Author Topic: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine  (Read 21151 times)

Offline scc

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2017, 04:11:03 PM »
Excellent documentation of the machining process for this part, Todd. That was an interesting set up that worked quite well.

I just finished watching a series of 3 videos on YouTube where Stephan Gotteswinter makes a sine vise. He rounds it over with a shaper, similar to what you did with your mill. He did an interesting thing, in that after a pass, he would coat it with layout dye. Then it was easy for him to make another pass and take off material in between the previous pass..............if that makes sense.

Jim
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Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2017, 02:40:18 PM »
Note: this is a repost due to the server issues this week.

The Crosshead Trunk Base

It's the weekend and time for the shop!  The crosshead trunk I've constructed so far will need lugs for bolting the engine to the floor, so to speak.  The article suggests either milling these from the block that forms the trunk, or alternatively machine grooves at front/back of the trunk and attach square bars extending beyond the width of the trunk to form the lugs.  I took a third approach because I didn't have material tall enough for the trunk, so my lugs are really part of a baseplate under the trunk.  I'll show that today.

I started by screwing a sketchy looking piece of 1/4" thick 1018 steel to the crosshead trunk I made.  Recall I already had threaded holes in the trunk that were used for screws to hold it to a mandrel.  I thought this was a fine re-use of these holes.


Next, I machined the base to size.  I decided it would be best to do this while it is attached to the trunk.  You can see I slopped on some dykem dye so I could see when the ends were flush with the trunk, and I used a depth gauge when working the long dimension until they were 1/4" offset.  That's the allowance for the lugs.


I skimmed it with a facing mill to make sure it sits perfectly flat.  The finish of my cut is getting real lousy so I'm assuming the inserts are getting dull.  My lighting is rather harsh and makes it look worse than it is.  But it's still not great...but not visible on the finished engine either.


Now it was a matter of hogging out material leaving the lugs behind.  Note again that I added dye so I can see when I touch the side of the trunk.  This worked really well on this side, but I overshot a bit on the other side :(.  But nothing a file can't fix.  I was just trying to avoid file work as much as possible.


Here's the cleanup pass.  The dye worked well.  I'm just starting to smudge it around.


Then it was simply a matter of drilling the four holes into the lugs.  This was easy to do from the underside.


The crosshead trunk is now almost done.  I need to make front/rear plates for it and turn down the ends to form bosses for fitting into these plates.  When I do that turning I'll do a final touchup so the ends are perfectly flush.  The plates, in theory, will be silver soldered in place.


Next, I need to make those front/rear plates.  Hopefully I'll get that much done this weekend.  Stay tuned!

Todd

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #17 on: January 20, 2017, 02:41:38 PM »
Note: this is a repost due to the server issues this week.

Misc Progress:  the MLK addition

It just so happens my employer chooses Martin Luther King day here in the states as a company holiday.  That means I could sneak in a bit of extra shop time.  And I made some progress on a few bits :)

I fully intended to start on the front/back plates for the crosshead trunk I made previously.  But instead I decided to try making the fairing which requires some bending.  This isn't a particularly large part and if it didn't come out well, I would rethink and try again.  Ramon's build will no doubt show a different method, and who knows, I might need to follow his lead.

So I scanned the page from the book, scaled it to 1:1 and used spray adhesive to stick it to some 1/8" brass.  I've recently watched some clickspring videos where he cuts brass like this with a scroll saw.  And what the heck...it worked pretty well.  Slow, but ok.


Then I took it to my trusty oscillating spindle sander.  I'm reasonably well equipped on the woodshop side of the world and thought this was worth trying.  It worked very well, so I just sanded up to the line.  It only took a couple minutes to clean up.


I routed a block of wood for the shape for bending.  Along the bottom is approx 1/8" strip of wood as a guide.  I created this block over on the router table with a roundover router bit.  In a few minutes I will realize that I made it too narrow.  Sigh.


I annealed the brass, never having done that before.  I heated it until it was glowing faintly and kept it heated that way for about 2 minutes.  Then I tossed it into water.  I didn't try bending without annealing.  Here you can see the setup a bit more.  I placed the fairing against that straightedge wood and then sandwiched a bar with some C clamps to hold it tight.  Now it was time to tap it around.


I pounded it around with a hammer and a scrap hunk of wood like this.  It formed very nice, although too narrow as I said earlier.  Sigh again.


