Muncaster Grasshopper beam engine

[kvom]

I started this project just short of one year ago. It is based on drawings by Herman Muncaster in Model Engineer in the 1930s and revived by Edgar Westbury in 1957.

These drawings were used by Julius de Waal to build a 3D model in SolidWorks, from which he produced publicly available plans. Julius kindly provided me the SW files, saving me much time in making parts suitable for CNC. The first version of the files had a one-piece beam, and originally I built the engine as drawn. It was pointed out that Muncaster's drawings showed the beam as two pieces, so Julius changed the SW model, while at the same time scaling it 1.5 times. To replace only the beam portion and necessary auxiliary parts, I used the beam from the second model mapped onto the already completed first beam.

My build thread is here: http://www.modelenginemaker.com/index.php/topic,8074.0.html

A youtube video of it running is here:

 

[kvom]

All of the construction is from bar stock with the exception of the gears and the flywheel, which is from a Sanderson casting set and was a gift from the late Chuck Fellows.