Suggestions for lathe-only projects?

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

The ER collets aren't fussy about size, so you can use them for work holding and for unusually sized tools. And a set of square and hexagonal collet blocks come in really handy for other jobs like making squares, cross holes, flats and hand finishing

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Collets and Endmills

Thanks Nicholas – I'm basically split down the middle – either a cheap-o banggood MT collet holder + collet set for about £30 all-in, or looking at the Myford sets as previously mentioned at £25 per collet.

Tracy Tools do a set of end mills with 5/8" shanks, but I cant find any 5/8" myford collets available online. What size of milling cutter should I be expecting to work in, with a vertical slide? I'm guessing fairly small!

Steam Engine Choice

After some more reading and seeing some of Tubalcain's more recent videos, he builds something very similar to the simple oscillating engine and it runs fine on 5psi so I'm assuming that I'll be OK for boilers.

Both the Elizabeth and Simple Oscillating Engine are single-acting, and the one he made in his video is double-acting. It seems a simple amendment (i.e. two holes in the cylinder and two pairs of inlet/exhaust instead of one). Should I be concerned at all with single vs double-acting at this point?

Is there much difference in the output of the tubalcain single-acting oscillator (1/4" bore) vs the simple oscillator (1/2" bore) ? The fact the simple one is in metric is killing me, none of my drills or tools are in metric!

Edited By William Ayerst on 29/11/2020 22:59:21

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by William Ayerst on 29/11/2020 22:46:52:

Collets and Endmills

………..

Tracy Tools do a set of end mills with 5/8" shanks, but I cant find any 5/8" myford collets available online. ……………………………..

Edited By William Ayerst on 29/11/2020 22:59:21

I doubt you will do, I believe they only made them up to ½"
They are No 2 Morse, so you wouldn't be able to have a 5/8" hole and have much metal left.
See dimensions Here, amongst other sources

Bill

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

Don't worry about metric William, just make a photocopy of the plans for the simple oscillator and mark it up with the mm dimensions converted to inches with a calculator – just divide mm by 25.4 to get decimal inches. Example – you might not have a 6 mm dia drill for a cylinder bore but you may have a 6.35 mm one (1/4" )   This is very close to the metric size. If you adjust the piston size to suit a 1/4" bore rather than 6 mm it will likely work fine.

If you have a smartphone it likely has a good calculator app already. There are many calculator apps online. You don't need a handheld calculator anymore.

A handy tool set for any shop is a full 128 piece set of twist drills with fractional, number, and letter drills included, from #60 to 1/2". You will find sizes very close to many nominal metric dimensions in these sets. The 128 pc sets don't cost much from China now, and some are very good quality drills.

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 30/11/2020 02:20:58

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

It seems that RDG do a backplate, chuck and set of collets so maybe that's a shout? £140 all-in doesn't seem too bad? (have I gone made, or has just the price of this hobby become completely disconnected from reality…). I would much rather get a used, german oro british set – but may bbe more challenging.

I would def be looking somewhere else. The price quoted HERE for an ER32 set is £920!

Now, that is disconnected!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

RDG (and others) always do that when out of stock, saves having to relist the entire item, been said many times before on the forum.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Posted by William Ayerst on 29/11/2020 22:46:52:

Both the Elizabeth and Simple Oscillating Engine are single-acting, and the one he made in his video is double-acting. It seems a simple amendment (i.e. two holes in the cylinder and two pairs of inlet/exhaust instead of one). Should I be concerned at all with single vs double-acting at this point?

Not quite as simple, you need to close in both ends of the cylinder, not familiar with the exact engine but at 1/4" bore I suspect the piston is also the piston rod all being 1/4" diameter. You would need to use a smaller diameter rod and short 1/4" piston then fit a cylinder cover with suitable hole for the piston rod.

That Minnie traction engine in my Avitar was done on an Emco lath with Myford slide and cutters held in the 3-jaw so basic stuff works.

Rather than a simple metric to imperial calculation suggested by Jeff, on a basic wobbler I would say just multiply each metric dimension by 1.0583 which will give you imperial stock sizes as well as proportional lengths.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by JasonB on 30/11/2020 07:17:40:

RDG (and others) always do that when out of stock, saves having to relist the entire item, been said many times before on the forum.

I know that, but it doesn't change my post – if he wants it, possibly this side of Christmas, does it?

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

OK, for the sake of simplicity then I'll go for the simple oscillator scaled to imperial. It appears that as long as I get the inlet and exhaust ports, the pivot, the piston/rod length and the crank throw lined up the rest is academic…

Thank you all!

[Henry ArtistParticipant @henryartist43508]

< SIGH >

The Tubal Cain of YouTube fame is a 'merican gentleman who I believe used to teach machining in a high school. The author of the books was T D Walshaw, an English engineer, academic, and prolific contributor to the Model Engineer magazine.

Only one engine in the book is double-acting (Hercules). The others are single-acting so only require the cylinder to be closed at one end. There are many "rites of passage" in the world of model engineering and one of them is making a Polly. Even I have made one –

** LINK **

These days most people use gel fuel for their toy steam engines. No bad odours like you get with Esbit tablets and more convenient than Meths. In UK you can get gel fuel from B&Q.

