Sunday, January 8, 2012

Nano-Tram and my frustration with VPost

Before I start writing about the session I just completed on the locking lever, I would like to show off the Nano-Tram I just received.

The Nano-Tram was purchased to help me in squaring up my 2 Sherline mills to save shop time.  Like most stuff I bought from US vendors, it came rather well packed to protect parts that are critical to squaring up the mills.  I played with it for a while this morning to get the manual and CNC mills squared up as I am preparing to re-start some projects, including the completion of the A2Z leadscrew conversion for the Z axis (of the CNC mill).  It only took me about 15 mins to get both done but I've not tested them to see how square they really are with the Nano-Tram.  This will be done before I start the other projects.

Meanwhile, some pics on the items I bought:

The Nano-Tram is the one at the top right (in yellow). Going anti-clockwise we've the LMS thin parallels (much better set than the Sherline's. Measured them using my Mitutoyo Micrometer.  Good stuff for the price), the 6" Hermaphrodite Caliper for laying out, and the SpillMaster container).
I've another 2 parcels that supposed to come in at the same time with these but VPost seems not to be able to get their act together.  They claimed that they made 2 attempts to deliver the parcels to my office but none in the office receive any delivery notes for the failed attempts nor notice any VPost fella trying to do the delivery.  From the tracking screen, the first attempt was made on Jan 2, at about 8pm.  If I know that they deliver after office hours, I would have given them my home address instead.  The second attempt was made around noon on the 4th.  I received a call while I was meeting a client in the office's meeting room but didn't answer it (I don't usually answer calls during meetings as a respect to my clients).  When I called back about half an hour later, a rude fella told me that he tried delivering the items but there was no one answering the door.  That is really strange as I've at least 5 colleagues around during that time.  No one hear the door bell ringing and saw no one on the CCTV.  Best of all, no delivery advice was received for the 2 failed attempts.  I made a call to VPost and after trying to get the lady on the line to understand what I'm talking about, she promised a re-delivery on Friday (Jan 6) before 1pm.  I was in the office till 12.30pm before leaving for my appointments.  Let's see if the 2 boxes are on my table on Monday.  I'm looking out for another company to use for consolidation of purchases in US.  Let me know if you know of any company that does the same thing as VPost.

Ok, done with my rant, some shots showing the Nano-Tram in use:

On my manual 5410 mill.
The 2010 CNC mill finally re-assembled.  I ws waiting for the Nano-Tram to put it back together.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Your blog is very informative. Saw that you bought a nano-tram, googled it and thought it will be useful to tram my 8 directional Sherline mill which I have problem making good alignment. Place an order a few minutes ago and will be getting one soon. Thanks.

YC

Wongster said...

Thanks for your comment, YC.

I've yet to test out the accuracy of the mills after tramming with the nano-tram. Been busy with the new lathe.

By the way, are you in SG? We have a yahoo group with 4 members at the moment - SherlineSG. Due to the heavy local flavor and tonnes of out of topic discussion, I'm keeping the group closed. There isn't much technical discussion at the moment, just some basic sharing and TCSS. If you're local or residing here, you're welcome to drop me a note for my sending of the invite.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I'm Malaysian working in US right now but will be going back permanently in a few week. I'm on buying spread right now as I foresee it will be difficult and costly to get stuff from US back home. What is one of the most useful tool that you have related to your machine.

Btw I owned a lot of machine e.g thing-o-matc, 40w laser, sherline and taig lathe, sherline mill and a cnc engraver from china that I got from eBay. Somehow I feel I still don't have enough machine. Looking to acquire a bandsaw, drill press in future. Thanks and keep blogging.

YC

Wongster said...

I wanted to buy the 3d printer but the texture on the products are not something I really like except this 3dhomemade.blogspot.com/, which is still under development.

I've been buying whole year round from US and some bit from UK. Tried planning each round to maximize on shipping but that didn't work well as I tend to click on impulse at times. Now I really have to cool off as I'm seriously short of space in the shop. So, get whatever you like while you're there.

Wong