Machining Microwave Coaxial Low Pass Filters Part 1

[@Blondihacks]

As is tradition. I got you covered, friend.

[@squelchstuff]

Yahtzee! Quinn has been summoned, and about time too.

[@someoneelse7629]

Fancy seeing you here, I came here from one of your videos... Are you also a amateur radio operator?

[@therealpanse]

5:20 came and went, I paused the video, saw this comment. Yes... as I expected. Now I can continue watching.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

"Who ya gonna call?" This episode is full of obscure cultural references beyond the "obvious" Ghostbusters" theme. Films, music, literature and popular culture themes are splattered generously throughout. I had ridiculous amounts of fun making this one. Those scientific papers are entirely real. AIMEE might have overstepped the mark with the recommendations from Venkman, Stantz and Spengler though. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Spengler I managed to get the Large Boulder the size of a Small Boulder reference in again with that un-noticed speck on the glue chuck [hangs head in shame] Episode 2 will be out as soon as I finish all the household chores I've been ignoring. Link to F1FRV's design sheet f1frv.free.fr/main3e_Filtres_LP.html

[@thomasklima215]

As an electrical engineer i thought this channel (which i found just today) was to scratch my "oh lets look at something more physical than electronics" itch. But from the second segment on it just tickled my fancy all over the different fields of science. Delightful stuff, thanks!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Always good to hear of an itch successfully being scratched. I might have to slip a bit of electronics in, but in general it'll be microstrip, resonators, filters and devices rather smaller than 0402 SMDs (beam-lead and flip-chip diodes), a bit of software, phase-locked loops, hydraulics, gimbals, electroforming, anodising, plating, Electromagnetic finite element solvers, a bit of maths and physics, radio propagation, Mie scattering, testgear, radio astronomy, RF lenses, coplanar waveguide and lots of different types of machining. Oh, and 3D printed radiofrequency lenses once I get some of that Rogers Radix resin.

[@crabmansteve6844]

I'm so glad I found this channel. I work for an ISP on an HFC plant, we've got RF and light, our hi-pass and lo-pass filters are like gold to us, the ones we use are ruggedized for use in some less than stellar places and expensive as sin.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

One of the 58 or so planned videos in my pipeline is about evanescent mode waveguide filters operating well beyond TE10 cutoff. Those are complete Magick, they don't even need end caps. you can see right through the guide, but the RF can't propagate through the short length of open guide and is trapped in a sort of passive electromagnetic jail. Spoooky stuff. Electroforming on dissolvable aluminium mandrels is on the agenda for later in the year, and it's time I revisited the 1.3 GHz rat-race coupler I made years ago, but this time for 2.3 GHz www.g4dbn.uk/?p=624

[@realfoggy]

You are like the British @thisoldtony . Love the machining and comedy. Keep it up.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Sadly, I lack Tony's skill, talent, accent, ideas, tech ability, dashing good looks and manicure, but I can do high-end silliness and hit my tolerances in a desperately amateur fashion, so that'll have to suffice! I try not to annoy proper machinists, metrologists and RF engineers by pretending to be some sort of education resource or cyber edition of the Machinery's Handbook. My slogans need to be "Doing Stuff the Wrong Way since the Sixties" and "Don't follow me, I'm lost as well". My late wife would give me hell about the amount of silliness in my vids, so I feel like a naughty schoolkid, gleefully defying Authority. There's certainly a bit of Caroline's benevolent critical appraisal and eye-rolling in AIMEE's "supportive" approach. It's a pity her voice synth can't do a passable snort of derision or giggle.

[@BravoCharleses]

@Machining and Microwaves Young man, we've seen them fingies. Ain't nobody can flex on your manicure.

[@AlessioSangalli]

I disagree, Mr. Machining and Microwaves actually shows some machining in his vijeos. ToT has so much talent and skill but sadly he cuts the machining part and replaces with gimmick

[@realfoggy]

@@AlessioSangalli gimmick for some, but still highly entertaining. Whereas this channel has both.

[@FloridaMan02]

​@@MachiningandMicrowavesgreat videos. Do you ever make these as 1 solid piece ?

[@jamesstevens2362]

My tiny little mind is still processing the use of lasers to bore out that cylinder. Amazing! Using big tools I’d probably look at and associate with making farm machinery to precision machine components of a filter that works with GHz frequencies is very impressive. And not one tiny surface mount component or specially etched PCB track in sight!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It would be nice if the Laws of Physics permitted that sort of machining. There are a few "minor" defects in my approach. Although the scientific papers I reference are totally real, the possibility of using laser ablation and oxidation and then excitation of the Aluminium monoxide by absorption resonance in air is probably just going to result in a small dot of plasma that wouldn't cut properly. Also, my toy lasers only do milliwatts rather then the kilowatts it would need to make this work in reality. Even assuming that you could control the depth of cut somehow by tuning the power and duration of the beams, you still end up with the impossibility of cutting the bottom of the plug out, which is why I had to go full-on Ghostbusters to come up with a magical solution. In reality, the machining is a little less theatrical, which is sad. I am working on a project I can't share details of yet with some tiny parts 0.25 mm thick, where I need to use my jeweller's piercing saw and my farm-machinery manufacturing machines to make some very delicate parts. Another antenna project needs a 1.0 mm reamed and polished bore in a solid silver rod pressed into a brass carrier, with a flared feedhorn around 2.8 mm maximum diameter. Getting a fine enough finish on that is a lot of fun. Today's project is huge in comparison, I'm making some Delrin clamps to attach GRP bracing tubes to the booms on very long Yagi antennas for 432 MHz moon-bounce communications, so they don't wave about in the wind and stay in a fixed phase relationship. Always something interesting to do, just not enough time to make videos about it!

[@jamesstevens2362]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves, well, the toy milliwatt lasers certainly look very cool, and who knows what engineering genius you may have inspired with the idea? In the mean time, what you’re doing with those tractor axle drilling tools really is impressive! It makes sense that big solid well honed drill bits on a big no-nonsense lathe would be able to produce the precision you need. All that metal would soak up the kind of vibrations that would be the death of a similar job attempted on a small lathe. Good fun to watch, and I can see you’re enjoying the process. Good luck with bracing the big Yagi. That sounds like a really interesting project!

[@fizzyplazmuh9024]

Lovely, soothing machining. So pleasing to live vicariously through someone who can afford stock these days. Say THAT is a whopper of a drill! Making my heart flutter.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I need one of those Adam Booth 3 inch drills. Trouble is that then I'd need a lathe five times the size of this little Colchester 1800! My biggest drill is an inch and an eighth at the moment. It certainly shifts a large volume of material with no fuss.

[@edgeeffect]

These videos are great.... I get to admire your machining, laugh at your jokes and skits.... and scratch my head in bemusement at RF back magic.... tripple thumbs up..... keep up the fantastic work!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'm endlessly surprised and flattered that anyone would spend time watching what I get up to. Reminds me of that saying about a Great Leader: "His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of a morbid sense of curiosity"

[@justRD1]

Omg I love the worms SFX. Very much appreciate that

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Vital part of any machining video, silly SFX. I made one HUGE error this time. In all my other videos I try to have a sticking plaster on a different finger, or fingers, but I forgot, and as much of the footage is shot out of order, then reassembled into a semblance of a coherent timeline, the plasters would appear and disappear at odd times. Actually, that might be even more fun.

[@jimsvideos7201]

Ah memories of a slightly misspent youth...

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@jimsvideos7201 "Slightly"? Heh heh...

[@keithjurena9319]

Fascinating. My kind of shop humor. Was doing nonferrous welding and proclaimed I was doing dissimilar joining as I was welding aluminum to aluminium. Of course the filler metal was yet another alloy. At least I have one Irish friend on the west side of the pond who appreciates my humor.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

You must have been using a supplier like mine. Every damn piece of aluminium I buy from them seems to be made of entirely different material, some of the elements in those alloys don't even exist in nature outside of the floor-sweepings they throw into the melt as additives. TIG welding two "6082" parts with aluminium filler often feels more like brazing cast iron to titanium with ally bronze. Or perhaps more realistically with the high standard of welding I'm capable of, like gluing cardboard to plastic with egg-white. Hey ho.

[@moconnell663]

Oh my goodness, I'm view #1! That's never happened before. I really appreciate the quality of your content, both the machining and the comedy :)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Heh heh, It's usually ME who gets first view as I'm testing, but I went for a walk down to my little woodland nature reserve in the pitch darkness with my Chihuahuas instead. We met a HUGE hedgehog snuffling about in the leaves on the floor of the old pig house. I do like hedgehogs.

[@alexanderthrasher923]

Thank you for the in depth analysis of whats going on, I cant wait to do things like this when I get my own equipment. Another great video!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I look forward to seeing what you get up to.

