Hello,
I've been lurking on this forum for a few weeks and I've even posted a few times so I guess it's time I introduced myself.
I'm a retired electronics engineer but I was fortunate to have a broadly hands-on training. During my career I was involved with the mechanical aspects of electronics (wiring & sheet metal), some heavier mechanical engineering, hydraulics, fluidic logic. I met a lot of clever people and found the really clever ones were always happy to share their knowledge (just like this forum!).
Early in my college years, I encountered Laurence Sparey's book, 'The Amateur's Lathe', that was the basic spark. My first lathe was a 5" Carl Hurth, made in Germany but so old that all its threads were BSW! I only had that a few years before it had to go but in 1970 I bought a Myford ML7 which is still with me despite three house-moves. It is housed in a wooden workshop, not ideal. The pictures of some of the workshops on this forum fill me with envy. In its time, I've used it (the ML7) to make or modify attachments for the lathe itself, SCUBA fittings and compressed air assemblies, parts for Amateur Radio VHF aerials and microscope accessories. At one stage in my career just turning a lump of metal, any lump of metal, enabled me to put aside work-related stress and probably saved both my sanity and my marriage!
Nowadays I don't get as much time in the workshop as I would like - one of the members of another forum, in his profile, listed his pet hate as 'armchair engineers'! Reading that gave me a red face!
My current projects are to fit a quick-change gearbox to the ML7 and to find out why the table of my Asian drilling machine is not square with the drill axis.
I think that's enough for now.
Best regards,
Pete W.
