Member postings for PatJ

An interesting backstory on this engine design is that it was designed by Charles Copeland, who was either a contractor, or worked for the US Navy.

In looking at the Mississippi drawings, I noticed an incredible gaffe, which was that the crank arms were drawn both facing the same direction. No competent engineering designer would ever make such an obvious blunder.

So I assumed that this must be Copeland's first attempt at a steam engine for a Naval vessel (I think this was the first steam powered Naval vessel design for the US), and I assumed (falsely) that this would also be Copeland's last engine design, since he clearly did not know what he was doing with the Mississippi design.

I found other errors in the Copeland drawings, and in general, they are good examples of very poor drafting and engineering design.

Further research indicated that Copeland went on to design other ship engines, apparently very successfully, and sophisticated designs, and so I guess it was a learning process for him.

And as a comparison, I found a set of French side-level engine drawings, also created in 1840, and the French drawings indicate a very refined and complete design, with exceptionally clear and concise drawings.

The Mississippi engines are so close the French design that I have to suspect that Copeland researched other engine designs, and basically copied them to the best of his ability (which was very poor ability).

I tend to forget how primitive engineering design and manufacturing was in the US in 1840.

England was king of the world as far as industrial design in the 1800's, although the French design from 1840 is very respectable. Charles Porter mentions in his book "Engineering Reminisces" that the only way to make a decent steam engine in the US was to order all of the tooling and measuring instruments from England.

To this day I still find and buy some superb products from England, such as a large paper cutter I bought recently.

Manufacturing seems to have vacated the US these days, but that is another story that we won't get into.

I am not up on architectural terms, but gothic seems to describe the Mississippi engine design well.

It is amazing how much effort went into the cosmetics of these old engines.

Later engine designs are devoid of these striking and remarkable visual features, and one has to lament that something has been lost over time.

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Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 22:43:04

I had to pull out the dictionary on that one.

I inserted the sheet below into CAD, and made sure it was level, and then drew lines up either side of the columns.

It appears that the columns have a linear taper; at least that is what it looks like to me.

This is the original 1840 sheet.

There is a great deal of artwork in the old engine designs.

Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 09:05:37

Yes, I completely forgot about that.

Such is my brain fog these days from too many work projects and too little time.

Perhaps you could change the heading to "Side Lever"; I don't see an option to change that.

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Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 07:31:47

The first engine I recall modeling in 3D a few years ago was a barstock build of my dad's, and I recall struggling to create 3D parts for this engine. At the time, these models seemed pretty complex and challenging.

With each engine that I modeled, I got better at modeling, and so you can see where things can go if you work at learning 3D.

That is the challenge; make something in 3D, no matter how simple, then increase the complexity with each part that you model. Each step mastered becomes another tool in your 3D modeling toolkit.

Before you know it, it is Beam Engine time !

A few more screen captures.

Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 07:28:20

My intent was/is to make 3D models that match the original design exactly (minus the errors that were in the original drawings). That has taken a lot of time, and a lot of discovery, and there are many subtle features in an old beam design, such as the crank pin only being fixed on one side, and have a ball on the other side that is not fixes (in case a wave hit a paddlewheel on one side, it would not shear the crank pin).

I have made pretty good progress on this engine, but still have much to do.

Some of the drawings were missing, and some of the drawings had incorrect information on them, so I had to fill in the missing pieces (still working on that), and correct the things that were wrong.

The engine is from the Gunboat Mississippi, 1840, which had two of these engines, and sidewheels.

Luckily the Mississippi engine is very close to the Pacific engine, and designed by the same individual.

Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 06:56:21

I had someone send me some scans of side lever engine drawings (originals from 1840), and they were dreadful drawings, in dreadful condition.

I worked on this engine last year when I had more time, and made some good progress with making accurate 3D models of many of the parts.

The columns actually taper as they go up, like an ancient temple column, and so that was a challenge to get the flutes to act correctly.

Edited By PatJ on 03/05/2022 06:32:35

Edited By JasonB on 03/05/2022 07:35:07

I use to get extraordinarily nervous before an iron pour, especially after these burns, but I finally got use to the heat and such, and now it is rather a routine thing to pour iron.

I do wear a lot of leathers, and I use a heat shield on the pouring shank.

Note: If you don't like burn photos, then read no further.

I preheated my ingot molds with a propane torch, but failed to get them up to perhaps 500-600 F (+) for a sufficient amount of time to completely drive off the surface moisture.

The molds looked completely dry, but looks can be deceiving.

These burns were caused by tiny droplets of molten iron.

One can hardly take one's gloves off fast enough when iron gets into them.

The initial burns did not look too bad on initial inspection, but the damage was more extensive.

"Curaid Silver Solution" is what works on burns, and saves a trip to the doc.

Oddly enough, there was no pain involved, since the nerve endings were vaporized.

In the end, it all fills back in with scar tissue. You can hardly see any evidence of it now.

Edited By PatJ on 02/05/2022 23:32:48

Molten iron is much like water, and it will run off without having a chance to burn, unless it goes into the top of your shoe or boot, in which case you have a serious problem.

The slightest amount of moisture will cause iron to explode out of the mold, and this happened to me one time, and I had iron strike my leather jacket, run down the arms, and into my gloves.

3rd degree burns on both hands, but nothing really to be concerned with; ie: no limbs were lost.

The bigger problem is radiant heat, mostly from IR.

If you look at 4:35 in the video, the radiant heat from the open furnace, and from the sides of the crucible are supremely hot, and will start to burn you in short order.

I guess the loose clothing act sort of as a heat shield.

I can speak from experience, standing that close to a crucible that big with no gear on is really amazing, and I am not sure really how they get away with it. The heat on the face is incredible.

