A little Sleeve Valve Engine

[jim]

this thread just keeps on getting better

fantastic workmanship

[Joachim Steinke]

Hallo,

things are proceeding in the last days and I managed to build the still missing parts like the flywheel, the ignition module and the intake and exhaust collar.

The 50mm flywheel is made of brass





and is mounted on the crankshaft using a ring cone which is pressing on a collet like part of the wheel. This guaranties an always good concentricity and a comfortable assembling and disassembling during the whole testing time to come.





Next came the ignition parts. I build the mounting plate for the hall sensor from Corian, a synthetic material made of Aluminiumhydroxid and PMMA. It has good machining and isolation properties and is heat resistant up to nearly 200deg Celsius.











This will become the housing of the sensor which is the oil sealing front cover of the crankshaft bearing too.














And all parts together. I intended to use the 2 pin plug on the photo for connecting the motor parts with the ignition circuit, but finally I had to use a 3 pin connector as it shows up later.





Connecting the sensor with only two wires (Vcc+ and signal), getting ground from the motor itself, was no success.





I lost two sensors by I would guess high voltage sparkover before I realized that a complete three wire connection is necessary here. So I had to make a new sensor plate (no chance to get things out of the two component glue) and modified the aluminium housing for the fitting of a 3 pin M8 sensor connector.





This M8 connector is a bit heavy for this task, but I had to take things from stock and wanted to proceed. I will purchase an angulated version of the plug later so the cable is getting closer to the motor side face. But now the sensor problems vanished completely.





The last major part to do is the intake and exhaust collar.

Staring basis is a ring of 7075 aluminium





which has to travel over to the turning table on the mill








and will take more and more the shape of the desired collar.











After finishing the mill work the collar could be parted with a fine saw.





At last the gas ways had to be cut out





and the collar and the intake pipe is ready to use








and can be assembled to the engine.








Then today was the “great moment” for the very first run on the improvised wooden stand.





I managed to get a few ignitions and crankshaft turns by actuating the flywheel only by hand. But not being a sophisticated model engine man (my experience with radio controlled models date back 40 years ago when I was a young boy) I got serious problems with the carburetor adjustment, so turning the flywheel only by hand was no good option.

I found a well fitting rubber door stopper and made a coupling to my cordless screwdriver. But as the rubber coupling would prevent the motor from rotating on his own after the moment of ignition (one could not loose the cone fast enough in the right moment) I had to modify the adapter a little bit. I installed a one way overrunning clutch (a special needle bearing) and two ball races between the outer part and the mounting shaft. Now the motor can overhaul the starter if necessary without any problem.





Okay, then it was time for the serious part…….ha ha ha…..but have a look on your own…..


http://pl-hi.de/JST/SLVE/SLVE_RUNNING_01.mpg


I made two sessions of about 10 minutes each. The carburetor settings are not perfect yet and I gave the motor a rich mixture for the running in time also. So the revolution speed is limited at the moment as you can see and hear on the video. But all is running well and I have no problems with too much heat in the critical area of the cylinder, sleeve and piston fit.

But there is enough work left with optimizing the oil pressure system, building a nice motor stand, a housing for the ignition circuit and batteries, a suitable tank and I guess a real motor starter too…..so boredom has no chance……ha ha ha……

Good by from Achim

[sorveltaja]

Achim, grats for getting the engine to run .

Your machining work has been first class, and addition to that, you got working engine .

[crankshafter]

Achim.
Congrats. You are a real wizzard/ artist. I really admire your work. thanks for showing us this masterpice of an engine and a great wright-up.
Crankshafter.

[Bernd]

Achim,

I'm very impressed with your work and photography. 

The engine sounds nice running. It'll be interesting to hear it when it's run in a bit and the carb is set right. 

It's definatly Miller time after that. 

Bernd

[ozzie46]

  Well done Achim. Congratulations on a very well documented build and a successful running engine.

  I learned some new things as well.  Thanks.

Ron

[DeereGuy]

WOW...great job and fast build.  I feel a POM nomination coming....

Are you selling your plans?

[dsquire]

Achim

You certainly have one fine looking and running engine there. The documentation and pictures are great. I am glad that you took us all into your shop and let us look over your shoulder while you were building it. You should be very proud of this engine. I look forward to watching more as you get everything finished up and fine tuned. 

