Member postings for Jim Nic

Good for you Chris. As I said, I would be interested to see how you do it (and I wasn;'t being facetious) so I hope you can enlighten us when you have completed it, perhaps by updating this thread.

Jim

I'll be interested to see how you arrange the gears to drive your leadscrew on a Unimat 3.

The U3 I have has no mechanical connection between headstock mandrel and leadscrew. The only drive I have seen is a mechanism which connects to the end of the leadscrew and takes it's drive via a rubber belt off the motor pulley as a means of feeding the crosslide, but that has a fixed ratio.

Jim

I came on a piece of 3" dia steel bar of unknown composition a while back and kept it as a "come in handy". When I found a use for it and tried to machine it I could cut it only with carbide tip tool and then only if I ran it at a very low speed and with a small cut. Even then my lathe was working hard but I kept going because the steel was "too good to chuck away".

The result was that after an hour or so continuous working I had overheated and burnt out my lathe motor.

An expensive lesson! I now only have material that I have bought and know it's composition.

Jim

Thanks for the good news update.

Jim

George

I did notice that you had located your nice brass spacers on top of the entablature whereas Stew's original drawings show them underneath. I thought you had done this to show off your brass polishing skills and had adjusted the pillar length to compensate. The difference would be 10mm.

The solution to your problem may be as simple as to locate the spacers between the pillars and the entablature.

Jim

It's all a matter of personal taste of course but I think the brick effect looks a lot better than the previous all over tiling. Good choice.

Jim

Stunning work on the oiler Jason.

And the Root and Van Dervoort is pretty impressive too, I love how the cart turned out.

Jim

Bricks, for sure.

Jim

Indeed looking like summat now George.

Can't offer any advice re polishing the ali top plate, for my Popcorn I engine turned the base and then laquered it for protection. Seems to be working to keep it shiny and easy to wipe away dust and oil so I would certainly recommend a coat of laquer.

How are you going to connect the air (or steam) to it? It appears you have a hollow wood base so a connection in the side of the wood and then up through the MDF to the inlet valve would look neat.

This is just a brass turning with an M6 threaded hole for the connector glued in to a hole in the brown stuff and piped to the connector in the ali base.

Jim

The thickness of the component being broached will also have an influence on whether you can fit the whole shebang, component plus the broach sticking out the top, in to an arbour press.

There is currently a 6 ton hydraulic press available from a seller on the Bay of EEs for £64.95 all in (Item 351730934471) if you have the funds, the workshop space and the ongoing need for such a tool.

Jim

Today I managed to cross something off my "To-do" list when I turned this:

into this:

Happy days.

Thanks for the drawing Stew.

Jim

Jason

I went with that conversion for 2 reasons:

1. I happened to have a flywheel about 3/5 of the original design size.

2. I wanted to convert the imperial dimensions I had on the drawing to metric so I made a spreadsheet and 15 was a convenient number to end up where I wanted to be and seemed the logical way to do it.

3. I never thought of working the other way (which now you mention it would have been a heck of a lot simpler)

I wish now I had asked for advice on here, but next time ..........

Jim

My current project is Ray Hasbrouk's No 3 Rocking Valve Engine. This is a fairly simple engine with not a lot of moving features so I decided to reduce it's size. I did this by converting the imperial dimensions on the drawing to metric using a 15mm to the inch conversion factor.

After a set back involving a small BA tap and a ruined cylinder I have made a couple of design changes to allow the use of larger threads than the reduction in size called for and now have a completed cylinder assembly.

Jim

Swing arms look good George. I think that's probably the trickiest bit.

Jim

Ian

I can recommend Steve's wobbler design as a first project, it was the one I started on.

There is a lot of good guidance with the drawings if your skills are a bit rusty and if you are up to speed already it will be good practice to get familiar with your new lathe. As no castings are involved, if you make a mistake there is no delay in making a new part and it will be cheaper than replacing a casting. Plus you will hopefully end up with some bits of stock materials which always come in handy.

My second engine was a Stuart 10V which I did with no problems because I had a fair knowledge of my machines and how various metals behaved by then. I also had a few more bits of tooling having completed a couple of other small projects.

Jim

Edited By Jim Nic on 12/02/2018 19:14:37

Know just how you feel George. The cylinder block pictured in my last post is now in the scrap bin after I broke a 10BA tap in it. All part of life's rich pattern

Jim

I have a WM16 which is very similar to the WM18 under discussion. When taking a milling cut I don't lower the head to increase the depth of cut. I set the initial position of the head and lock it then use the quill fine feed mechanism and digital readout to lower the cutting tool.

Jim

With Stew Hart's Popcorn engine finished -

it was time to make a start on Ray HasBrouck's No3 Rocking Valve engine. I purchased the book containing the drawings a while ago and yesterday I gathered the main materials to make a start (there may be a few bits left over at the end).

It is a small, fairly straightforward design and shouldn't pose any difficulty (famous last words!), I've even bought in a flywheel. I chose this engine because I dont have such a valve mechanism in my collection.

Today I've made a start on the cylinder block.

Jim

That's looking very tidy Jim. Do she run yet?

Jim

In these days of convincing cheaply made copies of expensive products, it would seem that if owning a Mitutoyo caliper is important to you, it would be wise not to try and get it on the cheap but to deal with a reputable supplier. You will undoubtedly have to pay more than if you took a chance with a "bargain" but that, surely, is the cost of having high grade equipment. (I make no judgement on whether Mitutoyo calipers are better enough than Aldi specials to be worth the extra.)

Jim