[@LaLaLand.Germany]

What I like about this channel: You make things fun to watch that I haven´t got the slightes clou about. Literally. But it´s very much fun to watch for me. Good Job! This seems like actual rocket sience to me weather I found a Canadian channel that DOES rocket sience dumb down so even I can compute. I´ll keep hanging around because often You use millimeters to express measurements, I like that. I can´t wrap my head around inches...

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'm from that lucky/unlucky generation who had to do imperial, CGS, MKS and SI standards at school and then at university. Working in foot-poundals and slugs and rods and chains and furlongs and horsepower and fluid ounces and Avoirdupois and Troy, then everything was in centimetres and grammes, then all in metres and Newtons and Joules and kilograms. It messed with our brains, but it's like how learning to speak another language expands your brain into different ways of thinking. It can't do anything about my subtraction issues though. I just measured a part at 23.82 mm, and decided that to get it to the correct finished size of 23.08, that I needed to remove 0.90 mm, so the part is scrap now. I even used the DRO, but set it to zero and moved in 0.90 instead of setting it to -23.82 and moving in to 23.08. I don't deserve to have a DRO. Now I have to make the dratted part again. Luckily it's just a hollow cylinder at this point, although it has a raised rim at the end of one end face. It'll probably come in useful as a spacer or something! I think I'm going to have to make this one a three-part video as there's a lot of interesting machining of tiny parts and I'm aiming for videos to be between 18 and 25 minutes. I'm still a total n00b at this video nonsense, but I'm on one h*ck of a learning curve.

[@murraypearson2359]

Well done, sir! Keep up the silliness, we all desperately need it. 🙂

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I've been silly in private more than sixty years, so I think I'll eventually get the hang of doing it in public as well. It seems to be an inherited trait from my Great-Uncle Les. Everyone should have an Uncle Les. He gave me six radiograms to dismantle and modify when I was a pre-teen hacker-in-training. Admittedly, he would answer the door to strangers wearing only a string vest and underpants, but the border between genius and the other thing is often narrow.

[@zebo-the-fat]

I have only just found your channel and must say I am very impressed. The only time I used a lathe was in metalwork classes at school back in the stone age (somewhere in the late 1960's, and the lathes were powered by teams of gerbils in wheels) Most of your descriptions of the tools you use may as well be in Chinese, but I can apreciate the skill and precision you use. As far as the RF side of things goes, I never used anything more exotic than 70 cm, microwave stuff is pure black magic! Keep up the good work, something ver relaxing about watching you turn a dull lump of metal into a well crafted functional piece of equipment. 73's de G8PRH

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I've almost finished part 2, but I had to get another job done and ended up making another video as well. Hope to get the next instalment of the 23cm filter posted at the weekend. I've already got orders for ten of these things... I'm doing a lecture at the Martlesham Microwave Round Table in four weeks time, so I'll probably do a video of that with a proper voiceover and publish it after the live event. Lenses and Cassegrains and Feedhorns for 122 and 134 GHz may be involved!

[@Strothy2]

Step 1: Comment before watching the Video so my comment is early :D (edit later lol)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Ah, the Placeholder Strategy. Splendid.

[@ollysworkshop]

If you make some concentric grooves in the face of the chuck, the glue can go in the grooves and the higher land can act as the reference surface, that's how clickspring does it I think.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Good point, I thought they were to allow any excess glue to escape rather than acting as a reference, from the days of beeswax chucks.CA glue is weird stuff, thinner glue lines are stronger in shear, and I'm wondering now if the low viscosity types might give a thinner and more consistent glue line. I have some 2.3 GHz versions of the filters, so haven't made any for that frequency or 3.4 GHz, where the tolerances would be even tighter. I need to make some oval iris plates in Aluminium. Their thickness is specified with a tolerance of a thou. It will be interesting to try that with a glue chuck rather than gripping it in a chuck and using an Edge Technology Chuck Stop 30-000 spacer kit as I do at present.

[@DudleyToolwright]

You must have a significant editing budget, timewise. Your content is always well done and quite creative. If your end products were more mainstream, you would certainly have an immensely popular channel. As it is, I was an EE with a strong interest in RF, so I quite enjoy every aspect of your projects. I hope you make it to the BarZ one year, I would enjoy an in person chat. I only live 50 or so miles from Stan and help out every year.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It takes as long as it takes, which is why this one was 10 days late. The stunts don't take much time, but getting the flow right and curating the little tinkles and chings and thuds, and synchronising the pops is something I do instead of sleeping. Also the Day Job has been ridiculously busy for the last three weeks. Normally I work three days a week, but I'm full time at the moment covering for the Security Operations Centre lead as well as doing my own security architecture work AND being a network engineer and forensic investigator, so "spare" time to mess about in the shop and edit vids is rather scarce. I almost made it to a meeting as NASA Ames a few years ago, but there was some snow in London and everything failed at London Heathrow as a result, so I've still never quite made it to the US. I've been close, Ontario near Niagara on the Lake, but one day I'm going to get to the left coast and do a road trip. It would be cool to time it to coincide with the BarZ for sure.

[@zeitgeist909]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Might be the lowest key fuck you anyway I have ever read...

[@AlessioSangalli]

What is BarZ?

[@tedvanmatje]

This is absolutely on the ball, mate! You've got yourself a new subscriber :)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Cool, very cool. I've just been asked to work on a Top Secret project that I cannot talk about at all, but it's terrifically exciting. Might not come to fruition until the summer. just hope I can get permission to make a series of vids about it!

[@aronsalad]

omg, I just love the fact that this channel exists.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

If it didn't exist, someone would have to invent it!

[@alwaysbearded1]

I love the nods to other KZbin machinists. Sometimes they return the favor.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Heh heh, I was a bit rude calling Adam's chuck lifter a "Lego Crane", so perhaps best if he never hears that! Quinn has already had the good grace to comment about AIMEE's thwarted attempt at cultural appropriation....

[@DEtchells]

Super-handy tips for an about-to-be first-time lathe owner! I liked the part about accurately indexing the forward edge of the parting tool to the part face, and the bit about characterizing the bond thickness on the glue chuck. (Heck, I wasn’t even aware of glue chucks in the first place!) I like the tool-height setter as well, it’ll be one of the first things I make for my own lathe when it comes. Very useful content, thanks!!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Hi Dave, using glue is a fairly new approach, clockmakers have been using wax chucks for centuries, I guess the Antikythera mechanism used wax chucks as well. Superglue needs a lot more heat than wax but is a bit stronger of course, and you don't have to preheat the chuck or part. Parting isn't really a high-precision operation as the tools are thin and wobbly at the best of times, but it helps when I'm making 20 of something that I can get the thickness to 0.3 mm or so of the finished size, then I can lock the carriage when finishing the other face - unless I'm using a sacrificial glue chuck of course, but then I zero the DRO or wheel when facing the chuck, and make the cut in the right place with consistent tool deflection (assuming a 0.8 mm radius insert and 0.3 mm depth of cut each time). With ancient lathes like my Colchester, there is always a bit of play, although with the gibs set just right and running with a toolpost fixed direct to the cross-slide rather than being mounted on the compound, it is remarkably good at 40 years old, and cost less than a decent Chinese mini-lathe, and included the pukka Newall DRO.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Definitely have a watch of all the more educational folks out there, especially those with similar lathes to yours. Mine is pretty much identical to Joe Pieczynski's so I can relate to his work more than the folks with newer lathes. Just take everything with a BIG pinch of salt. Some folks say you should never use carbide insert tooling because they used it 15 years ago and the inserts all needed lots of pressure. Modern finishing inserts and those intended for aluminium work amazingly well on most steels so long as your lathe has enough torque to take the "right" size of cut at the a sensible surface feet per minute. The published speeds and feeds are often based on a 90 minute or less tool life, and it's often fine to run a lower speeds, but make sure the nose of the tool is properly engaged. Grinding your own HSS toolbits is a really useful skill though, and that might be why everyone tells you to avoid carbide as a beginner. I rarely use HSS except for form tools cutting non-circular radii or funny beads and things, but I DO grind some carbide inserts with a diamond wheel on my ancient old Alexander D-bit grinder (Copy of a Deckel). I've had some fantastic advice about techniques from subscribers, there are some folks out there who are very generous with their time and sage words. Also some moany old wazzocks who feel it's important to snark about me not being a Proper Machinist, but it all adds to the jollity when I share their rude comments with my chums over an alcohol-free beer.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I have seen another version of that tool height setter which has a swivelling top plate. I think that might be a useful addition. It has a spring or pressure washer under a capscrew head and it is offset so as you turn the cap, it swings over the edge and you can feel it touching the tool. Biggest issue is how to keep the magnet glued into the base free of chips. I wipe it with a rag, then give it a blast of air, then use the palm of my hand to wipe it again. The trick of using a steel ruler between the curved edge of a workpiece that is already machined concentric to the lathe axis is also a good way to set tool height where the workpiece has a hole in the centre, but the best way is to stick a piece of aluminium in chuck and face it off, adjusting the height until the tiny "pip" at the centre just disappears to nothing as the tool reaches the centre. You can also use a dead centre in the headstock taper for a quick and dirty check.

