My build of Brian's double scale beam engine

[chuck foster]

looking good :bow: :bow:
you should be very proud of this new beam engine you have built, and thanks for the photos and details.

chuck

 

[Maryak]

kvom,

Great looking engine :bow: Thanks for taking us along with you during the build.

Best Regards
Bob

 

[kvom]

I got up my courage this afternoon and decided to try to solder the air feed tube to the cylinder and then plug the two valve holes. The air tube went fairly well. I melted solder over the back, set it into the intake hole, and then heated the assembly until the solder melted. It seems pretty solild, although there was solder that ran out onto the cylinder that needs to be filed off.

For the two holes I just cut off some pieces of solder, laid them over the openings, and heated until they melted. Of course I had some solder run into the valve bore, so I needed to drill it loose and then run the chucking reamer into the bore again.

Unfortunately one of these plugs seemed loose, as it popped up when I ran some air into the bore to blow out the swarf. So I had to drill it out and redo that one.

In retrospect, I think a better plan for the valve holes would be to drill them larger on the exterior and fabricate a plug that could be sweated on. Alternatively the cylinder could be made larger so that the hole could be tapped and plugged with a screw. I considered this, but there isn't enough depth to the holes for that to be secure.

I still have some nuts to make, some rods to thread, joints to loctite, and setscrews to cut down before reassembly for the first trial run.

 

[rake60]

My idea for soldering the valve holes was based on the S.W.A.G. method.
(Scientific Wild A$$ Guess)

I took a sharpened #2 pencil and twisted it in the holes to leave a coating
of graphite. Then I cleaned the outside surface and used a tooth pick to
carefully lay flux around the holes but not into them.
Heated it up and touched the solder to the fluxed areas.
Still a little bit of solder protruded into the valve area.
A reamer turned by hand removed it without damaging the original bore.

Rick

 

[kvom]

Found another "how not to do it" today. After re-soldering the lower hole I noticed that in soldering the upper hole the solder had dripped down and sealed the matching port into the cylinder. :'( I tried to clear it by aiming my mapp gas torch into the cylinder bore, but no luck. So I had to drill it out, resolder, and re-ream the valve bore afterwards. This time I put a metal rod into the valve bore while soldering to prevent leak through.

On a more positive note I finished the last two brass nuts plus threaded the lever crank rod to prevent the eccentric rod clevis from walking off, and I also made a brass washer to go between the crank and the connecting rod, replacing the oversize steel washer. I have a couple more minor things to adjust before I can reassemble and "hopefully" put some air to it. I have school this afternoon, so maybe tomorrow will be the day.

 

[Philjoe5]

Nice looking beam engine. Good luck with your first run up.

Cheers,
Phil

 

[kvom]

I got most of the little bits put back together this morning. I still had a lot of binding, and finally tracked it down to the piston rod guide. I took that off and found that everything turned pretty freely afterwards. I hooked up the air and set it to 40 psi, but nothing happened other than oily air escaping. One turn to shorten the eccentric rod and away it went.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3ESY51yruU[/ame]

The engine runs steadily down to 20 psi. Below that it slowly grinds to a halt. I believe the guide rod will cease to bind once I get the beam pivot oriented properly; then the column will not be slightly twisted.

I think I'll leave it as is for a while, then it's disassembly for some polishing. I think I am also going to blacken the flywheel.

 

[Maryak]

Kvom,

Congratulations on a successful build. :bow: :bow:

I see your now looking for the bling fairy.

Best Regards
Bob

 

[chuck foster]

awesome job kvom :bow: Thm:

chuck

 

[kvom]

I went out and fiddled with it some more.

AFAIK this engine should run equally well in either direction, but it does so only in one. Also, the exhaust on the up stroke of the piston is escaping around the edge of the cylinder head, indicating that the upper valve opening is closed on the upstroke. A few adjustments of the valve position/length didn't help and actually made the engine not work.

The cylinder head needs to be a little loose or the piston rod binds. I think this is because the mating surface on the head is not exactly straight. OTOH if it were screwed down tight the exhaust would have not place to go.

I'm not going to mess with it the rest of the day so that my kids can at least see it working.

 

[Shopguy]

Looking good. Always a great feeling when an engine goes for the first time. Keep up the good work. :bow:
Regards
Ernie J

 

[ksouers]

kvom,
Congratulations! :bow:

Looks like a great runner. Bet it'll get real nice and slow when you have it tweaked out properly.


Kevin

 

[rake60]

Beautiful work kvom! :bow:

Rick

 

[kvom]

Thanks for the feedback guys ... getting it to run was very satisfying.

I did determine via more inspection of Elmer's plan that the direction the engine turns is determined by which side the eccentric is set at half stroke. So given my setting it will run in only one direction.

I obtained a 2.5" cube of aluminum from scholl this week, so that will be the crankcase for the Kerzel 2V CO2 engine that I plan to build next, also double the size of the original plans. Watch for another build thread at your local friendly HMEM website. ;D

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Kvom---Congratulation!! Really nice job. ----Brian

 

[malcolmt]

Hi KVOM
First class job. It looks wonderful running in the video.

:bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow:

It's been fantastic to watch the build process, very well documented.

Thank you for sharing.

Kind regards

Malcolm

 

[cfellows]

KVOM,

That's a nice looking and nice running engine. You did good work.

Chuck

 

[ariz]

congratulations kvom!!!

awesome engine, and it runs like a clock. perfect :bow:

I hope to fix mine and to see it running... :-\

this thread was very instructive to me
thank you

 

[deere_x475guy]

Congrats on an awesome build and thanks for taking the time to document it like you did. I really enjoy reading threads like this and learn a lot.

 

[kvom]

Today I took the engine down to its individual parts for polish and some minor fixups. The first fix will be to drill and loctite some brass bushings in the column to correct for the pivot rod holes being drilled off-center originally. This error caused the pistod ron support to bind, as the column needed to be twisted slightly for the beam to operate.

I also need to mill flats on all the rods where set screws are used.

I just bought some cotton wheels and polishing pastes which will be used on my 6" bench grinder, This will be a whole new learning curve to master.