Machining plus Microwaves equals Awesome
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- An exposé of my addiction to two engrossing pastimes, Microwave Ham Radio and Machining. How a Bridgeport mill, Colchester Lathe, Fusion 360 and simulation tools collide in a perfect storm of awesomeness when I use it to make my own antennas, feeds, mounts and other amateur radio hardware.
This is the core of a lecture I gave to the Radio Society of Great Britain Convention in October 2021
I left off the credits for all of the RUclipsrs who have educated and inspired me, so in no particular order, here is a selection of my favourites: Stefan Gotteswinter, Robin Renzetti, Clickspring, Oxtoolco, Edge Precision, Joe Pieczynski, Blondiehacks, Abom79, NYC CNC, Ron Covell, Doubleboost, Randy Richard, This Old Tony, Myfordboy, OlFoundryman, Max Grant, Woods Creek Workshop and many others.
…and of course, Bob Cawley 1928-2019 RIP
Hey, you pilfered my entire subscription list :) Good man! That's essentially the who's who of RUclips machining crowd right there. Funny thing is how similar interests we have, radio and machining - odd combination.
Ah my youtube tutors. I can say they have given me tips and things to try and improve my own work.
The Signal Path may be another channel you would enjoy, no machining but lots of high frequency stuff
@@smbrown Been watching his stuff since FOREVER. Very useful teardown of an HP E44xx signal generator that helped me repair my 3 GHz genny. After I'd bought the 4GHz E4433B obviously, but a chap needs two decent GHz signal generators
I am enjoying your RUclips machining. I am an Amateur Extra class here in the US. I could legally operate on any available band or mode. I haven't the equipment or the desire anymore, though. I am enjoying watching others take up the hobby. Happy machining.
I am humbled every time I come across someone that knowledgeable. My respects!
Usually, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I grant myself permission to fail. Having no fear of failure is very liberating and means I get to try things that more sensible folks would perhaps avoid. It's important to understand the limits of what I know and I'm very much aware of my lack of skill and experience in anything connected with machining and radio engineering. I'm having an indecent amount of fun messing about with everything. Thanks for watching!
They say it's hard to see other people living your dream, but I'm enjoying this immensely. Here's hoping for many years of Machining and Microwaves to come!
73, KD2TDE
I'll try not to do myself any (serious) injuries. I'm machining a run of the bodies and mounting flanged for the 1.3 GHz low pass coaxial filters this evening. Making eight only takes twice as long as making a single one, or so I'm telling myself.
I am a) persuasive and b) gullible
Great mixture
@@MachiningandMicrowaves….. and joyously funny!
Hello, I cannot say I understood much of what you were making. I understand the concepts but it is not in any way my area of expertise. However I can appreciate the workmanship and the ingenuity needed to get done what you accomplished. And it is just phenomenal. To make something with your hands to interact with the day to day physical world i.e. clamps, fixtures and brackets is one thing but to design and make things that capture, amplify, or otherwise manipulate the electromagnetic radiation all around us is quite fascinating to me. Thanks for sharing your passion. All the best! Eddie
Thanks Eddie, I've had enormous fun from this hobby since 1971 and thought I'd try to share the joy a bit while having EXTRA fun mucking about with videos. Result!
Neil
This is amazing work and is really well-presented. Thank you for sharing it!
You are fascinated by similar interests as I am. My teams and I built a number of radio telescopes and receivers for studying the cosmic microwave background between 22 and 300 GHz, so your microwave work is very interesting. And I love machining as well.
Yours is definitely a channel I will keep.
Thanks Thomas, I have some friends who do a lot of work with radio astronomy and I expect they will have some projects for me soon. I am particularly interested in electroforming corrugated horn antennas on machined aluminium mandrels which are then dissolved to leave a gold-plated horn with fine internal corrugations to help suppress sidelobes. A particular interest at the moment is 47 GHz cloud reflection, but there is much to to before I can carry out detailed tests.
You must be kidding me... I just found a treasure in the youtube wasteland. My hat off sir!
i put this on for noise while i worked and ended up being glued to the screen and hanging on every word! i am so excited to follow your work! thank you so much for taking the time to share your world with us!
Super! I might be niche as a niche thing, but I try to be accessible and inclusive and suitably silly. In related news, I'm trying to edit FOUR videos at the same time. This could get messy if I forget which one is which!
Wow! I’ve watched a handful of your videos, this one has been the most fun. Seeing the diversity of projects and processes involved is amazing and inspiring. Thank you very much.
That was a lecture I presented at the Radio Society of Great Britain last year for a specialist audience, so it doesn't go into deep explanations. It would probably last five hours if it was done properly for a general YT audience.
Now that’s skilled engineering at its very best you should be very proud of your achievements if I were you
I just wish to watch & learn
Thank you
It's all a bit scary learning all this stuff and making mistakes in public, but I'm making these videos and projects because they are fun and a nice change from my "official" life doing boring old cybersecurity, network forensics and architecture. Almost everything I've learned about machining has come from watching RUclips Machinists. What an amazing resource we have to play with.
this was a wonderful video describing your journey thus far in machining. thank you very much for your insights
I wish my dad was still around to see how machining and tech has changed since his day. I still use his Starrett micrometer most days.
This is cool buddy! Ui love this stuff, instrument making and apparatus making. I'm a scientist by trade and that's exactly what got me into it as well. My father was also involved in advanced manufacturing and trying to replicate some of the processes has been very enlightening
I'm having a marvellous time trying to make the tiny antenna and waveguide parts, but also the control electronics and software to steer a 10ft diameter solid antenna dish and mount weighing a quarter of a ton accurately enough to follow the moon across the sky to better than 0.2 degrees pointing precision. Some of the newer parts have internal waveguides only 1 mm diameter, so things do start to approach watchmaking rather than antenna engineering. Huge fun.
breathtaking experience...
dude, that gold plated aluminium mandrel at the end was the icing on the cake. :)
Once I get that process properly worked out, there should be some very pretty results. Those internally-corrugated antennas should work very well. Lots of development work needed.
Only found you channel recently. I must say thank you for the inspiration.
Congratulations on the great video and the achievements you have shown. very exciting for radio amateurs who have decent mechanical equipment etc. good luck 73.
I had a lot of fun putting the talk together, I hope to make more videos of my projects soon
Excellent work, thanks for sharing on youtube!
Thanks for watching it. I'm having a whole lot of fun messing about trying to make videos and do something useful in the process. I fail a lot but I am learning SO much all the time.
Thank god I am not alone...
Heh heh, there's at least two of us then! Huzzah!
You are truly something else.
A gem from the past still here with us.
People like you are so scarce these days.
I blame the parents, giving us all those opportunities and open-minded attitudes to the world, plus a twisted sense of humour.
It was never going to end well. (Hi mum!)
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I'm sure they are super proud, wherever they are. Cheers to the videos and the humor 🥂
Amazing, I love this! Excellent summary of what you have been able to achieve!