[@OmnieStar]

I feel like when you pull the cutting piece back along the work after the cut, any deflection in the job is gonna let that cutter take scratches out of your work. I wonder if just pulling out your cross slide or whatever after the cut is done, could help with that. Or just go backwards really slowly so it sorta acts as a spring pass to remove any deflection while giving a nice finish?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Very good question! With this old lathe, the effect of taking the carriage back if there is any deflection is to cut a fine spiral in the surface. For roughing cuts, that doesn't affect the dimension when I take a measurement so long as I take it back fast. As the measurements are taken of the section that was machines in the forward direction, and I'm doing balanced cuts for usually the last three passes, tool deflection is compensated for. If I am aiming for 10.00 mm in stainless for a critical dimension, I might take a cut to roughly 10.60, measure that, and tweak the DRO if it's wrong, take another cut to 10.40, measure that with the micrometer, then take another cut to 10.20 and measure that, so I am 100% sure that even with tool pressure and other variances in the machine that an extra 0.20 mm move in will take me exactly to size. On that last cut, I'll pull back the cross-slide. For non-critical dimensions or where the surface is going to be polished, I don't always bother pulling back. It's certainly possible to use the slow reverse cut technique, but in general the tools I'm using are asymmetric, so the finish is slightly better in the direction towards the chuck with a suitable tool engagement. I have to be certain that the speed I retract the carriage is fast enough so any spiral grooves are spaced a few mm apart and leave wide enough lands at the finished size to give me a surface to measure. Obviously there's a risk of raising a tiny burr, but looking under the microscope, I don't see anything to worry about. When I eventually get the cross-slide refurbished and fit a new ballscrew in place of the old, worn leadscrew and perhaps fit a new DRO, then I can probably get away with retracting the cross-slide each time and still get repeatability. It's fascinating stuff, thinking about just how bendy and rubbery everything is, including carbide!

[@LongnoseRob]

Great work and presentation! Would you mind sharink a link to the excel-sheet mentioned in the beginning?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Forgot to put that in the description sorry. Bedtime here, I'll find it tomorrow

[@LongnoseRob]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves no worries

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Dominique's design sheet is at f1frv.free.fr/main3e_Filtres_LP.html (link is near the bottom of the page)

[@RichardKCollins]

I have to turn it down to 0.25 speed so I can read the captions and not miss anything. And to have time to read and think about the odd bits of mathematics, circuits, and component values thrown in. I liked the plot of the response of the parallel series inductance and capacitance filter. I checked your calculations, but not sure how that plugs together. I liked your comments about chucks. At 0.25 speed I can follow your methods, but at full speed they are blurred by your speed and habits. When you were milling the copper/brass rod it chattered ( I saw the ribs, I have the sound turned off). A software control on feed with feedback would help, But you said your workspace is already filled with cameras and such.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Thank you very much Richard! Yes it would be great to have software control of spindle speed. Not really too hard with a link between the DRO and the inverter. I have a 750 watt servomotor that I am going to use on one lathe axis to allow CNC style cutting of parabolic and hyperbolic dish reflectors. Similar to the electronic leadscrew mechanism that Clough42 made

[@feicodeboer]

Size matters... astonishing work. I never made it beyond machining a screw and a nut but it was clear to me that it was not my thing.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I really enjoy watching watchmakers making parts, there's some breathtaking craftsmanship going on that I can only dream of emulating. This piece is at the large end of microwave equipment, the other things I'm working on are at a scale around 200 times smaller wavelengths and linear dimensions. I have a long way to go to get proficient enough to make good work that small.

[@feicodeboer]

Radio communication is another important interest of mine. If I see this work I can understand that you do some practicing before going into the 122 and 240 region like those Germans with their recent distance records. That really must be tiny. Keep up the good work! I really like the detail and depth of your comment, together with @couriousmark these are my KZbin favorites.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@feicodeboer Michael and his son are using very advanced techniques which are not easy to reproduce by home experimenters, The work done by Andrew VK3CV and Tim Tuck in putting together the boards with those Silicon Radar chips has transformed the opportunities for non-professionals on 122 GHz, and there is a new project for a dual-band version. Other folks have been working with the alternative chip which has two for-element patch antennas on the package rather than integrated dipoles. groups.io/g/The122GProject

[@feicodeboer]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves The signal path KZbin channel might also be of interest for those into the mm waves. The presenter has a lot of tear downs and explanations of super expensive measurement equipment but the same principles apply to mm-wave RTX equipment. Pretty educational for the interested. Although quite a bit of a difference to what you do.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@feicodeboer One of my favourite channels!

[@mike94560]

We are a bit of a niche group of microwave hobbyists with machines shops. My 1.3Ghz filter is currently made from circuit board cut and soldered, etc. Might have to try this out. Can you tune that filter a bit? Not that it needs it at all. Just for temperature variations, yeah those.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

On the lower bands like 70cm and 2m, these are usually made using a long section of threaded rod and locknuts, so they are adjustable. As the primary purpose is mainly to kill the second and third harmonics, the key adjustment would be to optimise the Tchebyshev ripples at the main frequency of interest. John G3XDY has a very nice 23cm filter design that puts notches in useful places and consists of a air-spaced line with stubs. This is a brute of a filter, or at least the version with 7-16 DINs is. This one with delicate little Ns is going to be limited to maybe 400-500W by those. Mine has two female 7-16s and it should be able to carry more power than I can produce, although for EME, I guess nobody would care too much if I sent the signal with harmonics included. I guess some tuning screws would be feasible, but the others I've made all just worked. I have to make new spacers for this one when I do the soldering, to ensure the spacing is perfect. I use aluminium cylinders with a split, in a C shape. All will become clear in the next vid I hope. It's going to be interesting to see if there is any difference in S parameters with this version.

[@N3X15]

Thank you for sharing this beautiful RF witchcraft. I think you forgot to sacrifice a chicken, though.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Drat, that will be seven days bad luck for me then. In mitigation, I did sacrifice all the hairs on the back of my left hand when that fire after the slug ejection was slightly more impressive than intended

[@theradiorover]

We have two things in common: We are radio amateurs We love getting the blacksmiths drills out! Good Job. Looking forward to the next one 😀 Cheers, Fraser

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

That one-inch job does love spinning in the chuck. I might have to use it in a collet or fit it into a toolholder with a flat ground on the shaft to engage with a setscrew. Or get a U-drill if I could find one with less than a 32mm shank obvs. Sixty-eight videos in the pipeline now. That's YEARS at my current work rate!

[@theradiorover]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves yup, my pillar drill belts complains loudly when I spin up the 22mm blacksmith drill. Of course, I'm generally hacking together something like a winch bumper for my Land Rover, a vehicle which has tolerances measured in light years. Or is that parsecs? 68 videos? Bleedin' 'eck.

[@chrisstephens6673]

If surface finish is important to you, as it should be naturally, have come across roller burnishing? If not, feel free to watch a short video I did as a primer, sort of.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Very interesting, my dad had something like that but I had no idea what it was for. Thanks for the info. I'll have a think about making one of those some time.

[@chrisstephens6673]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves not for every job but a useful technique to have in the armoury.

[@txgho634]

Seeing some horror stories about tool run out. Do you check your chucks and collets at all?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Definitely! I have a Mahr Millimess and a 2 micrometre Mitutoyo DTI that i use to check tool and workpiece runout on the collet chucks on the lathe and mill. I've scrapped at least two ER40 collets and on R8 that were very poor.

[@BuckCalabro]

I love watching the MIT Rad Lab leap from the pages into physical form. Truly enviable work - in the good way! Thanks for taking the time and effort to showcase your skills.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'm having enormous fun messing about, next vid will explain the physics of how the thing works, as loads of folks have been asking. For a fizziks lesson? Challenge accepted!

[@lohikarhu734]

Would you have been better to run a lot slower for reaming, to a better finish, possibly more accurate?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Interesting point. That reamer is very small of course. I think it was running at 360 rpm, I tend to speed up those segments, but 360 rpm at 3 mm is the same as 90 rpm at 12 mm diameter. My Machinery's Handbook 30th ed. page 1112 suggests a highly alarming 610 surface feet per minute for reaming most aluminium wrought/extruded alloys in whatever heat treat state. A 3mm reamer is about 7mm circumference, so that's under 9 sfm at 360 rpm. Feed rate is 50 thou per revolution. I could in theory run that reamer 66 times faster if the Necrotelecomnicon of Machining is to be believed. It just *felt* OK running it at 360, and the amount removed wasn't enough to clog the flutes, plus I filled the bore with lube so that tends to push chips out as the reamer goes in. I must check the cutting data sheets for my "proper" 3mm and 4mm reamers to see what the designed speed is. In this specific application, I don't want a perfect fit as I need a tiny gap for solder to flow, but the tube is very slightly undersize, so all is good.

