Well I never got as much time to do machining as I expected over my 3 wk vacation. Seems like everyone wanted a slice of my time and unfortunately my wife's grandmother (oma) passed away so she went to Holland so I had to be Mr. Mom as well for the first 10 days of my vacation. My "apprentice" used up a lot of shop time as well trying to finish a Stirling engine before he takes off to China at the end of this week. Then of course Christmas showed up - hey on the bright side my loving 14yr old daughter gave me this awesome present of a beautiful black rock with heat generating capabilities (then she wanted me to buy her an iPhone 7 the very next day...) Overall it was a great time, my son flew in from Fort Sam Houston so I got to see him for the first time since he graduated basic on July 1st.
That aside, I did do some work on the engine.
I spent a morning lapping the piston into the cylinder and it now has a very nice fit. Might need a tad more lapping as it slides through with a gentle push but does not fall through on its own weight.
I silver soldered the small gear onto the hub and drilled and tapped the set screw holes.
I made the starter hub.
I finished the flywheel, broaching the keyway, drilling the big hole pattern and the holes for mounting the starter hub. The only slight screw up was when I broached the keyway, I put the shim in and it wasn't required for the 3/32" broach, so I had to machine a 1/8" key to 3/32" width to get a proper fit. I wish Dumont would include at least some instructions in the kit... or maybe I should have read the 1/8" stamped on the back of the shim...
I also made the cam and mounted it to the larger gear.
Made the little hub that the points ride on.
Tonight I made the Valve seat cutting tool that Brian suggested to use for cutting the valve seats.
I didn't take a lot of pictures along the way. I was mostly trying to get time in the shop and didn't want to stop to do a lot of picture taking as it does consume some time.
Most of the pictures I did were around making the cam. Not knowing exactly how to tackle the problem I went with the following:
I machined a length of rectangular aluminum and drilled and reamed 3 by 3/8" holes in a row, parallel to the edge of the work piece. The outer 2 holes were for hold down bolts in my rotary table and the middle was for an alignment pin that goes into the center slug of my rotary table and also the 3/8" reamed hole in the cam blank. A forth hole was drilled directly above the center hole and counter bored to allow the socket head cap screw head to sit below the surface of the material.
The cam blank was then machined to size and the 0.375" hole reamed in the middle and the holding screw hole drilled and tapped.
I then mounted the cam onto the fixture block I had previously made. With the rotary table mounted and set at 0, I locked the fixture down making sure the edge of the fixture was dead in line on the x-axis of the main table. I then centered the rotary table under the spindle with a coaxial indicator. Then it was a really simple process of calculating the correct angles in degrees, minutes and seconds and using the offsets I cut the two angles. and finally I cut the bottom radius to match the drawings. The top radius was already made as part of the blank.
Making the fixture was 90% of the work. Cutting the cam probably took maybe 5 min.
I reused the same fixture plate later with new holes drilled to hold the starter hub in such a way as to make it really easy to drill and ream the 0.125" hole.
Finally a picture of all the parts that I've made to date.
I had really hoped to have this done and running by Cabin Fever but looks like I'll be showing up with the a bunch of parts again... wonder if anyone think I'm nuts for having 2 engines in progress and only 1 complete engine....