Cheers 

Don

[sbwhart]

Congratulations on a great running engine and a wonderful thread, and a great bit of machining, thanks for sharing.

 

Have fun

Stew

[Stilldrillin]

Achim,

You can do magic! 

Thank you for showing us how..... 

David D

[Brass_Machine]

Wow!

What a great build. You got some serious talent. 


Thanks for such a great thread!

Eric

[NickG]

Wow, amazing build and fantastic result. What a good runner. Easy to forget what's going on inside there too so for people just seeing this end result, please go back and read the build log, or at least look at the pictures - you might be surprised how it works!

Nick

[raynerd]

Amazing build, great pictures and really detailed! Thank you..

Chris

[Joachim Steinke]

Hi,

many thanks for your kind appreciation and warm replies. This is also a very nice welcome to a brand-new member like me. 

Unfortunately there was no real progress in building the next surrounding components this week. Instead of that I got serious trouble with my ignition module.

From the beginning I was at war with this little Hall Sensors, two of them “died” after short time, the third worked for several days and many longer testing runs quite well. So I thought the problems where solved, but I was wrong.

Last weekend the last of my reserve sensors finally gave up too and I had to order some knew one as the local dealers here don’t sell them. But with the new sensors things didn’t get better, after killing three of them in short time I stopped all attempts as I could not come to any conclusion concerning the reasons for this malfunction.

After that I spend several hours on the design of a conventional ignition switch, finally realising that a nice and proper solution is really hard to integrate in the very small frontal bearing section of my camshaft housing. Then, short before frustration took over, I had the idea of making a test run with a good old fashioned reed switch. The normal medium sized types require a much too strong magnet which I can’t fit in the small rotor. But I managed to find the real micro sized types at my local distributor, they are 9mm long and 1.8mm thick.





The small types are able to work with a 2x4mm Neodyme magnet very well, even over a distance of 3 ore 4mm. And if they are positioned in the right distance and inclination to the plane of magnet rotation you get a well defined switching point.

After realising that this could work for the ignition timing I glued the reed contact in my old Hall Sensor housing, trying to keep the suitably position I just had found out.

And things are going fine, integrated in my motor I got a precise and repeatable acting-point. The pulse frequency should by no problem too, according to the data sheet the maximum pulse rate is up to 700Hz which means 42thousand rpm on the camshaft…..the little engine will explode before getting near this point anyway…..ha ha ha…..

Okay, that’s more a theory than real praxis so far……a nice running test has to follow …..

I can say it works real good, the engine is running fine and without any difference to the Hall Sensor triggering I had used before. And as the switch is solid state now I guess the problems with EMP should be gone.

Here is an additional video, showing some “only by hand on the flywheel” starting sequences I taped today. As you can see an electro starter is not a must have…..ha ha ha….(but could be a nice add on)…..

http://pl-hi.de/JST/SLVE/SLVE_RUNNING_02.mpg

And here at last the two parts which I managed to modify over the week 





I installed a small ventilation system on the left engine side and made a choke valve to reduce the oil volume which is flowing to the circumference of the sleeve valve. This will, in collaboration with the small outlet boring short above the oil pump, create a bypass like system so the not needed fluid can flow back directly into the oil sump.








Kind regards to all of you and good night from Germany

[John Hill]

Congratulations on an excellent project Achim..


  ...from New Zealand.

[sorveltaja]

Achim, that reed switch is something, that I've also considered for my test engine, but not being sure would it last .

It sure is tempting option, as they are more commonly available than certain hall-switches. 

Interesting to see, how it works with your engine .

[madjackghengis]