[@Mister_G]

Fascinating videos. As a matter of interest, what sort of tolerances are you trying to work to for the critical dimensions? (I used to have the RSGB VHF/UHF Handbook as bedtime reading - I'm fine with transmission lines and discrete L/C circuits but never really understood waveguides or the sort of thing your making here.)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Using QUCS Studio, I modelled the effect of a 0.1 mm error in one of the capacitative disk sections. Main change for a 4dB reduction in return loss at the frequency of interest and a tiny increase in through loss, but under 0.02 dB. That's equivalent to a 2% reduction in a capacitor and a 0.4% increase in an inductor, assuming everything else is accurate. The disk thicknesses are the most critical measurements. With four of them, there is a lot more scope for messing up the characteristics, I would like to keep the disk thicknesses to within about 0.5%, or about 30 micrometres. More detail in the next video it I ever finish editing it!

[@Mister_G]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Thanks for the reply. They're quite sensitive beasts then...

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@Mister_G Nothing like as sensitive as a proper high-Q double cavity, where micrometres matter and the resonance moves radically with temperature On those, I use coolant and wait for everything to settle to a steady temp before taking measurements. I use a granite surface plate and decent quality DTIs with sub-micrometer resolution, and a reasonable set of gauge blocks that are mostly good to much better than 100 nm, but at that level, I'm wearing cotton gloves and not breathing on anything! One day I'll see if I can do a video about those filters. It's about 45 on the list. The level of precision needed is on a par with old clocks or big steam engines. At least an order of magnitude worse than watchmaking and way worse than modelmakers achieve with bearings and cylinders. Plenty of scope to improve, but actually no need in terms of the performance and repeatability of the filters. Enormous fun anyway!

[@chriss2050]

I’m a recipient of the blessed KZbin recommended videos algorithm.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Next video is horribly late as a result of a totally fascinating project that has landed, but I can't talk about for a while. Next video should be out tomorrow night, followed by another later this week.

[@nilnull5457]

Waiting for a 2.5GHz knob tuner project. These videos are awesome. Edit: *stub tuner

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I almost preferred the original version of the comment! Not sure about whether I'll get round to a three-stub tuner, but I need to make some phase trimmers for 2.3 GHz and a 12-way combiner to take the outputs from a commercial UHF TV amplifier with 12 separate outputs and phase them together into a single humongous amplifier for 432 MHz. I'll probably make a 2.3 GHz low-pass filter as well. I need to make some coupled-cavity bandpass filters for 24, 47 and 76 Ghz too. One slightly mad project in the pipeline is a 10 GHz oscillator based on a coupled cavity excited in a very low-loss mode, tuned by varying the temperature of the body of the cavity, with a short length of delay line to get the phase right to stimulate oscillations. I rather doubt I'll be able to get the phase noise and stability low enough for it to be of any use, but it'll be fun to go down in flames trying.

[@ollysworkshop]

....so does black treacle make a good drilling lubricant?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Tasty, but tricky to deploy in a cold shop. That can has an anti-spill tube soldered into the lid, but at current shop temperatures, it would take ten minutes for molasses to drip out of a spoon. I suspect the clouds of acrid smoke and lack of lubricity might be significant drawbacks, but it would prevent flying chips 100%.

[@oafhauohguoihgakds5151]

that headstock dro is genius, i was wondering why you didn't just set it to 3 mm, until it came into view. cool vid, i subbed

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It uses a super-cheap scale because it gets drenched in oil and chips and I often hit it by accident, so I didn't want to use a better scale which is settable. I might change to a coolant-proof scale and remote display at some point, but it works pretty well, and I can wind it forward 3.00 and hit reset. I should really start using a roll pin like Peter from Edge Precision, but this is good enough and the scale is only accurate to about 0.02 mm. I REALLY want to get back into the shop this evening to make the spacing pieces and get the disks soldered, but the Day Job and Household Chores are getting in the way. Still another hour of day-job to complete this evening or the project manager will give me one of her hard stares tomorrow morning.

[@SteveWrightNZ]

Quality Radio content, love it.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'm just amazed how many kind folk watch me rabbiting on and fumbling about in the shop! Thanks for watchin', as Tony would say.

[@SteveWrightNZ]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Theres loads of that on the internet, but not while making cavities and filters!

[@tacticalrabbit308]

Sir Neil Smith do you have any relations to any Smith across the water in America?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Not that I'm aware of. My wife was a Smith from Bermuda, descended from Captain Christopher Smith, one of the original settlers in 1612 who returned to the island after the shipwreck of the Sea Venture on the way to Virginia in 1608, but my family roots are very much from farmhands, carters and drainage workers, for whom "London" was a distant foreign place that none of them ever visited despite it only being about 100 miles away. Most of my relatives on the Smith side never moved more than 30 miles from the Lincolnshire Fens near Boston, New York and other parts of Holland region of Lincolnshire (England). New York is a tiny hamlet way out in Fenland. I live near York. "New Amsterdam" was renamed after this York (although more likely after the Duke of York) in the aftermath of the Treaty of Breda in the 1660s.

[@tacticalrabbit308]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves the reason I asked is I am a Smith also Robert Smith to be precise and I have not research family history over to England yet do know that there was a Webster Smith from Florida a few generations back in my history my dad's sister has our family history back to England and she will sent a copy of it to me should have it next week would like to keep in touch with you either way

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@tacticalrabbit308 Always interested in family history, although I have almost no information beyond my great-great-grandparents. My connection to the past includes that I once held hands with someone who had held hands with Queen Victoria in the late 1880s!

[@neffk]

Seems like you don't clear chips very often as you drill very deep holes. Have you noticed any effects on diameter, roundness, etc?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I usually clear chips well before they start to pack in the flutes, but when I'm filming, it's really hard to see the chips and feel how the drill is cutting, so sometimes it catches me out. When I'm drilling the 1.70 mm holes that are 36 mm deep, I usually do a full retract every 3-4 mm. Those holes then get reamed to 1.80 For holes that will be tapped, I don't bother too much, but whenever there's a critical bore, I'll usually be reaming it or boring it anyway, so it's very rare that I'll have anything other than a clearance hole that's just a drilled finish. I use stub drills to start long holes that need to be accurately on centre, then finish with a jobber or a special slow-helix deep hole drill. I only have gauge pins and split ball gauges for holes less than 6.0 mm, but I have three-point bore mics for anything from 6.0 to 50 mm so perhaps I'll try a test with a 12 mm hole to see what the impact of clearing chips is on hole taper and ovality. I really need to fix some overhead camera and lighting rails so I don't have to reach around all the gear. Another job for the pile!

[@frep420]

I love how the machining looks like stop motion. Do you coordinate the refresh rate or some other way?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Some of the sections are made using the stop-frame effect in Cyberlink PowerDirector, with only every 5th frame being shown five times in succession

[@nikolausluhrs]

Great stuff

[@syedusamamanzoor1838]

Question: why do you drag the tool backwards after finishing a cut and mar the surface?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Never on a finish pass obviously, but the tiny spiral cut won't have any impact on measurements, as the micrometer or caliper will bridge over the cuts. i find I get better precision if I don't back off and reset on each pass, also if I fumble the DRO measurement, I can guarantee the cross-slide is still in the same place so there's no risk of getting lost. If I refurbish the cross-slide, leadscrew, gibs and nut, it should be perfectly OK to retract each time. Also, bear in mind that in a few cases, I do things like knocking the camera, or getting oil on the lens or running out of battery, so I lose the finish pass and have to use one that is almost the finish pass in the video. My horribly Sony ZV-1 can't be charged and used as the same time, although there is a way to bodge it with a dummy battery, but then it's hard to fit it on to a tripod mount. Give me a few years and I'll get a little less rubbish at everything! Except TIG welding. I expect to be hopeless at that forever.

[@syedusamamanzoor1838]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves hahaha 😂 Come on dude! I'm sure you'll someday be a master of TIG...ing... I suppose. New word for the dictionary: TIGing. If you're using DRO, doesn't it help you ensure repeatability no matter how much you move the tool post? But yeah, managing camera photage is a nightmare. Pretty sure that's why most KZbinrs outsource it as soon as they can.

