# Making flywheels from plate material



## Bogstandard

Bar material in the larger sizes does get slightly expensive if you buy from a merchant but if you have some thick plate it is just as easy to make a flywheel from that.
First off mark up the size you require and centre drill the centre point, make sure your centre drill hole isn't larger than the hole you need in the centre.








Then just rough cut off, you don't need to take it this close but it will mean more time turning it down, and stick some masking tape on the back to cover the whole area, doesn't need to be neat.







Now chuck a piece of bar in your three jaw that makes the outside edges of the jaws just a bit smaller than the flywheel size, but have it sitting inside the jaws.






This bit now looks a little unsteady, but rest assured that it is safe. You have to have a rotating centre to do it this way, a solid centre just will not work. Trap the plate between the chuck jaws and the rotating centre, leaving enough room for the saddle to traverse the cutter across the outside edge. This is called friction turning and can be used for all sorts of things like cutting discs out of perspex etc, but the centre is mounted in a slightly different way. Take cuts across the outside edge of about 10 to 15 thou, don't worry if you put on too heavy a cut, all that will happen is the plate will stop turning, just take the cut off, and come in with a shallower one. I have done lapping plates up to 2 feet diameter using this method.






After a few minutes you should end up with something like this. Don't turn to finished size, leave a little bit on for final finishing and trueing up.
Deburr the edges.







Put your outside jaws on the chuck and mount up the plate into it and drill and bore or ream your finished size hole.






The next bit is how to get everything running true to the bore so you don't end up with a 'wobbly' flywheel. Put your normal jaws back on your chuck and chuck a piece of bar sticking out of the chuck by the thickness of the flywheel plus about 1/4". Turn this bar down until it is a very close fit for the flywheel centre hole, and about 1/8" shorter than the thickness. drill and tap the end for a bolt and washer to clamp the flywheel onto it. All processes on the flywheel from now on are done using this mandrel, so DO NOT remove it from the chuck until everything is completed.






This is where you find out just how far your chuck is out of kilter. Put a spot of superglue on the machined part of the mandrel at the chuck end and put your flywheel onto the mandrel and lock it on with the screw and washer. Turn the outside edge to size. Then face down the front until you nearly reach the locating screw and washer. Turn off the machine without taking off the cut and remove the screw and washer, turn back on and carry on with the cut until the centre is reached, the superglue should hold it well enough for light cuts. Apply a bit of heat from a blowlamp and this should break the superglue seal and allow you to remove the disc from the mandrel. Borrow your friends best woodcutting chisel and use it for scraping off the old superglue, remount the disc the other way round using superglue again, and face this side to the thickness required but don't take out the screw until thickness is reached. The boss that is left in the middle is now machined away very gently using the superglue only to hold the disc in place. The pic here shows me machining the face with just supeglue holding it.






Reinsert the screw and washer and do all your decorative bits to the flywheel.

Recess






Concentric circles






The mandrel can now be removed from the chuck, but can be reused when you come to the polishing stage as this isn't critical on concentricity.
All this was done in less than an hour.

John


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## rake60

Excellent tutorial John!


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## Bogstandard

Thanks Rick,
The next one will be on making a chuck backstop for your lathe.

John


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## lugnut

John that is a great lesson!  But are you sure thats the right way to make a flywheel?  because it's no way near how I made mine.  
Mel


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## Bogstandard

Mel,
This is the way I make flywheels from plate material, if you do it another way, tell us about it, this is what this tricks and tips area is about, maybe yours is an easier way.
I have done them using just a mandrel but I find I get too many vibration marks.

John


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## lugnut

I was just teasing you John.  I used a mandrel and got those vibration marks you was talking about.  I did use my RT to index and cut the holes.  Then added a steel ring around the rim.  Not finished yet.
We need to get Cedge to show us how he made that fancy one of his.
Mel


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## tattoomike68

many times I have used that method to make a machined circle. I would lay it out, punch the center hole in an iron worker, user the iron workers coper to to bite the circle kind of round, weld on a hub that just fits inside the center hole. once cooled you have a nice hub to grab to turn and bore the part.

I will have to post pictures of my circle cutting torch and plasma jigs.


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## Bogstandard

Mel,
I wasn't being touchy, I genuinely thought you could do another post about making flywheels from plate, there must be hundreds of different ways to do it, this is my way. I use a rotary table all the time for doing things, especially eccentrics, its much easier than 4 jaw setting up (which I hate with a passion). I did a post on another unrelated site about doing eccentrics that way, I will have to see if I still have the pics and put it up as a post.

