The Steamboating Forum

Well todays shop time came to a close way too quickly. But! I managed to set up and drill and tap all the set screw holes in the eccentrics.





Frank

I decided to do something a little different tonight so I built a small whistle, mouth blown its 1/2" dia.
Just thought I'd share.


Frank

Turned the eccentric straps down to thickness on the lathe and then went to work on the mill. I did not take any setup photos but I will take some on the next three straps. I experienced some real frustration "finding" the finished piece within the casting. Either the mold collapsed a bit on the edges or there just was not enough material allowed for machining or maybe it was me? I did add a photo of a strap that is ready to be bored. As you can see in the photo the bolt lugs on the side is where I ran into trouble. They were both milled to the same height and distance in from the edge, and from the edge to the cored hole is only .018 to .020 different from one side to the other. You can see a lot more material had to be removed from one side. More setup photos in a day or so.








More in a few days
Frank

Finished up splitting the eccentric straps today.
Squared up the strap in the vice then milled the top and the tops of the bolt boss.


Then found my edges and made the offsets to drill and ream the bolt holes. The bolts fit close enough that I decided not to use the hollow dowels.



Now to split into two pieces. I would like to say there was a method to finding the center but with hole not being anywhere near being round or even close to being in the center of the casting, the core for the hole must have been on an angle also, what I ended up doing was just averaging up all the measurements and it seems there will be enough to bore it on center and have it all clean up.



Here are the three I did today , the fourth is chucked in the lathe ready to bore. Beverage for tonight, nerves need calming.



More in a few days when I do the bores

Frank

Well I "HAD" some really good photos od boring the eccentric straps but somehow I lost all the photos on my memory stick. So I retook a couple. The eccentrics are now inside the straps and turning. the other photo is of the HSS tools that I used one is to cut the groove .189 wide and the other is to chamfer the corners.




Until next time

Frank

barts wrote:Nice machine - looks exactly like mine. I used a FM100 VFD from dealers' electric, but they don't make
those any more. I found the 5 hp VFD for my lathe here:

http://www.wolfautomation.com/ProductLi ... oryID=5103

Have fun w/ that!

- Bart

I wouldn't use TECO-Westinghouse drives. They had a real high failure rate at our panel shop. We now use AC Tech's SMVector series most of the time. http://shop.actechdrives.com/Nema-4X-IP ... -s/117.htm On extreme environment applications we use Vacon's X series (used to be TB Woods).

xxxxx

Advice from Michigan Wheel on jam nuts:

Nice to have a fancy conical jam nut...

How's the engine build coming along?

Conical? I don't get it. But that's nothing new.