Building Val a one cubic inch four stroke single

[Art K]

Ray,
Welcome to the forum, I have been a closet member myself until recently. I was working on designing a flat four in Alibre and got burnt out on that and looking at my magazines thought, I can build Val. I've been working on this since Dec - Jan. I have more done than I've posted, trying to catch up on that. A quick question about your Val I notice you have a flat cut in the bottom of the crankcase what is that for?
Art

[Art K]

Jo,
Sorry I just caught your post
 

Another Alibre user  which version? I suffered a  recently and for the replacement machine (windows 8   )

Just learning to do all this cool stuff! I have expert 2011 and recently updated my desktop to use Windows 7 as my laptop uses. I like the term fobbed off, they wanted almost $400 to retain the maintenance plan and I thought I can buy it new again if I save my money for a few years. I don't remember what Cubify does but as I recall it is separate from Alibre. Are you a good person to turn to for questions when I'm having problems with Alibre?
Art

[raym]

Hi Art K

A quick question about your Val I notice you have a flat cut in the bottom of the crankcase what is that for?

It was my after the fact attempt to create an oil sump. Would be best to think about it before cutting chips.

Had difficulty with vertical head space.
I ended up working it out with Mike Rhemus at MEB, he on Alibre. You might save lots of headaches touching bases with Mike, he is a very helpful design/build guy. Worked with Alibre on their programming I think. Alibre sold out?
Here are a few pics, useful or not

Ray M

[Art K]

I've been in touch with Mike and yes I would confirm that he is quite helpful. He's thrown out a few ideas for lubrication. I am just coming to terms with the lack of a lubricating system but granted it shouldn't need much with ball bearing construction. Anybody have any thoughts? I have been thinking of oil in the bottom of the crankcase, splash type. I could do as you did and make a sump, more a gathering place for oil than anything, splash system type. Ray I like your crankcase ventilation solution. Ever since I had so much trouble on my Upshur single that seems to be the first thing I look at in an engine. I look at an engine and look at crankcase ventilation. But I learned one thing, don't have it in line with the crank rotation,bad idea. I do have easy access to fill the crankcase now though.
Art

[Jasonb]

I'll need to take another look at the Val drawings but you could do what the Nemett Lynx does and take a pipe from the crankcase breather up into the head so it gets a small amount of oil vapour. The bottom end uses oil and in a sump and splash lub.

[Art K]

I next started on the backplate. I've done a lot on my Tormach as a manual or doing MDI moves, even the wizard programs but only a few things as true CNC. Fortunately I have a lot of the aluminum stock for the backcover. I did the first one then (can't explain why I didn't notice the mistake) realized when the holes didn't match up with the crankcase, that the bottom was also short and missing the beveled corners.
like so
Then I completely re-did the whole setup and machined the inside first then the outside. I also deleted the defective part file. It looked good but my center / center for the gears was .058 short. So I gave up on that for NAMES was coming up and I didn't have time to delve into that problem. I am going to have a go at adjusting the backlash in the bearings. I noticed there was a problem when trying to center the bore, not .058 though. The inside of the cover looks like this.

The outside like this. The extra large champfer on the right hand side is the clue that something is amiss.

Art

[stevehuckss396]

What does the Tormac run on Mach3? or something else?

[Dave Otto]

I was under the impression that Tormach ran a variant of Mach3.

Dave

[Art K]

Steve & Dave,
Busy evening but yes it does run on Mach 3. There are some very handy programs in the wizard and also a lot that I have no idea what on earth they do.
Art

[Art K]

I left the backcover unfinished because of the afore mentioned Tormach problems. It also could be in the way I set it up when I flipped it over. I have a friend who is going to help me adjust the bearings for backlash probably this coming Thursday. But in the meantime I've not sat completely still. I had a chunk of aluminum that I chucked up in the 4 jaw centered it, turned down the bottom OD for something round to chuck on and bored the ID to fit a 3/4 inch mandrel chucked it up on the fourth axis and there it sits patiently waiting.
If someone knows how to add an Alibre CAD image like Brian Rupnow does send me a PM with instructions and I would be glad to add the cad image of my cylinder.
Art

[stevehuckss396]

When the cad image is on screen just hit the print screen button and then go to MS paint and paste it to paint. Then save the image to JPG format. The whole process takes 20 seconds.

[Art K]

Then I moved on to the flywheel. I don't have a band saw so I did the next best thing . I set up the 15 inch long bar of 3 1/8" 1045 in the lathe, center drilled it. Then with the live center in the outside end used the cutoff tool to make using the hacksaw manageable. I never thought my lathe was to small until I did this. I managed to turn it down to about an inch. It did bite into the steel binding the part causing the belt between the motor and the gearbox to slip, moving the tail stock in the process. Did this 3-4 times not breaking anything, but freaking me out and making me jump to shut it off. Hack-sawing the last bit was much less exciting.
I then chucked it up in the 3 jaw and began to do the back side of the flywheel. Turning the recessed area on the backside that covers the nose area of the crankcase.
These photos are a mock up with the finished part showing how it was set up. I then chucked it reversed on the ID on the backside of the flywheel.
I then indicated the back side of the flywheel to .0001" and then when the .375" bore was not true I loosened the bolts holding the chuck to the back plate and tapped the chuck till that ran true. Having it trued up I then machined the nose portion of the flywheel. Now I have to spend some $ on key way broaches. The end result was this.

[Don1966]

I would say your doing pretty good even with a set back Art. Looks like you had an adventure with the parting blade jamming with chips and causing it to bite in. Nice progress though.


 

Don

[Art K]

Ok, I'll have a go at this. Now that was more than 20 seconds, but I"ll remember how I did that, maybe.

Not a great image and I'll have to work on deleting the date stamp so you don't know how long it took me to attach the image after I finally figured out how to print screen. If anyone has advice on how to clean up the image, I'll take it.
After all that, this is a CAD photo of my redesign of the cylinder, I wanted aluminum and will use a cast iron liner. Went with square fin's so it went better with the head.
Art

[stevehuckss396]

One thing you can do to clean things up is to make like you are going to do an assembly. Import the part into the assembly and then right click all the axises and hide them. Then hit print screen and paste in paint. The whole process will only take 73 seconds.