Ed Poore
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Posts posted by Ed Poore
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I've only skimmed through the posts but thought I'd mention I have an alternative to the MSS drawers.
About 6 months ago acquired a Bullbox second-hand for £150, from what I saw of the MSS stuff is that although secure they're not built to the same specs as gun cabinets which is where the Bullbox differs. New they're a bit pricier and ironically about a week after I got mine another friend was selling one for the same price.
Originally I had it squeezed in under the bench seats in the 110 (a perfect fit more or less) with it offset to one side. Rather than using the existing angle-brackets to anchor it I simply drilled a couple of new holes into the brackets and mounted them underneath the 2nd row seat belts. I haven't actually got around to securing the rear (or rather front) of the drawer but it doesn't bounce around whilst off-road so can't really be bothered to dry and dodge the fuel-filler etc to drill through that corner. The drawer itself has withstood a fair beating and the first time it was substantially loaded was to take a university shooting team to a competition where we had 9 shotguns and 1000 shells (rest was in a trailer) in the cabinet. Since then carried lots of tools etc in it and it's perfect.
Over the summer because the 110's been used on the farm etc I've removed the bench seats and put some thick sheets of chip-board (had it lying around otherwise would have used something thinner) over the top. To counter the fact that the cabinet is slightly below the wheel-box a couple of batons support the middles to bring them back up. I was originally worried about putting weight on the top (something like 2mm sheet metal) but it's survived having almost half a tonne in the back with no issues at all.
Because it was originally intended for a Range Rover it's relatively short front to back and there's probably about 18" all told difference between the 110's boot and the cabinet. But because of the mounting through the seat-belts (it could only be moved 2 or 3" closer anyway otherwise seat-belts would have to be modified) there's probably about 12" between the back of the 2nd row and the cabinet and then a further 6" between the door and the drawer. However the front gap has proven to be quite useful for storing the air-compressor and spare bottle of windscreen wash. The gap behind (before the boards) was useful for people to use to climb in. The space on the right hand side (needed because of the door-stay) is also quite useful for storing the standard Land Rover jack, an umbrella and (at the moment) a couple of machetes.
I don't have the time at the moment to take measurements (got to finish rebuilding the engine, install it and ideally MOT the Series tomorrow) but I am going to be in Surrey from Monday and moving up there permanently hopefully a week later so you're more than welcome to have a look at it.
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If you have some reasonably accurate drawings of what you want then it might be worth having a chat with Chris at CLH. They recently built a motor base for a project and all told (metal, bending, welding etc) charged £260+VAT for building this out of 4mm steel. The benefit is that they have some stupidly big presses (think their small one is 8ft wide and 75 tonnes).
Not local to you but they are cheap and do really good work (can even galvanise it for you if you want that) and since they're local to my family home there's a neighbour of ours who runs a haulage company and would probably be willing to throw it on the back of a lorry to drop it off. They travel the M4 corridor fairly frequently.
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With some clever electronics surely it could kick in at cruise rather than needing huge power to get a vehicle rolling.
That is very true although in terms of saving fuel (in the scenario where you're pottering around London) then using as much of the electrics as possible would be most beneficial. Transforming a Land Rover lump (thinking my 300Tdi) into something that's efficient at stop-starting is probably non-trivial (haven't thought about it to be honest) and I'm guessing that having it ticking over the whole time isn't going to have that much of an effect in reducing fuel consumption.
The 3.54:1 of the diff and the 1.41:1 or 3.3 of the transfer box would significantly reduce that though.
That's what I realised but couldn't be bothered to add them into the calculations
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Hmm, need bigger motor...
Very rough calculation means that (I think) an electric motor on the PTO (excluding the transfer box ratio / diff ratio for the moment since that complicates things in my mind without paper) means that you'd need a motor capable of ~170Nm torque to get an unladen 110 moving.
Maybe a Gigglepin style box for all four of the motors.
