Elmer’s #5 Geared Engine . . . maybe

[bmac2]

Emler’s geared engine has always intrigued me mostly because it’s such an odd design, but with the cost of that ring gear here in Canada is around $75.00 so I just couldn’t justify it to myself.

Then while cleaning up the workbench I rediscovered my “drill grave yard bin” and in there is a bunch of internal ring gears.

This started me thinking that the ring gear in the plans shouldn’t be carved in stone but more a matter of geometry and picked out a slim 42 tooth gear I think came from a Ryobi. I hated that drill, horrible chuck, weak batteries and a garbage charger but I thought this gear looks promising. With the smaller gear as long as it’s centred along the same path as the original design it should work. All this will mean is a shorter stroke and rethinking of the gear arm.

The weather forecast for the weekend was somewhere between “horrible” and “hide under the stairs” so it looked good for some shop time. I decided to start with the cylinder and valve chest that way if the whole thing goes south I’ll just build something else using a “M” type cylinder. Sorry I didn’t think to start taking pictures until I almost had the cylinder and heads finished. For the most part cylinder is just straight turning; setup offset in the 4 jaw, drilled and reamed it then rounded the ends.

Then a little drilling and tapping for the steam chest and heads.

Milled out the steam ports then flipped it on end to mill a small flat spot before drilling the steam passage.

I find there is not much more nerve wracking than a 1/16” end mill. No matter how careful I am I’m always waiting to hear that little “tink” sound they make when they break.

I know. I know I’m using a drill chuck for milling but I don’t have a collet that fits this end mill and I REALLY don’t think I have to worry about side load.

I had to mark the faces that get milled off. Somehow looking at the plans I had a devil of a time getting my head around it.

 

[bmac2]

Set up the piece for the steam chest in the 4 jaw and turned the small (everything on this thing is small) rounded end then flipped it, re-indicated it and turned the hub for the packing nut.

The 1/16” hole for the valve rod goes to where it almost breaks through so I like to setup a dial indicator on the tail stock screw and crossed my fingers before drilling then milled out the valve opening.

 

[bmac2]

For the cover and valve plates I picked up some K&S 1/16” by 5/8” brass from the hobby shop. After drilling the steam holes(?) in the valve plate I stacked the 3 pieces of the chest before drilling the 4 mounting holes to assure alignment.

The valve is really just straight forward milling and not difficult at all to make . . . . . it’s just so damn small.

 

[bmac2]

Mmmm small things. It was time for that valve rod. This thing is TINY!
I’ve made one of these before for the Oscillating Cylinder Engine and found it very frustrating. It’s just too long and skinny.

This time I thought I’d try something different and build it up starting with some 3/32” stainless rod (K&S again). Turned 5/16” down to the 1/16” diameter and rounded the end with a file.

Then brought it out just enough to take it down to .086 and threaded the required 9/32” #2-56.

After that it was over to the bench to use my “precision part off tool” and that part of it is done.

 

[bmac2]

For the head end I just milled the flats in a piece to 3/16” rod then indicated and drilled the 1/16” hole for the pin.

Then back to the lathe and drilled a 3/32” hole in it and parted it off. Whenever my wife goes to the Dollar Store I always end up dropping something into the basket and on one of these trips I picked up one of those magnetic pickups. You know the ones that look like a car antenna. I found that if I put it in the tail stock chuck it will catch most small parts I part off. Better than using it to sweep back and forth under the bench to find it.

Back on the bench theirs no load on this part so I just used Loctite to hold it tougher. That was much better. It took less than an hour to make and with no stress and frustration. The rod is over sized (.0938” not .086”) but to me all that means is that I have to drill the packing nut for the inboard head 3/32” instead of #41. . For the valve nut I just ground down a #2-56 nut and dropped it into place.

 

[bmac2]

I needed some ¼” Hex for the two packing nuts and I don’t have any because I never buy it, but I do have these.

