Start on a long term project

[ozzie46]

   
     I had to take break from all the milling of the wheels and made the eccentric fpr the feed pump.

  I had some unkown stainless steel I got from the scrap yard that I had been afraid to use after I had read about the work hardening properties of stainless. Cut off a chunk with the band saw and it seemed to cut really well so stuck it in  the lathe and went at it. Man it cut really well. I totally surprised.

 

   These will be the steel tires for the aluminum wheels. They are cut from hydraulic cyl rams donated by a good friend that runs a Hydraulic repair business. Still need enough material to make 2 more.

   

   I would like to have it setting on its wheels by January. Maybe it will happen maybe it won't..

   Oh yeah, I started to get some sores on the palm of my hand from using the riffer files so much as they are double ended. I asked my wife if she could make me a leather palm protector. Oops no leather, so she found an old mitt style pot holder and cut the finger area off up past the second knuckle of the fingers and cut the thumb out too. I used the cut off finger area as more padding in the palm of my hand. I just stuff it inside the pot holder into my palm. It works great.

  Ron

[Brass_Machine]

Hiya Rn 

You did those wheels on the HF rotab?? Very nice. I have the HF rotab but haven't done anything with it.

Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing.

Eric

[ozzie46]

   Eric ,I had to repair the table after 2 wheel blanks were done. The gear on the bottom os the table came loos efrom the table. They only put in a small pin in the edge of the gear and table  boss to pin the gear tp the boss. It was mostly in the bronze or brass gear and hardly any in the cast iron boss. I used a 1/8 end mill to drill a hole and put in a 1/8 pin and also used some bearing retainer locktight type glue sold by NAPA. Hope I'm making sense about the problem?

  You may want to tear yours done and have peek at it before you use it. Don't want it coming loose in the middle of a job.


   Ron

[Stilldrillin]

Ron.
Those wheels are looking gorgeous!  

I thought they always had to be cast! Never thought of anyone milling 'em......  

Blummin, well done!

David D

[NickG]

Ron,

thanks for sharing, I need to do the buffers for my electric soon so that will come in useful. I've bought the material so will attempt to machine mine from square! Look exactly the same as yours which means I must have designed them sort of right! Funnily enough I found some old issues of Model Engineer magazine over the weekend and was just about to chuck them out when I thought, I msut have kept these for a reason - there was exactly that method of forming the radius you used so I'll definitely be trying that.

Good work on the axle boxes too and the wheels are amazing - so much work in those.

Nick

[ozzie46]

  David D, Thanks for checking and your kind words. They mean a lot.


    Nick, Thanks for looking. Yes ,its a lot of work and not without several boo boos as far as turning a handle the wrong way.     Some JB Weld here, some there.  Although the one in the post didn't need any.

  All that filing will warm you up in a cool shop.

   Ron

[ozzie46]

    I've done some more on the wheels.
 I got the steel tires heat shrunk onto the wheels. I made an arbor to mount the wheels on to turn them to size.



  It is a very close fit on the axle bores and will stay in the 3 jaw until all work  remaining work on the wheels is done. If I need the lathe I will just pull the 3 jaw off and mount the 4 jaw.

  The wheels were turned to .002  more than the inside dia of the steel tires.



  I stuck the aluminum wheels in  the freezer and let them get good and cold. I then turned on, are you ready for it,SWMBOs' electric cook stove and laid the steel tires on the heating element. SWMBO was there while I did it and I'm still here to talk about it. :big:

  I let the tires heat up till they got blue then put them on 3/8 plate steel on a little stool and took the wheels out of the freezer and they fell into the steel tires with no effort.

  This is what they looked like after cooling down.



  I had to see what they looked like on the frame.



   Now I have to grind up a HSS cutting tool to the 3/32 radius called for on the tire tread near the flange. I need to read up on how to turn the treads as well as it seems there are some angles involved.

  Thats it for now I guess. Oh I laid out the dimensions on the steam cyls too. Will be working on them soon but I want to make a holding plate to fit my cross slide on the lathe so I can line bore them on the lathe.

   Till then I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy and Joyous New Year.

  Ron

[NickG]

Look like castings but better  brilliant work

[ozzie46]

   Thanks Nick.

 Ron

[Rob.Wilson]

  those wheels look stunning 



Rob

[ozzie46]

  Thanks Rob.   

 Ron

[Mike Cole]

Hi
I have being building a simplex too over the last few years. I now put it on hold while I build a 4 inch scale traction engine instead.
 Just one thing to point out is an 'error' on the drawings. The front frame cross member not the front beam but the large square piece that is over the pump. This needs an 1.25 ish hole putting in. This is to get to one of the oillers. Can;t add any more at the moment as I have not worked on it for 18 months and the fine details fade. ( Also I just had 2 glassses of whiskey)

Mike

[Artie]

OMG Mike, its so early in the morning! What on earth are you doing boozing this early?

 

[ozzie46]

  Thanks for looking in Mike. I did bore a large hole in that cross member. Luckily I had seen pictures on the net of frames that had the hole. As I didn't have any reference as to how large to bore it, I made it about 2 in. Figured I would need to get to the eccentric strap too, so made it big.

   If you think of anything else by all means please let me know. I need all the help I can get. 

  Ron

[shoey51]

mate you did a top job on those wheels

cheers Graham

[ozzie46]

  Thanks Graham.

