Any interest in a high end casting kit??

[Lance]

Hello all,
Just kinda testing the waters here. I am currently doing research on producing a high end casting kit of a Foos special electric lighting engine.
I have been around hit and miss engines all of my life and this engine is by far the smoothest running of all. With a disc crank and electric wipe ignition it is truley sweet.
I have set up the photogammetry and have permission to take the pictures and get measurements in the next few weeks.
Finding out how much work this is going to be, I thought I'd ask and see how many might have an interest in a kit? Also what would you feel would be a fair price?
I am going to contact Morrison & Marvin to do the casting work, and would like to do 50 to 100 kits with numbered tags.
There will be a LOT of small castings, so I am guessing this will be on the pricey end.
I'm not in this for a profit, just tired of the limited choices out there.

 

[aonemarine]

looks goood to me. I think there is a fair amount of research to still be done as to the demand and cost of producing such a kit. I would try to keep the castings to a minimum and supply only the main castings and a good set of detail drawings with commentary on how to machine the minor stuff from bar stock. Casting every part to an engine will drive the cost up above most peoples reach, especially if you are out sourceing to a foundry with a limited quanity. Dont be discouraged in your project if there is not alot of interest at first, once a working model is built, thats when the interest will come.....

 

[Ed T]

What size engine do you have in mind? Is this a cracker box with 2 pounds of iron bits in it or something that comes on a pallet and requires a forklift to unload. Just asking because you potential market gets smaller toward both ends of the size scale. Too tiny and it's hard for us seniors to see and manipulate. Too big and I don't have a machine that will turn a flywheel that big and i can't move the finished product around w/o help. A noble quest in any case. Good luck with it. Cool looking engine.

 

[Jasonb]

I'd also agree that too many small castings will push the cost up when someone taking on a kit like this should have the ability to fabricate the smaller items.

Also just because a full siz eengine runs smoothly it does not mean that a miniature will, you may well have to make some alterations and adjustments to get it to run not just do a straight reduction.

Take a look at the Swan that Maury did a write up on here a while ago, take a look at that to see the amount of work that goes into the pattern making.

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/f23/birth-swan-15489/index7.html

http://www.lonestarengineworks.com/Swan.html

I've not seen any of your work posted here, do you have any experiance with making model Hit & Miss engines and pattern making? As there is a lot to learn about making patterns that will be castable, have sufficient material for machining and look like the real thing.

 

[MuellerNick]

I do not want to stop you from making castings!

There are some time-consuming tasks you should not forget about.
Photogrammetry will take 50 hours (my guess). But you need to be familiar with it.
CAD maybe 50 … 100 hours. Hard to tell how complex that beast is and how fast you are.
Not to forget to make decent drawings that match reality and are useful for the shop. 1 week at least.
Average per pattern is 2 days. Includes milling and testing. If you have cores, add the same time, except they are simple.
Don't forget, foundrywork is an old art. Patternmakers were not dumb at all in the old days. You will discover some nice intricate castings to make.

Some foundries do only accept matchboards. That is way faster to cast, but they also take more time to make and maybe a few tries to get the runners and gates right. They charge per board plus per kg casting.

Now if you add all together, sell 10 sets and do the math, you worked for 10 cents per hour.

Often, I do have my doubts that people are willing to pay a reasonable price for good castings. They tend to get cheap and start murmuring about barstock and blablabla.


Nick

 

[n4zou]

If you really want to dive into the casting kit market start off with a proven simple design. If I were to take a try at it my first casting kit would be the Webster Engine. This is a proven engine that can be made from bar stock but casting parts for it would make it much better engine and the plans are in the public domain. So many have been built that asking for help on the engine is easy on any model engine forum. The number and size of castings would be very small as would the cost of that kit. If I designed casting for that kit it would consist of the base, crankshaft/flywheel support, flywheel, rod, cylinder, and head. This would allow casting deeper and thinner cooling fins on the cylinder which it needs. The head can be cast with cooling fins, which are absent on the bar stock design. You can see many of these engines on youtube by entering "Webster Engine" in the search pane.

Here is the link to the Webster Engine page where the plans can be downloaded for free.
http://home.comcast.net/~webster_engines/

 

[MuellerNick]

If you really want to dive into the casting kit market start off with a proven simple design …

… and have a lot of competitors or people that think they will do one of their first engines from scrap lying around.
If you get out of the mainstream but have a nice engine, you can sell the kits. If you go cheap, you already lost (your time and money).


Nick

 

[Jasonb]

A model of an engine that is not mainstream won't sell if the patterns and therefore castings are poor, that is why it has been suggested to try a simple design first.

As for using barstock to save money, I have no problem with spending money on castings if they are of good quality. I have spent several thousands of pounds on castings for one engine in the past.

I have also had to throw too many small castings away as they have been unusable usually due to the cast iron being chilled or poor alignment of the mould halves so it is easier to make from scratch, take a look at my Easton and Anderson or Benson threads to see what can be done by fabrication.

J

 

[aonemarine]

Nick is right on with the pattern making, it takes alot of time to make a good pattern. I ususlly spend up to a week on a patterns (working only a few hours a day) My patterns are made in a traditional fashon using mostly hand tools Pattern ply and a bit of glue. I have tried making match plate patterns but was never real happy when it came time to mold them up sp now most of my patterns are split mold patterns. Ive been taking a break from my large steam engine project and spending more time with my father since my mother passed a few months ago but i hope to get back on it again soon. Im also going to do a bit of a direction change and get a cnc mill for making the patterns much the same way as Nick does. Hopefully it will save me time in the long run.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-dEjZiPJL8[/ame]

 

[MuellerNick]

A model of an engine that is not mainstream won't sell if the patterns and therefore castings are poor,

OK, poor castings won't sell that good. I fully agree.
With "mainstream" I mean models that have been built so many times and that you see everywhere. As soon as you take plans that are easily available, you have competitors. If you have a distinct new engine never done before, you can sell it. I'm not that much into the names of these models, because I'm already bored of them since years. Visit an exhibition, and you know what I mean. England -for me the mainland of model engineering- might be quite different.


