Member postings for ANDY CAWLEY

Dialled in the camshaft on the Anzani after four year rebuild! This included making replacement mag drive bearing from cast Babett,making replacement rollers for the tappets and making vernier ( well adjustable) cam drive sprocket.

The crank case in the back ground is mis leading, it is a replica of the Bleriot engine that crossed the channel.

Edited to add , yesterday actually. 

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 10/03/2015 08:56:05

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 10/03/2015 08:57:58

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 10/03/2015 08:59:29

What's it like for wheeling tool boxes on castors?

You can buy, via Abebooks, the paper back version for £2.95, from India plus £4.00 postage.

Not bad eh?

I've just ordered one😀

I too worked in the steel wire and wire rope industry for all my working life. As a management trainee, in 1961 I was sent to a wire mill in Warrington one of whose products, believe it or not, was pinion wire.

This particular mill was antiquated even in 1962. Whilst in our main mills in Doncaster an Cleckheaton we were drawing wire at high speeds through tungsten carbide dies on multi hole machines at Warring ton they were still using old fashioned draw plates or if I recall correctly they were known locally as whortle plates.

Wire drawing was in those days clearly divided into mild steel (below 0.40% carbon content) and high carbon, high tensile steel wire used for rope makinf and spring making principally. To produce high carbon steel wire in those days you needed the "patenting" furnaces referred to in Mark C's post. The mill at Warrington did not possess the patenting furnace and was due for closure. Not before I learned something of the old fashioned way of wire drawing.

Wire drawing consists of pulling the wire through a hole smaller than itself, if you see what I mean.

The hole is trumpet shaped and the trumpet is there to draw in the lubricant which was soap. The whortle plate was, from memory, a couple of inches thick and about 18" x 6" and had a series of holes in rows along its length. The entry holes were quite large compared to the size of the wire that was to be drawn.. The bottom of the lagge hole started off blind and the appropriate hole was made in it using punches and files. The wire drawer, a very highly skilled man, made all his own tools. The trade was so respected in Warrington, a wire town, that some pubs had bars that were only accessible to fully skilled men.

This method of plate drawing was used in the early days for drawing round wire until the tungsten carbide die came along however it remained for mild steel shaped wire because of its versatility.

Shaped wire started off round and the shape of the hole through which it was pulled was progressively pulled were gradually altered until the final shape was arrived at.

I surmise, as I never consciously looked at pinion wire production, that the round gradually became a polygon of the same number of sides as the number of leaves of the pinion. The sides of the polygon would then begin to take the shape of the pinion. The progression would be down to the skill and experience of the wire drawer. Sizes and shapes would have been determined by drawing soft annealed copper wire through the did.

One of the the thing that sticks in my mind was that the whortle plate was made of a very high manganese content steel. When the die was not drawing to size the steel was anneale and then "banged up", that is the back side of the die was whacked with a ball pein hammer to close up the hole, the high manganese content ensured rapid work hardening to give longevity to the reformed die hole.

Which reminds me the shaped wire was given several annealings during the course of its transformation from round to pinion shaped.

It was all 50 odd years ago and I don't think I knew then the full implications of "pinion" wire. We also made "pippin" wire which apparently was used as the knife edge for weighing scales or should I say balance.

When making your key make sure it is long enough for the Tommy bar to clear the dial gauge used in setting the work in the chuck. I made mine too short and it is a constant source of irritation, I must make a longer one!😢

The original item is cast white metal and has lasted very well for 89 years. It's just me who is a clumsy b*st*rd that broke it.

As I said in my OP, of course, it would make sense to machine from solid but that is not what I want to do, I want to stick to original specification.

On the moulding rubber question I had a long conversation with some one who uses the very hard grade professionally and he told me that because of the very high viscosity of the un cured resin a very high vacuum is need to properly degass the mix. He also said it is impossible to avoid air entrapment and get a good mix.

So casting white metal it is then!!!!

.

Oh, I forgot to say that I started this thread off 'cos I couldn't find any tool geometry, feeds and speeds data for machining white metal!