I saw this somewhere on the internet and I’ve used it a lot over the years. It’s just a piece of Hex stock with a .375 hole reamed through it and a set screw. I just insert a piece of 3/8” stock, set your depth of cut, mill, rotate, rinse and repeat.
All the hex stock I could ask for.

 

[TonyM]

The magnet and the hex bar are a couple of great tips I had not thought of. Thanks.

 

[Rudy from Norway]

Thanks for sharing. Very inspiring write up. And I also love that hex making device.
Rudy

 

[marioserafica]

!!!!!! bello !

 

[a41capt]

Love the magnet and hex nut tip! I’m looking forward to seeing how your gear geometry works out.

Following with much interest!

John W

 

[kwoodhands]

Emler’s geared engine has always intrigued me mostly because it’s such an odd design, but with the cost of that ring gear here in Canada is around $75.00 so I just couldn’t justify it to myself.

View attachment 102029

Then while cleaning up the workbench I rediscovered my “drill grave yard bin” and in there is a bunch of internal ring gears.

View attachment 102030

This started me thinking that the ring gear in the plans shouldn’t be carved in stone but more a matter of geometry and picked out a slim 42 tooth gear I think came from a Ryobi. I hated that drill, horrible chuck, weak batteries and a garbage charger but I thought this gear looks promising. With the smaller gear as long as it’s centred along the same path as the original design it should work. All this will mean is a shorter stroke and rethinking of the gear arm.

View attachment 102031
The weather forecast for the weekend was somewhere between “horrible” and “hide under the stairs” so it looked good for some shop time. I decided to start with the cylinder and valve chest that way if the whole thing goes south I’ll just build something else using a “M” type cylinder. Sorry I didn’t think to start taking pictures until I almost had the cylinder and heads finished. For the most part cylinder is just straight turning; setup offset in the 4 jaw, drilled and reamed it then rounded the ends.

View attachment 102032

Then a little drilling and tapping for the steam chest and heads.

View attachment 102033 View attachment 102034

Milled out the steam ports then flipped it on end to mill a small flat spot before drilling the steam passage.

View attachment 102035 View attachment 102036 View attachment 102037

I find there is not much more nerve wracking than a 1/16” end mill. No matter how careful I am I’m always waiting to hear that little “tink” sound they make when they break.

I know. I know I’m using a drill chuck for milling but I don’t have a collet that fits this end mill and I REALLY don’t think I have to worry about side load.

I had to mark the faces that get milled off. Somehow looking at the plans I had a devil of a time getting my head around it.

View attachment 102038

Your end mill has a 1/4" shank which is not common for the holders. Make a holder from scrap round 1018 or what ever you have . Bore the hole slightly less than .250. Then ream the hole to .251. Turn the outside of the blank to fit an endmill holder you do have, I used 3/4" because I rarely use that holder. Turn the work to .749. Mill a flat for the set screw on the holder, drill and tap for a setscrew for the 1/4" endmill. Much better than using a drill chuck.
The holder will have less runout than most drill chucks. You need as close to no runout as possible with tiny endmills.

mike

 

[bmac2]

Thanks guys. I wish I could remember where I saw that trick for using a piece of hex stock I would like to buy that man a beverage. There fast and easy to make, setup in seconds, and they work great.

Hi Mike

I am in total agreement with you on drill chuck runout. If you look at the steam passages in the 6th picture down they’re very ragged. The cutter is sharp but the chuck . . . well it’s a chuck. The end mill was given to me and though I call it my “1/16 in” end mill it’s actually metric and my metric tooling is very limited.

I was going to get a start on the front and rear bearings tonight after work but one of the axis displays has packed it in (again) on my DRO. I’m starting to think that when I built it point to point wiring may not have been the best way to go.

Buy hey, point to point wiring 4 micro controllers, 4 displays, 2 voltage regulators and 3 mini USB interfaces crammed into little box that’s subject to vibration . . . . What could go wrong with that?

