ME Beam Engine

[Peter Russell 1Participant @peterrussell1]

I had intended to build a 'Lady Stephanie' beam engine but, after a dreadful experience with Reeves – who I will never buy from again – I am now looking at the ME Beam Engine.

I note from a couple of threads that the Reeves castings are preferred over those offered by Brunell and I wonder why?

Is there a reason to avoid Brunells?

[Peter Russell 1Participant @peterrussell1]

Castings supplier

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Just do a search of any Model Engineering forum and you will find the reasons why.

Why not just get the drawings and do either without castings, there is nothing too complicated that really needs a casting on either of them.I think a big Steph would make a good project.

Edited By JasonB on 29/12/2022 15:47:19

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Thoroughly agree with Jason here Peter, you can buy an awful lot of decent, lovely to machine, homogenous cast iron for the price of a set of castings – without all the attendant risks of hard spots, blow holes and misalignment issues that is always possible.

I can recommend M Metals as a source – no connection save a satisfied customer and they will cut to size too.

With the aid of some standard JB Weld and some thought it is relatively easy to make convincing 'castings'.

My Marine Condensing Engine thread will give you an idea – any questions just ask

 

The ME beam engine is a nice subject that would lend itself to this approach – worth considering maybe?

Regards – Tug

Edited By Ramon Wilson on 29/12/2022 16:23:41

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

Didn't the designer Tubal Cain aka T D Walshaw make the prototype Lady Stephanie without castings?

I have got a set of castings for this engine and to be honest most of them did not need to be castings..

Regards

Derek

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I looked into making a beam engine a while ago and concluded cost of shipping castings to Australia is prohibitive for me. But it looked like the only part that would be a bit difficult to make from bar stock would be the beam, unless one has CNC.

So you might look at the option of buying only the beam casting and making the rest from bar stock.

The main problem with making the beam from scratch on the several beam engines I looked into (Stephanie, ME, Stuart and a KN Harris design) was that the edges of the beam are curved, forming a sort of ellipsis shape, which would be hard to machine manually, when you add in all the webbing and reliefs on the side of the beam that has to follow the same curves. Easy peasy with CNC but not worth the faff manually.

So another option might be to compromise and machine the beam with straight rather than curved edges, but that kind of thing always bugs me every time I look at it. I would pay the (relatively) little bit of money for the correct-looking beam casting and hope they could at least get that casting right.

You could also make most of the parts from aluminium rather than cast iron and make the machining easier. Only the cylinder and valve gear and associated working bits really need to be cast iron. Certainly the beam and column/s would be best in ally IMHO.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

That style of beam is actually quite easy to do. The average cast beam is not going to have the profile spot on to the nearest micron and mould misalignment will mean you end up filing the outer profile to tidy it up anyway. Fabrication is the way to go, so print out your eliptical shape and use that as a template to saw/linish/file a piece of say 3mm plate or flat stock.

Take two lenghs of flat or cut strips from sheet, mill a 3mmx 1mm slot down the middle to locate on the central web. Clamp to your 3mm web (they will bend easy enough) and silver solder into place.

Now drill for the various bosses, plunging or boring the ends to tidy up the previous work and bond or solder the bosses into place.

Now treat as a casting and do the final bores and reamed holes in the bosses.

I did look at the ME beam article last night, not too hard to do.

– Bed plate made from two layers of either aluminium or steel with an 1/8" one at the bottom to form the flange which saves a lot of cutting. Bond on the numerous hold down bolt bosses and mill the top raised features and moulding around the edge.

– Cylinder is a tube with flanges added each end and a coped block for the port face

= Column, probably do from steel round with square bits added top and bottom or you could turn from larger solid square bar

– beam as above

– Flywheel cut from billet and as it's a freelance design you could go got a more rectangular section to the spokes to save handwork

Bronze is another alternative for cylinders as it allows silver soldering if you don't want to JBweld as soldering cast iron is possible but not the easiest thing to do

As for needing CNC for beams, this engine's beam(s) was done before I had CNC, just outsourced some water jet work on the flywheel. The whole thread shows a lot of fabrication or cutting from solid that would be applicable to any other beam engine or any stationary engine come to that.

