Rod's Aussie Shed

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I agree rod,i have to share my time too.Just finished a wall and tidied up the back garden while the weather has cooled and to keep the wife happy
Today I di 3 hrs in the shed maching rebar and then 1 hr in the garden
1 hr playing online poker and another collating steam locomotive photographs which I collect.Nothing important to do so I share myself about doing what I am in the mood for.Some more photos of your setup would be nice
Regards Barry
 
Some more photos of your setup would be nice
Regards Barry

You might need to be patient Barry, I have to get this done
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Shown here after 2 days pulling out 22 metres of old retaining wall and everything green in the yard with a bobcat and excavator, 6 truck loads carried away and a few more loads coming in. You can see the operator dinted the brand new fence. I got it to here over the weekend so hopefully will get it further along over Easter.

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Getting ready to install popup sprinklers and decided to add fertiliser injection so came home with this today
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The venturi injector requires a pressure loss across the bridge hence the ball valve in the middle which is used to regulate the pressure drop. I need to drill and tap the T pieces for pressure guages 1/4" BSP so there will be a little bit of shed time here in this project. For those that are wondering, there will be a 1" main from the water meter entering on the right and the water goes through a main shutoff valve, then a dual check valve back flow preventer, a filter and then the 1/2" bypass/injectors come off. I need to replace the 1/2" coupling with a union so it can be unassembled for servicing.

You can see the small spiggot on the venturi that will suck the fertiliser in and inject it into the water. The injector comes with a pressure table chart for the inlet and outlet side that allows you to calibrate the flow of fertiliser back to litres per minute/hour.. The irrigation shop says I can insert some rubber test points into my tapped holes that let me poke the meter in to measure the pressure on each side so I don't need to install two gauges out in the open. The meter is then used like a tyre pressure guage when you want it. Should be interesting. 33 years since I majored in this and I've forgotten what I once knew about irrigation design backwards.

By all accounts, I should have enough water to drive 6 spinklers on one zone with a 9.1 metre throw so they will do the whole yard.
 
all you need is lawn.Thankfully I don't have any which means I don't have a mower,strimmer etc and I have an additional couple of hrs in the shed per week.All planned of course when I bought the house.Also keeps the high water bills down
 
rod don't know where you are in Brisbane but millers tooling at loganholme are very good to deal with can supply anything h&f have at a better price
 
rod don't know where you are in Brisbane but millers tooling at loganholme are very good to deal with can supply anything h&f have at a better price

Thanks Geo, not all that far away from me. There is also Brisbane Engineering Supplies. I think I have just about got everything now. While the exchange rate was good, I bought a lot of stuff from CTC ex Hong Kong. But i did find this morning that a dedicated set of drills to suit my BSPT taps from CTC would be handy as my metric fractionals stop at 10mm. But I looked up a chart and pulled out the right imperial one...
 
Hi Rod

What is the dilution ratio of your venturi injector?
Also what soluble fertilizer will you use?
I have tried Aquasol but have trouble getting it to dissolve at 40g/l which is required for my injector.

By the way how is your Ditron DRO going. My new Sieg Runmaster lathe came with a Ditron installed but I find it a bit clunky. Instruction book could use a rewrite. I like to switch between radius and diam on the lathe depending on what I am doing and it is not straight forward and I always forget what mode I am in.
Will probally swap it out for another ES12 because it is hard to find any lathe specific DRO readouts anymore.
Cheers
Ron
Macleay Is
 
Hi Rod

What is the dilution ratio of your venturi injector?
Also what soluble fertilizer will you use?
I have tried Aquasol but have trouble getting it to dissolve at 40g/l which is required for my injector.

By the way how is your Ditron DRO going. My new Sieg Runmaster lathe came with a Ditron installed but I find it a bit clunky. Instruction book could use a rewrite. I like to switch between radius and diam on the lathe depending on what I am doing and it is not straight forward and I always forget what mode I am in.
Will probably swap it out for another ES12 because it is hard to find any lathe specific DRO readouts anymore.
Cheers
Ron
Macleay Is

Ron,

I'm not sure yet about the fertiliser injector application rates. I got the turf down last Friday (9 days ago) and the sprinklers working on Sunday so its only been a week so far.