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Sorry to be a bit off topic but.. if hybrids are LEZ exempt how serious a hybrid does it have to be? Mind went back to RS1600 escorts racing against American iron some while ago - they fitted heater fans to the escorts to token 'supercharge' them which elevated them to the top class - then they could compete. If you stick on say a starter motor good enough to drive it a few yards is that hybrid enough to be LEZ exempt or is it type approved or something? I guess I'm wondering where a decent starter ends and a hybrid begins. Nigel
No idea to be honest, I've had some experience of the LEZ and no one knows how to correctly classify anything to the point where Land Rover just held up their hands and said anything pre Td5 was unknown. It's apparently meant to be based on whether the vehicle was intended as a commercial vehicle but they don't know what the definitions of those are... Station Wagons are meant to be exempt but because of LR's letter pre Td5's won't be but my 300Tdi is still saying it's exempt.
Then you get into the area where a Disco has the same engine but because it was designed as a people carrier not a goods vehicle it's exempt regardless of the engine...
So who knows? No one in authority in my experience and subsequently no one else.
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Ed- Didn't want to do the provierbial teaching granny to suck eggs, so glad to hear that you have the appropriate skills and appreciation to work with these safely.
In a public forum anyone might be looking for ideas and not have your level of skill, so I thought a warning was pertinent. My day job is designing HV systems for production cars, so am exposed to these issues daily and hence am sensitive to the risks.
I wasn't criticising Mike.yYou are absolutely right but where would either of us be without experimenting and accepting a degree of risk?
Si
Hadn't thought about other people following suit but a valid point. Wonder where they'd source the motors from though since these apparently set the team back in excess of £20k!
Si's right some of us have to make sacrifices so others don't :S
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Ed- If you do go about playing round with higher DC voltages- be very careful. HV DC is dangerous, both if you shock yourself and in switching/ fusing. It can strike an arc which means you can carry on conducting current even with blown fuses and open relays if you use parts designed for low voltage DC or AC system. There are correctly rated parts out there which are expensive at present but work reliably and safely. If you want to go down this route there are many other factors to consider to ensure the system is safe- I'd have a close look at http://www.diyelectriccar.com/ for a heads up as well as UNECE Reg 100.
Pah what's a few hundred volts
. I'm fully aware of the consequences - surprisingly for Imperial I'm actually doing a job that my degree (Electrical & Electronic Engineering) relates to. Also had experience (and fun) playing with 15kV DC systems at one of the places I worked previously...In reality I'm unlikely to have the time to even start thinking about playing around with stuff like that for a few years. There's more urgent things I want to do to the 110 first like eventually fix / recondition the gearbox, fit lockers, on-board air etc etc...
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Was wondering how long it'd take Si to respond...
I was actually thinking of playing around with mounting one on the PTO (when I get some spare time that is) but not for winching. Thinking hybrid vehicle scenario... Basically mount one on the PTO via a clutch, disengage the main box and then power the drive-train from the motor. Would only need to achieve say 30mph and last a short while (say 30 minutes) but would be great for pootling around London (if you so wished), hybrid therefore congestion charge / LEZ exempt.
Need to do some maths on shifting a 2 tonne 110 around though...
@simonr - Want me to bring a couple to Surrey for a play when I move up there (well they're actually in Kensington at the moment)?
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how the hell are you getting four for free?? read the specs and it says water cooled? and requires an inverter! carp it was hard enough for me to wire in in cab winch controls let alone one of these bad boys!!!!
Well long story short they're "scrap" from an electric racing car. They were hoping to sell them but as they've "ahem" modified them they haven't succeeded so not wanting stuff to go to waste I offered to be their scrap merchant.
The inverters are included with it as well, and yes they are water-cooled, they're not actually that big
, ok wouldn't be a direct replacement for a Bow Motor but would just about fit inside the wheel of a 16" rim I think.So basically the only issue is powering the damn thing given that they're 11kW
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I may be able to help
. Sometime in the next week may be receiving four of these motors for free. Slight overkill given they're the 11kW version... Also included are some of the inverters required to drive them. -
If you've gone this far, why skim on a sprocket?
