grendel

Right I have been a bit busy, I was planning on building a steaming box, but that would have to wait for the weekend, so I thought about my steam source and tried it without the steam box, 1/4" strip does not need any longer than a few minutes, so it was fairly easy to just hold the steam on the strip, using a steam cleaner as the steam source. I drew round my template on one of my building boards, and set in screws to make a former, and here is the result, it will stay in there until its dried again, then a second one will be made for the other side.

Quite correct in that assuption. I was filming in video as well as shooting stills, which is why there were occasional camera wobbles as I tried to do both simultaneously. I like the cuts from the footage of MTB coming in at BA and then cutting to the view from the other end so to speak, we did manage to get some well timed video of these occurances - especially considering there was no communication between cameramen.

Robin, That was excellent, when you told me that the two lots of video worked well together you weren't kidding, a very nice memory you have produced there. The experience was a once in a lifetime one, this memory will keep it fresh forever.

Nowadays broken plastic parts can be replaced a lot easier, by looking online if it a common part breaking, you can often find someone who has drawn the part up for 3d printing and placed the part online where an online printer can reproduce it for you, charging you a fee that includes a commission to the person who originally drew up the part. some of the materials available can be better quality and durability than the originals. Shapeways comes to mind as one of the large companies that can 3d print a part for you from a huge catalog of parts created by their users.

we had a girl working for us once - her previous post had been on an IT helpdesk. this girl admitted to washing up the toaster and kettle with the rest of the washing up, but did keep the plugs out of the water. she also believed that the photocopier could talk to her (when I was connecting via its IP address and posting messages up on its screen) and called over work colleagues to show them.

Earlier this week i headed for work as usual, departing home at 6.30am. just after 7am I arrived at the slip road off the A2 to the M25, it then took me 5 hours to move a couple of miles along the slip road (for those that dont know it, once you are on the slip road, there is no other way off than straight ahead. Due to an accident on the Dartford Bridge (one car - BMW - 2am crashed into the barrier) they closed the bridge and installed a contra flow using one tunnel. The M25 was moving, it was just all of the lorries that closed up on the inside lane, causing nothing to get off the slip road. my work colleagues travelling along the M25 were a bit late (10.30 into the office) despite leaving later than me. I arrived at 12.15pm. I checked my dart charge account and saw that they had had the nerve to charge me for my 5 hour delay, we only got moving when the contra flow was removed and traffic started flowing normally again. I sent an email to the dart charge people saying it was a bit of a cheek still charging me after I had been sitting in a queue of their own causation for 5 hours. this afternoon I recieved a reply:- I am sorry to hear you were stuck in traffic, due to the major accident the Contraflow was in operation since 5:30am through the east bore tunnel to help with the flow of traffic. If you use the crossings you are still required to pay the charge. to my mind that was worse than a simple apology, more like them sticking two fingers in the air and blowing a raspberry. Plus how does it take them from 2am until 11am to replace 20 foot of crash barrier (as when I went home that night, that was all of the new barrier installed. My other thought was how when you have driven through 4 miles of 50mph roadworks, and are in a 50mph speed limit across the bridge, do you have an accident with enough force to remove 20 foot of crash barrier at 2am in the morning when there is presumably little traffic about.

I always thought Zebadee said Boing...

dont forget the new swallows and amazons film is on general release today.

when I was little I needed a spare plug and bit of cable, so got my knife out and cut through the cable on my train transformer. next time I will remember to switch off and unplug before I try that. another time I tested a battery found in an old radio across my tongue, woke up about 10 minutes later with a splitting headach and then saw the voltage of the battery - 90V. later in life I managed to stick my finger into a 110V plug, that was being fed from a 240V plug at the other end, oh yes, I have had my share of close shaves

I wish you good fortune with your trains Robin.

I am also still trying to find out what the socket earth pin is connected to in the inverter (if anything). I can see myself pulling one apart at this rate just to see.

one earth fault and your 12v system is at 240V yuk.