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They say there is no point fertilising in the first month so I've got a few weeks before I need to worry about it. I'm not thinking in terms of dilution rates but rather in terms of litres per hour which will let me calibrate the dilution rate from there. I also have this inlet pickup line (from the Irrigation shop, Slack Creek) which includes a needle valve to further accurately regulate the flow
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I think I'll probably go to an Agricultural Supplies place to purchase my fertiliser and have not ruled out mixing my own. A friend who sells liquid fertiliser said he'll try and round up 20 litres of concentrate for me.

Anyway, back on topic, I had a bit of shed time today and finalised my Body Lift kit for the latest October 2015 and on Toyota Hilux, then spent some time taking photos of it....

vmn%20hilix%202015%20and%20on%20body%20lift%20_zps5h2kul8i.jpg


These will retail for a bit over $700 each. Its taken a good month to get everything laser cut and powder coated after the initial prototyping. I don't actually have much work to do this myself other than machining the body blocks and 2 hours of welding every six months. The oval black brackets with holes in them are countersunk and tapped to M8 by my laser cutters so I just have to debur the edges and drop it off for powder cutting (100-200 at a time).

As far as the Ditron goes, I like it. Its a quality piece of gear, nicer than the one I used on my mill. I have worked out the tool memory but today when I wanted it, I had forgotten how to retrieve the offsets. I must document the process as I want to gang up the turning of the small spacers in the photo to do 5-6 at a time. First pass is a 2mm deep groove with a 45 degree neutral tools followed up with parting off in the centre of this groove so that each piece ends up with a 1mm bevelled edge both sides..

I've just left my DRO set up on diameter mode. There is an indicator on the far left of the display to tell you which mode (eg. diameter or radius) you are running. Can't see any need to ever change it.
 
Thought I'd give a bit of an update on my irrigation system as its shed related by virtue of the fact the irrigation controller is mounted to the wall of the shed.

The turf has been down 4 weeks now and today I got the fertiliser injector calibrated and working. Shown below adding about 1 gram per litre of water to the lawn for the first time. Coming into winter, we got a couple of weeks of nice warm weather to kick it off so it looks really good now. I'm a bit annoyed becasue there is quite a bit of nutgrass (sedge) that was in the turf but that is easily controlled with Sempra (which costs $45 for 25 grams of ingredient - Ouch!)
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I had a few dramas as I put a crowbar through the water main and a week later found a leak near the manhole the water meter hides in on a Sunday.

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I had to dig it up, call in a son in law favour to get the plumber back only to find it was still leaking in the evening so I was out in the torchlight fixing it. Any left it open for a week to confirm no leaks and carefully bedded the pipework on some crusher dust before back filling the trench.

I went to a Rural supplies place and he recommended GF9 fertiliser at this time of the year. Made by Grow Force, its one of their Flowfeed fertilisers formulated for liquid fertiliser application. You mix it up as a concentrate at the rate of 1 x 25kg bag per 100 litres of water (250g per litre). It cost me $69 for the bag. Growforce say that crops can tolerate 5 g per litre of fertiliser per litre as a final concentration but usually much less than that is used. Their example on the bag works on 1 gram per litre which is what I adopted.

I bought a 60 litre wheelie bin from Bunnings for $15. Carefully measured in 60 litres and found it was brim full so I took out 10 litres and engraved a 50 litre mark on it which meant at the recommended concentrate, I needed 1/2 a bag. I repurposed a leanto by my garden shed into a fertiliser shed and here's what I ended up with.

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So for ronboult who said he had problems with his fertiliser injector, here is what I learnt about getting it up and running.
1. You need plenty of pressure as you need to give up about 60 kPa before the venturi functions at all.
2. The Mazzei 384 injector I am using is made in USA and their calibration data quotes a really obscure pressure unit of kg/m2. To convert to kPa (Kilopascals), multiply by 98.1.
3. You really need the horrendously expensive Mazzei needle valve pictured earlier above to cut the flow back so you don't have to dilute the concentrate.
4. I measured the maximum injection rate using a 3 litre measuring jug over a 10 minute period and found I was injecting 200 ml per minute.
5. I ran some calculations and decided to cut this back to around 10%. After setting the needle valve and remeasuring the flow over 20 minutes, I was injecting 45 ml per minute..
6. My pressure gauge told me I had a working pressure of 200 kPa and the sprinkler calibration chart told me I was using 10.62 litres per minute at that pressure. That worked out i needed 236 grams per litre of concentrate to give 1 gram per litre at the sprinkler. I decided to adopt the standard 250 g per litre concentrate (25 kg or half a bag into my mixing tank) so I am applying 1.06 gram per litre.
7. They say to fertilise every time you irrigate.
8. With 2 sprinkler zones running for 10 minutes each, I am using 900 ml per irrigation so the half bag ($35) of fertiliser should last for 50 applications. Thats about 3.5 months so it will cost me about $10 per month to feed my lawn. It will be interesting to see how it all goes from here.
9. I'd forgotten how cold urea gets via endothermic reaction when mixed with water! (urea must be the primary ingredient of GF9- ice cold beer anyone?). You can see the condensation on the wheelie bin in the pic above.
 