At this point I realized I made it 3/4" wide and it really needs to be about 1 1/4" wide.   So I made up a new jig, pretty much in the same way.  I annealed the brass again, and then used my vise to spread it a bit.  Finally I pounded it down again as shown here.


And here's the fairing


Then I shifted my attention to the front/back plates for the trunk.  I cut two pieces of 1/8" brass and bored them to 7/8".  The plan calls for the back plate to have a much smaller diameter, but I thought I'd try making them the same to begin with.  The rear plate will be trimmed for the fairing.  The boring process was entertaining.  This boring head is new to me and I had a number of frustrations with it.  The main problem was that it took me a while to figure out how to angle the edge of the boring bar.  I was shooting for neutral rake, but found the bar would rub (that took a while to notice!).  I also found the entire head being out-of-balance wasn't too nice for my mill.  I was maybe running it at 200 RPM max.


I made a bushing to hold the front plate onto the center of my RT and used parallels laid flat to hold it off the table while I machined it.  First, I drilled 5 holes for 4-40 bolts that will attach to the cylinder.  These are spaced 52 degrees apart.


And then I cut out the top of the front plate using a 1/8" end mill.   I was very surprised how well this little end mill cut.  It was like going through butter!  I really like brass :).


Here's the front head sitting against the trunk (I see I have the back side next to it).  I need to turn the trunk to make it fit...but I'll make the rear plate before doing that.  Note the little nicks around the edge.  I found these were caused by the swarf as I backed out of the cut.  At least I think that's what did it.


Here's the first family shot.  Bits and pieces.


Next time I'll make the rear plate and see if the fairing looks like it'll fit or not.  I'll also turn down the bosses on the ends of the crosshead trunk so I can fit these plates properly.

Todd

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #18 on: January 20, 2017, 02:45:18 PM »
So I'm the lucky b@stard this week because I happened to paste my recent posts into a file before doing the final post.  It's not that I expected the server issues that occurred this week, but I kept getting that dratted no more processes error and I encountered once where the back button didn't work.  The cool thing is that I could "recover" my last two build posts trivially (copy/paste the whole thing).

Unfortunately, I didn't capture the comments and dialog that followed.  Oh well...we'll all continue on anyway.  Hopefully the storm has completely passed.

Todd

Offline Pete49

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2017, 02:44:41 AM »
I tried one and it had a virus, maybe you could PM or e-mail me the link Ramon.
I could say mine would be done by Fawncett, you would be none the wiser as I'll probably not be there
PS Ramon should we be searching for Wisdom rather than history?
EDIT Found it :)
Jason could you flip me the link? All I found was stock market stuff. The Google foo is weak in this one.
Pete
I used to have a friend.....but the rope broke and he ran away :(....Good news everybody I have another friend...I used chain this time :)

Offline Jasonb

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2017, 07:38:04 AM »
Pete, I'll post it here as Ramon had added it to the thread before things were lost.

https://www.scribd.com/document/253513412/The-Shop-Wisdom-of-Jesse-Livingstone-by-the-Home-Shop-Machinist

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #21 on: January 26, 2017, 02:02:03 AM »
More Crosshead Trunk Assembly Bits


I've been in the shop off and on for very brief periods over the last week, so this update won't be too exciting.  But I thought showing a little progress is better than leaving the thread dark.

In the last episode I finished with the trunk itself, the head plate, and the bent fairing.  Now I add the rear plate, bend the fairing to fit a little better, and then turn down the bosses on the trunk so the plates fit neatly.

The rear plate is similar to the front plate, except it doesn't have a bolt-hole circle for the cylinder, and the part is trimmed to make way for the 1/8" thick fairing that wraps around part of it.  So to cut the top curve I needed to offset it 1/4" from the center of the bore.  I initially placed it centered on the RT using the bushing (see the last post for that) and realized that if I removed the bushing and shifted it, this would account for the 1/4".  So I clamped down some parallels so I could do this shift along one dimension only.


This worked good, so I machined it out with a 1/8" end mill.


Then I trimmed one side for the fairing.  This removed 1/8" -- the thickness of the fairing.


And I flattened the other side down so it was squared off 7/8" from the bottom.  In hindsight, I should have left more material.  If you look at the plan in the book you'll see the cut I made previously should have intersected with the inside bore.  I decided to let the rear plate be slightly higher so the fairing diameter would be closer to the front plate diameter.  I didn't account for the fact that this means the fairing wrapping around the plate is going to come up a little bit short.  You'll see that shortly.


