Author Topic: The Dickson!  (Read 34662 times)

Offline Dennis

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #120 on: February 14, 2020, 04:59:03 PM »
Hi Maury,

Look at all those valves!! Well done!  can't wait to see them at NAMES. 

John, The valve bank is designed to let the engine run on one, two or three cylinders depending on the dynamo load demand.  You can also choose which one or two of the three cylinders you want the engine to run on.  A very wide range of operation and steam efficiency for the time.  The dynamos are also designed so that one or both can be taken off like to further conserve steam during low demand periods. A unique piece of steam history.  It is also interesting to know that the Dickson co eventually merged with another manufacturer and became Allis-Chalmers who built some great large engines.  The dynamos were made by the Edison Co.  If you make it to NAMES, I will try to have some of the history written up and available there.

The power station in NY had seven of these monsters all lined up in a row.  We have some photos of the original installation at the power station.  This was the first time a large marine engine was direct coupled with dynamos.  The engine at Henry Ford Museum has dynamos stamped #3 and #4 so we believe it was the second engine set installed at the NY power station.

Dennis

Offline Johnmcc69

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #121 on: February 14, 2020, 05:27:28 PM »
Fascinating! That's some real good thinking!

 Thank you for the explanation, quite a fabulous piece of machinery.

 John

Offline maury

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #122 on: February 15, 2020, 07:21:02 PM »
Thanks for tuning in guys, thanks for the valve explanation dennis.
maury
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Offline maury

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #123 on: February 22, 2020, 09:05:15 PM »
Folks, I started working on the cat Walk, and have a little progress to show. I started by modeling the support brackets. There are 3 different styles, best I can tell form the pictures I have. Dennis developed the top view outline of the walk, and I modeled from that and the pictures.

I decided to make patterns for the support brackets, as I would like to cast them from bronze. I have two styles done so far, so the pictures are below.

maury
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Offline Dennis

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #124 on: February 23, 2020, 02:42:12 PM »
Hi Maury,
Nice looking patterns, thanks for modeling the brackets and making the patterns.  I look forward to seeing the cast parts.

Dennis

Offline Dennis

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #125 on: April 07, 2020, 03:43:54 PM »
Good Morning everyone, Maury and I were planning to show our work on the Dickson project at the NAMES show this year but since that show is cancelled, I thought I would post some new information on the Dynamos here.  Maury has focused on the engine build while I made patterns and drawings.  My shop time is focused on the dynamo build.

The dynamos have a ring winding which fell from favor among the dynamo builders because of the difficulty of winding the armature coils.  As the model armature goes together I am beginning to understand that decision much better.  The armature windings have to be threaded onto the ring by hand, one loop at a time.  With 70 coils on each armature, that is a lot of hand winding.  As Maury says, that's what modeling is all about.  I am trying to stay as close as I can to the original engine and dynamo design, however, I chose to use multiple wrap windings in place of the square bar single windings on the original dynamos in hopes of developing enough current at low RPM to run something in the finished display.

Photo 1 shows the hub and framework that hold the iron laminations for the armature core.  The iron core consists of 5 laminations of ductile iron rings about .280 wide.  A modern generator or motor has thin laminations but this was the state of the art in 1905 and I have the original drawings showing the laminations about 4.5 inches thick.

Photo 2 shows how the armature carrier goes together

Photo 3 shows the temporary armature assembly with bolts so that the winding slots could be cut in the assembly.  After cutting the winding slots, the armature was disassembled and cleaned.  Then the hub, framework parts and laminations were insulated with a polymide electrical insulation tape and reassembled with insulated rivets.  I first tried to cut the winding slots with a .125 end mill.  That turned out to be extremely slow and broke several end mills.  After a couple of slots, I re-designed to have a 5/32 wide slot and purchased a 5/32 slotting saw which worked very well.

Photo 4 shows the solid works model of the assembled dynamo to show where this is all going.

I am now working on the field coil posts and getting ready to wind the first field coil which will be done on a small coil winding machine I purchased on e-bay.  Another new experience for me as I have never wound an electrical coil.  I'll add some photos in a week or two showing how that part of the project goes.

Dennis

Offline jeff l

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #126 on: April 07, 2020, 04:16:43 PM »
outstanding!

