Member postings for Maurice

Thank you for your help Johan. I thought that the existing springs were ridiculously strong. Your reply confirms this. One more thing to correct! Oh well.....

Thanks again Maurice

I am involved in helping a friend to complete a part built Centaur gas engine. The cylinder head, valves and rockers are parts that have already been finished to a high standard, but the valves take a thrust of about five pounds to lift them off their seats. Is this normal please? It seems a lot of work for the cams to do. I have built steam engines for over fifty years, but this is my first experience of I/C. Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks in advance Maurice

I thought that the modifications that I made to a Stuart beam engine a few years ago might be of interest. The original entablature consists of two steel bars secured at one end to the centre column, and at the other to fresh air. I changed this to the arrangement shown in the pictures; a column at each corner to secure a frame, finished off with finials.

I added starting gear to the valve operating shaft, which is carried in plumber blocks, instead of the triangular brackets supplied by Stuarts. They employ the same casting to carry the ends of the radius arms; I have substituted the fabricated brackets shown in the pictures. The parallel motion is based on full size practice. However, the brasses are not in fact split, but pressed in, in two pieces, into the straps, or "loops". The ends of the pins in the beam are separate, like threaded drawing pins, so that the main loops can be slipped onto the pins without having to be split.

The beam itself has had a central rib added, and the bosses enlarged. Forcing screws have been added to the cylinder top, and steam chest covers. I added a 1/8" square steel lip around the top edge of the bed, so that it seems to owe less to jelly mould technology. The width and length of the added lip is the same as the upper frame, which makes it easy to stand the engine on end on a flat surface to enable measurements to be taken when aligning the beam trunnion bearings.

Having made these changes, it now of course needs a (dummy) air pump between the cylinder and the column, a feed pump between the column and crankshaft, and of course a nice Watt governor on a bracket straddling the crankshaft! I do actually have a pair of bevel gears that would be ideal. All I need is the time!

Maurice

(Sorry that the pics are either side of the text; don't know why that happens). ((Moved by moderator))

Edited By JasonB on 10/01/2016 07:31:44

Yes, thanks gents, that's what I want. Actually knowing the right name of what you are looking for is half the battle isn't it? Thanks again,

Maurice

I recently saw, on one of our advertisers websites, a set of 1/4" thick steel angles in increments up to 30 degrees, to place in machine vise jaws to set work to a specific angle. Comes in a red plastic box for about thirty pounds. Just what I want. But I can't find them again. Can anyone please point me in the right direction before I go barmy?

Maurice

As Jason says, the maximum diameter that you can turn in the gap on a Myford 7 is 10", you can just squeeze it to 10 1/4" if you need to. The maximum face that you can turn is a different matter. I can't remember the distance from the faceplate to the end of the gap, but when I wanted to turn some 2" thick rings of steel for traction engine wheel rims, I couldn't fit them in. To overcome this, I prepared a disc of 1/8" steel plate, 10" in diameter, with a 3" hole in the centre. This was fastened to the 2" ring of steel, with cap head screws tapped into what would become waste as the rim was turned. This assembly was than fastened with screws to the BACK of a spare chuck back plate. It had to be assembled in situ, but it fitted! I was then able to machine the outside of the rim, and one side of the tee ring. The holes for the spokes were then drilled undersize, and tapped. The 1/8" plate was reduced in diameter to a good fit in the embryo tee ring and fixed to tit with screws in the tapped spoke holes . The other side of the tee ring was then machine. I was knee deep in swarf, but I had my first front wheel tee ring! Ditto for the second one. Perhaps this might someone who was making a built up flywheel.

Maurice

As other contributors have said, the live centre is unhardened so that it may be machine true in situ. The live centres supplied by Myford were identified by having a ring turned on the body, while the dead centre was plain.

Maurice

Thanks for the feedback gents. Sorry for the delay in answering, I,m not at home at the moment, and my laptop has just turned into a plastic box! Had to borrow one for this.

Maurice

That seems a great idea, and so simple! I shall copy it as soon as I can. Thanks JA.

Maurice

Hi gents; thanks Tony, but when is that? Do you have to pre-load the bearings? I feel sure that if I just did the nut up until I could feel no movement, then the spindle might still move when under load. As to changing the bearings to roller bearings, this is made a bit difficult as the lower one is hard up against a collar with nothing to "grab" to pull or push it off. Being angular contact bearings, the outer race and the balls just pull off, leaving the inner race on the spindle.