[@pirobot668beta]

Yagi antennas owe their performance to accurate machining. Their only down-side is their size...they can be quite long and delicate. Very directional, highly polarized.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Longest Yagi I have is about 12 metres, almost 40 ft. I'm working on an array of eight Yagis for 432 MHz on an az-el mount for moonbounce. My biggest dish is not big enough to be really effective on 23cm/1.3 GHz (it's only 10ft/3 metres diameter) and would be hopeless on 432 MHz. It certainly gets hard to make a Yagi above 2.3 GHz as you say, although loop yagis with circular ring elements, tig-welded at the joint can work well at 3.4 GHz, you get into physical issues of stiffness to size ratios that make life very tough. I know of at least on 10 GHz yagi that was made with elements made from lengths of copper wire fitted through precisely spaced holed in a piece of glass fibre printer circuit laminate. With elements 13 mm long, it wasn't exactly mechanically robust, but great fun. I made some parts for a set of four long 432 MHz yagis and some other parts for a 144 MHz system of four long X format crossed yagis for EME with polarisation control. That was a fascinating job. Next one for that friend is an elevation system for a 50 MHz yagi that is ENORMOUS. There's been a huge amount of modelling work beyond the NEC-4 approach to do sidelobe optimisation to reduce noise pickup from warm ground, buildings and trees, and some of the modern designs are now producing Gain/Temperature ratios unheard back in the last century. I need to build those eight 432 MHz yagis and the associated open-wire feeder system, so that might appear as a video in late summer. At microwave frequencies of course, dishes, patch arrays and slot arrays can produce gains way beyond what Yagis can manage. My small 10 GHz dish has a gain around 37 dBi. My longest yagi is only about 21 dBi, so the dish has 40 times the gain, but a dish for the lower frequency would be rather a lot larger than my house! Horses for courses, as they say. The mechanical design of yagis is, as you rightly suggest, very intricate, with all the boom corrections, variable spacing, and different types of driven elements, feed impedances, Q values and balun topologies. Someone needs to start a channel called "Machining and VHF Yagis" I guess! I'd subscribe immediately. My level of expertise in that area of antenna theory, modelling and design is approximately zero. If not actually negative.

[@MatthiasWelwarsky]

Nice. Do you plan a video on actually measuring the filter on a VNA?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

When I get the machining finished, I'll run it on a couple of VNAs, then put serious power through it and check the results on a spectrum analyser to compare the before and after results and the theoretical against actual. I won't be receiving through it, but I might pop it in front of a good VLNA and see what the impact on noise figure it has. I use a tuned bandpass filter on receive because of the dreadful intermod products from digital TV and cellphone signals that swamp my receiver. Might end up as a third video, as so many folks have asked for something on how the filter works, so that will probably be next, along with making the fixture for soldering and the adaptor pins.. Sadly, I have to work full time at the day job this week, and there aren't enough hours in the day to do as much machining/electronics/radio/video editing as I'd like to!

[@MatthiasWelwarsky]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Excellent. Bring on those Smith charts!

[@HAL_9001]

With the size of Adam's machinery he could build macro-wave equipment.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It's rarely polite to speak of the comparative dimensions of a gentleman's apparatus, but @bbloc02 and @CuttingEdgeEngineeringAustralia do make Adam's tackle appear relatively ordinary. I miss the vids from the splendid @userwl2850 who works about 40 miles from here. Proper big machines. Not to mention the YUGE Cincinnati shaper and mill that @FireballTool runs.

[@HAL_9001]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves I'm subscribed to all but userwl2850; I guess those guys would be making mega-wave components? Carl at Cutting Edge will be putting Jason at Fireball to shame soon. He just brought his shaper out of storage so it doensn't count yet.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@HAL_9001 "Shaper Wars" See the series on all good local cable TV channels this summer.

[@dtnicholls1]

Out of curiosity, why not machine the barrel to length with both ends open and cap both of them? Would have allowed for much simpler dimensioning by side milling both ends in one setup. I can only assume that there's some consideration I'm missing here, and with what I know about making RF filters that's a lot of considerations to miss... Like virtually all of them.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I considered doing exactly that, but then there is another joint for RF energy to cross. Getting the junctions good enough to pass significant RF current in the few micrometres of surface because of the skin effect is already a significant challenge with the three joints in my implementation. Having a solid end gives a guarantee that the circulating currents at that end have an absolutely defined path, whereas at the other end I'm hoping that an aluminium on aluminium joint has enough gas-tight points of contact to ensure that there is no significant resistive loss and that the RF path length is not in any way asymmetric. The best solution would perhaps be to have the ends screwed in with a very fine thread, or TIG them in place, but then you have challenges about assembling the unit unless one of your sockets is a screw-in body type. If I through-bored it, I could then nip the whole thing in the mill vice and machine both ends, both sides and the to in a single setup, leaving maybe 2-3 mm of waste in the vice, flip it and deck the top and that's finished. As it stands, that's roughly what I'm doing anyway. Better solution might be to make it from silver plated brass and soft-solder the end plates and maybe even soft solder the sockets to the body. I could make it as an open-sided box and fit a cap perhaps. Lots of options to try. Perhaps I should make one with end caps and compare the performance and repeatability, but then I'd really need to wait a few years to see if there's any degradation. Once I've made one, it's not actually that much faffing about to do the blind hole compared with making an extra end plate and four more tapped holes. Making a batch would just mean setting some stops and possibly a positioning fixture. It's all about minimising the potential for losses and asymmetric paths and ensuring all the oscillating RF fields are as well-defined and symmetrical as possible. The sockets have a raised ring that will be pressed hard against the ends of the body to make a gas-tight seal that is a lot smaller and at a far greater contact pressure than the joint of the end cap and body. You've got me thinking about a way to improve the end cap joint by having a step that's 0.1 mm too shallow on the end so there's a much higher-pressure contact ring along the joint between the end cap and body. Thanks for triggering that idea! Neil

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

At higher frequencies, the capacitance of even a poor joint between two abutting metal faces is so high that it can look like dead short for RF current, and you can even configure the joint to include a choke section that electrically isolates the contact area. At 1.3 GHz, that's not very practical, but the capacitance of a micrometre-scale thick alumina and air layer between two aluminium plates does help reduce the impact of poor contact areas, but it's another variable that I'd prefer to exclude. I could probably run a 3D electromagnetic finite domain analysis of the end plate connection to see what the variance would be. It just *feels* better empirically to remove as many of the potential variances by adding a little extra faff to the machining I guess!

[@dtnicholls1]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves What about conductive O rings? If you put one in the end cap you can make the ID of the face groove line up exactly on the bore. Providing the grove cross section is the same as the O ring cross section, when compressed it will guarantee a good conductive and airtight seal with excellent symmetry and excellent contact right on at the interface. It will also allow for more tolerance in terms of surface finish and should allow for lighter clamping loads on the bolts.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@dtnicholls1 That certainly works for sealing waveguide flange joints with knitted wire compression rings, but the objective there is to prevent leakage rather than maintain a very low leakage inductance and resistive loss. I think I have some of those rings somewhere that might be large enough to fit the face of the cavity. Ultimately though, the choice of using aluminium is going to be the limitation. It would be much better to use heavy silver plating on brass as then gas-tight contacts are a great deal easier to achieve. Screw-in end caps would also be a better choice, but then I'd need to use threaded body sockets. This version with N sockets is a special for someone, I normally just use 7-16 DIN as the sockets then cover the ends completely and the body can be through-bored. Much nicer solution all round

[@Jajaho2]

The perfect channel name.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It was all I could think of, but it's a reasonably accurate description of the content! Apart from the folks who think it's a cooking channel and come looking for TV Dinner recipes.

[@Jajaho2]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves I wasn't been sarcastic in the slightest. I truly think it is a great name.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@Jajaho2 I did consider "Microwaves and Machining", but I didn't want to get lost in a huge list of cooking channels. The subtitle could be "Neil messing about with stuff he finds interesting". Ooooh! I could start a second channel like Lauri and Anni's "Beyond The Press". Or perhaps not!

[@smallcnclathes]

Can I use a clip of your animation in a video of mine? Happy give you credit. I want to show it as the clip that inspired me to try animation in my own cad.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Sorry I missed this message somehow. Try it and see, I disabled it on some vids, I can enable it again or you can download it.

[@smallcnclathes]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Thanks I tooka screen capture and it looks ok. Thanks for allowing me to use it.

[@bobluthier3031]

Top shelf... sorry i cant subscribe twice, spite my efforts. Joe pie has a great tip on centering square stock with projected surfaces off the end (rubber bands and four bits of flat stock). Indicates the same as any bore... cheers from vermont

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'd actually watched that video but forgotten it. We need a laminated wall posted of Joe Pie Hints and Tips. Merch idea there! Someone else mentioned Joe's vid just after I posted this video and I did a classic face-palm and rolled my eyes... Need less to say, I'm now doing the alignment using Joe's method and feeling a bit sheepish! I've just done two more bodies and it took a fraction of the time overall. Only six more to do in this batch and I can get the end face machining and end cap done and get them soldered and tested at last.