John


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## lugnut

John, I know you was not being touchy,  What you dont know is that I am not or have ever been a machinist.  In fact I have never in my 66 years ever seen a lathe or milling machine operated other than the ones I bought a couple of years ago.  I would like to kick my butt for not getting into this stuff 10 or 20 years ago, but feeding the kids and paying the bills came first.
Im afraid that if I posted my way of machining something, I would be liable for you and others falling of their chairs laughing, and hurting them selves.
 I will continue to watch your excellent posts and suck up all the knowledge I can .  I have a section on my computer set a side just for posts like yours.
Keep em coming
Thanks again
Mel


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## Bogstandard

Mel,
I for one would not be falling about laughing. You are trying your best at a subject you have very little experience of, and I admire that, especially as you are getting into your mature years and still willing to have a go.
Hopefully you will gain enough experience thru the great posts on this very informative site to make little engines and be proud of displaying them, if it turns or moves when you put a bit (or a lot) of pressure to it then be proud of it. 
You can stick your finger up to those who won't even try to have a go.
I make it look so easy because it comes over that way, in fact I can only just use my right arm and can only just about hold the camera, and to get the pictures in this post I took over 100 shots and chose the best ones. The one showing making a cut across the face, I started taking pics at the start of the cut, this was about the tenth shot and the only one in focus.(you should see me trying to do videos, five or six times is normal)
I rely on the automatic operations on my machines just to make most of the bits, and sometimes I have to come up with new ideas just to make something basic, I daren't show you some of the things I have to do to get bits made, and my recycling bin is full of parts where I hadn't managed to get to the feed lever in time. 
I am just like a swan swimming upstream, graceful and unfluttered on the surface but paddling like hell underneath just to stop going backwards.
The reason I am telling you this is that people like ourselves can easily fall back and turn into vegetables watching the soaps on the box with our slippers on and feet up, instead we decided to force ourselves to remain active and enjoy what we are doing, so never be ashamed of what you are doing or how you do it, as long as you don't lose any body parts along the way.

John


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## shred

Bogstandard said:
			
		

> Mel,
> I for one would not be falling about laughing. You are trying your best at a subject you have very little experience of, and I admire that, especially as you are getting into your mature years and still willing to have a go.
> Hopefully you will gain enough experience thru the great posts on this very informative site to make little engines and be proud of displaying them, if it turns or moves when you put a bit (or a lot) of pressure to it then be proud of it.
> You can stick your finger up to those who won't even try to have a go.
> I make it look so easy because it comes over that way, in fact I can only just use my right arm and can only just about hold the camera, and to get the pictures in this post I took over 100 shots and chose the best ones. The one showing making a cut across the face, I started taking pics at the start of the cut, this was about the tenth shot and the only one in focus.(you should see me trying to do videos, five or six times is normal)
> I rely on the automatic operations on my machines just to make most of the bits, and sometimes I have to come up with new ideas just to make something basic, I daren't show you some of the things I have to do to get bits made, and my recycling bin is full of parts where I hadn't managed to get to the feed lever in time.
> I am just like a swan swimming upstream, graceful and unfluttered on the surface but paddling like hell underneath just to stop going backwards.
> The reason I am telling you this is that people like ourselves can easily fall back and turn into vegetables watching the soaps on the box with our slippers on and feet up, instead we decided to force ourselves to remain active and enjoy what we are doing, so never be ashamed of what you are doing or how you do it, as long as you don't lose any body parts along the way.
> 
> John


I, for one, am very happy that people like John are sharing the tricks they use.  Prior to seeing this, my first thought would have been to trepan (or whatever the proper word is-- cutting out a circle by sticking a tool in from the end at about the right radius) a disk out of some plate held in the 4-jaw-- which has a number of worse issues associated with it.


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## bob ward

John that is a great article, thanks for taking the trouble to produce it.

I especially like the idea of pinning the raw disk between the headstock and the live centre. In the not too distant I'm going to need to clean up some 10" rounds, flame cut from 2" plate, the pinning method will be ideal for that.

Getting OT here, do you have a part number and/or supplier name for the QCTP we see in the photos?


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## tattoomike68

That tool post looks like an aloris.

http://www.aloris.com/


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## Bogstandard

Hi Bob,
It is just the 100 sized el cheapo chinese piston type jobby.
They retail here for about £90 ($180 US) but they come with a load of holders that are no use to man nor beast, if possible you should just buy the toolpost itself and then purchase the holders you require, Here in the UK the holders are about £14 ($28 US) each.

http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/Chronos_Catalogue_Quick_Change_Toolposts_69.html
You might have to put your outside jaws on to get the support you need on the rear of the plate, but please remember, only small cuts, especially on something that size, as I stated earlier I have done large lapping plates this way, but the larger your plate the more power is required from your machine and the slower you should go because of the peripheral cutting speed will be a lot higher, maybe the slowest speed you have would suit the best. Hope it goes well.