Nick

 

[LSEW]

Y'all, I absolutely agree with MullerNick about the kind of engine to do. I can say from experience it takes a year of nearly full time work to properly develop a casting kit ready to be marketed. Those who don't spend that time present kits with mistakes and issues giving casting kits a bad reputation.

That being said, I believe it is absolutely a wast of time to develop what the originator at the beginning of this thread described as an high end kit using some simple or common model, and especially a design that is in the public domain. A project as big as developing an engine casting kit deserves to be done on an interesting engine so the value added will provide a challenge and a result worthy of the builders time and investment. I'm not trying to put down folks who build engines from bar stock, and make CNC parts, quite the contrary. I do see the hobby moving more toward bar stock, where in the past it there was more interest in castings. Perhaps in the future casting kits will be reserved for those who want something special.

Lance, The Foos is an interesting model, I have had requests from some of my customers to do a Foos. I encourage you to do this project, to reproduce everything to the finest detail possible, to make a casting of every part that your foundry can produce, do good drawings, and work out the bugs in the design. There are people out there who will want to build it.

maury
www.lonestarengineworks.com

 

[MuellerNick]

will provide a challenge and a result worthy of the builders time and investment.

I could not say it better!
But this is just my personal opinion (and Maury's).


Nick

 

[Lance]

Thanks for all of the comments. To try and touch on a few spots, Ed T I'm thinking 8 to 10" flywheels, I don't want it to small, but I would like to be able to load it myself to take to shows. I've had hit and miss engines all of my life, sold the last one a couple years back, when I hurt my back moving it trying to clean the garage. That's why I went to models. I've always wanted a Foos, I've had a foos before, and still regret selling it. If they took me to coolspring and told me I could have any one engine I would take the 4hp special electric.

As far as the number of castings, 1 subbase, 1 cylinder, 2 valve chests, 2 flywheels, a piston and 6-8 small valve train parts. The valve train parts would be hard to fabricate, and would be a lot eaiser on the end builder to have cast parts.

The reason I decided to do this is I am working on my first engine, A Joe Trouchop <-SP? Economy, and the castings are not the best. 1 flywheel was eliptical at best, the hole for the cylinder liner was shaped like an egg, and the hopper is cast lopsided. While building this engine, I started thinking, when I'm done I'm going to have an engine that I can see 50 more of on youtube. I want something different, Something with polished parts, and a lot of moving parts, which Foos had a lot of.

As far as time invested, again I'm not out for profit, this is truley a love or passion. The cad part of it will be handled by a friend that does it for a living. He kinda owes me for a lot of work I did on his truck for free, so I guess it's time to get paid. One thing I love about being a mechanic, there's always barter room.

This project is months down the road before castings will be poured, I was just curious about if there is any interest in people wanting kits, and I'm sure that there would be a better price on 50-100 than 2.

I want QUALITY castings, not something close.

AS far as pattern making experince, I have very little, but I am the type of person that if I want something, I will do it. I will have failures along the way, but all failures are lessons, and as long as you learn from them, you will acomplish what you set out to do.

 

[n4zou]

I still think you should produce a simple and small cast engine kit before jumping into something complicated and intricate. This will let you know if the foundry can (or cares to) produce quality castings for you. It will also introduce you to the people that you would be working with. They may even refuse to accept work from you due to the complicated parts you desire. Once you are "in" and they know you are a good customer they would accept your new design. Who cares if another person copy&#8217;s your first engine kit. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By the time they appear you should have moved on to the engine kit you really want to build. Another thing to think about is the possibility that during the process you discover that it's more than you really wanted to get into and you end up wanting to give up. A small and simple kit would cost far less to abandon than the engine kit you currently want to design and produce. Ford started building Model T's before it started building GT's.

 

[aonemarine]

n4zou, I have to dis agree, you should go for what most inspires you, not just a project to cut your teeth on. Doing what you really want to do, even if there are multiple "learning experences" along the way is more likely to succed than building something you really dont want to build. I would recommend contacting the foundry who will be producing your castings in advance to see how they would like the patterns prepaired. And if all else fails just cast them yourself. I am no expert on castings by any means but the ones that I have seen and worked with (iron castings) I was not very happy with and after casting my own iron castings and seeing how much better I can do in a back yard foundry I am very hesitant to out source any small production run for a model engine. I only wish I had a way to analize and spec out the iron that I cast....

 

[aonemarine]

Lance, something to think about is what size equipment most people have in thier home shops that they would be maching your castings on..
you can machine small stuff on a big lathe, but cant machine big stuff on a small lathe...

 

[deverett]

From the various replies, it would seem that folks are very wary on behalf of Lance, while not outright pooh-poohing the idea.

If the design is right, perhaps he has the right idea to go to Morrison and Marvin for their casting expertise. They would also build a prototype to prove the design before marketing it. The project would then become more of a partnership rather than a lone hand's work and would stand a better chance of success.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

 

[Herbiev]

Maury thank you for your input. Good advice indeed. As this is your first post could you please tell us a bit about yourself in the welcome section.
Tia
Herbie