Its First-Steam-Engine time!!

[crab]

Anko,

Good to see you back on it Thm:
For sure, do not worry about time spent away from it. The main thing is to enjoy the time you do have on it!

Kind regards,

Ron.

Could not have said it better.It's great to see you back on it and I will still be watching.

 

[Anko]

Thanks guys

I made some new progress!, now I'm in full vacations and I have enjoyed full days of machining.

The plans of this engine does not specify the screws that holds the cylinder to the crosshead guide part, and there is almost no room to fit a regular M3x05 screw!

I made some calculatios and I ended up needing a M2x0.4 screw with a head diameter of 3 mm, and ofcourse, I wasnt able to find it in the regular screw store..

Not more solution that make it for myself.

At the time this four screws are the smallest things that I have done in the lathe/mill.

They where made out of 3 mm silver steel bar.

Then I made the cylinder top, like the bottom cylinder cover, it has a leaded diameter that fist in the cylinder bore.

The challenge of this piece is that is very flat, and need to be turned from both sides.
For this I made the conection face first, then I made a slot with a parting tool deep enought to fit a dial indicator, then hacksaw the piece out of the stock and put it in the lathe to cut the other face, I use the reversible jaws to chuck te piece because they have more tolerance to grap flat pieces that the normal set of jaws.

Then using a dial indicator in the slot i have cut before I was able to get the face parallel to the previos machined one.

This was a very dificult and tedious method of do this, Im pretty sure that there is a better way to turn flat pieces in the lathe...

Here I presented the bolts

Finally I ended up with a 2 mm end mill to make the steam channels, with deep cut of 1 mm at a time, and max RPM from the mini mill I succesfully made the steam ports!, the channels ended up a little oversized, arround 2.1 mm, and the middle port ended up staying about 0.1 mm to the left, but overall Im very happy with the result.

The old one against the new.

That's for now, more to come!

Saludos

 

[Anko]

More pics coming out

This time with the second try of the steam ports piece I decided to make it more aesthetic, the original desing is a brick welded to the cylinder, in my attempt I made the steam port piece with a shape that once asembled with the cylinder will apear to be just one piece, pics will tell better:

Looking good, now this needs a little sandpaper session.

Still more to come!

Saludos

 

[rhitee93]

Nice job on the cylinder assembly

 

[Anko]

Thanks for your comment rhitee93

Here is th cylinder sanded, still is a rougth sanding, Im planning to polish all the pieces before the final assembly.
he cylinder welding went vey well, some pics:

That´s for now, more to come!

Saludos

 

[RCGUY]

Excellent work.

Ed

 

[Diversion900]

Just a thought Anko,
Are you planning to use steam on this engine ?
The soft solder joins may not survive a steam run for very long......

 

[Anko]

Yep, this first engine is not meant to run on steam, just compressed air, and not too much either, tin is just what I have in hand

thanks for the comments!

 

[MarioM]

Anko,

Very nice work, you do not look like a beginner. Tu motor está quedando muy bien.........te sigo.....

Saludos,

Mario

 

[rhitee93]

It is looking great Anko

 

[SilverSanJuan]

Anko, great build so far. Thanks for sharing it with us. I'm especially impressed with your creative approach to problems. The columns are a real work of art. I'm learning a lot following along.

Todd

 

[Anko]

Thanks for the comments! I'm glad that you like my little build post

I got some more progress:

Today: the shaft bearings:

To make some small radial cut I use a round dremmel bit, It work perfect!

After finishing the shaft bearing I notice that there wasn't enought space for the screws heads, and I don´t like the look, so I made a new set of shaft bearing, repeating the same process, this time I add some extra room to acomodate the screws hex head and a nice radius.

To make the raduis, I make a little "help piece" of steel, because brass is softher that steel, this piece will guide the file and help me to get the correct diameter of the radius:

Here is the new one agains the frist one: much better!

The engine at the moment:

My uncle is a mechanic, and he has been following this build for the beginning, the other day he ask me of what material I was going to make the piston, I respond aluminium, then he told me that brass and aluminiun dont get along very well, instead I should use cast iron, or mild steel.

