The Workshop Progress Thread

[John ThorneParticipant @johnthorne49048]

Hi Some more parts made at home for a Westinghouse pump

John

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 25/10/2015 08:49:46:

> With a bit more poking about I found an eccentric strap

That's how Jason doies it – he get model versions of these:

 

A rare find. The original tooling for an Adept super !

Edited By Ady1 on 11/11/2015 10:14:38

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Over the weekend I have converted a piece of 0.75" x 1.5" EN3B into a pile of swarf and been left with this which looks like a conrod

The strap was bent up from a bit of 4x15mm black bar, an offcut welded into the end to stop it closing up while in the vice so it could be final machined.

Still a bit more to do.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I got the big end bearing done yesterday as well as the cotter and wedge to hold it all together. This allowed me to finalise the size of a few bits like the piston rod length so could not resist making up a couple of plugs so that I could try the Tidman on a bit of air, fired up straight away with my eyeballed timing setting and the governor butterfly valve seems to control teh speed quite well on teh 15psi I'm running at, no gaskets, gland packing or piston rings fitted at the moment.

 

J

PS don't jump when te compressor kicks in just after 60secs, organ music will have to wait until its all finished.

 

Edited By JasonB on 22/11/2015 13:22:13

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

It's a good 'un.

Neil

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

No pics as yet, hopefully tomorrow but been round reckoning up what quick change tool holders I have.

Including some specials that have things like knurling tools built into the holder and some obsolete holders to hold defunct type parting blades then the total count is 49 holders between two lathes.

Problem is once Deb's Phantom Bantam is in use and that's three lathes, we could be struggling for tool holders so hunt around and come up with a lump of steel 2" x 6" and 29" long. That will do nicely and should make 32 new holders.

So couple of hours on the saw tomorrow and should have the blanks cut out. Pictures later.

[I.M. OUTAHEREParticipant @i-m-outahere]

Posted by Ady1 on 11/11/2015 10:13:38:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 25/10/2015 08:49:46:

> With a bit more poking about I found an eccentric strap

That's how Jason doies it – he get model versions of these:

A rare find. The original tooling for an Adept super !

Edited By Ady1 on 11/11/2015 10:14:38

Must be for a late model Adept Super !

[Anonymous]

This part is in the 'progress' thread because it represents progress, unlike the previous attempt. Here's the part with undamaged screw threads, 32tpi on the larger (1" ) diameter and 19tpi Whitworth (aka 3/8" BSP) on the smaller:

Through the radial holes the inner valve seat can be seen, with undercut made using the homemade cutter previously shown.

Two more to go!

Andrew

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

The new Shaftesbury jig borer/light milling machine arriving at home. Looks pretty nice at first glance but an obvious problem is how am I going to get it in the garden/workshop?

Scratch of the head for two minutes then out came the spanners.

Long story short, a lot of puffing and panting and she was home but in bits. I am midway through the stripping and cleaning and have decided to have the table surface ground to get rid of a few dings.

I also bought a power hacksaw while I was at it and this will be next in the dry dock when the jig borer is complete.

I managed to blag a lot of tooling from the supplier so many thanks to those who offered chucks etc on 30 Int tapers but I am now in possession of everything I need. Including a brand harry spankers INTEGI U.M.200 boring head which looks very good and probably a lot more expensive than I paid for it. Anyone have any experience od Integi stuff, its Spanish.

More as things get cleaner.

T

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Funnily enough this landed on my yard this morning.

Pretty complete, has the arbors, vise, collet chuck with collets and a full set, I think ? of 8 pick off feed gears.

No manual and there isn't one on the Yahoo Harrison group. The Anilam DRO is playing up and I suspect the head.

No time to play with it at present so it's gone into winter storage.

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

.

Very nice bits of new kit you have there Tractor man and John.

Nick

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

Hi all,

Just a quick photo of the new boring head for my jig borer, any thoughts on it? It looks pretty robust and seems like quality.

Busy afternoon getting filthy removing all the dried on grime form the cross table and feed screws. Used an ultrasonic cleaner to get all the old grease out of the thrust bearings.

