Recent content by John2002

Hello, Can anyone tell me if hardened dowel pins are generally made from cold rolled or hot rolled steel? I would appreciate any feedback I can get on the dowel-pin manufacturing process from start to finish along with the usual type of steel used. I want to use a hardened dowel pin as the...

Hello, I would be grateful if someone could please help me calculate the amount of torsional deflection (in degrees) of an octagon shaped tube or housing for a given amount of torque. The housing is an 8 sided octagon circumscribed "around" a 0.905 inch diameter circle. The housing...

Hi Tuck, I would recommend you try the book "CAMS FOR INDUSTRY" by John Reeve 1995. I have found this book to be very helpful. The book comes with useful software for designing mechanical cams of all types, and you can export a drawing of the cam in DXF format and import it into your...

Hi David, Thanks for your reply. If I can get one nice flat ground end, I don't think I really need a bevel. I think your idea to use a jig to grind several dowel ends at once is the way to go if I cannot find a stock pin that comes from the factory with a nice flat ground end. Thanks John

Hi David, Thanks for your message. Initial production runs may require 100 to 200 dowels. Can you give me a rough idea as to how much the grinding operation would add to the cost of the dowels? Could 10 pieces for prototypes be done at reasonable cost or would this just be to low of a...

Hi Arto and Ietech, Thanks for your messages. The dowels do serve a mechanical purpose and I must use a dowel 1.5" long with a diameter of 5/16" or 3/8". The dowels have a slide fit in very close tolerance holes, and I do not think that rivets come with a + 0.0002" /-...

Fred, Regarding my last message, The dowel that I actually saw from Mcmaster carr is part # 98381A587, which has a 1/4" diameter, but I figured that the 5/16" and 3/8" diameters would look the same at the ends. I also contacted Mcmaster carr and got the impresssion that they all...

Hi Fred, Thanks for your reply. The Mcmaster carr dowels are not what I am looking for as far as aesthetics go. It is hard to tell by looking at pictures in most catalogs what the dowel ends will really look like when you get them. The Mcmaster carr dowels have one end that is slightly...

Hello, Does anyone know where I might find hardened dowel pins that have at least one end that is crowned or beveled in a nice consistent manner? I have an application where one dowel-end is seen by the end user of the device and I would like to find some dowels with one nice finish end...

Hello, I am having a problem with Mechanical desktop 3.0 on start up. After clicking the Icon, the programs starts to open fine, but then it freezes and the command line says "regenerating drawing". Clicking on the tool bars or file menues produces no results. The only way to close...

Hello, Does anyone know of any good freeware or shareware software that allows you to animate 3D solid models and/or assemblies created with AutoCAD? I am looking for the cheapest software with the shortest learning curve. I have tried a freeware program called "3D canvas" at...

Hello, I just wanted to thank everyone for their replies to my post. Your comments were very interesting and helpful. Sincerely, John

Hello, I just wanted to thank everyone for their replies to my post. Your comments were very interesting and helpful. Sincerely, John

Hello, Can anyone tell me if you can convert 3D solids to polygons in AutoCAD 14? Is there a freeware, shareware, or lisp program that can do this? I want to import an AutoCAD dxf file containing 3D solids into the freeware program "3d canvas" but the program requires that the dxf...

Hello, Can anyone tell me how to load and use .FAS files in AutoCAD 14? I can use regular .lisp files but I am having trouble with an .FAS file I downloaded. I am not familiar with FAS files. I attempted to open the file with a word processor, but I just got a bunch on unreadable code and no...