And you can quickly burn your eyes with IR without shaded glasses. I guess they don't look at the crucible or open furnace, either that or get cataracts. I burned my eyes after one melting session without the proper eye protection.

The scoop-out ladle would not be very dangerous or difficult to handle, as long as you made sure it was super dry before dipping it in the crucible.

I will attach some photos of my iron experience.

The slightest drop of iron vaporizes the skin almost instantly, and creates a large burn zone around the contact area.

I pour aluminum without much protection. The main thing to protect are the eyes.

If you splash in the eyes, it is game-over.

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Looking at the Galloway after I got it home, every single part down the smallest piece is polished bright, as if it was chrome plated, including every piece of the cart.

Even the inside of the piston is polished bright and smooth.

The attention to detail is remarkable in my opinion.

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I must say, I greatly underestimated the weight of small IC engines.

The Owner lifted the Galloway out to the car, and I carried out the Briesch Olds.

The Olds was not too bad to carry, but definitely had some serious mass, and I had to really watch my grip.

When I got to the hotel that night, I picked up the Galloway, and holly molly is that thing heavy !!!!!!

The technique I had to use to carry them was to get 1/2 of them on the hip, and then lean back to support the weight on the hip, doing an awkward walk, but it worked.

The Olds is 1/2 scale with a flywheel in the 8 or 9 inch range.

The Galloway has a 10 inch flywheel, so perhaps a 1/3 scale?

The builder's son sent me a bio today, as follows:

William Zakocs born 6/12/26 in Bethlehem, Pa.. He served in the Navy at the tail end of WWII, upon returning home he worked as a sign painter and had a stint at the Bethlehem Steel, followed by a 32 year career as a letter carrier with the US Postal Service. Naturally gifted in all of the mechanical arts he began building hit and miss model engines as a hobby upon his retirement in 1985. He passed in April of 2020 at the age of 93.

I have a few more photos.

I stumbled across this liquidation of a fairly large IC engine collection.

A most impressive group of work in my opinion, all done by a mailman no less (a very talented mailman).

I thought the good folks here would perhaps be interested in seeing this collection.

Perhaps I should go to work for the postal service so I can learn how to build engines like this.

Edited By PatJ on 01/05/2022 23:26:53

I don't think I have ever seen anyone put the lettering in the core, and not by CNC either.

Saves having a two-piece pattern.

Reversed lettering I guess.

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Edited By PatJ on 28/04/2022 20:33:14

I use AutoCad 2004, and am running into the same issues.

For smaller files, this was not a problem, and only took a second or so for a regen, which I have on a keyboard shortcut key.

For my current project, I have perhaps 100 drawings in one file, which is about 8MB, and the regens have become longer than I would like, along the lines of perhaps 20 seconds.

People have said "Don't put all your drawings in one file", but the efficiency of cut-and-paste, and the quick access to all areas of the design make it the only efficient way to do the project.

I am having to purchase a new computer, with hopes that the problem will be minimized.

I bought an HP desktop, 32GB ram, 6GB ram on the video card.

I hope this computer works, since I have a lot of money riding on this project.

One thing I have found that helps is running the purge command repeatedly until the file is cleaned up.

I have found that this can reduce a file size from 10 MB to perhaps 6 MB.

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Edited By PatJ on 24/04/2022 15:04:53

Very nice pattern work !

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All metal should be poured as cool as possible, while being hot enough to completely fill the mold cavity.

Dropping the pour temperature 20 F can have a huge affect on surface finish (for the better), if you can get the mold to fill without cold-shuts.

With cast iron, there is little chance of overheating it, and few use a pyrometer with iron, due to the cost of iron pyrometers.

I can get a good iron surface finish without paying any attention to pour temperature, but aluminum is very sensitive to pour temperature and surface finish, especially with oil based sand.

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So in summary, great work you have all across the board, such as pattern making, core making, 3D modeling, 3D printing, machining, etc.

You most definitely have it "going on" as they say in these parts.

I will add a few pictures of the snap flasks that I make, to use with resin-bound molds.

Snap flasks are very useful, and they totally prevent any damage to flasks from spilled metal, since the mold is poured without the flask being in place.

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7. Knife gates seem to work well for thin parts, since you can fill a large thin section very quickly.

I generally use generous V-shaped runners, often one on each side of the mold, with gates either side of the mold cavity. The runners have spin traps at their ends, to allow the metal to spin and rise up the trap, and out the top of the mold, before metal starts to enter the mold cavity through the gates.

The gates are always at the top of the runners, and as low in the mold cavity as possible to try and avoid the waterfall effect.

The metal velocity is controlled by the gates, not by the sprue or any chokes in the system.

Oversized runners allow the cooler metal and trash/entrained metal/air to flow to the spin trap, and then feed very hot clean metal to the mold cavity.

8. To solve your strobe screen problem, hit the "PrtScn" button on the keyboard, toggle over to your favorite photoshop program, hit Paste, and then crop off the unwanted screan area. This produces a perfect screen capture every time.

9. I acutally have found that casting gray iron is easier than casting aluminum, since gas absorption does not seem to be a problem with iron. I can get iron as hot as possible, and not have to worry about getting it too hot and degrading surface finish.

Iron requires a good clay-graphite crucible such as a Morgan Salamander-Super, and furnace refractory such as Mizzou, which holds up well to iron temperaturs.

I #10 full of iron takes about 1 hour to bring to pour temperature, and that requires about 2.5 gallons of diesel (some use waste oil; I don't).

10. Gray iron scrap does not have to be cleaned prior to melting it, in contrast to what many will tell you.

I have seen scrap with 1/4" of thick rust get melted and make the most beautiful castings you have ever seen.

Any paint, rust, etc. on iron scrap comes out in the slag. I had to see this to believe it, but it is true, and can easily be proven with a couple of test pours.

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