John


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## temper

Is it just me or do others find it annoying when you come across an interesting tip like this only to find all the images have disappeared? :-\


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## Cedge

Temper
You'll find a few places on the board where the photos were lost due to a photobucket disaster some months ago. John has been reconstructing things as he's been able to find his original images. In answer to your question.... yeah... I hate it when that happens too. Unfortunately, all the missing photos may never be replaceable since many were simply fast snapshots, made, uploaded and deleted on the local computer during hard drive clutter control..

When John gets his shop back together, you might ask him to repost with new pictures. He's a pretty agreeable sort...... sometimes...(grin)

Steve


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## Bogstandard

What I am trying to do, as and when I do another one of this type, I will take new photos and rewrite the post slightly as it is very difficult to remember what the original pictures looked like.

I have been doing this over many months now, and a lot of the pics on my other posts have in fact been retaken and reposted, all in the background so nobody ever notices. 
I'm real devious like that.

One of the main problems is finding the posts that need fixing.

Bogs

BTW, I think I only have a few hundred left to replicate.


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## Divided He ad

Hi Temper, I am going to point you toward a post of mine in which I made a flywheel out of a few plates... It is not exactly as John describes because I ended up with something thick enough to chuck up, but it is the way I found to do what I wanted to achive.
It may help you understand a little about johns description? 


http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=1644.msg15825#msg15825

Go down a little and pick through my ramblings and you will see the arbour etc I used.... Hope this helps you out? 



Ralph.


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## John S

Another flywheel post here.

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=2506.msg21784#msg21784

.


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## lugnut

lugnut  said:
			
		

> John, I know you was not being touchy, What you dont know is that I am not or have ever been a machinist. In fact I have never in my 66 years ever seen a lathe or milling machine operated other than the ones I bought a couple of years ago. I would like to kick my butt for not getting into this stuff 10 or 20 years ago, but feeding the kids and paying the bills came first.
> Im afraid that if I posted my way of machining something, I would be liable for you and others falling of their chairs laughing, and hurting them selves.
> I will continue to watch your excellent posts and suck up all the knowledge I can . I have a section on my computer set a side just for posts like yours.
> Keep em coming
> Thanks again
> Mel



Like I said earlier in this post I save all (well some of the better ones) posts that I think I might be able to use later. I do have this one on flywheels saved in Microsoft Word and would be happy to send it to you (With Bogs Approval) of coarse ??? It's about a 2500KB file.
Mel


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## tmuir

If you don't mind I wouldn't mind a copy too. (If Bogs doesn't mind)
I do have Bogs sketch saved on this but not his photos and I need to reproduce a cast brass pulley in the next week or two and I will be making it from sheet as I don't have any 3 inch diameter brass bars to work from and I will need all the help I can get to do this.


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## Bogstandard

Mel & Tony,

Go for it, no need to get permission from me. 
In fact Mel, I would like a copy if possible, so maybe I could put things right.

John


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## lugnut

John I have sent you a email with the photos, hope it works.

Tony, send me a email with your address and I'll send you a copy also.
I tried to send it via PM but it wouldn't take.
Mel


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## Bogstandard

Mel,

You are an absolute star, you have just saved me many hours of work.

Post has been fixed.

Many thanks

John


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## DICKEYBIRD

lugnut  said:
			
		

> Like I said earlier in this post I save all (well some of the better ones) posts that I think I might be able to use later. I do have this one on flywheels saved in Microsoft Word and would be happy to send it to you (With Bogs Approval) of coarse ??? It's about a 2500KB file.
> Mel


And just how does a feller go about saving a thread with all the pics at full size? That would be really handy!


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## lugnut

I just copy and paste them into MS Word. Then save them to file. Works great and I can edit a little if needed. Ad notes and resend them if needed, like today to John. I set up a "Shop Tips and Idea's" file in my documents files and save them there.
Give it a try.
Mel


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## tmuir

Thanks for that Mel.
Got the email.
I've just spent the last hour chopping wood so I'm recovering at the moment but then I will read through it all and decide how I'm going to proceed in making the pulley.


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## mogogear

I am a n00b myself , but the images show well enough for me... ??Maybe it is your "my computer" settings that have caused them to "evaporate"?? I hope they return 

A nice simple- what I need- lesson- Thanks John


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## Bogstandard

Greg,

If you look up this post a bit, I fixed it a couple of days ago with the help of another member.

John


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## itowbig

i too will copy for future reference. if thats ok 
thank you


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