I clamped the fairing upside down and indicated it straight so I could very lightly machine the underside of the bent part.  The bend part wasn't perfectly straight, but was only 15 thou off so I gave it a try and it machined just fine.  The alternative was a little bit of filing.  If I was using JB Weld, this probably wouldn't matter at all.  Just fill the gap when assembling.


And here's the not-so-great fit.  It comes up short due to the larger diameter.  Oh well.  I'll fill that little space with some JB Weld later.


Finally, it was time to turn the bosses on the ends of the crosshead trunk to accept the two end plates.  Here I just turned the front side.  Note the base remains screwed to the trunk so that I could also face the whole end to true it all up.  Therefore, I couldn't use set screws, so instead I screwed a little plate into the mandrel since the sides of the trunk are open anyway.  Note also that I applied a little dye so I could see what I was doing.


The other side of the trunk was machined in the same manner, so now I can fit the parts together just a little bit.


Next I need to make one more part to form the back side of the frame.  It will need to be a bit higher than the plan to account for my short fairing, but that should be easy to adjust.  Then it's time to solder this up!

Todd

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #22 on: January 28, 2017, 09:08:31 PM »
Finishing the Crosshead Trunk Assembly


In this installment I almost finish the trunk assembly.  All that remains of this assembly is the back part of the frame and then a little fitting work before soldering it up.   In this next photo I'm milling a little swoop in the frame back which is 5/16" brass.  This frame will become a bearing for the shaft, but I'll leave the creation of that bearing for later after I've soldered it up and checked that everything is still straight.



This part was intended to be 0.875" high, but as a "fix" for my fairing which came up a bit short, I'm leaving a bit of the frame extra high (1") to meet the fairing.  Here I trimmed most down to 0.875, but in using a 1/4" end mill I get a nice little curve feature into the part that will meet the fairing.



I had to do a little fiddling, tweaking and trimming to get everything to fit.  Here I'm trimming the fairing to final length.



And here's the assembly on the firebrick, all cleaned up, fluxed, and ready to go.  I buffed all the mating surfaces with green pad and also used acetone to clear off oil.  Then I used the flux that came with my Harris Safety-Silv56.   You can see I fashioned a bit of wire around the bottom edge which worked because I fit a thin plate between the frame parts that (hopefully) won't solder in.  That little plate was cut from scrap that's white so it's a bit hard to notice it's there.



I have a recently purchased Bernzomatic TS8000 torch head with propane for cooking it up.   It seemed to heat ok, though I had to be careful not to aim at the wire too long, and it got to the point where the flux started to flow.  But at that point, I would touch the solder to the joint in expectation that it would suck in, and nothing happened.  Eventually a teeny bit of solder did melt, but by this point the flux was looking pretty cooked out.  Epic fail :(.



I only tried a little solder in the joint at the front of the trunk.  You can see some bits there.  I kept heating a bit more, but since it wasn't flowing the solder I decided to stop and let it cool down.  Now I need to clean it all up again and figure out what went wrong.

Todd

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #23 on: January 28, 2017, 10:35:51 PM »
Well, I pulled it apart and cleaned the trunk and front plate.  That was fun...that flux makes a mighty strong glue!

I decided to have another go with only the trunk and front plate.  Here's the result.  It's ugly looking, but I actually made some progress I think.



Hmm...it's hard to see the "progress" in the photo.  This time I kept the torch away from the joint on the theory that I managed to burn the flux last time.  I was only working with the trunk and front plate so didn't have to worry about all the other distractions from the fairing and frame assembly.  I kept going until the trunk started getting to a dull red, then tested every few seconds to see if any solder would melt in.  I never passed the solder into the flame.  And then it happened...a little solder melted and sucked into the joint.  I touched a little more on right and left.  On the right there's a bit of excess (the light gray in the photo).  But all in all I think it worked ok.  Of course it looks like hell, but it did before, too, and I found it does clean up a bit with a wire wheel, sandpaper, etc.

Todd

Offline zeeprogrammer

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2017, 10:49:43 PM »
Neat looking engine and a nice project. The governor will really set it off.

I also found this helpful for a project I've been wanting to do.

