Flywheel machining CNC style : Video

[GailInNM]

Since most of us end up machining a flywheel at some point, you might enjoy seeing part of how a flywheel is machined for a model steam engine kit by Graham Industries.

The flywheel shown starts off as a 1-3/4 diameter brass disk saw cut from bar stock with a cold saw. The video shows the first side being cut on on a machining center. The outside clean up pass is just to provide a register for machining the second side. They are later finished to 1.740 diameter on a CNC lathe.

The video is about a year old as the current flywheels have rounded spokes, but the general method is the same.

http://grahamind.com/video/flywheel.wmv

Gail in NM, USA

 

[AllThumbs]

That's how I do mine, but my machine is slower. ;D

 

[BobWarfield]

Golly thumbs, show us a piccy of the back side of that nice little engine too!

Best,

BW

 

[GailInNM]

AllThumbs,
Nice engine. I like it.
The machine in the video is a Mori Seki TVR30. It's rapids are 5 times the speed of my machines rapids.
My machine is like me. We are both older,slower and not a accurate as we used to be. But, we still get the job done.
Gail

 

[AllThumbs]

I don't want to hijack the thread (too late I guess). I was trying to show some examples of cnc machined flywheels. There is a video of that engine in the video's section.

 

[GailInNM]

Eric,
You did not hijack anything. The thread is about CNC machining of flywheels. So in that vein, I want to try a direct post from the computer with out the photo being on the web. If this works here is a photo of the two flywheels for my "Poppin" that is under construction.

Looks like it worked. These have not been finished up. Just milled out.

 

[BobWarfield]

AllThumbs and Gail, what CNC machines are you using?

Best,

BW

 

[AllThumbs]

Here is mine:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jsedtI22Ik[/ame]

 

[BobWarfield]

Aha, Balsaman! I know you!

Sorry, didn't recognize the handle on this board.

That is an exceptionally nice mill drill conversion you have there. I really like a lot of the features like the MPG handwheel right on the mill where it is convenient to use and the VFD right up front in place of the old power/reverse switch.

Very slick and thanks for sharing!

Did you do a build log on CNCZone for it? I'd guess I could just go look that up...

Edited: Here is the build log for those curious on how to make a mill drill do amazing cool CNC things: http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7180&highlight=mill+drill

Best,

BW

 

[AllThumbs]

AKA Balsaman

 

[GailInNM]

Bob,
My CNC mill is a 24 year old Bridgeport that was CNC from the factory. Has a Boss 8 control on it and has accumulated a bunch of modifications over the years. My lathe is a DynaMectronics that is about 20 years old. I also have a 30 watt 18 x 24 laser cutter/engraver thats about 5 years old.

Programing for the mill and lathe are mostly done in Autocad 12 using a Lisp program I wrote many years ago with direct links to the machine tools. That all runs on a 1.3 gHz AMD computer running DOS6 in native mode. I use ACAD 2000 for the laser and use it as a Windows printer.

Gail in NM,USA