The Workshop Progress Thread (2017)

As neil likes the "church font" I showed the other day that it would be nice to do a bit or ornamental turning and add a couple of candle stick holders to go with it.

Mostly turned with 1.0m and 2.2mm insert parting tools and a 2mm dia MRMN grooving insert. the part you can see is 65mm high and 22mm dia at the base.

Well with the guide rod bases done I could not resist the temptation to add the rods to see how tall the engine will end up. So chopped a couple of 430mm bits off a 1.0m length of 9mm silver steel and then turned and threaded the ends. Did someone recently say silver steel doe snot thread well with a die?

Looks about 34" tall to me. Quiet pleased as there is only a couple of thou difference between the crods top to bottom at the moment and once the top bar is in place that should be sorted

Edited By JasonB on 05/08/2017 20:05:56

A bit more done on my version of the Vertical Cross engine to Stewart Hall's drawings. I didn't have any ally bar of 55mm dia. for the base, so marked out, drilled, tapped, & turned a piece of 10mm ally plate to required dimensions. The tapping mode gave me the chance to try out a 3mm spiral flute tap I picked up at a car boot fair some time ago as the tapped holes were shown as 5.5mm deep so not through holes, all tapped out nicely with cuttings coming up & out as designed to do. Must keep my eyes peeled for more spiral flute taps...




​Cylinder machined & marked out for steam ports & valve chest location studs, partially assembled...



​Jim Nic, on your model which avenue did you take to mate up your valve chest on the cylinder, the two options I can think of are...1) mark out the valve chest separately & hopefully the drilled chest will mate up with the cylinder studs ( always seem to get one hole out of line with mating hole / stud on other pieces ) ... 2 ) locate the drilled valve chest in position & spot through to the cylinder, which I take is the best method that most members would do ?... going through brain fade episode at the mo'

George.

Hi George

As I recall I drilled the cylinder and steam chest to drawing and luckily got it right. I do have a DRO on my mill/drill which makes that a better option for me than spotting through and picking up the marks. This part actually allows a little inaccuracy especially if you clad the cylinder

Also I normally make clearance holes a tad big, normally 0.1mm, to give a bit of wriggleability. As Stew Hart (not Hall, he was the giggling fool off "It's a Knockout " from the telly wasn't he?) says "A little bit of clearance never got in the road."

Jim

As part of my ongoing machinery upgrade policy, A Myford 254S mysteriously founds its way into my workshop this week, to replace my Super 7.

It was obtained via a dealer, and came out of a workshop that had gone into liquidation.

Condition was as per it was dragged away from the operator, and he clearly didn't have time to clean it!

it's actually in good condition, little wear in gibs and ways, and underneath all the grime there was quite a nice lathe struggling to get out.

Above all, it was very cheap!

It had been used for turning plastic as well as metal, and everything was spattered in a weird sticky plastic jelly type gunge.

About six hours hard work with a big can of petrol, brushes and scrapers, and here's the before and after pictures:

Niiiice! looks like you got a bargain there, any extras included?

George.

Bit more done on the Vert' cross ... drilling for valve chest studs, 1.6mm drill... DRO's certainly help with the hole spacing ...



​Steam passages milled & drilled... not seeing any dimensions for depth of milled slot for steam /air entry passage on dwg, calculated out for 1.5mm boss on cyl. end cover ( sitting on ) milled out to 2.5mm depth, I'd decided on 1mm steam / air entry clearance. The slot was calculated ( guesstimated ) to leave a 1mm wall thickness taking into account the 3mm dia. drilled passage, making distance from inside cyl.dia.to end of milled slot 4mm... not taken gasket thickness into account... haven't measured yet, but there is still 0.56mm - .021" to come off overall cylinder length as it now stands at 52.56mm so a clean up on both ends will bring it to spec. So unless I've missed something off the dwg...I don't see why it shouldn't work ?. Maybe Jim Nic / others could clarify?



​George.

