its no good swearing

[blueyonder]

  life has its little ups and downs.  and sumtimes when you share them its not so bad.

   ive yet to put up a wind turbine but already ive seen pics of others who had sum real bad luck.

 mainly wind damage.  its bound to set you back doing work that gets damaged.

 huh i aint evan got to that bit yet.

 but i sure was disgusted with what happened with my rotors.

  or maybe i should say would be rotors.

   so it all started when a friend asked me to make sum winter wheels for his caravan .

  like a rv.   he said he had the metal to do it.

  hum sounded ok then he said its 1/2" thick about four feet long and over twenty inches wide.  jeez i couldn't be leave my luck.  as he said i can have the bits left over.

  all i could think was two 12"" discs. great .

  so off we went to collect this sheet steel.  it was heavy as hell .

 and was a struggle to lift it the two of us.

  got it in the back of motor and headed home .

 i was like superman . got it out and walked it down to near my work shop.

 it allready had rust on it so no problems leaving it outside.

   most every day i looked at this sheet of steel.

   and with my tape measure i started DREAM ON .

  i had lots of bits of steel i could use on my friends winter wheels.

  this was rotor stuff i had here.

   i already had hugh piggots  manual.  a failed attempt with a dc motor and ceramic

 magnets wasent going to make any power.

  so this was a good time to make a twin rotor axal flux .

  i read and read the plans and was ok about making a start.

  first thing i done was to order magnets . 24 at 2x1x1/2" n42.

   i dident order any wire yet as i had lots to do before i was ready.

  then the day came i started on cutting out sum bits for turning on lathe.

  my idea was take my time do a bit now and again when i have spare time.

  lokking at the pics you can see how things went .

  as i had to turn them in the lathe i made it much bigger to allow for getting a good center.

  the bit i cut was 14"x14"

   but evan that was so heavy

  i tried to imagine two bits like this up in the air .

  thats not counting the rest of the bits.

  after cutting and using up two 9" cutting discs i wanted to mark it out.

  as it had a bit rust on it i thought all i need do is scribe it.

 that way i will see bright metal.

   but had a problem trying to mark it.

  so then put sum white water based paint on and let it dry.

   happy as a pigglet in $#|+ and set about the marking.

  it went ok .

  so if i did the four holes first i could make a face plate with four matching holes.

   this was when things started to get me a bit uptight.

   i could drill the four holes for the studs.

  i tried new drills  sharp drills slow speeds .

   now i was puzzled. why couldent i drill holes here .

  i got the metal free . so if i had to find sum place to lazer cut it and pay them money then so be it.  

  i did manage to make sum dimples on it.  it looked odd stuff .

  i knew it wasent stainless it was all rusty.

  but whare i tried to drill it looked shiny .

  now i was real unhappy.   things werent going well here.

  it had been a job cutting it with angle grinder.

   i dont know why but i got a magnet and put it on the plate.

  HOLY XXXX. it wasent magnetic.

  well now i realized it wasent going to be any good for rotors.

  well that was enough for me so left it alone for a few days.

  i took the bit plate down to a local steel fab shop .

   the guy saw me with this bit plate and asked .PROBLEMS?

  i told him i was trying to build a wind mill but this XXXX steel was no good and what was it.

  he got interested in it and tried all sorts of tests on .

 and the magnet test.

  now a few of the other guys in the shop were looking.

  in the end thay said it was cobalt.  huh what can i use that for i said.

  keeping superman out the guy said .i dident think it was funny.

   but i did get sum 8mm steel while there.

  after all i had 24 mags.

  so now im working on a small 9"rotor with 8 mags.

  getting a lot of fun from it but its not like the one i wanted to make.

  that will come later.

  now ive just left the plate outside in the rain.

  cant think of anything to use it for.

  maybe a base for pipe mast. but ill get over it in a few year.

  every time i look at that steel sheet i want to give it a kick.

   but im not so stupid. broken toes arent so good .

   try try and try again .robert the bruce said .as he watched a spider trying to make a web in a cave mouth. .wind kept blowing web away. but it did succeed. in the end  

  back to the drawing board .


cleaned up some language, we get younguns through here working on school projects.

