Elmer's Kimble engine

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rleete:
Arnold, try a blank CD. All stacks of CDs have a clear one at the bottom to protect the surface of the good ones from scuffing.

arnoldb:
Cheers David :beer: - Thanks; Christmas was nice and quiet :thumbup:. Passwords... :doh: :lol:

Thanks John :beer: ; I really appreciate your offer. I'll find some locally; will be cheaper and quicker than postage from the UK :thumbup:. I was thinking along the lines of a brass hold-down frame as well :thumbup:.

Rleete, thank you :beer:; Great idea; I checked with a CD blank but its a bit small. I have a bag full of CD jewel cases that can be used though :thumbup:

I'm shooting for less than 5 psi running pressure (hopefully purely breath power) and I won't ever use this engine on live steam, so the cover could be thin. But after another look at the plans, its easy to fit a thicker cover on the one side of the engine; the two shafts just needs to be made a bit longer. So I have an idea what I'll be doing; it will take a bit of extra work, but should be worth it.

:D The weekend is getting closer :dremel:

:beer:, Arnold

arnoldb:
Wow - what a hot start to the New Year; it's been consistently in the 38C plus range here for the last 2 weeks, so I didn't even bother to venture into the shop and rather spent some quality time indoors upgrading my computer and a lot of software on it. This morning I grabbed an hour shop before the heat got to me again.

I started drilling the port holes in the engine top:

Half-way through the first hole, the mill started making a funny noise; a quick check and the draw-bar had started unscrewing:

I don't know if the heat could have had an effect on it; I don't over-tighten the draw-bar and it could be possible that the heat allowed it to stretch just enough to come loose... That's something I'll have to remember to be on the lookout for.

All set up to cross-drill the long port holes. I used a small square as both a parallel and a way to keep the block square vertically. The wire is to feel when the hole breaks through into the other passages:

As I was peck-drilling these deep 1.6mm holes without any lubrication, I kept a careful look-out for the drill tip clogging up like this:

Whenever that happened, I stopped the machine and cleaned the tip thoroughly. If one don't, that's a sure-fire way to break off a drill in a deep hole.

At that point, the shop got too hot again, and I moved inside. Out of pure idleness I made a short video on using the wiggle-wire:

At least this afternoon some cloud cover came in, and there's the rumble of thunder in the distance. A good rainstorm would help to break the heat spell, so hopefully it might be cooler tomorrow so I can actually get something done.

:beer:, Arnold

DaveH:
Nicely shown Arnold,

Comming along nicely,

38 deg C mmmm................ seems to have got a bit on the warm side.

:beer:
DaveH

arnoldb:
:beer: Cheers Dave. :palm: It's been extremely hot here; the weather office actually called it a "heat wave", and that's very rare. Seems to be doing Namibian Breweries good though; I drive past their plant every day, and usually they're a bit quiet after the New Year, but they seem to be going full blast!

:ddb: It's been cooler here the last couple of days, and after a run-around to shops this morning I got some more done on the Kimble, though I fluttered around all over the show. Must be residual heat-stroke or something...

Instead of checking exactly where I ended off last week, I jumped in with a bit of perspex hacked off a salvaged old line-printer "window":

The perspex is 4mm thick, but that's not a problem as the one side of the engine where I want to put the clear engine cover can accommodate it. I'd decided to make an insert from 2mm thick brass plate to act as the bearing.

To protect the perspex, I just coated it with masking tape, leaving the section that I wanted to mill out for the insert open:

The mill was still set up to drill holes all over the engine's top, and fortunately I thought to check if I'd finished all the holes in the top last Saturday. Good thing I checked; I'd forgotten to drill the exhaust ports; in fact, I'd never even laid them out on the top. So that was done first. Then I had to drill the holes. There was no way to get in close enough to spot drill first, so I just had to take the plunge and drill with the 1.6mm drill and hope it wouldn't wander:

As I couldn't drill straight through for both ports in one go, I had to flip the workpiece and drill from the other side as well. I don't know if I was purely lucky, or if I'd spent enough time to set up accurately, but both holes intersected perfectly. Looking through it, it's impossible to see that it was drilled as two separate holes.

With all the holes ( :palm:) in the top completed, I started on the brass insert for the perspex cover, purely because I'm lazy and it's easier to make it first and then mill away the perspex cover and use the insert to check the fit. Holding smallish bits of plate is always a bit of a problem, so I opted for the tooling plate to hold it down to mill to width:

The perspex cover followed to cut out the insert space:

While I was set up on the tooling plate, I also looked for a nice piece of flat 2mm brass plate for the other side-cover, and squared up two sides of that as well:

I nearly started tapping all the 2mm side-cover mounting holes on the block and top, but then remembered that it would be easier to spot all the holes in the side covers using the block and top. Then I saw some more holes I'd forgotten in the top; the 1.6mm mounting holes :palm: - So I drilled those first:

Three down & one to go; just a flip away...

And done:

Cleaned the burrs off all the holes, and then glued the insert to the perspex plate. I wanted to use epoxy glue, but when I found the tubes, all the hardener had leaked out, so I used superglue. I hope it bonds with perspex. Stopped for the day with this bunch 'o bits; not much to show for quite a bit of work :coffee::

:beer:, Arnold

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