[cforcht]

LOL, No its not an engine part. I would rather be working on the engine but gotta pay the bills and keep the customers happy too.

[TarHeelTom]

and keep the customers happy too.

I heard that part. I'm on the way out the door to do mundane paperwork. Would much rather be home working in the shop.

Tom

[cforcht]

Its lunch time so Im going to take a little break. I have the current op done. ready to move onto the next one. here's what it looks like now.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Used to make stuff like that for sanitary packaging machines. Worst one was similar to your part.

Was for a milk packaging machine that put milk into plastic bags. All surfaces highly polished, no welds, pits or inclusions. I assume that was for easy cleaning and preventing any bacterial growth.

Also made pipe fittings for dairy and canning companies. Fun stuff.

Dick Z

[cforcht]

heres the op i did after lunch. milling off the excess material on the 45 degree projection. The following op is still in progress. its the most time consuming one of the whole part. I will post a pic when that op is done

[Ken_Shea]

Craig,
I spent almost 5 hours this morning putting an AC condenser in a 2001 Venture, while it isn't as pretty as your job that cold air coming out may be just as satisfying.

What kind of time will you have in that at completion?
I bet a lot less then the first one.

[cforcht]

the first one took close to a week. but I wasnt in a hurry. and there was a lot of programming and figuring out how I was going to make it. this go round is going to be 2 days.

[cforcht]

heres what it looks like now.




heres the final product. when its all done.

[RomanLini]

Wow! It seems almost criminal to start with a huge block of an expensive hard to machine material then whittle it down to almost nothing, ie a skinny bit of tubing.

Incredibly interesting non the less!

I bet they are paying a LOT for that little piece, haha.

[cforcht]

yes it does seem to be a waste but I have one better than that. heres 2 pics of a part I used to make when I worked for someone else. we made many of these parts. it started out as a 5.5 dia round 316 stainless and weighed 97 pounds at the start. when we were done with it. the part weighed a mere 6.5 pounds.

[cforcht]

Ok back on topic. I had a little time this evening so whipped out some piston rings. well whipped out might not be quite accurate. what seemed like a straight forward drill, turn, bore, part off didn't quite work as expected. faced and rough turned it. drilled it close to size. turned the od to size. then bored it to size only to find the od had gone out of round while boring. had to do a little re-programming and attack it in a different manner to get them to stay round and on size. but they're done now. I have to split them and heat treat them. I plan to surface grind them to thickness after heat treating on my new surface grinder. that will be fun. I've done this once, long ago. it was a memorable but successful experience.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Remember to turn the magnet on before you start grinding. I remember "somebody" who forgot. Pieces of steel and grinding wheel all over the place.LOL

Dick Z

[cforcht]

that wont be a problem the problem is holding them still since theyre so thin. it requires blocking them in so they stay on the mag chuck instead of shooting off the end of the chuck.

[harley573]

Craig,

Are you building four engines or just planning ahead for a serious catastrophe? That's a lot of rings!

[cforcht]

LOL you're the first to notice the number of rings. Steve said to make a few extras. the program I created made 17 rings per cycle. for some reason I had it in my head I needed to run it 4 times. when I actually only needed to run it twice. not a big deal. the program took about 3 minutes to make 17 rings. not to mention it was after midnight that I ran them so at that point I probably should have been in bed and not making parts. the material I used was purchased specifically for the rings and really not usable for much else and I had to buy a foot of it. I still have enough to make at least that many more rings if not more. I guess I will have to build another engine of some variety that uses the same bore size.

[cforcht]

Im working on the Cad drawing for the crank right now. I've enlisted a little engineering help in the counter weighting dept. from another member of this site. with the current design I can get to a 76% balance. not much to work with so thats about as good as its going to get. which I suppose is better than none at all.

[dynosor]

Im working on the Cad drawing for the crank right now.

Nifty Craig! I presume the holes will be filled with some sort of heavy metal?

[cforcht]

yes they will have a .3125 dia x .25 long carbide slug pressed in to help balance the rod/piston assy.

[FannBlade]

Did you get the surface grinder up and running?
What is the max cutting height?

Why you ask....may have small job for you if interested.

[cforcht]

Fannblade,
the grinder is fully functional. I don't know what the height is yet. I haven't gotten it home yet. been too busy, but I'm going to pick it up tomorrow morning. what ya got?