Vaughan, I believe the answer to that is nobody really knows, certainly none of the electrical design engineers at work know (and they are all graduates of various ages) they all know how not to earth (things like steel framed buildings) but none have a definitive answer. at work we get various documentation coming out, the latest was the hazards of a floating neutral in single phase supplies off of a 3 phase main. One was even experienced in oil rig (in marine environment) supplies, but that is all explosion proof this that and the other.

from the looks of it the flaps on the board shown by Vaughan are interlocks, they slide on the rail, so that the power cannot be used from the generator until the shore power breaker is switched off and the interlock plate slid over the shore power circuit, before the generator can be used, ditto the inverter the interlock plate has to be moved across the shore power 2 before it can be switched on. there is also an interlock plate on the switch that connects the two halves of the panel (A+B), I presume the generator feeds side A and the inverter side B so the interlock plate will switch off one of those before allowing the whole board to be fed from a single source.

I now have all of our electrical design engineers scratching their heads over how to earth an inverter, common consensus seems to be to earth the case to an earth point, but then we still get the same discussion as above as to where that earth point should be in a boat.

there is usually no earthing on an 11kV overhead line as it is a 3 wire system, the neutral comes from the star point on the step down transformer to 415V 3 phase. all substation earthing relys on an earth mat at the ends of the cables, if the connection to earth cannot be got down to a certain resistance, the site is referred to as a hot site, when everything metallic must be earthed to a central earth connection, a hot site under fault can have a voltage potential across gaps as small as a few metres, where the earth voltage can be enough to cause injury if the two locations are bridged by a person (eg a metal support and a metal fence adjacent).

I will ask our electrical engineers here at work

One thought, when using an inverter, where is the earth connected? most inverters I know connect to a battery, and supply a standard 13A socket, so where does the earth lead to, is it connected to the neutral in the inverter? - or where.

many years ago during the 1985 hurricane aftermath when I was working for the local electricity board, we had an engineer killed as someone connected up a generator to supply their house while the power was out. unfortunately they did not isolate the supply from the mains supply, and when the engineer was working on the HV side, the generator voltage went through the transformer, was converted to 11,000 volts, which gave him a shock whilst working up a electricity fall. If the shock did not kill him, the fall from the pole certainly did, mixing generators into the supply mains should never be done, unless at a power station equipped to synchronise the phases properly, or by some other qualified electricity supply engineer under very specific circumstances, or after the mains supply has been isolated.

mine happily cuts 2.5mm as it is, though it does not have the slots for the guides as the one in your video does.

Just one thought occurs to me, the 16A plugs and leads are not fused (I had to think about this yesterday when constructing an extension lead to connect to a camping electrical outlet, and run to a standard mains extension socket. a 13A extension lead is protected by a fuse in the plug - the equivalent 16A blue plug has no fuse, so the extension cable from the electric post to the boat, has no fuse. there should be a trip on the post, which might or might not protect you, but if your extension cable were to be damaged, or the outer sheath of the cable be damaged and accidentally dipped into the water, where would that leave you. Another reason the cable should be inspected carefully before use, the bare minimum is careful inspection of the cable along the whole length before you plug it in.

even mounted in a drill press or a table router in this case would not have helped, I needed the bit horizontal, so I could see the line I was cutting to, while routing. my router only has a momentary switch, so has to be held on to work, while I moved the work along by hand, in this instance I fed to work the wrong way as that gave greater control - though the initial cut caused some splintering out as I advanced the work, rather then the router dragging the work into itself. I really either need to clear out my shed and make it more of a workshop- or converting a section of the conservatory, or something as I use most of my power tools by lugging them into the garden, sitting them on the workmate and then using them, at least there the mess blows away. As for power tools, I just wait until the appropriate ones are on offer at Lidls, when they last had bandsaws I wasnt needing one, but one would be handy now. One good note is the new blade I got for the table saw, makes a very good job of cutting the thin bits out, they dont even really require sanding afterward.

an earth leakage trips when it detect an unusual current on the earth line, a RCD is a residual current device, this detects an imbalance between the current carried on the live and neutral wires. - two different beasts

Yes, the plan is a floating radio controlled model, I am still considering the internal detail, it is probable that the section for the battery will be removeable, with a detailed interior section that slots in to replace it for display.

If I hadnt been already spoken for at the company fun day (as one of the orgamisers) I would have packed my tent, model of BA and modelling bits and headed up there myself - maybe next year?