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The code to make your text italicized is CTRL I, which probably happened when you attempted to type the capital I and accidentally bumped the CTRL key when you hit the shift key as the CTRL key is directly below the shift key.

1. My Harbor Freight mini lathe wants to keep turning when I turn the knob all the way down. I think that is because the potentiometer does not have infinite resistance. The power switch comes closer to infinite. 2. The gears that allow changes in the speed of the lead screw are not perfect...

Firefighters use aluminum tanks for their air in firefighting because of the reduced weight. They have to be fiberglass wound to help them hold the pressure and have a much shorter lifespan than steel tanks so they have to be replaced more frequently. There must be some reason air compressors...

Move south? I too am a northern Minnesota guy. I and my wife have planted tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, and radishes. My wife asked me to build a raised bed last year and she really enjoyed the vegetables grown and the fact that the raised bed was waist high so she didn't have to bend down...

You are correct in your thought that FreeCAD has a switch for making internal/external gears. My first time making a gear came out as an internal when I intended external and it took a while to discover that switch at which point it turned into an external.

The first "word of wisdom" is that learning 3D CAD is difficult, regardless of the program. I started with Fusion 360 but figured out fairly quickly that Autodesk was not likely to leave this free to hobbiests with all the features. FreeCAD may not be as easy to use and may not have all the...

Boron nitride is a special case of carbides used for its superior hardness but a carbide is defined as a metal and carbon like iron carbide or tungsten carbide. The advantages to these is their hardness which makes them wear longer but the tradeoff is that being that hard makes them brittle and...

CFM is cubic feet per minute. A common way to measure airflow in the US. There has to be a metric equivalent. At the car dealership there is a window sticker that tells about the car you are looking at including its fuel efficiency as miles per gallon. YMMV is translated to mean "Your...

I've had to disassemble a transmission to replace bearings and then use the exploded 2D drawings to try to fit it back together when the parts finally arrived. I could have done it much faster had I had a 3D model on the computer showing where the pieces fit and the ability to rotate the model...

Buy a 10 pack of SR44 and don't wait hours to be able to change. The 10 packs are cheap enough that you can throw half of them away and still be less expensive than the trip to the store to buy them....if the store even has them...

According to the shop where I take my car to be worked on, bearings are still made off size...even the ones made for that specific vehicle. PITA when the new bearing won't fit and you have the vehicle on the lift.

Check how much memory your Dell 280 has. Newer operating systems like lots of memory. It may not be very expensive to add memory to it. Changing my Dell 7010 from 4 GB to 16 GB made a big difference.

Raccoons are edible. Make them pay.

You might be surprised that your machine will power tap. It won't be the right speed but if you don't tell the tap that it will probably work, especially if you don't drill for the best threads and go with a drill that is just a little over size.

Look at rubber electrical tape. It comes in widths from 1/2" to 2" and is stretchy and sticky both sides. It might seal up what you want.

The leading number on a Linux distrubution is simply a build number and has nothing to do with the year it was released. I use Linux Mint (it has proprietary drivers which Ubuntu does not) and the latest version of that is 20.3. Unless you plan to use this computer as a server to a large...

1. Linux (any version I have used) can read all Windows files. Windows (at least until very recently) cannot read Linux files. 2. Every time I have installed Linux it is with a dual boot with Windows. You do have to be careful and read the instruction so you don't overwrite the Windows...

Here's a nice tutorial on using FreeCAD. It's 1.5 hours long but the first 20 minutes will get you a good start.

Fasten a dial indicator to the table with the stem against the spindle, then use the jog function of Mach 3 to move the table in the x direction and note the distance as compared to what the jog should have been. Then jog it in the -x the same distance and see if the dial indicator returns to...

Model Engineer seems to be based in the UK and the people on their forums seem to be a friendly, helpful bunch. They may be able to help you with a source in the UK or on the continent. https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/