  Ron

[madjackghengis]

Hi Ron, I was just looking in on your build, and I have to say, those are some of the best looking wheels I've seen, and you certainly succeeded in getting them looking like they were cast and cleaned up.  Those tires went on a treat as well, and really offset the aluminum.  How does the hydraulic ram steel turn?  I would think it would be a bit hard, but it might be leaded, as lots of machine work goes into them before they get hardened.  When you grind your tools for shaping the tire and getting all the angles and flange right, finish work on the tools with good stones will make cutting much easier, and a better chance of getting all of them machined without re-sharpening them.  High speed steel really cuts sweet when it's finely honed.  Those wheels will look just right, up against that frame you've got put together.  I hope to see it rolling, soon.  As far as your question regarding accuracy of axles and wheels, with your plates drilled and filed as one, and your bearing blocks made as you did, you should be within a couple of thousandths on wheel spacing, and shouldn't have any reason for concerns.  If they are off significantly, you can expect lots of odd wear on the tires if you plan to run it a good bit.  You might have some issues with pressure in opposite cylinders if you are way off, but I can't see that happening with the way you've mated up pieces initially.  By the way, the counter weights on the wheels look just right, like they were cast in place, and not at all like they were machined out of solid.  You should have a nice, clean looking engine when you've got her on the track.  cheers, mad jack

[ozzie46]

   Jack; Thanks for looking in. The steel turns well but creates stringer chips a mile long. I have to keep it cleared out or it gets really dangerous. Using HSS I can only take about .020 at the most or it gets so hot it ruins the cutting edge. I'm turning at 150 rpm as that is the slowest my lathe will turn and feeding at the slowest my lead screw will turn. I don't have flood coolant so I brush on, of all things, "crisco" for lube. I tried turning dry and had to resharpen very often but after using the crisco I think I had to sharpen once on the remaining 4 wheels.

  Had a bit of a disaster on my last operation on the wheel treads. (Wouldn't you know it!) I set my compound to cut a 3* taper on the tread and WHAAAT? It didn't look right at all. Got to checking and my protractor scale on my compound is marked off in 2 1/2* increments. So what I thought was 3* was actually 7 1/2* Cut the tire off and today will make another one to replace it.

    Thank you for the comments.

   Ron

[DavidA]

Ron,

Back in July you wrote.

...Now a question, I know that the distance between the axles have to be really close as far as the distance between ,say, the leading axle and the drive axle. How big a variance is to much between,lets say, the distance from the leading axle to the drive axle on the right side as compared to the left side?
  I hope I'm not confusing you with my description. ...

I've only just read your progress report, so this is a bit too late.  But in the construction notes I have for my Fowler Don Young suggests that the axle box horns (riveted on this engine) are fitted and trued up parallel right after the slots are cut in the frames by fitting the Horns then clamping the frames back to back.  You then machine across the horns together with an end mill to ensure that,  even if the centres of the axles are not exactly in the right place,  they will be equal for both sides.

It's all in ME 3504 (I think,  don't have it to hand) from January 1975.

Hope this may come in useful for your next engine.

Dave

[ozzie46]

  Thanks Dave. Thats a good idea. I'll use that one for sure.  Thanks for looking in.

 Ron

[DavidA]

Mad Jack wrote..

...If they are off significantly, you can expect lots of odd wear on the tires if you plan to run it a good bit.  You might have some issues with pressure in opposite cylinders if you are way off, but I can't see that happening with the way you've mated up pieces initially....

I was wondering if the wheels would turn at all.  It would seem to me that as the connecting rods on opposite pairs of wheels would have to be different lengths then due to the different between - axle centre lines, you would maybe get a kind of geometric lock effect which would prevent the wheels going around.

Dave.

[DavidA]

Ron,

....A friend of mine gave me some ductile cast iron for the cyls. That stuff is nice....

I used to hate the stuff. 

At work I had to machine ADI (Austenitic Ductile Iron) both manually and on a Guildemeister NC machine. We had to treat it like steel,  reducing the depth of cut from the normal 1 mm per pass to 0.5 mm and flooding it with suds. If we didn't then it would turn blue very quickly.

I don't know what none austenitic is like,  unless it is just like plain SG.  I like that stuff nearly as much as CI.

Have fun.

Dave.

[madjackghengis]

Hi Dave, the austentitic ductile iron is basically virgin cast iron, from good clean ore, with as much as thirty percent scrap steel added.  It produces a cross between cast steel and cast iron, and is also known as "nodular iron", which can be machined like steel, has the lubricity qualities of cast iron, and the strength of medium carbon steel, and hardenable like such.  It is commonly used in crankshafts of engines and the like, as it casts very cleanly, with little or no inclusions, yet allows the intracacies of an iron casting, that cast steel won't mimic, as it doesn't flow as nicely as iron does.  The scrap steel is carefully sorted, and thus the end product is well controlled in its properties.  I hope this helps a bit.  mad jack

[DavidA]

Mad Jack,

Thanks for that.  I must have been having a 'senior moment' when I wrote the above. I was a sampler/machinist at a metals lab and should have known that. Probably did,  but like the loco picture, I have it in a mental folder I can't find when I need it.

One thing I do remember about SG is that unlike CI you can't just melt bits to make your castings as it loses some of it's constituent parts and they have to be added back into the mix when melting.

Dave.

[madjackghengis]

Hi Dave, in truth, nothing re-melts like virgin metal, be it iron, bronze, brass or especially steel.  Aluminum is probably the easiest to remelt and get good castings out of, just requiring good fluxing to keep porousity at bay.  With the nodular iron, sharp tooling is essential, and failing that, one gets very ugly cuts with strange "hair" and no accuracy at all.  The quality of the iron before the addition of the scrap mild steel is a big factor, and even a tiny piece of high speed steel will totally ruin the nodular iron, making for odd hard spots throughout a casting or forging.  mad jack