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French Beam Engine

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madjackghengis:
Hi Pete, I guess I missed this build till now, but I'll chime in with my two no make that about half a cent worth, we keep printing funny money and it's hard to get two cents together these days here:  I suspect you ran into a piece of aluminum bronze in that flange, from the damage done to the slitting saw, keep the pieces and cherish them, it is good material to make strong things from, even if it's hard as a witch's heart, and it keeps its shine a long time too.  I suspect I should have bought a more expensive DRO, because I keep reading about arc functions and rectangle functions, and mine has none of that, just bolt circles(PCD) and straight line bolt hole functions.  That arc function, if I read it right, lets you mill an arc in a piece of stock that a cylinder will drop in I am guessing? The rectangle function lets you set up corners and stay within the lines, or am I reading too much into it, as I do rectangles by choosing a corner, milling to the next, changing directions and milling to the next, and so on down through a piece of stock or plate?  All in all, you've got a very nice build going forward and I think it will really shine with the bronze and aluminum setting each other off.  I look forward to seeing it with all the rods, beam and connections in place and ready to put steam to her.  Great job so far.  :beer:  Cheers, Jack

DaveH:
Good one Pete :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

DaveH

doubletop:
Murray

Yes there will be more than one engine at the next club meeting, yours and mine. Regardless of their state of completion. We should also take along the warts to demonstrate its not all plain sailing. My wonky flywheel and your toothless gears come to mind...........

Jack

I did a bit of research on DRO's before I purchased, there are expensive like Newall and Easson and the cheaper Chinese versions such as Sinpo and Sino (there are plenty of others) In the end I went for Sino on the simple differentiation that if they are OK for the Bogmeister they will be fine for me. Later investigation showed that the manual content for Sino and Sinpo is virtually the same indicating to me the controller electronics is the same. It then comes down to the scales which the seem to be differentiated by the number of seals they have. As they are offered on the basis of "the price is the same how long do you want them?" they are much of a muchness. OK its impossible to do the true technical spec assessment MTBF, EMC, IPxx etc etc it becomes a case of you pays your money and take the chance or buy Newall or Easson.

On the functions; as well as the PCD function it has

Smooth “R”  - which allows concave or convex curves to be milled in either the XY, XZ or YZ axis. The YZ mode is what I used to make the 'saddle" it was a bit tedious as it required 250 steps as it incrementally to mill the shape along the X axis

Internal rectangle  - This progressive give the coordinates to mill a pocket in a workpiece as it works you from the center of the shape outwards. External rectangles are just a standard milling function. I used this for the valve chest and base plate

Mid-split - Use edge finder to find the one end of the workpiece, zero the axis, use edge find to find the opposite edge. do mid split and you have the coord for the center on that axis. No need to compensate for edge finder dia. I used this to center the mill on job in the round table, when finding say the x axis I move the Y backwards and forwards slowly to ensure I find the peak of the circular job. Although doing this may not be unnecessary as the perpendicular of the center of any tangent passes through the center of the circle. The experts can put me right on the accuracy of doing it this way compared to an expensive centre finder.

Divide holes on an oblique line - like PCD but a line of holes at an angle, I've only used this to set my 4"  machine vice at the correct angle by setting it to do two holes at an angle at 4" centres and using the DTI in the chuck to ensure the vice is set correctly. It may be the way of setting up to do the relief in the beam later.

There are a few other things in the box but these are the most useful.

Hope that helps

Pete

doubletop:
Dave

Apologies I missed acknowledging you; Thanks for the support

Jack

If that's aluminum bronze its certainly nice stuff it even comes out of the mechanical hacksaw with a shine.



Today was another go at the flywheel. This time I started with a flat blank so the drill wouldn't go walkabout.

Drilling completed



Final cut done



Actually this is my third attempt the blank I did last night was a scrapper before it got to the mill it was undersized for the outer ring. All three efforts below. You'll see this time I reduced the spoke thickness after the milling. I'm very happy with the result.



It just needs blending, the bush making, fitting to the outer ring and the whole thing skimmed up.

Pete

saw:
Very nice build, good work  :clap: :clap:

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