[@lewisheard1882]

I’ve picked up a saying from around the internet recently, it goes “I like your funny words, Magic Man” and is used in the face of ‘sufficiently advanced technologies’ Loving the videos, but as a mere ‘run of the mill nerd’ as opposed to the Level 5 advance physics alchemy that’s on show here, I must confess a whole slew of terms and principles fly so clear over my head they’re leaving con trails. Perhaps it wouldn’t bore the other wizards too much for a little bit of “Radio Chemistry 101” as we go along :D. Cheers!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Second episode has some "paddling in the shallows" tech explanations for folks who are not Mages of the Dark Arts, plus some deep dives for those who've been immersed in this stuff for ever and are total on the Dark Side. I'm going to try to explain how these filters work and why they are useful. As Richard Feynmann said, the best way to find if you understand a complex subject is to prepare a freshman lecture on it. If you can't, then you really don't understand it well enough. It'll be an interesting test of my rotten pedagogical and presentation skills if I can pull it off. Up to a point, my approach is intended to entertain, amuse and spray the viewers with a firehose of detail rather than simply to inform and educate. Oh how I wish I had the skills of @3Blue1Brown or @Mathologer. I won't dumb it down, but an understanding of the underlying maths of Tcheychev polynomials and Maxwell's equations isn't really necessary for a qualitative explanation of what is going in between those two sockets and how four disks and a tube can block signals above a specified frequency. No Magickery required. Especially no Physics-defying laser tricksterisms. I do wonder how many viewers are sufficiently huge Ghostbusters nerds that they recognise the slightly-munged dialogue. Many of them were not born when the film came out. It only seems like yesterday...

[@_Matyro_]

Is the spread sheet public?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I'll have a look for the original link, I need to walk the Chihuahuas before they bite my ankles. I can share mine as well, I'll put it on my website when I get the weekend chores finished

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Dominique's design sheet is at f1frv.free.fr/main3e_Filtres_LP.html (link is near the bottom of the page)

[@_Matyro_]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves thx

[@Alex-wd9gu]

In every shop I visit ,including mine, is an old Colchester still spitting out parts

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I suspect that old Colchesters appear spontaneously wherever there's a sniff of coolant and an empty corner. Nobody remembers ordering them, nor what exactly they are used for, but they keep on making those parts, whatever they are...

[@ianphilip6281]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves as per the promotional phrase: "The world turns on Colchester lathes." and what do you know.. It still does!

[@ianphilip6281]

Cheers for the mood to the audience. While I've got your attention M&M (no, not those things) have you made up a shear tool yet? That other comment about a roller for finish passes, would that be knurling or burnishing? Made me curious. I must try one of those out. Better dig through the hardened stash and see what I've got roller wise. Course it'll take me at least until winter to get "round" (ahem, sorry) to it. Cheers! I've got a dishwasher to argue with before Trunchbull (the beloved wife, bless her she's tolerant of me) gets violent.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@ianphilip6281 I wasn't aware of what a burnishing roller was used for. Found what I think was one in my father's old toolbox. It's not something that I would normally use, but I can see it could be a useful addition to the armoury. I use mostly polished carbide insert finishing tools for brass and aluminium and stainless out of habit really, they give a consistently excellent finish, and I use coated carbide at the upper end of the power of the old Colchester and get super finishes on 4140, EN24T and D2, but a 10HP motor would work better I suspect! A lot of what I do is boring internal tapers deep inside 4.5 mm diameter holes with 1.8 mm reamed holes at the base, using tiny Simturn 1.7mm solid carbide boring bars and similar micro tools.

[@ianphilip6281]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves boom. A wealth of information right there. Keep meaning to pick up some polished carbide inserts for the occasionally dreadful aluminium grades I sometimes turn. Usually roughing with coated carbide and finish with a shear tool, or fine paper and polish. Found a fantastic piece of ally in a car park once of all places. Of course it took me bloody ages with a socket set to liberate it. But I really did find it in a car park on the grass. Best ally I have ever machined. From a quick gander over yonder Web, "turns" (ha) out the burnishing roller provides a work hardened surface too on appropriate materials. Like knurling, it's a deformation process moving the material around rather than cutting it or shearing it. Not particularly useful to you in a waveguide or low pass filter mind you, not unless your finishes are truly crap.. which they aren't. Might be useful for bearing and shaft surfaces or very high precision dimensioning I suppose, if said roller was truly round, truly hard and in a truly beautiful journal bearing. As for work hardening I find stainless does enough of that for my liking, especially when drilling. A true love hate affair, love turning it, hate drilling it. Perhaps carbide drills will help, want some anyway so I'll run the purchase by the female comptroller I mean.. Counterpart in the morning. Now, about that sheer tool.. *sniggers* Keep the great content coming. Appreciate the effort given how busy you are!

[@alfredassimply5865]

When is the video about the actual device?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Ah, that's a good question. About 12 hours after I finish the machining and testing. Not sure when that will be, I have some urgent machining jobs to do first and I have a Day Job as well, so not this week, but should be soon after next weekend (I hope).

[@Remowylliams]

Please keep making videos. It does wonders for my blood pressure as well as my funny bone. Cheers! P.S. Amy call me.

[@icebluscorpion]

Your videos are wholesome for my sanity😆👌. So hilarious 🤣 and interesting 🤓. I love your content. Keep it up Niel you're awesome 👍😎!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I started doing the vids as a distraction from the grief after Caroline died last summer, but it's turned into a really fun way to share the interest and enjoyment I get from this stuff, plus I get to make *really* annoying jokes that irritate 2.0783% of viewers to the point of hitting Dislike. Cool! Next video will probably have a deep dive into how these low-pass filters work and how they are modelled, as well as a bit more machining. I need to make the assembly fixtures for the coaxial core and then the tiny pins that fit inside the coaxial socket spills and the 3 mm tube. Oh, and the end cap of course. Final assembly and testing might need to be another episode. My mother watches these vids, so the worst curse-word I'm likely to say is "h*ck". Or "M*cros*ft", but that would only be invoked in extremis as a last resort when things have gone WAAAAAAAYYY too badly wrong. Honestly, I really have been binge-watching the sublime @ViceGripGarage and the absolutely terrific @SarahnTuned a lot. and their mannerisms and idiolects are SO infectious that I can't help myself. When Sarah says "Hello, People of the Internet" or does her Beans tests, the world seems slightly less dreadful for the next half hour. Folks like them are providing free mental health support for tens of thousands of YT viewers I'm sure.

[@berndlangerich4615]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves My condolences to your loss. Keep up the good work and entertain us with your interesting videos and your humor. Being half of a HAM myself (currently I don't do anything with amateur radio, but I am planning to put my old gear to a working condition) I am fascinated by all the microwave stuff machining (my homemade transverter for 1.3GHz never made it to the air, only laboratory measurements were done).

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@berndlangerich4615 I heard yesterday that Michael DB6NT and his son have managed a world record distance on 241 GHz and 134 GHz and perhaps 122 GHz as well. There is some fascinating work going on. I have some 47 GHz equipment that has not made it out of the lab yet. Perhaps next year!

[@icebluscorpion]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves My condolences to your loss, Niel. Heads up pal, We are with you.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@icebluscorpion 36 years is a long time to share your life with someone. Nine months isn't quite enough to adapt to the loss, but things are getting better every day. Thanks

[@Phaenome]

Hi there, next-gen This Old Tony

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Heh heh, Tony's a youngster. I'm a great-grandfather!

[@letmelooktv]

You are bonkers. Subscribed :D

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Flattery will get you everywhere! That fire in the lathe bed was 100% real by the way. It was supposed to be a nice controlled flame inside the hole, but the block was very cold and the fuel shot out unburned into the chip tray, and ignited itself very well indeed, along with some oily aluminium chips. In the interests of Art, I filmed it for six seconds before I lost it totally and went all "burly firefighter" on it. Not even putting that on as an out-take.

[@MrZigzter]

I believe the glass spheres you mention are commercially known as Expansil (not entirely sure of the spelling, sorry)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Thanks, I can see Expancel from Nouryon who make thermoplastic microspheres, but haven't found glass yet. Looks like 3M do something, but I'm sure I saw some CA glue with microspheres somewhere. Thanks for the pointer, at least I know what I'm searching for now. Most of the products seem to be hollow and subject to breakage during dispensing. Cospheric do precision borosilicate microspheres I see. I guess I wouldn't need more than a tiny dusting of 5 um spheres to get a decent and repeatable glue line

[@MrZigzter]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves A means to monitor the applied force would be advantageous. For some reason I thought the spheres were glass/silica. Glad I almost helped, nonetheless 😆

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@MrZigzter One British Standard Thumb is the current measure, but a heavy spring on the tailstock or a toolpost mount, with a rod to show how much it is compressed, should be enough to give a consistent force. Good thought. Again.

[@MrZigzter]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves You've reminded me a thought I strayed from adding, that was, to use a load cell. Furthermore since, a triage, as triangulation could insure controlled pressure distribution. Everything moves proportionately to force. Albeit logarithmic or exponential in many cases. A pleasure, thank you in kind. By the way, is current measure the amount of electrical current resistance from different given points? It could be very interesting if the two could marry up and prove each other simultaneously.. 🤔

[@Mister_G]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves The glass spheres are called 'Ballotini' - the ones used for controlling adhesive bond lines usually cite Raytheon Spec HMS20-1776D or Hughes Spec SCGMS-53004.

[@ramradhakrishnan9382]

And how, Sir, pray can you detect that "imperceptible click"?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Gold Star for that comment! I should have said "barely perceptible", shouldn't I? Well spotted.