Hi Rod
Thanks very much for taking the time to update your fertilisation procedure.
The info on the Fertiliser (GF9) and the application rate is very helpful. If I read your post correctly your injector is injecting at a ratio of 236:1 ( 236g/L concentrate gives 1g/L at the sprinkler). My Injectors are mechanical pumps run by water flow ( Dosematic) and are adjustable from 40:1 to 200:1. So if I make up my concentrate at less than 200g/L everything should be OK. This is well within the solubility you stated for GF9. Interesting as I could not get Aquasol to completely dissolve even at 40g/L
You seem to have it running well given the lush looking lawn.

PS Found the radius /diam indicator on the Ditron Display-thanks
Cheers
ron
 
Hi Rod
Thanks very much for taking the time to update your fertilisation procedure.
The info on the Fertiliser (GF9) and the application rate is very helpful. If I read your post correctly your injector is injecting at a ratio of 236:1 ( 236g/L concentrate gives 1g/L at the sprinkler). My Injectors are mechanical pumps run by water flow ( Dosematic) and are adjustable from 40:1 to 200:1. So if I make up my concentrate at less than 200g/L everything should be OK. This is well within the solubility you stated for GF9. Interesting as I could not get Aquasol to completely dissolve even at 40g/L
You seem to have it running well given the lush looking lawn.

PS Found the radius /diam indicator on the Ditron Display-thanks
Cheers
ron

Ron, yes If I mixed the concentrate at 236 grams per litre of water, I'd be adding 1 gram of the concentrate powder per litre at the sprinkler heads. But the injector ratio is different as I am injecting 45 ml (0.045 L) per litre of water. Thats actually (1000-45):45 or 955:45 or 21.2:1
(955/45 = 21.2 ).

I think that the 1 gram per litre is a very conservative application (which is cool when just starting out so as not to burn the lawn) and will talk to the fertiliser shop again to check their rates now I have some calibration data. I think it should be up around 3 g per litre. From what I can work out at 40:1 you are adding 25 ml per litre so your minimum application rate is 6.25 grams at the 250 g/L concentration I'm using so you need to cut yours back.
 
Rod
I am now totally confused. If your concentrate is 236 g/L and your injector ratio is 21:1 i.e. 1ml per 20ml of flow then I believe your sprinkler concentration will be approx 11.2g/L and not 1g/L.
One of us has it arse about somehow.

Somehow I think your injector ratio is really 236:1.
Are you sure that 45ml of concentrate is added to just 1 litre of water going to your sprinklers? This would mean that you would be using 45 Litres of concentrate in 1000 L of sprinkler water i.e. approx 10.62Kg of fertiliser per 1000 L (10.6 g /L)

Ron

Just had a thought. Is the 45ml added to 1 litre going through the Venturi with a lot more water actually by passing the Venturi?
 
Ron, we are coming at this from 2 different directions. Your system works on ratios. Mine works on litres per minute injected and the fertiliser instructions are based on the same methodology I use. I never calculated ratios until you posted and I think I was wrong in what I did. I'm injecting 45 ml per minute and the sprinklers deliver 10.6 litres per minute. The liquid concentrate I'm using is 250 g per litre. So there is 250g * 0.045 L = 11.25 g of fertiliser in my 45ml. Thats spread over the 10.6 litres delivered to my lawn so the final concentration is 11.25 g /10.6 L = 1.06 g per litre. I think if I calculated the ratio it is the 236:1 you stated which coincidently was the exact number of grams per litre in the concentrate I needed to add to get exactly 1 g per litre so your post confused me :)

Anyway while we've been confusing each other, my lawn is responding well to its fertiliser application a few days ago and is looking better by the day...
 