[spinningmagnets]

I once broke a drill bit inside something important at work. I was told to grind the stub flat, then drill out the bit. They sent me to get a special bit made from cobalt.

I guess its really hard stuff (harder than drill steel!) You might sell the plate to a metals shop, check the web for cobalt for sale, and ask if they also buy it.

[Janne]

Heh, nice story, thanks for posting.

Reminds me when i was making spacers for a guide in my hand held router. Well i found a piece of steel lying in the shop floor, almost the correct size. So off i were first curring it with angle grinder into 2 parts.. it was a bit tough and sparks were very small, of course i wasn't paying too much attention to this at the time. Next job was to drill a few holes in it. Ok, time to drill holes.. WTF? drill just started to make lots of smoke and very little metal shavings.. Time to try marking punch in it... Couldn't make any mark with it!

It turned out to be a piece of the toothplace from an old snowplow

[brkwind2]

Yikes.  I'm going home & check my rotors now.  I never thought rusty metal wouldn't stick to a magnet.  I cut mine out with a cutting torch.  Hopefully that means I've got what I want.

[richhagen]

Kind of reminds me of a time when I was replacing an older type wooden framed window with some free glass I was given.  I found out it was tempered when it shattered into little pieces on me.  

The thing is tempered glass is actually more costly than regular glass.  The same is almost certainly true of that tool steel/cobalt plate you have there.  If you look at the prices of tool steels, you will see that the high cobalt content stuff is expen$$$ive.  if you can find a machine shop that can use that plate, you ought to be able to trade it for a boatload of mild steel plate I would think.  Rich

[Norm]

or the time I thought I had a whole bunch of copper wire

and turned out it was aluminum.

light brown enamel coating sure looks like copper.

[terry5732]

Cobalt is one of the three magnetic metals -nickel cobalt iron -  must be something else

[blueyonder]

  thanks terry . i wasent sure about cobalt .

 the fact that it was non magnetic just put it in the class of wood.

  thay say its no good crying over spilt milk . so whatever it is is a thing of the past.

  but i do remember reading a post on here about a guy who was at work and found meny

 steel discs. i think as big as needed for rotors.

 he posted on here that he can get them from his boss and maybe the guys on here could have them at a small charge.

  but then it turned out thay were magnesium or sumthing to that affect .

  so its good you said there not cobalt . as i was thinking about how much thay might be worth as scrap.$$$$$$$$$$$$$££££££££££££.

  i think thay have a small % magnetic . not sure how to describe the pull.

 so it could be sumthing like 2% or maybe 5% .

  i was able to weld it .a short run with a mild steel electrode .

 that welded ok.

  its good i got a drawing board as thats whare i spend most of my time nowdays.

  maybe its a bit that fell of a UFO. lol.  

[blueyonder]

 its no good swearing. i must apologise. i did put a few bad words in there.

 menny thanks for cleaning up my post. i need a rest.

[12AX7]

Hi

I've seen some types of stainless that will rust/oxidize.  It also has a very "slight" magnetic property.  and it's an "sob" to machine.  welds, but not very good.

[brianschanafelt]

I also had a time that i thought i had a lot of copper wire it turned out to be a big spool of welding wire. Go figure

[Capt Slog]

Yup, I've seen that too, especially if it's been near to some other metal and sets up galvanic action.

  now a few of the other guys in the shop were looking.

  in the end thay said it was cobalt.  huh what can i use that for i said.

  keeping superman out the guy said .i dident think it was funny.

           well it made me laugh!

[methanolcat]

  could be one of the 400 series stainless steels, any type of stainless starting with 4** can and will rust at some point usually only surface rust though, never seen any that was pitted, AND all of the 400 series are mildly magnetic.

    methanolcat

[12AX7]

I don't recall Super Man having any problems with cobalt.  

besides the big K..   and not seeing though lead, he was pretty much "super"

[wooferhound]

Superman

Able to rip through 1/2 inch of Cobalt with his bare hands

so I guess Cobalt does not shield against Kriptonite

Maybe Lead Plated cobalt