I'll be looking at some of those subjects in detail in future videos as I stumble around trying to make sense of this totally immersive and engrossing mix of pastimes I seem to have adopted.
Fantastic channel summary. Lots of words I have no idea what they mean, but still very entertaining.
I really must get round to making the channel introduction video... That particular vid was an online lecture I gave at the Radio Society of Great Britain national convention, so it didn't pull any punches about the tech as the audience were knowledgeable about the radio parts of the subject matter, but my mother watched it and said she liked it. She might be 91 but she's still totally hardcore.
I have only the vaguest idea what this is about, but it is absolutely fascinating how you use skill and experience and fearsome technical knowledge to overcome very complex problems. Finely grooved horn? Make a mandrel out of ally, electroplate it in gold and goodness knows what else, then dissolve the ally in a caustic bath! Why didn't I think of that?
A lot of very clever folks have been thinking up brainy solutions since they first decided to try bashing rocks together. The trick is knowing which bits to apply from watchmaking, metallurgy, chemistry, quantum physics, blacksmithing,, tribology, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, maths, art, welding, electroplating, metalcasting, 3D print, basketmaking, knotting, jewellery, carpentry, electronics, coding, microcontrollers, steam engines, gas turbines, piston engines and all the other things I've been exposed to over the years. Since the invention of the web, making the connections and finding info are so much easier. I remember first using an indexed database of scientific papers in the early 1980s over a dial-up link to a service in Switzerland that was a total revelation in terms of speed of access to ideas and information. Also cat GIFs and dank memes, but hey....
Wow, reminds me of the first few times I watched vids by all your listed RUclipsrs!! Most of whom, I was in their first 5k subs! Your gonna fit right in! What's so damn fun is, not only watching your machining but learning your alien language as you describe the function of your bits and pieces of your projects! Alas, I am elec. engineering illiterate!
May you live long, prosper and continue to pass along your passion and knowledge though this channel Sir.
Sub'ed.
Heh heh, just hope I can live up to the expectations! I'm having a huge amount of fun messing about with microwave and mmwave radio and machining. There's a lot of maths and physics involved, but once that's worked out, it's down to good old-fashioned engineering design and actually making things to test in the real world. I'm working on an update to the coaxial low-pass filter design so I expect I'll do a full-length video on the design and machining of that, but also I have some much more intricate stuff coming along, plus water-cooled radio frequency amplifiers and some more tools to help me make radio parts to push the limits of Physics a bit harder.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves where should someone who doesn't know anything about these subjects start to learn?
I've just found your channel and I am very glad I did. I am also an electrical enginner who now spends all day writing firmware for whatever smart toaster the clients want. Ive always dreamed of a mill and lathe as a young boy hearing stories from my uncle who worked on airplane parts. I have managed to finally get a cnc vertical mill and a cnc lathe, first in my tiny Manchester city center appartment, and now under the stairwell in a house. This is all to say that I really like your videos and If you ever need something cnc machined, I'll do it for a box of tea and a packet of golden cremers ;).
I'm negotiating to try to buy myself a CNC machine so I can do more intricate work, but that's a really kind offer! Today's emails included one from Rogers, the printed circuit board manufacturer. It seems they now make a low loss dielectric resin that can be printed in an LCD or DLP ultraviolet 3D printer, so we should be able to print really complex microwave radio lenses and metamaterials with variable refractive indices to bend and focus radio signals with much finer control. Exciting times we live in.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves i was thinking of mentioning that I have a resin printer too. I strongly recommend against getting one, its somehow messier than machining. What i recommend instead is taking advantage of fools like me who already have the kit and process dialed in :))).
@@BogdanTheGeek Heh heh, indeed that would be the sensible way forward! Much depends on whether Rogers will send me a free sample of the special resin. They are very good about SHF laminates, so perhaps I might get lucky!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves can a person subscribe to get this email?
Your skills are amazing. I do Ham and machining, I am in awe of your work. Gauge pins, and jo blocks are what separate us from the animals. You mention a Deckel machine - I have a used Deckel that is as big as my Bridgeport and is in need of a deep cleaning and lubrication. With luck it will get fitted into the project list before next winter.
I have some nice gauge blocks and four big boxes of pins, but sadly, not REAL Johanssons. I'm getting a bit obsessive about metrology, I now have TWO granite surface tables and a quarter-ton cast iron table. Tomorrow's project is drilling some 0.2 mm holes and a 20 mm deep hole with a #70 drill at 0.52 mm. That should be fun of a sort. I'm just getting set up for electroplating gold, silver, nickel, zinc and copper electroforming for making really REALLY tiny parts for 241 GHz and potentially higher if I can find some diodes.
The most exciting development is around dielectric 3D printing resin for UV printers. That means I can make graded-index microwave lenses. I'm expecting a new 47 GHz Kuhne transverter to arrive later this week so I can make up two sets and send my friends out into neigbouring locator squares so I can get at least JO03, IO94, IO83, IO93 and IO92 on 47 GHz from home. That will be neat. I haven't seen a big Deckel close-up, but I've only been messing about with machining since 2017, so I'm a total n00b at this game. Producing gold-plated feedhorns for 122 and 134 GHz is pretty much like making costume jewellery! Good luck with the Deckel!
wow amazing work!
Having recently discovered the channel I'm working through your videos, enjoying them thoroughly. I'm intrigued by the applications for the part you are making, I'm going to have to do a bit of research as I'm out of my depth big time. The machining is more my thing which is very entertaining
Next one has a bit of background on how the low pass filters actually work as well as machining and soldering the cores. I'll include a bit of detail like that in most of the projects, but I think I'd upset the algorithm too much if I went full-on with the microwave technology. Perhaps I need a second channel for some deep dives into EM solvers and meshing and Smith charts and tuning and waveguides and cavity resonances and how dual-mode horns actually work and the mechanisms of Mie scattering from large hydrometeors and Rayleigh scattering from small ones. aircraft scatter, tropospheric ducting, Fresnel zones and all the other things I mess about with. Machining is very much a side gig, supporting the rest of the "messing with microwaves and mmwaves" stuff. The vacuum chuck project which is in the pipeline is so I can make Fresnel Zone Plate lenses to focus mmwave signals. Now THEY are quite spooooky and I'm going to have a challenge in explaining how they work, without invoking deep Physics.