True. My main concern is getting the thing up and running quickly so was contemplating building it, MOTing it and then re-doing the timing at a slightly later stage once it's on the road. I'll order a sprocket and depending on when it arrives I can either fit it before or after.
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Right following on from my success rebuilding the gearbox it was decided to fix the smoking issue with the engine. Having never properly seen inside an engine before (surprisingly).
Finally after a saga with various components - the wrong main bearings being supplied, then a broken oil ring in one of the kits and now the wrong size crank / flywheel oil seal I'm finally getting things back together along with spouting various select words about suppliers
. Basically I've got to the point of re-doing the timing, my carefully marked up spots have disappeared after the block went away for honing so timing needs to be done from scratch.I suddenly noticed this morning whilst dunking all the various sprockets / chains in petrol to clean off the huge amounts of gunk (went through two rolls of industrial size toilet paper and ~1/2l of petrol cleaning up the fly-wheel housing alone) that there are quite a few damaged teeth on one size of the camshaft sprocket. One of the "sprockets" is ok whilst the outer one is the one with all the damage, I do have some photos but on a different computer so don't have access at the moment.
So - should I replace the sprocket or not? In my opinion the chain will still grip etc. but I'd assume the damaged teeth would mean that the problem's simply going to get worse faster?
As an added problem - I've got to try and get this thing rebuilt, running and MOTed in the next 6 days...
before I move up to Surrey. I'll be popular with the neighbours if the first thing I do when I move in is litter the garden with Landy bits 
. I was going to try and refrain from that for at least a year... -
Is your driveway on a slope? When I got my 110 she'd mark her territory once in a while, since fixing a few things which involved getting the oil cooler etc out it stopped. The oil cooler used to leak slowly and oil would pool in the tray below it. When parked on a slope this was used to mark the appropriate piece of floor. I've since put some o-rings in and that's stopped things, I think Kensington and Chelsea borough should thank me.
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Mine didn't have any ('94 300Tdi 110) but put some in and it stopped the occasional drips that happened when parked on slopes.
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um, can't tell at the moment - need a machete to get inside. AFAIK it's complete, was used for a couple of years then parked up.
You should have asked - I was in your neck of the woods yesterday with a machete and various "pruning" equipment in the boot of the 110. Along with a milling machine and 2.25D engine block / cylinder head etc...
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Ah well the advice was incredibly useful. I've been working the other side of the yard to Dad and he's gone off and ordered one of the Peatol mills. Think he'd come to the conclusion that it'll do what he wants so now wants to get it as soon as possible.
What can I say - it's for him and it's his money :-).
I'm tempted to get a mill myself at some point and will probably go for a slightly bigger one since I'd quite like to be able to do slightly bigger parts for the 110 etc and go for a manual mill and retrofit it myself. When funds permit that is
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Hope you're happy with it, let us know how you get on.
If you're sticking with the DIY principle, and can solder SMD, I should have port breakout board and microstepper driver pcbs back in a week or so. Only 2A drivers, but enough for a mill that size.
The first prototype seems happy enough driving at 2A with heatsinking not as good as in the final version.
Well going to the original definition of DIY I would have said yes we're doing that but since the business is in building custom electronics (one main specialist area of the business is small compact data loggers) so soldering SMD isn't really a problem since almost everything is that :-).
In fact there are already stepper motor drivers lying around - one's in use for the system we're buying this mill for.
At the other end of the scale my Master's project at Imperial was dealing with 4.5kW motors and 150A currents so can do big too
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Well after speaking with the chap who distributes the "Taig" mills in the UK it looks like that may be the route we're taking. Perhaps specifying CNC was slightly misleading - the immediate stuff for the heat-sinks will almost certainly be milled by hand, with CNC to follow.