Maurice

Has anyone come up with a method of locking the cross slide of a Myford Super 7, that does not involve disturbing the adjustment of the gib strips please?

Regards Maurice

I have just discovered that my Dore-Westbury milling machine spindle, has acquired a lot of end play . Thankfully, it is just the large retaining nut over the top of the upper bearing which has loosened. I shall lock it in place with a thread locking adhesive. My question is, how do I tell when it is tight enough? I don't want to over-tighten it.

Thanks for any guidance

Regards Maurice

Facing page 221 of "A century of traction engines" by W,J.Hughes, there is a picture of the Hornsby tracked engine, and beneath it the Fowler 'Snaketrack' engine. Its tracks are much lower than the Hornsby example, and are flatter on the ground, and so less prone to rocking.

The text says "Later on, in 1923, Fowlers' conceived and built the remarkable vehicle seen in Fig.158, and in 1929 even put a ploughing engine on endless tracks. Because of the rope drum beneath the boiler, this was not easy, but the problem was solved by having separate tracks in the place of the hind wheels, with a kind of tracked bogie in place of the normal fore-carriage. The 'Snaketrack' of 1923 was a 'go-anywhere' vehicle, of course, but like the four-wheel drive vehicles of half a century before, it was too heavy and cumbrous to prove of real value." There is no illustration of the ploughing version. I think that the 'Museum of English Rural Life' in Reading, Berkshire, hold the archive of Fowlers drawings, you could try there.

Maurice

Just been into The Plumb Centre. They have a special offer at the moment. Its a two inch diameter pressure gauge on an armoured hose. It reads to 160 psi. Also Bar and that metric one. £4.17 plus v.a.t! Looks quite robust. Good for boiler testing? I assume these offers are across all their stores . I was in the High Wycombe one.

Maurice

If you decide to use vegetable oil, be careful what it is. There have been recent warnings on the television cooking programmes not to use two particular oils for cooking if it involves high temperatures, as the oil changes and gives of dangerous fumes. I think the oils were corn oil, and sunflower oil. Can't remember what the effect of these fumes is, but they were sounding very serious about it. Just thought I should mention it.

Rergards Maurice

I was recently visiting my neighbour, when a postman put an "Unable to deliver" notice through the letter box in a frosted glass front door, while we were standing about four feet the other side! Lazy B*******s!

Maurice

Hi Ian, glad to help. As I recall, after over forty five years, there were only two other problems. One was an inaccuracy in the beam casting. The middle boss for the parallel motion was out of place. It was supplied by the "old" A J Reeves. I did tell them, and it may well have been corrected. The second problem was a "negative clearance" between the ends of the crosshead and the pivot pins for the radius arms. I had to do some careful thinning down the get it to work.

The only other thing that occurs to me was that the connecting rod casting is a bit tricky to machine, and I made my connecting rod from two pieces of mild steel; one for the fork and one for the fluted rod. The flutes were painted and the lands polished; it looked great! I sold the engine many years ago. I wish that I hadn't!

Regards Maurice.

Just spotted this thread. While you are talking of gears for your engine, I built an M.E. Beam engine many years ago. If you intend to fit the lay shaft and pulley as shown in the design, you may find,as I did, that the shaft fouls the cotter in the big end. I increased the number of teeth on each gear by five teeth. Problem solved.

Regards. Maurice.

Thanks for all the nice comments gents; yes Peter, the handle is 'clockwise'. One thing that is not visible in the photos is that the spindle, or axle, ends in a ball at the lower end. It just locates in a socket, and is not restrained along any particular axis. Thus there are no alignment problems, and it is readily unshipped went not in use, as were some of the full size ones. Probably to stop them getting nicked!

There is another irrigation device that would be an interesting model;' a dragons backbone"; a Chinese water elevating machine that is principally a chain of wooden plates moving in a close fitting trough. There are pictures on the internet. I regret that I have lost the web addresses. Worth searching for though!

Regards Maurice

I was thinking along these lines Jason. Do they not tend to slip sideways in use, or are they retained in some way?

Regards Maurice