You're a genius, Mister
Haha, I am only a beginner at machining Andrei. RUclips machinists have inspired me to learn how to make things with care and precision
Back in my army days I was a single side band radio operator. I had good fun sending messages using my best deep radio voice spouting the nato spelling alphabet using it as much as I could . 🙃 often listening in on foreign transmissions in languages I didn't understand in off times . I got a kick out of using the transmit booster . It made an awesome noise sounding like a jet engine spooling up . While doing so it was a good thing to stay clear of the antenna for it could literally fry ones eggs . I know it isn't like the beam transmitters that you construct, awesome stuff by the way , the math involved in that just boggles my mind . It is safe to say I suck at math but am good at making seat of the pants or rather measureless objects 😆. Your skills sir are very well fit to your craft 👍
The nice thing about doing this stuff in the 2020s is the availability of astoundingly good modelling software so you don't need to do all the horrific mathematical shenanigans that used to be necessary. OK, the models are complex, with perhaps 20 million cells, and for each cell, the computer solves Maxwell's equations for the fields in that cell, and then recalculates all of the neighbour cells, and then all their neighbours, at about 100 million cells per second for a few thousand seconds, perhaps 200 billion separate calculation sets, and spits out the far-field pattern, the impedance curve of the antenna and various other useful parameters over a range of frequencies, plus it creates a 3D model of the antenna pattern that you can fly around and zoom in and out and get a really good feel for how the thing works. And the software is free and open source. What a time to be alive....
I love the channel, guy. RF tech and machining are two of my biggest interests. Ever since I saw a tear-down video of a 4G LTE base station diplexer, I've had a burning desire to learn more about the alien-looking technology inside. That incomprehensible maze of cavities seems to hold the mysteries of the universe.
Circulators and magic tees and rat-races and 90 degree hybrids all seem like magic. Actually, circulators probably ARE magic now I think about it...
There is def magic here, I just can’t put my finger on it, yet. Clue me in if You will, fundamentally what’s RF tech all about? I’m not asking for the nerdy answer, I want what’s beyond all that.
Some very interesting projects there. Nice to see openEMS in use. I'd love a Bridgeport mill but I'm sick of fixing and restoring things for the time being so will get a new mill for now and probably try to find a good Bridgeport in the future. I'd need a trailer to transport it otherwise the transport would cost a fortune. I've got a nice little Boley lathe ideal for small components or turning down tuning screws from grubscrews. Interesting video.
Next project uses OpenEMS to design an oval iris matching section from WR90 rectangular guide to a round phasing section and step to excite a dual mode Pickett-Potter feedhorn. I'm doing the machining right now, not sure if I can get the video out tonight as planned, but watch this space...
Everyone needs to have a drawer filled with proudly and professionally home made trinkets that all have one thing in common, only you understand what they are for and if they are ever found after one departs whomever finds them can only scratch their heads in awe and wonder gazing upon the collection of ..... things .
These days though, the Internet Never Forgets, so at least everyone will know what many of the weird things in my drawers are. Apart form those that even I don't recognise. Who puts those weird bits of useful-looking metal in there if it wasn't me? Aliens! It must be Aliens!!
This is so cool! I actually work in a tool and die shop that does plaster castings as well as lost wax for microwave guides for industrial communications. It is really cool to see what this actually does!
Oh cool right back at ya! Good to know the commercial stuff is made by actual humans!
Hello, as a fellow electronics engineer I find that my path is cery similar to yours, but instead of microwaves I started making guitars, to the point that I now consider more of a guitar maker than a player. I even got my first published article in the magazine of the American Guild of Luthiers a few weeks back. Thabks fors your videos!
Oh very very cool indeed!
OMG that was so interesting, thanks for sharing that...
I had a lot of fun putting that talk together. I'm always fascinated by the detail of other folks' hobbies and pastimes so I thought I'd explain what I get up to in my lab and workshops at home.
Watching the part about casting I was thinking about when I was making the the tiny K band horns using investment casting, and there it was. The horns were modeled in Fusion, then printed using a resin 3D printer. The resin used was a special material that produced almost zero ash when burnt out. PLA may work, but the ash content may be too high for fine detail. I have used FDM 3D prints for Petrobond casting, but the rough surface grabs the sand and it is hard to pull the pattern out without disrupting the sand.
Your video about the investment cast horns was an inspiration to me. That video I posted was from before I thought of publishing on RUclips, it was a lecture I presented at the national convention of the Radio Society of Great Britain. I'm working on some casting patterns for antenna drive gearboxes made with some printed pattern pieces filled and painted and sanded. Not tried resin patterns yet. Thanks for the inspiration to try this sort of thing
This work is lovely. Very pleasing to the eye. I've dreamed of doing similar work. Especially the antenna mounting solutions you've come up with. I'm not much of a microwave experimenter. I did look at working EME in the distant past. But that was thirty years ago... This video is very encouraging. Thanks for posting it!!
I'm just completing another batch of clamps of a different type, they are to support some big 432 MHz EME yagis. Soon I need to make a new az/el mount for a new solid 2 metre dish that just arrived on my driveway as if by magic (Thanks David and son!) That's designed to be good to over 30 GHz, so I'm hoping to use it on receive at least on 47 GHz to see if I can hear signals reflected off the moon. Making serious power at 6 mm wavelength is very very hard indeed, so I rather doubt that I'll be anywhere near to two-way communication for some time unless someone has a 5 metre plus solid high precision dish and suitable feed. Lots of fun ahead.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I hate to admit this, but this video is extremely captivating. Approaching sexy.... Ye gods and little fishes. Thanks for putting this up here!!
Beautiful collection of work. Presumably you can test these creations? Homemade anechoic chamber?
The great thing about the super-high frequencies these tiny antennas run at is that you can just test out in the garden. The wavelength is less than 2.5 mm. Trees and bushes and walls act as absorbers. Even at lower frequencies around 5.7 to 24 GHz, putting the antennas on a short rotatable pole allows you to characterise the antenna pattern and compare it with the finite-element simulation. On 10 GHz/3cm, I use the Sun as a signal source to check the pattern and performance, comparing the thermal energy of the 6000K photosphere with cold sky at less than 20K. The there are amateur radio transmission beacons on large steerable dishes following the Moon so I can test reception of the reflected signals. It's very close to the limits of Physics, but certainly feasible from a setup that will fit into a suburban garden. Huge fun.
It appears the saying was wrong, and should be updated to: All roads lead to foundry and CNC. I'm absolutely foreign to EM transmission technologies (Short of installing Motorola 900MHz gear in my early 20's), and I'm not even sure why this video appeared in my youtube suggestions, but I couldn't help but notice our paths have quite a few parallels, though I get the impression you'rer about a standard deviation smarter than I am. I too started from an ICT background, then found an unquenchable thirst to work with machinery, got a mill and a lathe, quickly fell in love with the processes and have ultimately been aiming at CNC and foundry solutions ever since the idea-to-material limitations became apparent with the equipment I had at hand. In any case, you've caught my interest - even if your casually throw callsigns and RF parlance around like it's patently obvious and I'm left having to rewind and google what the hell you're on about.