[@JainZar1]

Totally fascinating.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Part 2 will be a bit more intricate. Fewer lasers and thermonukes and fires inside my lathe. That fire was real, not CGI or anything - I waited almost six seconds before putting the fire out so I could catch the moment for posterity. There were some really weird effects from the lasers reflecting off the machined surfaces, like a diffraction grating effect. Now I want to play with lasers and machined surfaces dammit.

[@JainZar1]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Microwave Laser sharks? :D

[@jongmassey]

If you ream a hole too big, you can make it smaller by de-reaming it. You might need a large hadron collider to do it, though, best speak to that professor Brian Cox about it

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Jon, those are two of the finest sentences in the English language that I've had the privilege of reading for some considerable time. I am extremely grateful that my grandchildren were born slightly too late to experience that particular Coxian horror. For them it was more about electro and dubstep and drum'n'bass and hardstyle and even a little math-rock in the form of Three Trapped Tigers and Battles. In the years from 2008 to 2013, I dragged them to maybe a hundred gigs, and on my own while working in far-flung corners of the Empire, I think the total number of live bands and live DJ nights I bounced around at was just over 250 in that period, plus four or five festivals a year. Entirely D-Ream free. Marvellous. Here's a thought, if you sing "retteb teg ylno nac sgniht", does it sound like the noise of turning a reamer THE FORBIDDEN WAY????

[@jongmassey]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves ooh, TTT now there's a great band. Had the pleasure of seeing them on a boat in Bristol a couple of times

[@jamesstevens2362]

Internet’s Comment Of The Month right there! Bloody brilliant!! 😂👍🏻

[@smallcnclathes]

A coating on inserts for aluminium? From Cutwell? Odd place that Cutwell, sent email re some tool or other. Sorry we don't supply to anywhere outside of UK and Ireland, fair enough, Australia is a long way for Postman Pat to get here.Then I get regular emails trying to sell me bits from their inventory!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

My dodgy yellow-belly accent sorry, definitely UN-coated. Cutwel head office is an hour up the motorway from here. If you ever need something from them, I'm happy to buy them and pop them in the post to you. I'm not sure if there's a way to prepay GST like there is for stuff sent into Europe now. Much depends of you have carrier fees to pay when they collect tax/duty on behalf of the tax authorities, or if you are in a Civilised location where you just get a bill from the Government without Fedex demanding a £20 "processing fee" and then adding 20% tax to it. So annoying. The DDP prepayment service is between £2.50 and £4.50 fee, but that's at least a little more reasonable.

[@smallcnclathes]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Thank You, that is a very kind offer. However I have a friend in Lincolnshire and he can get stuff for me as easily. Not that I need much these days, most of my normal supply lines are well established after some 20 years. Although I have just ordered a Diamond insert with a chip breaker from AliExpress. By the time it arrives I may have got some enthusiasm back for playing with Diamond inserts. Good thing it will be awhile as I have some 750 parts to get made, that's a lot when one is retired!

[@nuxboxen]

This is hillarious

[@markfergerson2145]

That is amazing. Many years ago I build a similar filter from copper sheet and rod, but it only had to handle a couple of milliwatts. I got into serious trouble when I decided to silver plate everything (for pretty, the copper had plenty of conductivity) and of course afterward all the dimensions were off. Well, it was a hobby project, not for pay, but I gave myself a lot of grief over having to scrap it and do it over. How much power is "high power" in this little gem's future life?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

The connectors are the limiting factor, so no more than 500 watts. The version with 7-16 DIN connectors has been tested at a kilowatt into a well-matched load. I guess it could take a lot more as the electric fields are not excessive and I'm running a 1.5 mm air gap. The unknown issue is what happens at the harmonics, where a real antenna load might result in some more spectacular voltages. Ideally there should be diplexer or something to divert the unwanted power into a dummy load before the filter, but the amplifiers I was using (4 x 250 watts) each had a 90 degree hybrid with a large dump resistor, so any harmonic energy reflected back from the filter would be at least partially absorbed by those resistors.

[@zeitgeist909]

16:01 - back to life, back to reality - - - Soul II Soul reference. This is my new channel. Subbed. Belled.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Jazzie B was The Man. Still is. Live at Lincoln Engine Shed in September. Highly tempted...

[@BasedBidoof]

Those were some good chips

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Never in the class of Chip of the Week though, sadly....

[@So-Flo]

It's an english This Old Tony! Deal. I'm subscribed

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Ah, but Tony is far more handsome and has a much better personal manicurist.

[@So-Flo]

​@@MachiningandMicrowaves Well, he does live in America

[@jimsvideos7201]

Electricity is all fun and games until it starts moving back and forth, and the RF stuff is utterly bananas.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I wonder if I could use one of Kurtis from CEE's banana rulers to measure wavelengths? Hmmmmm, banana calipers! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZmTSdWONoJuAsK8

[@nf4x]

Why not? 1.3 GHz is the 9 banana band, 2.3 is the 5 and a half banana band, 3.4 is the 3 and a half banana band, 5.7 is the two banana band, 10 GHz is the banana band, and 24 is the half banana band. From there it gets fun, with 47 GHz being the 250 millibanana band, etc.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@nf4x OK, that's what I'm calling them in the next SHC activity contest. Wish me luck, smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.....

[@littlejackalo5326]

4:32 5 tenths (0.0005") is 100 microns (0.1 mm)? It's this part of the shtick? I'm sure you know 5 tenths isn't 100 microns.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

That was actually a silly mistake when I made the voiceover and I didn't notice the slip until I watched it back, and by then it was late and I was tired as a tired thing, so I thought I'd leave it in to see how long it took for someone to notice. You get the gold medal! Twelve days. Marvellous. Well spotted.

[@rallymax2]

I see Amy’s new AI is the Quinn version. …as is tradition.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Heh heh, did you notice the identity of one of the commenters? AIMEE is a big fan.

[@campbellmorrison8540]

Fascinating stuff, I have never understood UHF+ stuff and this is very informative. PS you dont need the bimbo discussion in the beginning, your information is brilliant without that :)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Oh, but the banter and pyrotechnics are such fun to make. Total self-indulgence.

[@juststuff4381]

If my parting tool made that sound, all my stock would be a pile of shims by now. Cheers!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

"Build a Carefully Curated Soundscape" it says in the "Dummy's Guide to making less terrible videos". I have no idea what those words mean.

[@ryebis]

Have you seen Joe Pi's tip on indicating square stock using shims ? "Clever way to indicate a square part in a 4 jaw chuck", should save you some time.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I thought I'd watched all of his back catalogue, but I must have missed that one. I did work out a simple trick last night by taping four parallels to the stock, overlapping the end a little and using my Haimer held in a clamp on the toolpost, but I wasn't convinced it made much sense. Oh wait. I could just use one parallel held by hand against each face in turn to achieve the same thing, couldn't I? Joe will of course have a totally obvious, elegant solution that I totally failed to think of, using only an egg cup, scissors and a short length of drinking straw

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Now I've watch Joe's vid, I can see the rubber band is better than the insulating tape I used, and I was using 100 mm parallels, so it was a bit unwieldy. It only works if the block is pretty much parallel, so machining the part on the mill first is looking like the best approach. Using a single parallel by hand certainly worked OK. I'll have to have a play and see what is most effective. Original link to Joe's site is kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXTImmh9oaqNa8k

[@yvestouchette4159]

That french quote was very well spoken. But we would have commonly said "plus ça change, plus c'est pareil"

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Désolé, AIMEE was probably quoting Alphonse Barr from "Les Guêpes", Juillet 1848. Heh heh... Ma compréhension limitée de la belle langue française a été aidée par ma femme Caroline, qui parle couramment le français depuis plus de 70 ans. Le vocabulaire que j'ai réussi à acquérir consistait surtout en mots de cuisine, de charcuterie, de fromage, de viticulture et de bons vins, de culture de la châtaigne, de quincailleries rurales, de recettes de cassoulet, de soins vétérinaires et de vaccinations pour mes petits chiens, de vannerie et surtout de discussions sur les écrivains obscurs des XVII|e et XIXe siècles. Caroline's sister-in-law is a native of Lyon, and we have friends in Rouen and Montpellier. Caroline died last summer and I miss being able to shout "What is the best way to say in French?". I could still shout it, but there would be no reply. I never got a sensible answer when she was still alive, but somehow, that's not important! I try to keep my grasp of the French language refreshed by posting in the hyperfr-ref and hyperfr.fr listes and having deep technical discussions with the experts on that forum, but also I try to keep up to date with le francais de la vie quotidienne et let mots d'argot with the help of the excellent Elisabeth at kzbin.info%C3%A7aisavecHelloFrench

[@yvestouchette4159]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Wow, I didn't expect that kind of answer! Sorry to hear about Caroline. I'm a ham operator here in Canada, but I dont know much about microwave other than working on maintaining commercial wifi networks and using commercial gear for some microwave RF backhaul link. I have a growing interrest in machining and a great admiration of those who master the craft. I feel like the combination of interrests is both really niche and interresting. I like your style of video and all the work you put into them really shows. Keep up your good work!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@yvestouchette4159 Caroline's stepsister is from Haileybury near North Bay ON and now lives in the melon belt near Niagara-on-the-Lake. I've only been to Canada a couple of times, to Toronto to visit family. I remember visiting our friends in Rouen and they had other visitors from Quebec. The young daughter of the family was fascinated by the accent of the little girl in the visiting family "ton accent, c'est très drôle" she said....