I am considering having the table reground as it looks a bit tatty, three drill holes show that someone was careless in the past and I want to disguise them so cast iron pins bonded in before grinding should do the trick.

Hopefully I will get the table ground next week and then refit everything during the evenings.

This is just a quick refit rather than a back to bare metal overhaul but I will still repaint her just to take away the tatty looks. Might be tempted into filling a few casting issues with P38 but this is not a concourse machine lol.

Regards mick

[Anonymous]

I've been winging it today. My afternoon tug pilot duty was cancelled on the grounds that it's blowing a fair bit! So instead I've been making wing valves in the workshop:

The wing valves are the white parts on the left, and in situ in the water pump valve body on the right. The valves are made from glass filled PTFE. Straight PTFE is awful stuff for holding tolerances. It moves, it creeps and measures differently ten minutes after you got it bang on the dimension, or so you thought. The glass filled PTFE is in a different league. It machined beautifully using a polished carbide insert intended for aluminium. If the part was 20 thou over-size I could move the cross slide dial 20 thou and after cutting the part was 20 thou smaller, to within a tenth or so. Marvellous!

The only downside is that no matter how many times you wash your hands and wipe the tools one still ends up with 'dirty' fingerprints soiling the pristine whiteness.

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Look good Andrew, will be interesting to see how they perform under steam, I have only seen seats or seals done with PTFE before not the whole valve.

I have spent most of my workshop time this weekend doing the bright bits of the Tidman governor, just waiting for some big brass balls to arrive from the states to finish it off.

[Anonymous]

Posted by JasonB on 06/12/2015 15:34:59:

Look good Andrew, will be interesting to see how they perform under steam, I have only seen seats or seals done with PTFE before not the whole valve.

I'd be a lot more worried if it was virgin PTFE; the glass filled PTFE is a totally different animal. I'd be even more worried if it saw steam as they're for the water pump. The main question is one of strength. The outlet valve shouldn't see much in the way of differential pressure. But the inlet valve will see the full pressure needed to overcome boiler pressure on the 'compression' stroke.

Is the governor for real or show? Looks excellent either way. I've been looking at the governors on my engines and I'm not sure that brass is heavy enough to allow a working governor? I'm dithering between lead filled hollow balls or carbide. The main problem with carbide is how to cut it, given that the governor balls are fitted as two hemispheres.

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Ah yes its the water pump so should not even get warm.

Well I'm hoping it will be a working governor, the balls will be 1" dia brass which is a bit bigger than scale to make sure them have more effect. I may also play with the drive pullies to gear it up a bit more , they are also likely to be the weak link in teh system as getting a small flat belt to run without slipping while putting minimal load on the shaft is not easy. Maybe a shallow straight knurl on the pully surface would help and should not show up too much.

J

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Andrew,

I think one of the sintered tungsten "alloys" may be the answer to your problems. These are " heavy metal" as used in tungsten darts. I bought some from the surplus market some years ago and used some slugs to help balance my 10cc 4 stroke single. Turns like mild steel so making some balls should be straightforward. Supply is something of an issue to MEs but you could try these people **LINK** or **LINK**

HTH,

Rod

[Anonymous]

Rod: Brilliant, thanks! Don't know why I didn't think of tungsten alloys. The limiting factor may be cost. I've used Smiths Metals (the first of your links) in the past for non-ferrous; mainly copper and brass. It will be worth giving them a call and seeing what they can do. At least they're only a few miles down the road from me so I can avoid expensive delivery charges.

After a complete fumble last night trying to make the blanks for the water pump rams I managed to get it right this evening. The rams are made from 303 stainless steel. Here is the blank for all three rams being ground to the correct diameter:

The total length of the active part is 10". With a bit of trial and error with the table swivelling screw I managed to get it parallel to within a tenth. To get a nice sliding fit in the water pump I needed to be a few tenths under nominal size. This confirms my view that bronze/gunmetal seems to close up slightly when drilled and reamed, and so ends up slightly undersize. Now all I have to do is hacksaw the blank into three, without the hacksaw slipping and damaging the finish, which was one of last nights foul ups.