That video was actually part of a lecture I gave to the Radio Society of Great Britain Convention last year, so the target demographic was way different from the general RUclips audience, hence I could make huge assumptions about the knowledge level and jargon-awareness of those watching. The current subjects I'm covering are heavily biased towards machining, but upcoming vids will cover a lot of antenna and waveguide and microstrip and co-planar waveguide and moonbounce hardware and dielectric lensing and, well anything I get interested in. I'm a total beginner at machining really, but it's much like coding and Physics and Maths, another part of my toolkit for exploring the murky corners of technology. You nailed it totally with the phrase "idea-to-material limitations". Pushing against those limits is where life starts to get properly interesting.
What a Rollercoaster. Good shit!
I use CT-90 tapping and drilling fluid too. For the uninitiated it's a proper, thick, stinky old world style drilling, tapping & machining fluid. For the record it warns not to use on yellow metals and "orange" metals. Okay it genuinely warns for yellow metals, I invented the orange metals bit. Gets more corrosive at higher temperatures. Obviously not a problem when hand tapping. I've had had some staining on copper and brass in my scrap tests.
Great content by the way. Just the ticket.
Ear-wax is a good description of the stuff. Works nicely on stainless, hard steels and mild, also aluminium. I've used it a few times on copper where the surface is going to be milled afterwards. Sometimes I use it mixed with WD40 and way oil as a cutting lube on really horrible steels where I'm struggling to get a decent surface finish. Lovely stuff. I have a few other fluids that are non-staining, there's some stuff with PTFE that I use, but I can't find any supplies of TapMagic for Aluminium in the UK. Most of the time on copper I just use an SAE30 oil with no additives or WD40. On aluminium I'm finding that a blast of air and isopropyl alcohol works really well, although I think my Noga-Cool Mini isn't ideal for it, perhaps I should save up my pocket-money for a Fogbuster.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Hahaha earwax. I should note I've got the big bottle liquid variety of CT90. I find liquid floats the chips away better and gets in the threads and parting off gaps better. Aerosols are for brake and clutch cleaner only.. not cutting fluid. I use diesel or paraffin for ally as per tradition and sometimes use them on stubborn copper, evil sharp tooling with proper angles and clearances are the only option for recalcitrant fussy copper grades as you know!
Not much else works, speeds and feeds are also way more critical on copper than any other material in my opinion.
It's so expensive though I rarely use it for anything besides plumbing or electronics with bloody good flux.
As an aside a razor sharp shear tool ground from hss (that weird flat nosed angular one that's always on the edge of the chip tray) will give excellent results in even the worst grades of materials especially soft or gummy ones like copper, lead, aluminium, plastic etc. If you don't have one making one is a ten minute job and it's a must have for copper finishing passes.
Barring that a broken insert with a sharp point can work wonders on mega hard or mega gummy stuff for removing stock without gumming up or chip welding.
In the past bacon fat, tallow or lard were common apparently. Though.. I shan't be trying them though for the stink and the cleanup!
Keep on keeping on. I do enjoy the content. If you made it this far good on ya and have a great day!
@@ianphilip6281 Full-fat milk was also used for lubricant on copper, but I'm sticking with either Tellurium or Zirconium copper alloys. I make the big heatspreaders from Sulphur copper now and that takes a nice surface finish and doesn't eat taps. I used to pay around £450 for a 4 metre bar of 4" x 0.5" C101, but now two metres of C111 is about the same price. I hate to think what it will be next time I buy some. I should have stocked up while it was "cheap". Ha!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves too right. Keep a bloody good stash where and when you can get it! Retirement fund almost. Copper in the stash is every bit as good as money in the bank. I'll pass on the milk though being lactose intolerant, thanks all the same. Probably ruins a nice hot drink with chunky curdled swarf in it anyway...
Cheers for the info on the copper grades, useful stuff to have in the noggin.
I meant what I said about the shear tool though for multi micron finishing passes or very thin walled parts. Make it, use it.. love it!
You'll know when you try to take too big a bite with one.. Nothing will happen except heat and noise. That was an amusing experience REALLY glad it was a scrap part mind you.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Real Yorkshiremen use Henderson's Relish!
Sir coming from another machinist you are more than on the right course. I became interested in microwave communication when studying for my extra class license and find your channel very educational. I have subscribed to you and look forward to more enlightenment. 73 OM AI4JN Michael
Hi Michael, its huge fun finding out how to do interesting radio projects using all the different machining techniques, plus 3D print, metalcasting, electroforming, sheet metal work, TIG welding as well as mechanical simulations/CAD and electromagnetic simulators. All of this is totally different from my day job. So long as nobody thinks I know what I'm doing, all will be cool! My mantra for hobbies is "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and I give myself permission to fail". That seems to be working in terms of the ENORMOUS amount of fun I'm having. I passed the US Extra and 20 wpm test back in the 1990s and held K1NS until I let it expire by accident. I really should take the Tech exam so I can renew my Extra. I'll try to add some interesting projects to the channel soon. 73 Neil G4DBN
@@MachiningandMicrowaves So you're a subscriber to the I'm not a Gynecologist but I will have a look at it, outlook. What a great starting point to exploration. You downplay your machining skills but as a former professional machinist myself I can say you have "all done extremely well" and while on the subject of British humour the inclusion of Amy really makes you videos fun as well as informative while keeping the expectations under control :) Just for the benefit of less radio active viewers may I suggest a brief explanation of what the various parts actually do and where they fit in.
@@RobB_VK6ES I'll be using the second channel to do some in-depth explanatory vids that would otherwise upset the RUclips algorithm, and trying to get videos out more regularly.
Lol, I came for the machining, the rest....well you might have well been speaking Klingon. Still enjoy your vids, and still listened to every word. I enjoy all of those machinist channels you mentioned, I know you didn't list all of them publicly, but in case you have never seen it I HIGHLY recommend "This Old Tony" He is very funny, and very educational.
EDIT: The tour of all of the items you have machined for projects was great, you did a very good job. I know zero about microwave transmission, but could appreciate looking at the parts you have made. Your welding will improve in time with practice.
I admire your confidence about an improvement in my welding skills being possible with practice. I definitely agree, but only because it's *fundamentally impossible* for them to get any worse. The effort and skill that ToT puts into lighting, production and sound recording are very much evident in the quality of his vids. His typography and editing trickery are totally on point. I need to organise things better so I can improve the lighting design for filming around the machines. I just wish my horrible Sony ZV-1 was more suited to this use. Second-worst camera I've ever owned. Worst purchase decision since that orange second-hand Austin Allegro I bought in 1981. Bad times....
@@MachiningandMicrowaves you are doing just fine
How am I just now coming across your channel.. This is COOL ! ! ! ! !
Stealth and secrecy are my watchwords!
Im surprised you got into machining so late.
I had other things on my mind for the intervening 40 years since Bob Cawley introduced me to the world of machining! Also, my father was able to make most bits I needed in his workshop, so there wasn't a huge incentive.
Absolutely fascinating :-)
I certainly had a lot of fun putting the talk together
It exist vax filament made specifically for doing lost wax casting and that will work allot better than lost pla casting
Thanks for the info, I'll investigate as there some parts I need to make that really need the lost wax process and centrifugal casting. I'll have to make a video when I work out how to get good results. Good to know.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I am happy that you found it informing.
