Mikes shop activities

[Mike R]

Here's a list of all the current activities. Like others, I jump around too much to have a dedicated thread for 1 activity, so I'll toss them together in this word salad of all things going on in my hobby shop.

The longest "active" project is the radial. Started it 10+ years ago. Didn't know squat about machining, cnc, etc. Been a learning experience. Lots of parts and need to remake a lot of them, but its getting closer. Optimistically - maybe a year or 2?

Next on the list is the B1 Springbok 5" gauge live steam locomotive. Bought as a chassis running on air. I've so far built the tender body 80%, and soldered up the insides of the boiler. Next up is boiler assembly, going to be a big job and waiting on spring weather to have a go.

After that is a Worthington duplex steam pump. I got distracted building the B1 boiler and needed some machining time, and the radial was at a difficult place for me so I started something new. This one is about 90% done. I may actually finish it...its all small but time consuming parts left (tube fittings, check valves and some silver soldering.)

Then its mostly either new things I shouldn't start yet, or tool / workshop fixes / upgrades etc.

In the list of things that I've started the mental exercises but really should not start until the above are done:

Gauge 1 (45mm between the rails) live steam "Green Arrow" locomotive (2-6-2) - fair amount of CAD done on parts I'd CNC
Some design work on making a functional direct injection diesel in small scale (~22cc - 28mm diam piston x 35mm stroke) - because I like a challenge...
I also have castings for a 1/4 scale Wright Whirlwind 9 cylinder for when I'm bored
A 3.5" gauge Britannia Duchess part built chassis as received by my dad, who gave it to me to finish as he's smart enough to know when he has too many things to do.

Hopefully I'll be sharing some progress and wins along the way.
And pictures, always pictures. After this week at work I have had it reinforced in my head that nobody reads words

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[jorogi]

Which radial is that ?
Guess you didn't think a three or a five cylinder might be a gooder starting project.

 

[Maker Mike]

Wow! I'm impressed, makes me think I should take on something more challenging.

 

[Mike R]

Which radial is that ?
Guess you didn't think a three or a five cylinder might be a gooder starting project.

Yeah, I know, one of the more difficult engines out there to build..
Its a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. (R-985) in 1/6th scale. If being 9 cylinders wasn't enough its a smaller scale than most making it more like watch making at times...

 

[David]

Whoa! I am super impressed! That's some nice work!

 

[Mike R]

Thanks, I think it looks nice cause alot of the glamorous parts are castings I bought (cylinder head and front crankcase). Doing my best to not mess them up as they are no longer available. I'd love to get one of the heads 3d scanned so I could make a new one, drawing it is such a pain...

 

[PeterT]

Its a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. (R-985) in 1/6th scale.

Nice. I think I've seen your Wasp pics on one of the ME forums. What's the history of yours? When did you get the parts? Were the plans 'serviceable'? (I seem to recall you did a CAD re-do).
I think Bruce Satra was one of the the Wasp casting guru's, but I also seem to recall others have modelled the Wasp in other flavors. I wonder what became of his wax casting dies & such?

Recently I was digging in my storage box for some obscure magazine back issue & found a handwritten reply letter from Bruce when I was contemplating his single as a starter project. I think I had just got my lathe around then & didn't know which end was up, never mind taking on a jewelry casting. So I passed. Probably made sense at the time, but OTOH it would be nice to have a small piece of model engineering history. Well I hope you keep pursuing yours. I am familiar with the 'its almost done' syndrome, there is a lot of work in those little buggers.

Roach/Satra R1830 Radial

Model Engines - Old and New | # **PRATT WHITNEY R-985 WASP SINGLE ** | Facebook

# **PRATT WHITNEY R-985 WASP SINGLE ** Pratt Whitney Wasp Jr Single Cylinder Prototype Airplane Engine by Bruce Satra, UT, 2000 Bruce Satra of Vernal Engineering produced a very popular casting...

www.facebook.com

 

[jorogi]

Yeah, I know, one of the more difficult engines out there to build..
Its a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. (R-985) in 1/6th scale. If being 9 cylinders wasn't enough its a smaller scale than most making it more like watch making at times...

Cool, only familiar with the 1:1 scale and those are great. Very impressive job Mike.

 

[Mike R]

Todays update: just a few house keeping items and spending more money on a new mini project.
I found these large baking pans at Costco for $9 each, and they are the cheapest way I could find to get a piece of sheet metal that size. Anyways, I bought 2, 1 went under the mini mill cause it leaks like a sieve, and the other I wanted to use on my horizontal bandsaw as it piddles all over like a 2 year old boy potty training....
But it fits just so nicely under the lathe it might actually make cleaning it up a task that gets done and not just thought about.
I could just go buy another for the bandsaw.


The other thing is I wanted to get back to having a 4th axis on the mill. When I sold my DIY mill I kept my 6" rotary table that I had adapted a stepper motor to, and it has an adapter to my D1-4 chucks that makes swapping a part from the lathe to the mill (and back again) an easy task. Only issue is that I found the stepper motor was just not strong enough to move the rotary at a good speed without loosing steps. Keeping the rpm's low (~3 or 4 maybe - like 900 or 1500 degrees per minute) it was reliable, but that was painful to do, especially as I hadn't figure out how to go from 355 degrees to 0 the "short way" in the software, and if I'd gone around a few times I had to unwind it as far as the software was concerned (doesn't have position feedback).


Anyways, long intro to I spent money on a new closed loop stepper motor and driver that ought to be able to move this at a much faster pace, should arrive Friday.
I justified it by telling myself I needed to buy a driver anyways. Hopefully its a quick project. The cabinet has space, it has wiring connections to the control board already, and has dedicated terminals for DC power for the drive.

Tormach already have a configuration setup for 4th axis that I just need to use. The one thing I will need to do is make a new adapter for the larger stepper motor (actual metal working).
The only thing I'm on the fence about is maybe mounting the motor in back of the rotary table and connecting to the shaft with a pair of pulleys. That would be so that I can mount it on either end of the table. As it is now, the motor sticks out too much to mount on the right side of the table - it will interfere with the column and cabinet.
That would prevent the table being used vertically. I don't need it for rotating things vertically as the CNC can do that, but I did find it handy to use as a way of having the chuck to hold round things vertically (think pocket inside a piston). decisions...