It also came with a 4 Jaw Pratt Burnerd chuck (looks pretty much unused), Albrecht keyless tailstock chuck, brand new genuine Myford operating manual (these are around £50), 4 QC toolholders, decent live centre.

I paid £1,450 for the lot so I didn't think that was bad.

I'm having a go at George Thomas' bending rolls. Made the gears today, a stick of 20t 20DP. The gear cutter came from RDG, still sharp, no sign of any wear on the teeth.

Parted off, bored and tidied up in soft jaws in the lathe. Seeing as the mill was in horizontal mode I thought I'd use the slotting attachment to make the keyway in two of the gears.

I had to make the slot tooling, I've never used the slotting attachment before

Nice bit of kit but probably simpler and quicker to use the hand shaper for little slotting jobs like this.

Rod

Lovely looking gears. They'll be 14½°PA if it's an RDG cutter?

Andrew

Indeed it is. Presumably focussed on making Myford change gears. Free cutting mild steel - very flattering to average technique.

That Sharp mill - horizontal, vertical AND slotting - nice bit of kit.

Super bit of kit there Rod, like the set up for horizontal, vertical & slotting capability thaiguzzi says it's a 'Sharpe' any particular model? I'll nose around 'Lathes.co.uk' to have a look see details.

George.

​p.s. just had a look see... nice compact design, looks like you got all the additions too.

Edited By mechman48 on 09/08/2017 10:13:35

Vertical Cross progress... tapped out valve chest for studding, machined up valve chest, drilled for studs, nice to have DRO's to help ... still managed to get one stud out of alignment, always seem to do that.... . A tad extra clearance drill sorted it, Still need to drill for inlet / exhaust ports, piston valve etc...



George.

Finally made some progress out in the workshop. Lost a lot of time recently due to 3 weeks in China (work), 2 weeks in Wales / Yorks (hols) and bringing the ceiling down (planned and almost controlled!) in the new kitchen / dining room, so there hasn't been much activity out there for a while. I also spent some time commissioning the stick, MIG and TIG welders, so I'm back in the welding game again.

Previously I'd designed a tool setting fixture to hold my ISO40 ER40 collet chucks during tightening. There is no easy way to hold an ISO40 toolholder without damaging it, unless you have a suitable fixture. Tightening them in the spindle is not recommended and you could make a grand mess of your knuckles if you slipped when tightening a sharp new cutter.

This was largely a CAD/CAM/CNC exercise, designed to progress a complete design from the PC into metal, using my (now largely finished) CNC milling machine. It's a 1983 Shizuoka that I have retrofitted with a 3-axis Chinese Fanuc clone controller. Although I've now got a fair bit of experience with 3D CAD, this was my first start-to-finish project using CNC. All in all it seems to have gone rather well - no obvious dimensional cockups, no broken tools and it bolted together nicely.

The remaining component parts:

Machine tapping with 100% thread in the manual mill:

Finished assembly. All parts fit like the proverbial:

In use:

So that's another one ticked off! Quite a few milestones passed on the way, so feeling quite fulfilled. Time for a couple of beers perhaps.

Murray

Vertical Cross coming along nicely George.

As I remember Stew's design calls for the piston valve hole to be made all the way through the valve chest and a plug to be inserted to seal the bottom. I found I was able to drill and ream to within a couple of mm of the bottom and the valve still had room to operate and I avoided the need for a plug and the potential for an air (or steam) leak.

Jim

Never mind a couple of beers, I think that effort deserves the whole case. ^ 10

Very impressive, and no broken tools, way better than I managed. It must have been a sizeable task on it's own justgetting the mill going.

Andrew

Hi George

Here I come with advice a bit late again. I am still using carbon impregnated string as a seal medium so I use ordinary twist drills for stuffing boxes and leave the conical seat at the bottom of the hole after tapping and then the flat on the end of the gland follower tends to compress the string on to the shaft. Counterbores or such are not then necessary. Small O rings are the modern method I understand, so a flat bottomed hole will work just fine or just leave the drilled seat.

Jim