It exist several manufacturers of investment/lost wax filament for regular machines, the good thing with some of them is that they are still vax so you will be able to smooth them and correct imperfections before casting.
It also exist several investment resins for the resin based printers that give a similar preform, those are mostly used for jewellery as they have exceptional high resolution.
I personally work with designing 3d printers but I haven't tested any lost wax filament yet but I know some people that have done regular lost vax casting in the past and I doubt that pla would be a improvement on a more than 10 000 years old technology 🙂 especially as pla would be allot harder to get out of the mold
@@aggese The most interesting development for me is the new dielectric UV resin for microwave applications that Rogers are producing. That should allow me to make some very interesting variable-density lenses for mmwave radio antennas. rogerscorp.com/advanced-electronics-solutions/radix-printable-dielectric
I'll have to do a video on that when I finally get my hands on some of the resin
As someone who makes their living doing stuff to computers instead of real work. I appreciate not having to do real work for a living while, at the same time, long for tangible changes to show I've done something.
My entire career in IT has resulted in inconveniencing some electrons, briefly, to change patterns of light on screens and sometimes make marks on paper. Nothing tangible at all is left to show for it. None of my code or network configs from more than about seven years ago remain. Stuff I made from wood and metal is mostly still around, as is some of the electronic stuff I made. Many of the willow baskets I wove now existing only in photographs and books, having worn out, rotted or been eaten by woodworm. Lots of words I've written are in old magazines that have gone to recycling. Most of the furniture I've made over the years should be around for a while longer, and the green oak framed sun room I built might last centuries if it is looked after properly. When it's finally dismantled, someone might wonder who carved "NRS 2009" in so many places hidden from view, but the willow corn-dollies I hid in there will have disappeared I expect. There are about 50 corn-dollies I've made that have been hidden in dark corners of buildings I've visited in several countries, and there are quite a lot of oak trees in Yorkshire that are a result of my guerilla planting. The best we can hope for is to remain as memories and perhaps as stories, but I'm going to keep making stuff in my unending battle against entropy and the eventual heat-death of the Universe.
Longest video I have ever watched when I had not a clue about what was being discussed
I figured you were in the UK. Insomnia? Just noticed I used my other channel to comment. Still smallcnclathes!
So many channels, so little sleep....
What was the free software package you use for analysis & design? Also, what is the spreadsheet you use and/or is it available to the public? I know less than nothing about microwaves and such, but am very interested in home shop machining. I'm mostly interested in the spreadsheet in order to look at it to see how it is designed for the designed it helps you with, i.e., it seems to be a great example of how to use spreadsheets for Engineering analysis & design, which I want to become better at (the use of spreadsheets).
For ideas on the anodizing, finishing, etc., take a look at Mark Presling's channel here on RUclips.
The EM Solver is OpenEMS, running under Gnu Octave on Windows. I do have MATLAB but Octave works really well. I use Paraview for visualisation of .vtk files. I have a paid-for copy of Eagle PCB CAD so get a licence for Fusion 360 included, that has good thermal and mechanical simulation tools. QUCS Studio, ELSIE, Simscale, Sonnet, LTSpice and ATLC2 are other tools I use a lot. There are some excellent design spreadsheets on W1GHZ's site, I use f1frv.free.fr/main3e_Filtres_LP.html for coaxial low pass filter design. That's a good example. dc2light.co.uk/SlottedWaveguide-2020.xlsm is another good example for waveguide slot array antenna design.
I'll take a loot at Mark's channel, thanks!
Wow interesting stuff. Hopefully I might get there someday. Well done and keep up the good work
Mans. 9H1GB
It is all Joe Pieczynski's fault, I have almost the same engine lathe that he has (his is badged as a Clausing Colchester). I chose my lathe because I'd seen his video on thread-cutting in reverse with the tool inverted. Fantastic
Impressive. Is this your full time job or a hobby?
Totally a hobby, I'm a cybersecurity architect in real life!
I personally believe TIG, MIG, and Arc welding is a black art. You either sell your soul to be good at it, or (like me) you use the "Lay it on thick, and grind it back to pretty" technique.
When I was trained as an engineer (Many moons ago) I had to arc weld up a bracket as a test piece to be marked. My stick welding back then was REALLY bad. Think "lumpy porridge THROWN at the metal join" and you get the idea. Knowing that my welding on this test wasn't going to get me a passing grade, I looked at the technical drawings of this bracket, and realised that all the welds were depicted as perfectly smooth radii........... So I over welded the joins until they were about 1/4" proud, then used bench/die grinders to make my workpiece match the drawings perfectly.
When I handed it to the examiner he looked at it and said "......erm ......... What have you done to the welds?".
'I've made it as per the diagram sir. The diagram shows radii that can't be achieved by just using a welder, so I've dressed them back to spec".
My instructor piped in at that point and said (Knowingly) "So this isn't an attempt to hide sub par welding ability then?".
"Oh, no sir. All those welds looked absolutely textbook perfect sir".
There was silence for a while, then my instructor said "You realise that you need this to be marked at over 50% to pass this course module, and the marks are 50/50 for weld quality and accuracy of the test piece".
"No sir, I didn't know that. I just made EXACTLY what I was instructed to sir".
More silence, then the examiner said "Well, I can't deny that this IS the most accurate version of this test piece I've ever had submitted. It's well within tolerance, and the drawings DO show all the corners as even curves, so I can give you full marks for accuracy....... But as I can't SEE the welds, I can't give you a mark for those, and the pass grade is OVER 50%..........". With that my instructor said "Allow me", grabbed my work piece and jogged off into the workshop. We both followed and saw him grab a hammer, then give my bracket a couple of whacks with it. The examiner asked what the instructor was doing, and he replied "You might not be able to SEE the weld quality, but you just observed me demonstrate that it's got adequate penetration and strength to put up with a spot of stress testing.......... That's GOTTA be worth a few of marks?". It seems it was. :D
I scraped through with a pass and got to stay on the course........... So, as far as I'm concerned, "Using a grinder to be the welder you ain't" is a perfectly acceptable metal finishing technique. Since then I only really MIG welded until recently, when I decided to rebuild my trusty........ Sorry, "RUSTY" old utility trailer, and realised that my ancient 100A MIG wasn't going to be anywhere near man enough for sticking a couple lengths of 5mm angle iron together. So I bought a cheep Chinese inverter stick setup and went to town on the project. By the end I realised that my welds were still pig ugly, but if you can grind them back to "Pretty", and STILL bash 'um about for a bit with a big hammer without them breaking, well...... It's welded isn't it. :D
Absolutely brilliant story! I am watching all the videos on TIG that I can find, trying to get to the point where I don't always have to machine off the uglies. Huge respect to folks who have mastered the skills and hand-eye-brain coordination needed to make beautiful-looking welds. Lucky for me that my new welding job involves sheet metal and the joints MUST be ground out and polished flat, so I get a free pass so long as I don't blow any holes. I think I might have to book myself on to a proper TIG training course to debug my poor technique and just do endless practice until I'm slightly less terrible at this. The one great thing is that so long as the dimensions are right and the electrical joints are smooth and solid, the microwave radio energy doesn't care about how the welds look, or if I've cheated and ground them flat. At least I know I'm a rotten welder, and my expectations are rock-bottom, so every time I make a joint that looks moderately acceptable, it's a cause for (brief) joy and celebration.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Yeah. I occasionally fluke a nice looking bead, but invariably it's the only one on whatever I'm making that looks perfect, so it would look odd if I didn't grind it back to match the rest. :(
Hey Niel, what do you think about broadband fractal antennas? Are they worth to machine such antennas? I relish the content of your channel. Keep it up pal! You do a awesome job.