Achim, congratulations on an excellent build of a rather difficult design that has many potential pitfalls.  With regard to your experience with hall effect sensors, they are extremely sensitive to impedance, and require rather exact current limiting circuits which means you have to either build your own transistor circuit for power through the coil, or have the sensor's matched to an ignition circuit with the parameters well matched.  I am still up in the air as to what ignition I will be using on my radial engine build, I have an option of using an auto ignition unit from a Mallory "unilite" distributer, which will demand 12 volts, a ballast resistor to control the current, and making a disc or sleeve with cutouts, to activate the LED sensor, and either build and advance unit, or operate it entirely manually for advance.  I am also considering building a magneto for the engine, but I'm not sure I can get the power necessary out of such a small unit.  I also have an ignition kit I built, which is designed to convert points to electronic, and with it, one can use micro switches, as the trigger current is too small to burn out the contacts quickly, as they do if used directly.  If you know the actual voltage delivered to the hall effect switch, you can put in series, a resistor that will reduce the current substantially, but test to ensure you don't lose reliability of the sensor.  The type of transistor trigger circuit that drives the coil has a great effect on the load on the sensor, and is drawing too much current through something that is just supposed to be a trigger, and not a component of any substantial power.  I am impressed with your idea of the reed switch, and that it works reliably may mean that is what you stay with, but if you wish to pursue the hall effect ignition, I'd be happy to assist you in figuring out circuitry, I just have to pull it out of some fifteen years of ignoring electronics, and get back to my books.  I'm having to do this anyway for my own engine build, and when I get to it, I will be posting it, along with the rest as I go.  If you want to do something with it in the mean time, I will jump ahead, and take a good look at the electronics, as I have to eventually in any case.  Regardless of all that, you have done an excellent job on a difficult build, and done so very impressively.  Md Jack

[Joachim Steinke]

Jack, many thanks for your offer of help and advice.

By the way, the reed switch was not a longer lasting solution too. After several good running periods I got new problems with temporarily contact bonding. Maybe there are several reasons for this failure, still too excessive current on the micro contacts of this very small reed type, too little magnetic field intensity and perhaps too excessive vibrations under this circumstances.

So I turned back to the hall problems, spend some time on understanding the working principals of the transistor circuit and was also looking for help in my German CNC Forum too. It soon becomes obvious, that the ignition module (I took from a website) is a very primitive layout. The creator hadn’t turned any attention on keeping away high-voltage influences from all the sensitive parts. I would need some components like a Zener diode in the main transistor power line and maybe a fast recovery diode in the hall sensor supply line too. An additional alternative could be to separate the hall sensor completely from the ignition coil area and transmit the trigger signal via an opto-coupling device. Such a fully galvanic separation is common in professional vehicle ignition modules.

Anyway, all the nice things I would need to enhance my ignition module where naturally not available at my local store. So I had to make an order first and it would take same days until I can progress with the hall unit complex.

In the mean time I don’t wanted to trust in further electronic experiments only…ha ha ha…..

So I put some pieces of Dural on my machinery…..





and after a couple of horizontal……





and vertical milling actions…….





and some small components made from bronze….





and Polyamid…..





…….finally I managed to get a good old fashioned ignition switch.








For sealing the housing cut-out of the little ignition camshaft from any oil leakage I arranged an o-ring gasket between the shaft and the base plate tunnel, I don’t have enough space for a normal rotary shaft seal here.





The separate ignition switch plate has a cylinder clamp mounting…..





and can be rotated around the base plate about  +/- 20deg.





Now it’s quite comfortable to change and adjust the ignition timing.

As I will use the existing transistor device for driving the ignition coil, the bronze contacts don’t have much current to handle and a smoothing capacitor is not necessary too.





This pure mechanical system is working fine, here comes a new testing video I made this afternoon.

Sorry, some unsteady camera movements here, but I used a new digi cam and have to look for some new cutting software now as my old system don’t like the new MPG format very much. So the complete video sequence is taken directly from the camera and totally uncut.

http://pl-hi.de/JST/SLVE/SLVE_RUNNING_SWI_01.mpg

Good night from Achim

[sorveltaja]

Achim, nice work on the new breaker points .

[Bernd]

Only one way to describe this "simply assume"  

Having a bit of trouble with the video. Won't play but about one second of the vid.  

Bernd

Just updated my media player. Vid works fine now. 

[Stilldrillin]

Achim,

That final photo......... Absolutely gorgeous! 

David D

[NickG]

Stunning work on that set of points, fantastic! 

[Trion]

Very very nice work. I wish I would be that skilled some day!

[tinkerer]

Wow! I am assuming that the ability to rotate the points is like advancing and retarding the timing. Super job. Looking forward to your next project.

[madjackghengis]

Achim, I only just got to hear your engine run as I just got high speed internet on my computer today, and she sounds absolutely gorgeous!  Congratulations, any man who can fail four five, or more times, and then just pick up some scrap, make some new parts, and put it back together again with a shrug of the shoulders and joy in his heart when it runs knows who and what he is, and makes his own way through this world.  You are a man of talent and perspective, you've done as fine a job as I've seen in this.  Top of the line all the way.  Mad Jack