I was so p*ssed off about it, that it led to a nasty accident with a bottle of red wine and watching trash on the TV until the small hours. Although I didn't stay up to watch it there was a programme on QUEST at 3am which claimed to be about building a live steam loco.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 07/12/2015 21:00:27

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Finally finished adding DRO's to my Cowell's ME90 lathe. I am using YuriysToys android app (TouchDRO) and his controller design. Just need to calibrate them and build another controller box. The current one is running the DRO's on Cowells mill.

Fun job with not too much space to attach the various brackets on the carriage and cross-slide.

Quite pleased with the result.

Colin

[lancelotParticipant @lancelot]

[lancelotParticipant @lancelot]

Hi Colin ……sorry for hijacking your post …it has been a while … great work on the Cowells …I have the mill and use very long reach clock gauges…not used to diggy stuff I hope you can see the photo of what I am currently building …this will keep me going for some time .

Cheers,

John.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

John,

I also have the mill. If you look in ' the album Twizseven's Bits & Bobs' you will see the DRO's I fitted to that. makes this so much easier and accurate. Which engine is that you are building. Do you have another mill or is all milling done on the Cowells.

Colin

[lancelotParticipant @lancelot]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 11/12/2015 19:27:20:

John,. Which engine is that you are building. Do you have another mill or is all milling done on the Cowells.

Hi Colin…this one is from the Peter Southworth collection…Peter recently passed on and the castings are now with his old friend Bob Potter …This is the 1 1/8'' single cylinder rotary valve horizontal…I have two mills, I started off with the Conquest …from Chester, made the 10v …score from Stuarts then the James Coombes on this mill plus a lot of other jobs …I had started the Corliss build some few years ago with the 10'' diam. flywheel which was in two halves….I was only able to mill the faces of the halves ,,,just…basically wrecked the mill far too lightweight for the work …a club friend finished the flywheel outer face …

after a diagnosis of Parkinsons my motivation was a tad on the low side …Shed shut …

During this time I bought a Cowells mill…so the interest was alive and a few prods from my grand children got me back in the shed…

Yes …some of the small work was handled by the WEE…Cowells mill a really solid and accurate piece of kit UI use long reach indicators from Mittytoyo…This mill is excellent for this type of job…

The Chester is now replaced with one of the mills from Amadale a much heavier and more professional jobby…with an extra long table , very useful when the rotary indexer needs using.

Keep her cuttin.

John.

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

The Shaftesbury jig borer is completed, just about……

I discovered the draw bar was 3/8 UNC but the tooling I scrounged was 1/2 UNC. Make a new drawbar was the obvious answer, but the bore of the quill prevented anything larger than 10mm dia.

So I make a number of helicoil style inserts with an outside 1/2 UNC thread and a 3/8 UNC inner thread. Bonded them into the tooling and hey presto they all fit the machine now.

Table reground and looking good with the drill holes filled.

Just a little more tidying up with a paint brush and we are on to the next job.

Milling and drilling section of the shop

Face mill for light surfacing work

Laser centre finder used for hole alignment.

Morse 2 taper drill

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 08/12/2015 13:27:45:

Finally finished adding DRO's to my Cowell's ME90 lathe. I am using YuriysToys android app (TouchDRO) and his controller design. Just need to calibrate them and build another controller box. The current one is running the DRO's on Cowells mill.

Fun job with not too much space to attach the various brackets on the carriage and cross-slide.

Quite pleased with the result.

Colin

Colin,

It looks good. I saw that you also have this set-up on another machine. I am curious about a few things, and wondered if it is possible for you to explain:

1. I am presuming that the magnetic tape is behind the aluminium plate?. Did you stick it on or did you buy a pre-fabricated track/bar with the tape pre-mounted?

2. There is a small gap in between the reading head and the bar. Your picture shows that the reading head and bar are 'exposed' for want of word. So, from your experience so far, have you had any issues – problems resulting from swarf/grinding/machining dust getting in between the reading head and the bar? Also, do you use any coolant?. If so, any related problem?

Ketan at ARC.

[Author]

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