I was reading an article recently about three-dimensional "fractal tree" monopole antennas which are almost impossible to machine, but can be 3D printed and then coated and electroplated. www.jpier.org/PIERC/pierc86/02.18030505.pdf Most of the recent work I've seen about Sierpinski and Koch fractals has been intended for UWB applications, aimed at getting better than 25 bits/Hz/sec for mainly indoor applications, and are usually using PCB techniques. I'm more interested in highly directive arrays, so patch arrays and spirals and slot arrays are closer to my area or interest, but there is a specific application where I think a fractal approach might work, for feeding a large dish on multiple bands at 1.3, 2.3, 3.4 and 5.7 GHz. The big issue with multiband antennas for weak-signal extreme range comms is that wideband transmit and receive systems at those frequencies are not practical for anyone on a hobby budget, so you end up needing a multi-way coaxial relay, or two layers of relays to do the necessary switching, and that has an impact on noise figure of the receive system. Up to a point, transmit losses can be compensated by more power, but when a GaN device for the higher bands costs more than $400, that's a high price to pay for using a single antenna element.
I got rather excited by the title of this, but it's actually 2.9 to 14.6 GHz. Boooo. www.mwrf.com/technologies/passive-components/article/21844655/fractal-antenna-aims-at-29-to-146-ghz
There is a very specific application where a fractal wideband antenna might be a solution, that's for a Reverse Beacon, where tens or hundreds of receive systems are installed by enthusiasts across a country (similarly to the ADS-B amateur network) using omnidirectional antennas with a high gain in the vertical plane feed front-end converters which listen on the digital-mode segments of 2.3, 3.4, 5.7, 10 and perhaps 24 GHz using SDR back-ends and either decode locally or stream segments of those bands to a central cloud server, so I could transmit a digital mode signal and get back the responses from a huge area. That might provide some interesting possibilities for real-time propagation mapping and 2D investigations or rain-scatter (and snow/hail scatter) as well as off-axis aircraft scatter. It will be a big project, but the beauty is that folks without radio transmitting licences can participate in the project and help provide a really useful resource for testing of antennas and propagation research. At present, the antenna choices are rather limited, mostly being slot arrays, but I'm sure we can come up with something more wideband. Biggest obstacle is that I don't have access to the professional antenna modelling software suites, so I'm limited to what I can do in OpenEMS or by asking for favours from folks in the industry.
Thanks for the quick and In depth response. I look forward to your projects. I'm glad that you are as passionate on this topics as I do. Great job that you do, keep it up! 👍
The PDF of the fraktal Antenna looks intriguing the paper uses a Makerbot replicator X2 ist a FDM printer 🤔 if there is any Step file from this Antenna then it would be doable for me to print it out by the condition that it wouldn't be larger than the printing bed. I own a Geeetech A10 pro and a ANYCUBIC Photon Zero 🤔 btw. STL and Mesh files aren't reliable enough for such funktioal purposes I rather tend for the format 3MF, AMF or STEP files to get dimensional accurate functional parts. STL and mesh is more for childrens toy and paperweights
this is unbelievably great stuff. i have some industrial filters etc that seem to b e composed of super alloys. have you discovered much about the composition? I could probably swing you a slab or two that i'm sure you'd find fun atleast
122GHz, that’s just nuts, I still struggle getting my head around anything above 1GHz
Should be on 135 GHz soon, and if I run out of other jobs, I'll be looking at going to 241/248/288 GHz, with waveguides around 1mm diameter. That should be an even jollier jape. 24 and 47 GHz first though, I want to see if I can hear signals bounced off the moon on those bands.
AlN disc between transistor and heat-spreader reduce capacitive effects dramatically at these high frequencies.
250w radio "easily" becomes 500w radio :)
I've heard of that at VHF using switching mosfets where the tab is the drain, but all RF devices for UHF and above these days seem to be designed with the source bonded to the copper baseplate of the device and that needs to be either soldered to a copper heatspreader or at least clamped to it directly, either with an Indium tape or a high performance heat transfer compound, sometimes with the underside of the PCB soldered to the spreader as well. Do you have any references for the types of device where an AlN washer would be useful? I have an idea that it might be very useful in H-bridge amplifiers using all N-channel devices for a kilowatt at 136 kHz, and I have a nice box of IRFP250N mosfets in my parts store. On those, the drain is connected to the metal backplate so needs to be well insulated but still shift the heat.
This is amazing stuff. I mostly muck around with TTL and microcontrollers... microwave is black magick!
I did a load of work on MECL-III logic chips in 1976, clocking them at what then seemed a very fast 280 MHz, with transmission line interconnects. That was my introduction to stopping thinking about PCB traces as conductors, as there were times the voltage at one end of a track was the opposite sense to that at the other end. I'm doing some work with grounded coplanar waveguide on PCBs at the moment, that is an even deeper level of spooky. I limit myself to PICs and FPGAs so I don't go down rabbit holes having fun coding stuff.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves once the frequencies get so high that what I consider to be "the laws of physics" break down... when what I see as one conductor starts to become a circuit in it's own right.... I stand in awe at the doings of dark wizards beyond my ken.... but it's still nice to watch and antennas of all kinds are like works of art. :)
the cross section of the vacuum chuck design looks a lot like a ermmm 🔫
Hi Neil, great presentation of your work!
Henning DF9IC
Thanks Henning, I'm having fun in the machine shop!
This kind of thing makes a fella wish they got started early in life on the subject, I'm about half done probably much past half, and wish I done many things , and feel I wasted Soo much time!
I didn't start messing about with machining until I was 60, so I have a huge amount to cram in to my remaining years on this planet. No regrets about starting late though, I was WAAAAAYY to busy doing other exciting stuff before this current enthusiasm took over my life.
Just whow!
I appreciate your work, intriguing! - from a millennial in the US.
32:57 did you build a housing & termination adapter for that isolator? (Assuming that's an isolator - I'm no microwave expert or rf engineer).