When it came to annealing the brass I was surprised you dunked it in water. I've just let it air cool. (I'm still a newbie.)
Is there a difference or advantage to dunking in water?
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Offline crueby

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #25 on: January 28, 2017, 11:35:35 PM »
For the silver soldering, best is to heat from the back side of the joint, and let the heat of the metal melt the solder, never put the flame directly on the solder or it will melt before the metal is hot enough. You should see the flux melt and go clear before the solder will melt. I put short lengths of the solder against the joint, then cover with flux. A metal pick with a bent tip is handy to reach in and keep the solder in place, and when it melts you can run the pick back and forth to help spread along the joint. Be sure to heat both pieces of metal evenly or the solder will run along just one side. If the torch can't put out enough heat quick enough, the flux can burn off before the metal is hot enough, particularly on larger pieces of metal that wick away the heat. A torch with different tips is handy for this, larger the parts, larger the tip.


Hope that helps, sure that I am missing some tips, others please jump in too! If you can find a copy of Kozos book on building the new shay, he has lots of info. It was also serialized in magazines.

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #26 on: January 29, 2017, 12:07:43 AM »
Thanks for the tips!  I'm starting to get the hang of this a little.   I think part of the problem was simply working with too many joints in a single attempt.   I assembled the brass bits for the frame and fairing and it worked out ok.  Here's a few pics.

Here's a view from the front.  It looks much more disgusting than it really is :).  I found that if I try to feed it solder, there was no way it was going to fill that gap.  It was soldered plenty good on both sides, so I decided enough was enough with that.  I'll finish filling it with JB Weld.  The side of the fairing where it meets the frame is what I was really worried about, and the solder just sucked in the way it should.   I'd pull the torch away and touch the solder and in it went!



Here's a view from the top.  You can see I have a little spacer at the bottom to hold it reasonably square.  That spacer fills most of the bottom.  I was a little worried I might solder it in, but I figured if that happened I'd just machine it out again.  But it pushed out fine.



So now I have two sub-assemblies, rather than one.  I think I'll just JB Weld them together from here.  The crosshead trunk bolts down at 4 points, and the frame and fairing bolts down at two points at the back.  So JB Weld is really overkill.



In hindsight, I think the two subassemblies are the way to go.  Now I'll have the opportunity to square things up a bit, which would be hard to do if they were joined.

Todd

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #27 on: January 29, 2017, 12:15:20 AM »
When it came to annealing the brass I was surprised you dunked it in water. I've just let it air cool. (I'm still a newbie.)
Is there a difference or advantage to dunking in water?

Zee,

I had read contradicting instructions on how to anneal brass.  I should dig up the links I was looking at, but one site said to anneal brass you heat to dull red for about 2 minutes, then quench in water, which is NOT what you'd do for steel.  But another jewelry site said you heat it and let it cool however you want because you can't harden brass with heat (it only anneals).  I'm not quite sure what to believe.

I'm still pretty much a newbie too, so I can't really say whether it worked or not.  However it did bend fine, and I've read that brass gets pretty fragile and will crack if you don't anneal -- and that didn't happen to me.  I actually annealed it again later when I fit all the parts together and that time I let it air cool.  It seemed to come out the same way.  So maybe the jewelry site was right.

The one obvious advantage to dunking was that I could start working with the part again almost instantly.  Well, I had to dry it off a little :).  That's probably the only advantage.  I assume it could warp, which would be an obvious disadvantage.  However, when I first started on the fairing I was going to bend it anyway, so I figured that wouldn't be much of a factor.

Todd

Offline crueby

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #28 on: January 29, 2017, 12:40:57 AM »
Annealing brass just requires the heating, quenching will not harden it, just cools it quicker. Quenching a large and or complicated shape could distort it, to be safe let it cool from red a bit first. Same process for copper parts. Only way to harden it again is to work it, bending, rolling, or hammering.

For brass bar stock that will be cut lengthwise to get narrow strips, best to stress relieve it or it can twist, due to internal stresses during the rolling as they manufacture it. Easy to do, pop it in your oven at 500f for an hour and let it cool. Degrease it first! It has saved me problems when cutting a wider bar down, only takes a little time. Without it I've had bar take a 1/8th inch curve over 6 or 8 inches of length.


Steel is a whole different beast, every alloy is different.

Offline tinglett

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Re: Jesse Livingston Rocking Valve Mill Engine
« Reply #29 on: January 29, 2017, 03:23:59 AM »
Thanks for the advise!  It sure seems weird to me that metal can have internal stress like that, but i believe you.  I'm very familiar with the crazy stresses that come out of ripping wood.

I filled some of the gaps in my parts with JB Weld and will be hopefully back at it tomorrow :).

Todd

 

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