Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine

[gerritv]

Some more progress:

After drilling the base plate, the next item was to drill the supports to the same pattern. This was a bit nerve wracking as there is not much wiggle room for 'adjustments'.
To align the holes in middle of the supports I used a .375 rod in the mill arbor, and a parallel to make it align with the top surface of the support. The spindle was then in the middle, the vertical was then locked into place. The other position was aligned each time with a spotting drill and then drilled 4.2 for the m5 SHCS. A very sophisticated depth stop was rigged up to not drill too far into the supports.

To do the tapping I digressed into making a tapping block, just a lump with appropriate clearance holes for the various metric taps. I cut a block for Imperial ones as well, will get to that when it is needed.

The holes were tapped, the machinist clamp is my Grade 9 project (1962), it has aged better than I have :-)

Final result is the 3 supports square and vertical. Next up is some measuring to adapt the shaft dimensions to the .375 plate (instead of 10mm per the drawings)

[gerritv]

Catching up with posting, this is from early Jan.
The main shaft has several features. A long flat to provide a place to lock the flywheel onto and 3 flats for the main drive pulley.
I made a holder for the shaft from some hex rod so that I could index the 3 flats. And a slitting saw arbor (using Stefan Gotteswinter design) to cut the groove in end of the shaft, this will key with the rotating exhaust valve.

Nothing too complex this time but a satisfying result. This is the first rotating part!

[gerritv]

Up next from late Jan are the crank webs and pins.
The webs gave me some bother as they are to be only 6mm wide when finished. I faced the end of some stock, drilled and reamed to 6mm to a depth past the combined width. On cutting off, the end of the drop was convex! So into the chuck, aligned with a 6mm rod in the tailstock chuck. I didn't gets this aligned quite right so the result was a wobble after facing off the convex end :-( So, made new ones, having realized that the end of my cutoff tool was not ground square.
The second pair were much improved. I should probably have made a pot chuck to do the finish facing work on these.
A bit of straightforward lathe work to make the 2 pins, starting with drill rod. These are a press fit into the crank webs, hoping to avoid silver soldering for this first engine.

The crank webs were centered in the mill using my usual trick of a rod in the spindle to centre it. The pins are offset 7mm from the centre. I really need to buy some DRO scales, the mill has 0.1mm graduations on very small hubs so not very convenient at all.

I also made the rotating exhaust valve, again just a piece of drill rod with a hole in it.

[gerritv]

Next up, the exhaust valve housing and mounting the cylinder block.
I turned the housing from some brass, I was hoping for bronze but none to be had when I was ready for it. This piece threads into the support plate, it will need some thread locker on assembly to keep it in place. The cylinder block, which I made on my Taig in fall of 2014, was marked up for holes on 3 sides. 2 are tapped for the spark plug and carburetor, the other is the exhaust port.
To align the exhaust port with the exhaust housing I turned down the end of a piece of 8mm rod to fit in the housing and the 4mm hole in the cylinder block. I squared this up on the marked up support plate, then clamped.
The mounting holes were tapped m3. And then test assembled to view something that is now resembling an engine.

[gerritv]

The last rotating parts to make before the pulleys and flywheel are belt tensioners.
A bit of turning and a bit of milling on these. One noticeable skill improvement is turning to a specific diameter using the graduations. For a while I wasn't trusting myself on getting that right. But with practice comes confidence. A calculator to determine the number of 0.025mm graduations helps avoid brain fog. Upping the spindle rpms also improved the surface finish so no polishing was needed.

The 2 nuts were also made from drill rod. After milling them square the required rounded corners remained. My previous learning on the cutoff tool meant that now the cut end is almost good enough to use as is.

Pulleys were turned from stainless. I used the cutoff tool as a groover. The flanges are 1mm wide. Holes were drilled and reamed for a smooth rotating fit.

I think these were the last of the easy parts for now. I am planning the making of pulleys and flywheel but for those I need to make some more tools. Both the mill and the tool grinder will get some new attachments in the next week.

[gerritv]

Its time for some heavy metal.
I had a lump of 4.25" steel that came as part of about 700lbs of metal. You can never have too much stock to work with :-) I knew at the time that there was a flywheel hiding in there.

There were several attempts made by previous owner to cut this up, so I was left with 1 end to work with. Into my recently obtained BSA 4 jaw, it was centred as best as possible. After much cutting half a flywheel popped out.
It was rigged in the 4x6 bandsaw and cut off. Spending time aligning the saw pays off, in this case it was out by 0.5mm over 100mm. Spray cutting oil meant that the cut was fairly smooth as well. 40 minutes to cut but can't imagine any other way, certainly no a hacksaw!
After re-centering in the 4 jaw I finished the machining. Drilled and reamed the shaft hole and off to the engine for a test fit. Thankfully no discernable wobble. I still need to drill 5 large holes but will defer that for now. I have some DRO scales on order for the milling machine for easier locating of holes.

Learnings from this process: Need to grind up a better selection of cutting tools. I prefer HSS so at Names I think I will be visiting the Arthur Warner booth. In the meantime off to make some adapters for my ancient Tool & Cutter grinder.

[gerritv]

When we left off many moons ago, I was at the stage of making the timing pulleys. While I could have bought the 2 small pulleys, the large one was not available in the required width. This resulted in a detour to make the Eureka Relieving Device to make the T2.5 format cutter. (You can buy gear cutters but apparently not timing pulley cutters.)

This post shows the cutter, the setup and the result. One thing I learned much later on is that the outside diameter of timing pulleys must be spot on. Too large or too small and the belt with ride up on the teeth. Thankfully I only had one that was off and a slight trim fixed that problem.

The assembled engine turns over nicely.

[Don1966]

Nice set of gears Gerrit!   


 
Don

[b.lindsey]

Those timing pulleys turned out very nice!! Good to see an update too.

Bill

[bent]

Slow but steady progress, keep it up Gerrit!  I like the idea of building Jan's glass tube models, seeing the internal workings is a pleasure.  I keep looking for cheap and good high-speed video cameras, aiming one at a running IC glass engine would be interesting...

[gerritv]

Bent, the engine is essentially complete, I am actually at the stage of building the ignition. I will catch up on all the progress here this week.

Lots of in-betweens: lathe tool height gage, single wheel cut knurler to create coining, ball turner, added TouchDRO module to lathe and mill, converted lathe to DC variable speed, got a 7" Ammco shaper in shape enough to use (more work this winter), built a deck, finally started restoring a 6' RC model of HMCS Athabaskan that my dad built in late 70's, etc :-)

Part of my absence here was also due to needing to re-learn how to focus, the internet is too much of a diversion at times. I dropped participation/viewing of several sites as a result. Model Engine Maker is now the only one that I will actively participate in as well as a ship model one.

[gerritv]

  I keep looking for cheap and good high-speed video cameras, aiming one at a running IC glass engine would be interesting...

Kdenlive is supposed to have a speed modification feature to slow motion down. Only tried it as a slide show builder so far, waiting on a remote for my camera before doing videos of my machining efforts.

[Chester]

Following with interest, can’t wait to see this one run. Looking good so far

[Gas_mantle]

Hi Gerrit, I guess I'm a bit late to the party but did you finish your engine ?

I'd be interested to see how it turned out 

[zeeprogrammer]

Fast forward to Aug 2016 and there is rampant progress!

 

Sorry. Couldn't help myself. 

Not that I have any place to talk.