This past Saturday was a successful day as far as making a materials score. The local transfer station (town dumping station) was open. I know the attendant very well since him and I are close friends. I scored several things I always keep my eyes open for.
First score was a remote control car. Below is what's left of it after I disassembled it to the point of what I wanted.
What good is it? Well it has a differential, wheels, extra motors and plenty of gearing. The clear rings are a unique item. They have an LED in them, and when lit light the whole ring up. They were mounted to the fancy wheels.
Now the reason I kept these items. The wheels and diff plus it's associated gearing make an excellent base to build a steam powered vehicle. Just remove the electric motor and substitute the steam engine and of course a boiler. This idea came from "Crabfu Toys". Don't knew the link right off hand, but if you Google it you'll find some interesting steam powered toys.
Next I scored an electric powered scooter. The batteries are next to it. It's a little over 24" long and will haul around a 120lb person, so it says on the label.
Here's a close up of the motor drive arrangement. The motor is rated at 24VDC, 3000rpm, 10A, 135W
A close up of the batteries. They are two 12volt batteries hooked in series to give 24volts.
Next are all the items I'm going to keep. Left is the motor, batteries and the rear driven wheel with the brake. Only reason I'm keeping this is to get a dimension of the driven cog. The control cables. It had both a throttle cable and then an extra cable attached to the brake handle which had a switch in it. I believe is was used to disconnect the circuit so you won't apply brakes and power at the same time. The square block with the blue cube on it in the lower left is the controller.
Being interested in 1.5" live steam or 1.5" model railroading, these items above can be used for an electric powered loco. Although I haven't tested them yet to see if they even run. That'll be next.
The final score of the day was a milling machine made in Sweden. I don't recall the name of it right now. Only problem was it was in pieces and had been laying out side. It was at a persons house a few miles down the road from me. He asked if either one of us ( the attendant or me) was into scrap metal. When he said mill my ears perked up. I went and looked the mill. He had already given the two motors away to somebody to make 3 phase converters. There were two 6HP motors running this mill.
When I looked at it I figured it won't be worth putting back together but dragged it home anyway. Just before we got all of the parts loaded we had a fierce wind storm and then it poured like crazy. I had to leave one item behind and that was a bush hog (large rotary mower towed be hind a tractor) with a 5 foot cutting width. I'll be back next week to get that. All for free.
And here are the pics of the mill still on the trailer. It's been to cold to investigate further on this item. Will report on that after some warmer weather gets here.
So I've added a few more items to my
list.
Hope this has given somebody ideas for projects. As I said I've always wanted to build a radio controlled steam powered vehicle. Now I've got the parts to do it cheaply.
My quest for electrical parts to build an electric powered 1.5" scale locomotive continues.
And as far as the mill goes, it might get turned into a few good pieces of cast iron and the rest scrapped for a bit of cash to spend on tooling. That remains to be seen though.
Regards,
Bernd