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Peter,

Plus one for Jason's comment on the beam manufacture. I was intending to make (now a defunct intention) a larger Mary beam engine (another nice design that lends its self to fabrication methods). That is exactly how I intended to do the beam, the outer strips with the groove in, filed to give a draft angle once assembled. No silver soldering necessary if not desired as a few small screws and JB Weld would be more that adequate to create such a component. A little thought can produce a very convincing 'casting' more than adequate in strength for the job in hand

As Jason's link indicates all the bosses (again with draft angles) will be in a alignment side to side too and not offset to one another as most castings seem to be. If heavy chamfers are put on the holes and/or the bases of the bosses this gives a much thicker fillet of JB Weld and a much stronger bond – it's best to use the JBW as a structural addition rather than an 'adhesive' per se

From my own perspective there will be little if anything made after the Marine Engine but I have now used JBW on enough projects to know that except for really small parts, silver soldering for the most part is redundant in such fabrication work. No heat so no potential for distortion and no clean up of wayward solder. When it comes to pipe work the parts can be assembled on the model for perfect alignment too.

Were I to be continuing with my model engineering journey it has to be said I simply would not part with my cash for 'castings' except perhaps for a flywheel on occasion but even that can be over come by fabrication.

Good luck with your journey

Best – Tug

 

Edited By Ramon Wilson on 30/12/2022 09:10:42

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

As more home machinists take up CNC it may be the case that the lower demand for castings has made the suppliers go for cheaper options that have reduced the quality. With low numbers of parts it may be a better option for the suppliers to find someone to CNC large parts, like the beam, from solid.

Martin C

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

The likes of Stuarts are already supplying some parts as CNC machined, I expect they just stop the program short of the ones they make for the ready to run kits. Items are mostly what they used to supply a shot pressings.

[Peter Russell 1Participant @peterrussell1]

Gentlemen, thanks for all those replies – very useful.

I did a bit of searching on Brunell and I see what you mean.

I know M-Machines quite well, I like the fact that you place your order in the afternoon and collect it next morning. Great service.

I've used JB Weld as an adhesive a couple of times, but never as a 'structural' item, so that will be interesting.

Well, enough prevaricating. Time to get on with the machine.

One last thought, can someone point me to the ME issues that cover this engine.

Thanks.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Volumes 121 and 122 issues 3048 to 3072 every issue with an odd bit in vol 123 No 3091

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

Hi

Wasn't there a recent series detailing the building the ME beam engine in the Model Engineer?

This is another engine on my "to make" list. I will probably only buy the cylinder and flywheel as castings, the rest I will build from stock.

Good luck with the build !

Derek

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I thought about Jason's method of fabricating a beam when I was looking at beam engines to make and decided it seemed like so much work for one piece, it would be easier to just buy the casting, wheareas the rest of the engine was just about as easy to make from stock as from castings. One more casting I would buy is the flywheel casting. Plenty of them in different styles available at reasonable cost if you shop around. But they are a lot of work to carve from the solid. Of course, both are interesting challenges to make from scratch if you are so inclined.

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

Just read the saga of Brunell and some unhappy customers on another forum dated over 10 years ago….I wonder if anything has changed over the last decade ?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It's an option when castings are available but if Peter does not want to use one supplier and the other could be hit and miss then it's DIY or do something else. I've used just flywheel castings quite a bit in the past, less so now I have the CNC and like the recently completed reinvented Real the much Modified James Coombes I'm working on at the moment will use a (modified) Stuart cylinder casting as someone wanted to know what to get me for Xmas otherwise I may have scratch built the lot.

The DIY route does also allow for a change of scale as I often do and Ramon is currently doing with his marine engine. Don't think many would alter the scale of the ME beam as it's flywheel suits Myford gaps but the small 5" flywheel of Lady Steph would definetely be a candidate for her big sister, maybe a modern girl using 1/32" = 1mm would work out well with a 160mm flywheel stopping her getting too much of a handful. Though those with a 250 or over lathe could just double up.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I was thinking you could take a punt on one relatively inexpensive casting rather than the very expensive whole set.

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