The engines and boilers in Stan Bray's book can all be made with a lathe no bigger than a Unimat 3 or Sieg C0. The final project in the book is a locomotive.

Most toy steam boilers operate in the 10 – 20psi range.

The engine suggested by David George is an excellent project but will work better as a pneumatic engine than one run on live steam because there is waaaaay too much material in the cylinder which results in priming.

Edited By Henry Artist on 30/11/2020 11:04:22

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Hi Henry,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I'm a little confused that Tubal Cain is listed as the author of the book, and in your video – if the author of the books was T D Walshaw? Is it a branding thing? Certainly I was confused to hear about various local british firms from an ostensibly Illinois-based engineer!

I definitely want to build a steam boiler if I get the engine running – after all, the whole point of this is to get ready to build a locomotive! So maybe an Elizabeth really is a better choice after all as it's already in imperial, is horizontal rather than vertical, will work on steam, and has a boiler designed to work with it…

As written the plans suggest brass tube with a 1/4" internal diameter, but I can only find 6mm and 8mm internal diameters. Is it feasible to just use the 8mm I/D tube and increase the piston diameter? I assume, if the boiler can deliver up to 15psi and Tubal Cain's double-acting equivalent with a 1/2" bore was running at 5psi, it would be fine. An alternative would be to machine down some 20mm stock to have an integral port at the back end, and reduce the material down to fairly narrow elsewhere?

Edited By William Ayerst on 30/11/2020 11:43:46

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Probably easier to use 6mm rod or turn 1/4" down to 6mm then you don't need to worry about enlarging the bore of the tube which would be best reamed..

[IanTParticipant @iant]

'Tubal Cain' was the pen name of Tom Walshaw, that he used to write articles under in Model Engineer – long before YouTube was even dreamed of.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 30/11/2020 11:49:12

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

So there are two 'Tubal Cain's? Ah… I didn't realise it was a biblical name – makes so much more sense.

JasonB – so definitely going from 6.35 to 6mm better than 6.35 to 8mm bore?

[Henry ArtistParticipant @henryartist43508]

William,

if you look in the description box below the video there is a link to the build log for the engine. This should answer some questions for you.

Before building your first toy steam engine it is very easy to overthink things. It is important to remember these are simple mechanisms that are easy to construct.

Vertical boilers are easier to make than horizontal ones and take up less shelf space – an important consideration once the collection starts growing. However, horizontal boilers are more efficient (or rather, less inefficient).

I have seen many toy steam engines successfully made using K&S brass tube for the cylinder.

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Hmmmm, I've got my vertical slide and vice but I've just seen it's the single-bolt type and I'm having a bit of a mare keeping it square to the ways. Fiddling around with a micrometer it looks like I'm about 5 thou out over an inch – is this reasonable or am I going to need to sort a double-bolt type? I'm using a 3/8" HSS milling cutter in the 3-jaw. I set the face of the vice jaws parallel with a faceplate in the lathe chuck and tightened up there.

Materials ordered for the Elizabeth, so I guess that's what I'm building!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I'd be looking some something like half a thou over 4" or better when setting up an angle plate, vice etc

What vertical slide did you get, I thought that even the swivel type Myford ones had two fixings

Edited By JasonB on 01/12/2020 20:19:05

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

It was a myford double-swivel with a single bolt through onto the cross slide. It's a bit weird because there's an angle indicator for the horizontal swivel, but to swivel like that you have to loosen the bolt, which means the whole slide slops around in the t-slot.

This design (not this vice): https://www.nielsmachines.com/en/myford-accessories.html

[Terry KirkupParticipant @terrykirkup37827]

Hi William. Here's something I was savaged for recently on this site (but it worked!).

And my grippy "thing" for the tailstock (bought the blank arbour, made the chunk of aluminium, maybe too deep)

Have fun and take care.

Edited By Terry Kirkup on 03/12/2020 14:51:45

[Andy_GParticipant @andy_g]

Posted by William Ayerst on 01/12/2020 20:21:09:

… but to swivel like that you have to loosen the bolt, which means the whole slide slops around in the t-slot.

This design (not this vice): https://www.nielsmachines.com/en/myford-accessories.html

Does yours not have the dowel pins that fit into the T slot to stop the base rotating?

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

It does but there's a lot of slop. I wonder if they need bushing or something? What's the diameter of the lugs please?

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

The same diameter as the width of the slots

[Andy_GParticipant @andy_g]

Posted by William Ayerst on 03/12/2020 18:44:53:

What's the diameter of the lugs please?

That photo was from your link to show the slide, so I'm not sure about those.

On the one I recently acquired (Chinese / Indian / WHY copy) the dowels are 3/8" diameter. (But I don't have T slots for them to fit into!).

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by roy entwistle on 03/12/2020 19:19:12:

The same diameter as the width of the slots

.

… Hopefully just a little less than that

MichaelG.

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

MichaelG   You knew what I meant and surely it should be obvious

Roy

Edited By roy entwistle on 03/12/2020 21:42:07

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