Looking at the alternatives (basically non-CNC ones but that can be converted to CNC easily) the Taig looks the most rigid and largest travel for it's price. CNC ready ones that have the same sort of travel are substantially more expensive.
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Since the OP is getting the mill for work use, I doubt it'll be less money if you include the lost earnings from time spent converting it. That's a calculation only the op can do.
I'm seeing a pattern here - assembling my ML7 will be the next project once I've finished fiddling with the mill. (It was dismantled and put into storage 20+ years ago)
You've kind of hit the nail on the head there. Basically some radical modifications to an existing system have been conceived and the company we work with has already got several orders for them. Despite the stuff still being in the prototyping / experimental stage and wants them by the end of September if possible...
There are several factors - basically the attitude is kind of "my way or the high way" so when the transition is made to CNC then it'll be a custom job (certainly from the control side of things). But given the time-frame if these alu head-sinks are to be made in house (which is the desire since it means we have control over all the manufacturing and orders are plentiful but hap-hazard) then a manual mill that doesn't require much setting up but can be converted to CNC easily is the best.
The other consequence is that while massive bargains can be found on eBay etc we're kind of erring towards a new machine rather than a second-hand one so that we don't need to spend ages fixing any potential problems.
The other side of the story is that we do have the full kit for the ML7 so could actually make the heat-sinks on that in the short-term although not ideal. I'm not sure whether our "table" adapter that allows for horizontal milling is quite large enough but needless to say it can be done if required.
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I'd recommend buying a small, good quality mill like a Centec or Myford and CNC converting it using Mach3 yourself with stepper motors. You'll learn much more in the process and end up with a better machine for less money!
I've Mach3 converted a Bridgeport Interact CNC mill - and it's fantastic!
Si
Ironic you should mention the Myford - we've already got an ancient ML7 (IIRC) that's hardly been used but works well (now that we've actually tightened things up a bit...).
Since I'm just learning about all this stuff (basically used the lathe a bit and that's it - but tend to have my head screwed on reasonably well) any recommendations on where to start looking, or the kind of models to look at? Lets say for arguments sake that the budget is ~£2000 which would ideally cover the stepper motors as well. I have read through one of Nige's old threads regarding lathes and where to source them.
Location in the U.K. isn't a massive problem - the business is in South West Wales (border between Pembrokeshire / Carmarthenshire) but having said that I'll be moving up to Surrey at the end of the month. Depending on when some work is completed for me and how quickly I reckon I can reassembly the 88"'s engine once it's returned I may be "popping" up to the Highlands briefly so could always stop off on the way...
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Here's an other render:
Can't help but thing it needs a bigger tub for the back in that render...
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I've got a old Peatol, converted to CNC. Mine's a pretty old machine, and the newer ones have some siginificant improvements in the ways (better Z axis, better gib adjustment, adjustable lead nuts etc.)
It's a good stiff machine for it's size, easily good enough to produce good results in Alu. and plastics, for the sort of thing it sounds like you want it to do (I'm in the electronics business too). I can get backlash down to 1-2thou easily enough.
I can't comment on the Taig sourced cnc setup - I bought mine part converted (badly) to CNC. The X & Y motor mounts were home made, the Z axis wasn't converted at all. I remade all the mounts to a workable setup, and now I can get decent results, I'm using the mill to make new motor mounts for all three axes. I'm also making my own microstep stepper drivers to replace the half step drivers that were included in the sale.
I think the biggest problem with the Taig for your use is the maximum spindle speed (depending on the exact build) is limited to something between 10k and 2800rpm. I was limited to 2800, so I fitted a Kress 25k spindle, giving me a range of between 5k and 25k (and a lot more power), much more suitable for cutting ali and doing fine work and engraving.
If you use the standard motor setup, the ER16 spindle is a good choice, easier to find a range of collets when you want spares. Alternatively A2ZCNC do some nice endmill holder for either the Taig or ER16 spindles.