How large is your shop/garage and door? If used 1990's Cincinnati cnc machines are as readily available in the UK as they are in the US, you may be able to get into an Arrow or Sabre 500 for a reasonable price, as I did. They often have 4th axis option, and capable of 5 axis simultaneous, I believe.
Yes, that was a drop-in isolator. I bought a batch from the manufacturer and had some spares, and a friend needed one with connectors, so I milled up a box. When I built the machine shop inside my barn, I made the door 6 ft wide by 8ft tall in case I needed to bring in some big old iron. The used market is not as good as in the US, but there are some good bargains around. Prices have been very high recently though, and I'm not keen on spending a lot on an old machine in the current market. There is an auction sale in two weeks that looks interesting.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I wish you luck in finding the right machine
@@tannerbean3801 I'll get there some time soon!
Can a cnc lathe cut a parabolic shape? Mine can’t but it is 30 years old! Some cam programs would break it down to lots of straight lines
My home-made version will be able to, but that will be designed from the ground up to accept equations. Straight-line approximations are OK if the step sizes are small enough. I've not looked at whether LinuxCNC will work OK for this, but I'm going to have a lot of fun finding out.
This is a great repository of your accomplishments, and I'm thankful that you're sharing it! I'm only getting into radio waves very lightly, in the interest of extending my wifi range to my shed. Is there any advice you can give to a novice looking to make a directional antenna for wifi frequencies?
Main advice is not to believe anything you see on RUclips about wifi antennas. Nor anything you see in adverts for magical wifi antennas. I was talking about this exact subject with some friends half an hour ago on a radio tech discussion group and there are some horrifying examples of nonsense out there on the internet. I used to do long-range wifi bridging and comms links professionally, although we mainly used dedicated point-to-point systems with high gain panel antennas at 5.8 GHz. There are lots of variables to account for, such as neighbours with wifi or volumetric alarms systems or a myriad of other 2.4 GHz radio systems that can overwhelm the wanted wifi signal, so if you want to make a link work, you need to find if it's possible to make the receiving antennas unable to hear the interfering systems. That is hugely tough if the other systems are behind one of your endpoints, as any high-gain antenna will amplify the interfering signal as much as the wanted one. If you are sure that you just need additional range and there is nothing causing co-channel interference, and there is a free channel available that is different from the main one you use (lot of ifs here) then what I did was to connect an access point to my main hub using a 25 metre ethernet cable and mounted it so it could see through a single-glazed upstairs window, then installed another AP in the workshop about 40 metres away. That works fine, but I don't have a huge amount of local 2.4 GHz traffic, and the far end can't hear ANY other wifi signals as it's mounted inside a brick building, again looking through a single-glazed window. Double glazed windows are often metallized and you will lose 99% of the signal trying to get through them. It's almost impossible to suggest a perfect solution that works for all cases, and the first step for me is always to connect an analyser to see what signals each end in hearing, and whether there are microwave ovens in the coverage zone, or burglar alarms or things that are only used during working hours or only in the evening or only after bedtime, then start the design. Sorry I don't have any simple answers. I guess I should make some videos about it, but then everyone else does that and 99% of them are wrong.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves WOW, thank you for the quick and detailed response! I really appreciate it!
i didnt understand anything, but that was beautoful
I think it would need to be ten hours long to explain everything, or maybe half a lifetime! Glad you enjoyed it, I had fun putting it together
Which video is it that shows the 122ghz horn you made in the first video attached to the semiconductor transmitter pcb?
I am a Unity developer and make models too on computers.
I've not published the W2IMU and grooved choke horns, but I did one two on the simple horn at ruclips.net/video/X4UO6juGioA/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/XW-Q3hJ70xc/видео.html I need to get on with a load of dual-mode feedhorns and some Pickett-Potters
Other parts are at www.g4dbn.uk/?page_id=1492
www.g4dbn.uk/?p=1586 www.g4dbn.uk/?p=1504 www.g4dbn.uk/?p=1390
www.g4dbn.uk/?p=1367
I hope to get round to doing videos on making those in the next few weeks
Machinist, electronics guru, and a microwave magician. Jack of all trades, aren't ya?
Microwave electronics is still black magic. You can't convince me otherwise. Even if I someday understand all of it, it's _still_ black magic. I'll stick to wrangling E-field pixies, thank you.
Grounded coplanar waveguide is DEFINITELY Magick of a high order, specially those transitions that just look like a short circuit.. Current vid is about a stepped coaxial filter where an inch of copper tube looks like a coil and an inch diameter disk looks like a capacitor and the whole arrangement acts as a low-pass filter.
I nearly set fire to the shop last night while shooting a stunt involving lasers, blowtorch, oil mist, brake cleaner, and a pile of oily swarf. I daren't even put the out-takes into a blooper reel, in case my mother sees what happened. (Hi mum, I know you are reading this!)
I still have BOTH eyebrows, but the first three seconds of the clip are golden. The other two minutes are me in firefighting mode in pitch darkness, just making things worse and laughing maniacally. I don't think I need to reshoot that particular scene, thank goodness.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Just... don't burn the house down, okay?
I have to confess for some parts of it im not sure you're still speaking english🙂.... like many on hear i have engineering experience and am able to understand general nuts n bolts chat...but I'm honestly lost with some of the terms you use.... this is not a criticism at all... I thoroughly enjoy your videos...I wonder if you could do a short idiots guide showing what these things do and maybe why your meticulous attention to detail is so important..... I suspect there may perhaps be others who like to understand your hobby in a more general way....I'd certainly enjoy it... maybe thats a cheeky request and I should do my homework.... p.s is Amy inspired by Holly from red dwarf.... just asking cos...well... if you know.. you know !!!... stay safe and keep up the great work..."i think"...😁
AIMEE is a mixture of the big sister I never had, Servalan, Holly, both Kochanskis, Lieutenant Gay Ellis, my Religious Education teacher (who was a white witch), one of my old managers and an ex-colleague with a PhD in linguistics. That particular video was a lecture I gave to the Radio Society of Great Britain's convention, so it made enormous assumptions about the common body of knowledge shared with the audience. I'm intending to go into the dark corners of what I get up to with radio experimentation in upcoming videos, but I like the idea of a sort of glossary of terms in video form. That is perhaps a good use for #shorts, but maybe a Quinn Dunki-style sidebar would be easier. In my case it would be a visit to the mystic Tangent Plane, where time stops. A bit like Story Time at infant school. A place out of time, where things went quiet, we sat in a circle on the floor, and Miss Markham read from one of The Story Books.
I like microwave ..and the presision
And the thick 7/8 and 1.7/8 cabels
I got 3M dish and 2 x 1.8M
I Work on 1296 2.4 5.8 10.2 to 100GHz
This realy separate the "" walkitalki / HF "" users from Men!!