[@nf4x]

Wouldn’t all of that have been much simpler on your Bridgeport? With a final boring pass on the lathe, obviously. By my calculations it would have saved you 17,923 steps in 4-jaw centering.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

If I had a decent long-reach boring bar, it would certainly have been easier, but the head I have can only take a weedy 12mm bar and I the longest I have can only reach 50mm on bores narrower than the head. HOWEVER... as it would obviously be 78.3924 percent easier to do it on the mill, I am plotting a build of a long bar with an insert cartridge and fine adjustment screw that might also be able to do this much more simply. Perhaps a U-drill with a flat end to get it close to dimension, but ultimately, this is really a job for a CNC machine if I wanted more than seven of them this size. For this batch, what I'm ACTUALLY doing is fitting brass jaw protectors and marking two of the jaws as fixed, so I can just pop a new piece in, nip it up with the other two jaws, then check for parallelism, tappy-tap-tapping if necessary, having marked the two faces that are against the fixed jaws so I know which edge is closest to perpendicular to my reference face. I won't drill out the 6mm hole on the lathe, I'll just use the slug and a gauge pin in that hole to confirm the alignment in the Bridgeport and shim it if necessary, then drill it to size on the BP while I'm drilling and tapping the mounting holes. I might get an HSS reamer the right size as I can imagine it will be useful to be able to make accurate 50 ohm characteristic impedance coaxial lines for other jobs. To save messing with alignment, I'll nip the raw stock in the vice on wide parallels with one end overhanging the jaws, take a cut off it, then deck the top and both sides giving me four guaranteed (but oversized) faces, then invert the thing with the other end overhanging, machine to finished length, then trim both sides to form the mounting flanges to finished width and deck the bottom oversize. Then all six faces and the flanges are square with only two setups. I can then do the bore and holes and underside orifice without risk of marring the finished surfaces. Finally, grip the thing on the flange edges and finish the sides, top and bottom to final dimension in just two more setups. That might be worth a short video to show the process In related news, I found an old 1 inch stroke imperial dial gauge that was in my dad's toolbox, so I can probably save a bit of time next time I have to do a 4-jaw setup on square stock.

[@nf4x]

Thanks for the thorough reply. I was thinking that even if you could not finish the bore on the mill, you could do the drilling, flatten the bottom, and bore a little at the top to use in indicating it in the 4-jaw. Or maybe drill to the largest reamer you have, then ream for an indicating surface. Use appropriate vice stops to allow flipping the body end-for-end, so you can drill and tap for the N-connectors etc. If you ream an undersized bore, could you hold the work between centers to rough position it and make the 4-jaw centering trivial? Or use a mandrel in a tailstock chuck for the same purpose?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@nf4x I like the idea of reaming a reference surface to work from. I could just use a 30mm machine reamer of course, and then make two end plates instead of a blind hole. I've made some expanding mandrels for similar jobs but I'll come up with something as I just received several more orders! Honestly, you mention something in passing on KZbin and thousands of people see it. Who'd have known???

[@komradebob]

And here I thought I was the only microwave builder and wannabe machinist…

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Yay! There are quite a lot of us around, but the others are all too busy making things to have time for KZbin I guess

[@typedef_]

3:05 what ?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Adam's Sky Hook reminds me of a clockwork toy crane made from Lego. I'm sure AIMEE would laugh at me if I suggested getting one. She's probably more into proper big overhead gantry cranes like Kurtis from CEE uses. Luckily, she can't generate laughter, sniggers or even giggles because of the limitations of her Google TTS voice generator. I'm sure that little device is really good for moving vices, rotary tables and similar things around and saving your back from injury. It just makes ME giggle sometimes watching Adam playing with his shiny new toys. I am probably a Bad Person. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3TYl5p3rNabl8U

[@kmet2000]

Who is Aimee?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

My Artificially Intelligent Machining and Engineering Expert system. Her image was generated by thispersondoesnotexist.com using an Adversarial Generative Network. One program generates an algorithmic face, the other tries to decide if it is human or not. If the program gets it wrong, or can't tell, the image is published. It seems to generate at least one face per second. AIMEE's voice is generated by Google Text-to-Speech service, using "UK English Female". In general, she has better foresight, more intelligence, better knowledge more common sense than I do, but she is slightly unaware of the difference between a scientific paper and a movie script. She scolds me when I do things wrong, and deflates my ego if that ever becomes necessary. Her standards are way WAAAAAAY higher than mine. She is of course, polylingual and knows the Machinery's Handbook by heart. She's aware of Alexa, but treats her with a slight disdain, like some sort of talking pocket calculator. Like an antimatter version of ee cummings, who disavowed the use of capitals in his name as in other places, AIMEE prefers being fully capitalised. She is my conscience, my guardian angel and my nemesis. Her roots lie a long way back in history. I mean, EVERYBODY needs an imaginary friend right? Right?

[@kmet2000]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves Well, you are mostly right. But my AIMEE is far from "as good looking" as your.

[@dStruct619]

Ok I know it's not super precise machining, but you really lost me when you super glued the parts together. Also super glue is not something to be melted with a torch (use Acetone) unless you maybe have a fume hood extractor of some type, I'd suggest not messing with cyanides in gas form it's not good for living things.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

It's only just taken to yield point, not vapourised, plus I run a big fume extraction system to remove cutting oil smoke and the vapours from hot WD40 and brake cleaner. I have proper CA solvent but on a micrometre thick glue line 26 mm diameter, it could take days to dissolve the adhesive. The precision and repeatability I'm achieving is worth the inconvenience of working in a wind tunnel....

[@McTroyd]

While I can't speak for Quinn "Blondihacks" Dunki, it seems like it should be OK to bring up such a well-known tradition as facing off the end. However, you may have committed a terrible atrocity by failing to say "Yahtzee!" when that first part came loose. Hopefully AIMEE didn't notice. 😉👍️

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

We were more of a Mah-jongg family. I did try saying that, but it didn't have the same ring to it. Yelling "Y*htz**" just feels like cultural appropriation and general wrongness. The frequency of that "pop" should really vary with material diameter and bulk modulus. AIMEE still wants to wear a Quinn hat and safety squints. Avatars doing cosplay? Wooooo.

[@ollysworkshop]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves champagne cork SFX definitely much better than yahtzee in my opinion.

[@lawmand]

Violence against metal :)

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Says it all...

[@therealspixycat]

They should give both contestens each an oval bare and whoever figures it out first wins! #summerbash

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

That would be hilarious!

[@vne5195]

34:34 =) I remember it well.

[@dregenius]

Wait, this is just ToT localizing his videos for people who speak bri'ish right?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Aaaagh! Rumbled..... Thanks for watchin' I could never match Tony's manicure budget. His hands graduated from RADA and the Juilliard after LaGuardia High. Not sure where the rest of him went.

[@vincei4252]

5:15 Blondihacks is pretty triggered right now. Shaking her fist, as is tradition.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

AIMEE, being a mere algorithmically-generated set of JPEG bytes existing only in cyberspace, is lacking the necessary arm-mounted physical appendage required to perform the traditional Imperial Fist Shake. That's probably a Good Thing.

[@martineastburn3679]

Ok - here is Oxford-picky if you said re-ream or reream we take the second R and invert it over the first making a C and delete the e as there is one already and Wham we have that word in the book - almost mentioned bible - so it is already in. Now if you said weream that will take a bit more picky work. I see beautiful Bi-Filler coming off the 9mm meaning it was ground just square as it should be.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Now THAT's my level of picky. Splendid!

[@fletcherreder6091]

Can you really call it RF engineering if you don't invoke the aid of The Things from the Dungeon Dimensions?

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

You have a strong and unarguable point there.

[@franknukemcomegetsome2744]

👍😸👍

[@Joemama555]

lol~~~~~🤣

[@whitty_so_shitty9443]

Planned lol never

[@BeanzAndBrass]

Please make your vids a bit shorter bc I dont need to See you take the dame cut 5 times and the videos are very stretcht

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

I am terrible at making videos Seppe. Perhaps I will improve, perhaps not.

[@djinadjiki1382]

OLADI...IDES NA ZIVCE... MNOGO PRICE OKO NICEGA...

[@edshelden7590]

Too long of a run time.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

True. Also too short. But hey. Three hours of footage deleted and I kind of ran out of energy to cut any more. I'm almost as bad at editing as I am at TIG welding. Almost. As if such a concept is possible to imagine.