If I were buying new for small work in Alu., I would probably look hard at the mid size Proxon mills. A mate has the MF70 and the mid sized one (230?) for electronics work, and seems very happy with both of them.
The spindle speed was one of the things that we'd noted although looking at the pics it looks easy enough to adapt the drive system to something else. One option that presented itself was possibly building an attachment for a Dremel like tool so that PCBs could be drilled out via CNC if required (the majority of the stuff is now surface mount but the odd power-supply component is still through-hole).
I'd come across the Proxxon stuff before but was initially discarded because of the lack of CNC however I hadn't seen the "bigger" mills which I've just come across on Axminster's website - they look a bit more viable, the initial one we saw (the MF70 looked a little small for what we wanted) however there are a number which look a bit bigger and at a slightly cheaper price than the Peatol.
You say you'd have gone for a Proxxon for alu work is that simply down to the spindle speeds that you can get out of the Peatol / Taig or are the Proxxon's "better built" i.e. less issues with backlash or rather accuracy (my understanding is that provided you know what the backlash is then - at least manually, and a bit more complex in CNC - then it made bugger all difference to the end result since you could tune it out).
For CNC have a chat with Arc Euro Trade of Leicester, they have a website.
Had a look through their website but the CNC stuff I suspect is slightly beyond what is needed and slightly above budget (not my budget so can't fiddle with that unfortunately).
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As per the subject - does anyone have any personal experience of the Taig (distributed under the brand Peatol in the UK) mini-mills? Basically we're interested in a reasonably small CNC mill for the family electronics business (cutting heat-sinks and panels etc).
Seen some decent comments about it but thought I'd ask here on the off-chance anybody has used one - or have any alternative recommendations. Obviously the bigger the better as with almost everything but there's a limited budget available and the size of the Taig is probably about the smallest we want to go (~9"x7"x5" IIRC).
Regarding the CNC aspect the ideal situation would be where we can use it in a manual mode whilst still configured for CNC. The controller side of things matters not a jot (in fact it'd probably be more of a hindrance since a custom controller would likely be built) - so basically as long as stepper motors can be mounted relatively easily that's all that matters.
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take a voltage reading of a well charged battery, run the fridge for 24hours, take another reading then with a bit of math convert it to amps? maybe?
There will be many variable factors though.
Yep - like missing the required measurements for doing the "maths". You'll need at minimum another variable (such as resistance) in order to calculate the current draw (not going to be easy on a device such as a fridge since it'll be a mainly inductive load).
A simple method which can be used to measure currents (wouldn't help in the logging side of things) and particularly useful for stupidly high currents like those drawn by winches and starter motors is to accurately measure the resistance of the wire between the battery and the device (only needs to be done once). Then you monitor the potential difference (aka voltage) dropped across the wire. You then have voltage and resistance and can work out current. Of course if you're wire changes temperature then the resistance will also change - depends on how accurate you want the measurements to be.
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Gutted, someone beat me to it!!! pair of benches and belts and fixing bars for £45. Gutted, must of clicked virtually at the same time.
Thankyou very much for the offer though Ben.
What benches were you after?
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. I'm fully aware of the consequences - surprisingly for Imperial I'm actually doing a job that my degree (Electrical & Electronic Engineering) relates to. Also had experience (and fun) playing with 15kV DC systems at one of the places I worked previously...
, ok wouldn't be a direct replacement for a Bow Motor but would just about fit inside the wheel of a 16" rim I think.
. Basically I've got to the point of re-doing the timing, my carefully marked up spots have disappeared after the block went away for honing 
before I move up to Surrey. I'll be popular with the neighbours if the first thing I do when I move in is litter the garden with Landy bits 
. I was going to try and refrain from that for at least a year... 
aero wipers
in International Forum
Posted
I'm fairly sure that's play in the shaft that drive the wipers (I've got the same thing, just putting off pulling the dash apart to fix it).