I do some research in the matter.. and ended up reconsidering my material choise for the piston, as aluminiun with brass dont have a good mechanical mixture...

I wanted to make the piston of a material softher that brass to aboid cylinder wear (Im planing to run this engine powered by a small electric motor, and get it running all day in my desk (and some times with compressed air (when I get a compressor )), thats because Im worring with this stuff)

Today he came and brought two materials to me for the piston:

The one on the left is Technyl a90, the other in the right is called here "durocoton" (the same material that uses in the circuit boards), I don´t know the english name.

My uncle told me that both materials have exelent mechanical properties, the techyla90 is self-lubricant, cut nicely and got a lot resistance to wear.

In the other hand I really like the durocoton stuff, the color and texture, like vintage stuff, cuts real nice, is very tough, and can be polished, also has more heat resistance and flexibility that the technyl.

I like the durotocon, but I want to know your opinions about this two news materials to me. What do you think?


More to come!

Saludos

 

[Runner]

Hi Anko great work so far, I'm following this with interest. I was particularly interested in the fabrication of the cylinder, it's something I am shall consider when making my next steam engine.

I cannot offer any engineering advice on use of durocoton and techyl A90, durocoton is a stratified material formed by layers of special cotton fabric impregnated with resin and as you state used, inter alia, for the manufacture of printed circuit boards. Your first hand experience in using it will have far greater relevance than any opinion I may have. I can only ask that you consider what sealing mechanism you intend to use between the piston and the cylinder, if any, and what mechanical interface you intend to have between the piston and piston rod. If it is threaded does durocoton produce a good thread. If so go for it and we will all broaden our knowledge on the use of non traditional materials.

Brian

 

[rhitee93]

I am not familiar with the Durotocon name, but if it is indeed one of the substrates that circuit boards are made of, you will want to be cautious.

If the material has the fibers in it that you would find in a circuit board, then it is likely to be rather abrasive to your cylinder wall. If it is just the resin without the fibers, then you may be OK.

 

[ironman]

Anko, I am really enjoying this build. I have always thought about building one like you are doing. This is great.

Will be watching from start to finish.

Ray

 

[Anko]

Thanks for your comments guys!

Runner: the piston does not use any type of sealing rings, yet it had some grooves, maybe to put some wax or packing don´t know, I was thinking to make the piston of a very close tolerance with the cylinder diameter to make the sealing.

rhitee93: the durocoton, as you said, is a cotton fiber pressed in some type of resin, as you can see in the photo:

I would imagine that some fiber can erode the cylinder walls made out of brass, cand you tellme more about this issue?

ironman: thanks, thats is very encouraging, more progress will be here soon!

Thanks for following this post.

Saludos

 

[rhitee93]

Anko,

That fiber is probably fiberglass, and would be very abrasive to your cylinder walls. I'd stay away from it for your application.

 

[Anko]

Thanks rhitee93, so finberglass stuff is a bad idea, now make sense to me, but what abour cotton fiber?, I do a little reserach about the this material fiber, were my uncle get this material, in their web says is made of cotton fiber with resin, not fiberglass, I do some circuitery and I know that I can get two types of boars to drawn the circuits, one is brown looking, almost identical to this durocoton here, and the other is the fiberglass board, more like a pale light green color, and more easy to drill an to work generally, taking this intro acount, I can say that this one is made of cotton fiber instead of fiberglass

Should I stay away anyway? is still a fiber I guess

Saludos

 

[rhitee93]

It my be OK if you are sure it is cotton, but I would be cautious. You could always rub some against a piece of aluminum and see what happens.

The green circuit boards you see are generally made form a material called called FR4, and are fiberglass. However there are a number of different board materials out there. What you have looks like what I used to call "Phenolic" which I looked up on wikipedia. According to that source it can come with cotton or paper fibers as well as fiberglass so I suspect you are correct about the fiber.

 

[gus]

Please advise print vendor for above engine.Just cannot resist building this engine.The dimensions are balanced.Did built one two years ago from odds/ends and ended with a clunky engine thought it did run well specially at very low speed. Planning to put throttle valve.


Gus Teng,aged sixty-niner and happily retired.
Calling from faraway Singapore.