This is the magneto drive shaft bearing off my Anzani engine.

The broken off bit is left hand thread. Needless to say when I removed the brass collar that was screwed on I didn't know it was left hand hence the break.😞

It is about 35 mm long and the diameter of the parallel bit is 20 mm approx and it carries a shaft 15mm diameter.

I need to make a replacement and I want to make it in a similar manner to the original. I know for a one off it probably makes sense to machine from solid or to machine one from a lump of bronze but I really want to make a casting and machine it.

I tried to make a silicone mould but it wasn't succesful for a variety of reasons the principal one beind difficulty of de-aerating the resin before it went off.

My proposed method is to make a two part mould out of a couple of chunks of ally that I have in stock.

I propose to spigot the two pieces of ally bar with a shallow spigot then bore one piece to make the parallel bit including a slight angle to permit separation from the mold, this will be through bored to allow molten metal to be poured into the mold.

The other half I intend to machine a triangular pocket to produce the flange and bore a recess to produce the tapered bit. I will add a short bit onto the taper for a chucking allowance.

The mould cavity will be carbon blacked to ensure release ( or would Zebrite work).

The two halves of the mould will be clamped together, preheated and the metal poured.

Simples.

Or is it? Any advice or suggestions will be great fully received.

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 26/10/2014 06:56:36

Michael, thanks for that. I have an English version of the manual that Tony Griffiths has however that is for a plain bearing lathe and mine is a roller bearing version. I have now got a later manual for the roller bearing version however it is in German a language with which I am not familiar.

Google translate goes part of the way but the translation of technical German is rather quaint. I'm gradually unpicking it, I think!

Oh dearie me, bearing adjustment was the one thing I was hoping you would know about.

Never mind they are wonderful pieces of kit.

Hi there Versaboss, mine's a LZ4S as well (must remove boxing gloves when typing). The 90 tooth is on my list to make.

Is yours a solid bearing or the later roller bearing spindle?

Are you in the UK?

I believe it's mild steel, the spec number quoted by the Waterjet cutting bloke was a number un familiar to me. He said he thought it was mild steel. A bit vague I know but as the gears are not highly stressed I thought it would be ok.

I'm also thinking that I need to complete my powered feed project first.

Check that they are not left hand thread on one side and right hand thread on the other. The wheel nuts are definitely different on each side. I did some of those dust caps ages ago and I can't remember for definite.

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 19/09/2014 21:00:19

Isn't India in Asia?

I tried making an RTV silicone mold and it was full of bubbles ( the rtv that is). Is it possible to produce a good mold with out vacuum degassing? If so how does one get rid of the inevitable entrapped air?

I went through the same exercise and finally chose the Gloster vice however they had no stock so ended up with the Arc type 2. I have no regrets and find the Arc vice excellent.

I suspect you are looking at a thread that complies with British Standard 86. My copy is the1956 version. It covers (among other things) a constant pitch series of threads of 20tpi of whitworth form, that is 55degrees.

I am aware of this because all GN and Frazer Nash motor cars manufactured up to the mid thirties had threaded components,as distinct from fasteners, at 20tpi.

http://www.tracytools.com/ stock taps and dies of this type.

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 03/08/2014 04:43:09

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 03/08/2014 04:46:28

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 03/08/2014 04:47:45

Yes, I didn't quite follow what you were trying to do.

Have you got a 6" diameter disc 30 mm thick that you want to make into two discs 15 mm thick( less the saw kerf)?

When I had my shed built I decided to have twice as many sockets as I thought I would need. I planned to have them mounted on the roof beams which were at a height where I could easily reach. The logic was that the cables would not be trailing over work benches. My electrician pal found this very difficult to accept and persuaded me to have sockets fitted at the conventional height, just above the work surfaces. We reached an compromise and he fitted some sockets to the beam that went accross the middle of the shed.

How I wish I had stuck to my guns and had all the sockets mounted on high.

Despite having a seemingly extravagant number of sockets fitted I still one of those multi socket adapters in my battery charging area!