It’s probably just another broken wire.

 

[stragenmitsuko]

Emler’s geared engine has always intrigued me

Me to , it's been on my to do list for ages , and I also saved some cordless drill gears just for that purpose .

Another good source for ring gears are bicyle hubs . The 5 & 7 speeds have 3 and 4 planetary gear sets of various dimensions .

Pat

 

[bmac2]

Ok this is the boring stuff so I’ll keep it short. Spent a couple of nights Fritzing (Open source PCB software) a board for the DRO and printed it out on Friday . . . . Just thought of something, when I retire I’m going to have to buy my own laser printer . . . crap.

Got the board etched and drilled but I have a couple of jumpers that run under the Mini Pro’s so I needed some sort of spacer. After a bit I started wondering if my wife had ever done any bead work. Sure enough scored some nice little glass beads. I even got to pick them out so I could color code the pins.

While it was gutted and spread over the bench I redid the 3.3 volt supply with better filtering. A little bit of noise can raise havoc with iGaging scales. Spent today crimping way too many of those little 2.5mm Dupont connectors but it’s buttoned up and running more stable than it was so enough of this. Tomorrow I can get back to making chips.

 

[stragenmitsuko]

From a geared elmer's to a dro to a pcb .... you've lost me

Where do I find more info on the dro project ?
Looks interesting for sure .

 

[aka9950202]

The DRO on my Mini-Mill is one by Yuri's toys. A Google search wwill find it for you. Yuri supplied the controller. The scales are purchased from any suitable source and the display unit is a tablet or phone. It may seem complex but following the instructions got mine working like a champ. The features that the tablet provide like center finding, hole patterns to name a few are only equalled by far more expensive DRO units.

Cheers
Andrew in Melbourne

 

[bmac2]

Andrew has it spot on. Yuri did all the hard work and has a ton of great information on this page http://www.yuriystoys.com/. I found the stock iGaging displays hard to read unless I was straight on and had the lights adjusted to avoid glare. My original plan was to pick up an old tablet and run Youi’s full meal deal. But for some reason people on Kijiji think that a 5 year old tablet with a worn out battery is worth 70 to 80% of the original purchase price. All mine does is gather the data, beat it up a bit and send it to the LED displays instead of to an Android via blue tooth. It works and I can read it from across the room but it doesn’t do any of the magic that happens inside a tablet.

Stragenmitsuko if you’re interested there’s not much to it, PM me and I’ll get the wiring diagram and code to you or I can just put them into the download section.

 

[bmac2]

On with the build.
The front and rear bearings are basically the same just the rear being shorter so I sandwiched them together with a couple drops of super glue before milling and drilling both to match the drawing for the front bearing. The rear bearing will have 2 extra holes near the bottom but I’ll live with that for the sake of alignment.

 

[bmac2]

When rounding over the top of a part I always worry about going over with one of the passes and digging a chunk out of the part. This time I decided to use my Arduino controller. Once I had it set up and had the angle worked out all I had to do was press “A” forward. “B” reverse’ and move the Z axis down. It worked pretty slick but the waste peace on the last pass sure did some chattering.

 

[bmac2]

Separated the 2 pieces with a little heat and a good smack then did the same thing with the rear bearing to bring it to size.

Drilled and tapped the mounting holes in the bottom of the bearings and the matching holes in the base. The DRO must be working because the fit is great and actually line up!

Drilled and reamed them to .375” and got the bushings installed and everything still lines up. That doesn’t always happen when I disassemble and reassemble things.

It’s starting to look like something. Got the crank done, it’s a pretty straight forward milling and drilling.

The parts count is climbing so I happy. Next up I think I’m going to tackle the flywheel.

Personally I don’t like a flywheel that just looks like a 5Lb. lump so I’ll be going with the MF11 per the drawings. But for now I can hear my BBQ calling me.