And yes, a portion of the flow bypasses the venturi. In the pic, you can see the large 1" ball valve is partly shut off to create a pressure differential which I can measure with the 2 guages either side. This forces some water through the venturi which is called the motive flow. This in turn creates a suction that injects about 200 ml per minute if unconstricted but then I have a graduated needle valve that allows me to throttle that back to the 45 ml which is pretty much as low as I can get it to go. So if I want to add say 3 g per litre, I can open up the needle valve a bit more without changing anything else. There are some calibration charts for the venturi. For example with 275 kPa on the high side and 172 kPa on the low side, there is 7.6 l/min motive flow and 28.4 l/hr suction flow.
 
We acquired a small lathe at work with a 70mm spindle but it came with no chuck and no tooling. But at $900, the price was right.

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You can get an idea of its size by looking at the blue posts which are actually a vehicle hoist!

A mate gave me a heads up about a cheap chuck at Hare and Forbes so I went and had a look at it. I'm sure we can swing a 400mm chuck on it, but a near new 315mm DI8 chuck for $150 was a bargain given it retails for about $1k.

So then the pressure was on to be able to actually use it so I decided to have a go at making a tool holder for its Quick Change Tool Post over the weekend and this is what I came up with. Just gotta grab some set screws in the morning and it will be complete.

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I placed a tool holder from my lathe for comparison. You can see this one is a monster. My 25mm 60 deg dovetail cutter was at its limit doing this one! Every part you see I made. The washer must be 4140 so it did not knurl very well and I turned the M12 x 1 threaded rod (my third thread ever)and made the lock nut as well.

Just a heads up, if you are going to make a dovetail for a QCTP, if you grab two pieces of machined rod and place it in the dovetails and measure the distance between, that is what you are shooting for when machining it. When you make the drawings, include the circle for reference as part of your drawing so it is tangential to (eg. touching) both dovetail surfaces and it makes it so much easier. This is the third tool holder I've made and it turned out the best of the lot after I was told about this cool trick. For this one, I used 10mm dia circle but just grabbed a drill bit and an end mill when I measured it. It was a bit hard to draw without a part as a model so I printed the drawings at 100% and checked it for fit by placing the tool post over it and made a few tweaks before I was happy to head for the shed.
 
Geez, 18 months since I've updated this thread. I have to report I'm currently latheless. I never thought I'd see the day I'd part with my AL320G but the Optimum TU-3008G comes with a D1-4 camlock chuck and has a full gearbox so when a mate of mine told a random shopper in Hare and Forbes that I might part with my lathe, I did the deal with the intention of upgrading to the Optimum
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L691
But I think I can just squeeze in an AL336D that comes complete with DRO, coolant, spindle brake and worklight.
https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/L682D
By the time the Optimum is optioned up with 4 jaw chuck and all of the fruit, it won't cost that much different.

So Hare and Forbes will have a sale in November so I'm going to see if I can wait that long.....

I also sold my plasma cutter on my CNC table via another forum under similar circumstances as I did not have any firm for sale plans but the right opportunity came along so I can see a Hypertherm 45XP coming in its place.
 
Latheless ? those are scary words. I got my first lathe around 1976 and have not been without one since. I currently have 3.
I hope you can make it until November without any real withdrawal symptoms :) The 336 looks pretty nice, It should be worth the wait.
Hope to see an update on the plasma as well. Thanks for checking in.

Scott
 
Yes, it might be hard, but I also expect that I'll be leasing an industrial unit for my ecommerce business in between now and then and some of my toys (and a few others) are going to live there so setting it all up will keep my mind off the deficiencies :)
 
All nice stuff, Rod. I used to have two 150 liter stills running in tandem. I had them equipped with Norse marble colums. Those are pipes of about dia 120 mm and length 600 mm with a screw-on lid and filled with glass marbles. The main benefit is easy cleaning. I had to let go when my wife got a serious position in the local police force. Have Fun!
 
A mate has an AL336D. You will love it. A foot brake for threading is just awesome. The only thing to have a look at will be the lead screw covers. They stop full travel towards the chuck and with a face plate on you can’t get all the way there. He ended up removing them.

One day I would like one as well. But the 320G still owes me a few years yet.

Cheers,
J.
 
Yes, a mate also has had one for a few years and says the same thing about the leadscrew covers. He uses it in a semi-commercial setting so its done a lot of work.
Had it been available at the time, I would have gone with the Optimum TU3008G over the 320G
But it needs to be optioned up a fair bit so the 336D wins as its ready to go out of the box.
I might add, I was given 2800 reasons to part with my AL320G and have kept all of my tooling except for some starter ISO tools I have never used since I found the CCMT inserts. I think I only paid about $1900 for it.
 

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