybe there was something wrong with my circuit and it was spiking the LEDs damaging them. Didn't matter. Even the new improved circuit didn't help. Over a month they had gone to half intensity.
View attachment 32460
Then I was given a bag of way more expensive NICHIA LEDs and tried them on the new improved circuit.

View attachment 32461

They were way way brighter and didn't go dimmer after a month of 24/7 operation so those are what we put into service.

That was summer 2009. Figure at least 8 hours per night and 24/7 this summer that will be almost 41,000 hours.

View attachment 32462

So don't go cheap on LED lights I guess. Although I suspect the technology has improved in 14 years.
It's hard to know quality sometimes. My brother just replaced outdoor porch light led fixtures that had burned out. I believe they were about $100 a piece and the led light was non replaceable as it was integrated in the fixture itself. The manufacturer label stated something like 27 year/30000 life span. These lights my brother replaced had a 2020 year manufacturer date on them.
 

jcdammeyer

John
Premium Member
It's hard to know quality sometimes. My brother just replaced outdoor porch light led fixtures that had burned out. I believe they were about $100 a piece and the led light was non replaceable as it was integrated in the fixture itself. The manufacturer label stated something like 27 year/30000 life span. These lights my brother replaced had a 2020 year manufacturer date on them.
The first set of very expensive Philips LED bulbs we put in our renovated kitchen claimed 10 year life or about $2.50 per year.
They were all gone in less than 3 years.
 

jcdammeyer

John
Premium Member
The first set of very expensive Philips LED bulbs we put in our renovated kitchen claimed 10 year life or about $2.50 per year.
They were all gone in less than 3 years.
The up side though was I complained to Philips. They gave me two coupons for a total of 4 lamps. Equivalent to about $100. With that I bought different LED lamps that have lasted much longer. I did a postmortem on the broken lamps and found in all cases the soldering had separated. Poor manufacturing I guess considering much of the body of the lamp was metal heat sink.
 

YotaBota

Mike
Premium Member
The ones I bought from a local commercial lighting supplier were $40 each. I looked at Amazon, they were cheap but lots of reviews with bulbs going dead in a short time or being delivered in multiple extra pieces. At least buying local I can go have a chat with them if things go awry.
 

PaulL

Technologist at Large
Premium Member
A decent morning in the shop. I'm still learning how to square up to tolerances. I have some castings (the Hemingway Kits George Thomas dividing head) that I need to true up.
So I went to work this morning on squaring some angle blocks. I'm reasonably happy with the result, though it's clear that either my vise or my mill's nod are giving me a bit of error:
1679772365610.png
I've been running these by clamping the block directly to the table to mill the L-shaped "top" surfaces:
1679772454888.png
That lets me easily shim under the back side to bring a previously milled face plumb by sweeping an indicator vertically in the mill spindle. Once I have the L-shaped face, I do the opposite face in the vise, indicating it in similarly.
The "vice" faces come out just about 0.5 thou out per inch of Y travel. I'll figure that out the next time I pull the vise off and back on. For now, this one is accurate enough to start drilling mounting holes to help machine its bigger cousin. It should be easier to manage shims between the two plates than between the plate and the vise bed.
 
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