Haven't seen the article but isn't it more usual to mount a sucker on the funnel rather than using a blower? You then need a fan that is impervious to smoke and heat.

Where can you fit a blower?

Russell.

Try breakeryard.com, and request quotes for a fan blower motor

http://www.breakeryard.com/partfinder

You may need to spoof a reg number so you can manually chose a suitable donor car.

Greetings Julian, thank you for your comments.

In my experience, the compressed air system can use quite a lot of air, and just when you need the most, someone else opens up, thus reducing the supply, just what you need.

You are quite right about the plastic fan being next to useless, and my design was to provide a laser cut replacement for the fan & casing.

Above all, it was meant to be simple to construct, with a view to encouraging someone who has purchased a locomotive, to start making some thing simple, and thus beoming converted to this wonderful hobby of ours.

Regards

Brian

Hi Micheal, that is a most beauttful loco that you have picked, and coming from a dyed in the wool LNER man,, thats saying something. I have seen several running. I had one my self, but my son in law pinched it.

Good luck with your build.

regards

Brian

I'd started making a blower along the lines of the article, prior to it being published. I needed a motor and realised I had one of these laying around.

**LINK**

Its more than adequate and needs a speed controller otherwise you'll be sucking coal down the firetubes !!

**LINK**

Seriuosly this motor makes such an effective blower. I was using it for the first time the other day and once I'd got steam up one of the guys wanted to try it. He said "put it on full" as he only had about 10 psi on the guage. He went from 10psi to safety's blowing in less than a minute.

OK Jaycar is Oz/NZ but these are Chinese products so I'm guessing Maplins (are they still around?) will do similar, otherwise its Ebay or Alibaba.

Pete

PS – 7.25" guage locos. The tube for the chimney is 2" I'll do some photos if more details are required.

Edited By Doubletop on 11/12/2016 10:22:03

Here's my nearly finished blower for a 7.25" loco (Dart) with the Jaycar motor (see link above)

The rotor was supposed to be just some flat baldes welded to the two plates. i don't have welding kit so made a hub and copper plades and silver soldered it all together. The other plate is held on stand offs like the main body. Rather than spending time making standoffs I used 1/4" stainless tube and 4ba bolts

By the way the direction of rotation is with the sweep of the blades trailing. I felt that the leading face would swash the air outwards and a vacuum would be created in the concave cavity of the trailing face. The combined effect drawing air from the center

This blower (sucker) is cabable of lifting something the size of a book off the table.

And the speed controller

Hope that helps somebody.

Pete

Edited By Doubletop on 13/12/2016 09:41:29

I wasn't sure that would be the case or whether flat blades should be offset from the radial axis. A bit of googling indicated that any would work to some degree or other. However as I had no way of welding on the flat blades I'd been given with the disks I had to seek an alternative.

I did consider the tabs similar to those used by Brian or tabs a push fit into holes in the discs and the whole lot clamped together as a sandwich with the spacers and bolts.

In the end I went for the copper blades and silver solder. Adding the curved blades wouldn't be a problem. They were just annealled and bent by hand around a 3in tube.

Pete

Kerrin

When you read the instructions you'll see that you will need a diode across the motor to protect the unit from back EMF. Its a 1N5404 so order one at the same time.

I found out too late.

Pete

Brian

Had I been able to weld my fan would have had straight blades. Some time ago one of the club members had produced some ‘kits’ for a fan. Except for the method of attaching the blades it looks remarkably like your design, I was given one of the kits and I hadn't seen your article at that point so I grappled with how I was going to deal with fixing the blades and came up with my silver soldered solution, and, after a bit of Googling, the curved blades. I just thought I'd share it.

If anything it’s too efficient, hence the speed controller. Given the opportunity it wouldn’t only pull the fire out but attempt to suck the coal and wood up the chimney.

Regards

Pete

Edited By Doubletop on 18/12/2016 09:21:07

Edited By Doubletop on 18/12/2016 09:21:28