Oooh, controversial! I have an 8-petal 3m Prodelin/General Dynamics solid dish, another Prodelin 2.4m offset 4-petal and a 1.8m one-piece offset solid, plus six other prime and offset dishes. I should get my new Kuhne 47 GHz transverter next week. I need more power on 24 GHz for EME adn I only have 22W on 10 GHz, but I'm building GaN amplifiers for 10 G using CMPA801xxx MMICs that should do 37 and 43 watts saturated. That should be a nice signal when bounced off the moon. I hope to get on 13cm EME soon, and I have equipment for 9cm and 6cm as well. I might try the 3m dish on 23cm, but it might be better to make a 4.5 metre mesh dish to do 23cm seriously. My friend Howard G4CCH has a nice 5.6 metre dish that I made some parts for recently. That is a good size for a small garden in the centre of a village!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Respect
If splitting a 20 light cord And press tune
Is complicated for some. Well okay ,.
I find the High end way more interestin
All my dishes are pro solid .. working on getting
A 6M solid military DiSh hold
I would love to listen for the Voyager sattelites!!
You amps sounds like a challang !!
The gain in the dish/es may be huge on 10GHz@22Watt
Greetings from Denmark 🇩🇰 🖖 🇩 🇰 🖖 🇩🇰
OZ1**
We are nye building a 1296 repeater
Comet GP98 7/8 60M Hardline 155M antenne hight
Near 9000 Aalborg ... BUUUUT
6Cavety filter ... @250/300Watt are hard to find
IT Will run 50+Watt
Ther is a Lot of 1296 10 Watt All mode radio out THERE today
And only way to rattel the """ waklitalki bums """ is to BUILD
Somthing that is 100% over kill soooo
We just do that SWEDISH ERIKSON
2X125Watt Vfet 1296MHz running 50+Watt
The comet 98 is a 300watt spesial repeater model
At 36:35 you refer to yourself as "amateur radio".
With the amazing knowledge you have, at what point would you consider someone "professional radio".
Looks like "genius radio" from here!
Heh heh, the hobby is called Amateur Radio because we don't get paid to do it! Some radio hams are radio professionals in their work lives, but a lot of us aren't. I've just been doing this for a long time. I started messing with radio and electronics at nine years old, back in the 1960s and haven't stopped. I passed the exams to get my amateur radio licence as soon as I was permitted, at the age of 14. I'm pretty much a n00b at machining, but I'm trying to learn and practice by doing real radio engineering jobs as machining and design projects. I still have a day job though, doing cybersecurity and forensics, so I can't put as much time into radio and machining as I would like.
Watched it all and didnt understand a word you said...
In my defence, that was a lecture I did for a technically-aware group of viewers at the Radio Society of Great Britain national convention, so I was able to assume that the audience were pretty much aware of the jargon and techniques I referred to. Definitely rather tricky material for a general RUclips audience. If I'd added sufficient explanation, it would have been three hours long!
I didn't understand a single word.
Why not spend some of the money you make from your hand made high precision parts on a CNC machine, I think viewers would appreciate that
I'd have to spend 20 years making parts to buy a useful CNC, but perhaps it will be possible to raise some finance. I'll buy lottery tickets tonight!
Actually, it might take 30 years
I wouldn't call what you do "amateur". Far from it.
I think the most useful definition of "Amateur Radio" is that we don't get paid to do it. Some hams work in electronic or radio systems engineering, but a lot of us don't and just do this stuff for fun. This hobby has kept me totally engrossed since I was ten years old back in 1968. There's always some new aspect or technique or complex mathematical technique or simulation tool to try, and we can waste as much time on it as we like, without finance folks and management being involved in any way at all. Marvellous.
Amazing work and more importantly, amazing attitude towards the new techniques and methods! You are an inspiration. If you want to discuss Tig welding send me a message and we can chat. I would love to be of assistance.
My terrible TIG welding is actually improving all the time, but I wouldn't want to expose the world to it yet! I have one big problem that I need to fix. I need a brighter work light so I can see the line of the weld a little better, and I need to find a way to stop my mask from misting up. After a few minutes, I can't see anything and I have to remove the panel and wipe the face of the panel and the inside of the outer visor. The rest is just practice and getting better at controlling the arc with the pedal. I also need to make a fixture to give me some back-purge when I'm welding the caps on to feedhorns and welding the seams on rolled aluminium tubes and cones. Practice, practice and more practice. I have a job coming up on 3 months making a 1.3 GHz septum-polarised dish feedhorn, rolled from aluminium sheet and with an integral polariser which I'm intending to weld alond all the seams. That should be a good test of whether the practicing is actually making me improve. Nowhere to hide with that job.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves it sounds like you're on the right path. Aluminum is very much of a tattle tell when it comes to the quality of the machine whereas not so much with steel. A good backpurge follower is such a nice tool, I used it alongside solar flux for stainless steel to amazing results. A tiny jar will go a long way and you will see a night and day difference. Know that the offer is there if you need advice. There's nothing I love more than to share my passion with passionate people!
@@xavierdemers-bouchard2747 Super, I'll bear that in mind when I get stuck and can't control my puddles and end up blowing holes in things! I have GOT to get good at this.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves if that's your problem, consider a copper chilling block as they're called. You could machine a tight fitting negative plug for the inside of the cavity out of gummy copper (to quote your work hehe). Copper for aluminum and steel but aluminum is also great when used for steel. If the plug is too small then you can drill and machine a water channel and add a pump to circulate water through the copper plug and keep it from melting. This makes such a world of difference.
@@xavierdemers-bouchard2747 That could be the solution if back-purge and being more careful doesn't work. The last two horns I made form aluminium were 68 mm diameter with a 4mm wall and backplate and I got decent penetration and only messed up in one place where I let it get too hot and lost the corner. I let it cool, laid a bit more weld over the gap and machined it and NOBODY KNEW. I with I could get to the sort of standard that Jody reaches and 6061.com and the sheet metal work that Ron Covell does. Years of practice needed. Main thing is to keep improving and getting advice I guess.
Just came across your channel as I've bought my first lathe (Myford ML4) and am enjoying it a lot. It's great to find out you're also a ham! de Lee M0RQX. Subscribed.
Hi Lee, this radio hobby has kept me enthralled for more than fifty years now. I first messed with clocks but then when I was ten, I got into radio and electronics. The Reverend George Dobbs got me interested in getting a license so as soon as I was old enough, I passed the exam and became G8HYJ, then did the morse with help from G4BSS and G3EBH to become G4DBN. A few years later, I passed the exams and 20wpm morse test to get a US Extra license as K1NS but let it lapse. Must renew it..
It's a great hobby. I've been licensed since I was 10. I'm mostly a CW op and the idea of making CW keys is one of the reasons I bought the lathe. I will be watching your videos from now on for some tips! 73s @@MachiningandMicrowaves
@@leeguitar5210 I'd LOVE to make a proper pump key!
Yeah same, I'm also keen on bug keys so will attempt that also.@@MachiningandMicrowaves