Offline scc

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #127 on: April 07, 2020, 08:45:23 PM »
Dennis and Maury,   great progress on an excellent project. I love that engine and the way that it and the generators can be switched in or out as well as the cylinders. Clever thinking back then.  Thanks for posting all the details. I love it  :popcorn: :popcorn:       Terry

Offline Dennis

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #128 on: May 25, 2020, 03:30:10 PM »
More slow progress on the first Dynamo for the Dickson model.  Here is a photo of the armature and field coil ring ready for final detailing and coil winding.  The field coils will be wound on bobbins that fit on the bare posts in the photo.  They are proving to be another learning experience.  My first attempts at machining the bobbins from UHMW failed.  Next I started making an aluminum mold to cast the bobbins from a polyester elastomer which is a low viscosity fast cure plastic that could be injected at room temperature.  When the mold was almost finished my son did some research on machining plastics and ground a special cutter for me that worked very well on the UHMW.  So now the bobbins are all machined from UHMW and ready to fill.  I am going to finish the aluminum mold, just to see if it works, another learning experience. This proves you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Coil winding on bobbins is also proving to be a learning experience.  Learning experience meaning a lot harder than I thought it would be.  The dynamo field coils will be shunt wound like the original machine so I want a high resistance in the field coils according to the books I have been studying on dynamo design.  There are a lot of turns of wire on each filed coil and getting them to wind level and flat is a challenge.  Still working on that "learning experience".

Offline Admiral_dk

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #129 on: May 25, 2020, 09:11:57 PM »
Progress and more work winding all those coils - I never liked that as I always lost count somewhere on the way -> removing them all and start over again .... repeat a few times and I usually gets very frustrated and in the end never finishes. I have wound transformers with a very low count by hand and they worked and some with very many on machines (no problem either).

Per

Offline crueby

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #130 on: May 25, 2020, 09:34:35 PM »
What would happen if you got a turn or two extra on one? Odd fluctuations in the voltage?

Offline Admiral_dk

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #131 on: May 26, 2020, 12:04:46 PM »
I haven't tried to wind Generators, Dynamoes etc. so no sure knowledge here, but I would expect that a low winding count 12v generator for a car would burn out quickly if they don't match rather closely on the count on each pole .... the one with higher count doing more work -> getting hotter that the rest ....

Above it is mentioned that the stator coils should have 70 turns each, so one or two more or less is probably not much of a problem - especially since this probably never will have to work for a living (long enough to get really hot)  ;D

Quote
Odd fluctuations in the voltage?
  Yes, I'm pretty sure that will happen - also if seen on a Scope, you should see a repeating pattern that matches the RPM.

Offline Dennis

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #132 on: May 26, 2020, 04:05:52 PM »
I also think you are correct about the fluctuations however as Admiral says, this machine will never have to work for a living.  The field coils will have 1000 turns of wire so small variations in the number of turns will have very small impact on the total resistance and heating in the field.  I had some courses on AC/DC motors and generators in my undergrad years but that was 55 years ago and for some reason I can't remember much of it.

Some time ago, I did a mock up of one pole to see how this design would work.  My tests showed that I couldn't get enough current to do much of anything at the low RPM I want to run the engine (20 t0 25 RPM).  In order to make a much stronger magnetic field, I decided to supercharge the field coils by putting a 3/8 x 1 inch niobium super magnet in each field coil post.  In my mockup testing that increased the current about 10 fold.  Yes, I know that is cheating but this is a model and the magnets will make for a nice demonstration of life and power distribution at the turn of the century by powering a diorama of the period.  And....if I hadn't told you the magnets were there, very few people would know I was cheating.  At least I am not hiding a battery under the display platform as one person suggested.

I have a hand crank coil winder with a counter so getting close on the number of turns is fairly ease, however my winder does not have a level winding guide so the resulting coil is not perfectly level pretty coil I want on the model.  Now I am looking for someone with a winding machine that has a level winding guide to feed the wire as it is turned on the bobbin.
Dennis

Offline Roger B

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #133 on: June 01, 2020, 08:27:19 AM »
The additional permeant magnets is a neat trick  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp:  :wine1:
Best regards

Roger

Offline Peter A Lawrence

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Re: The Dickson!
« Reply #134 on: August 12, 2020, 10:39:35 PM »
Guys,  I designed and built an "Edison Bipolar Dynamo" to go with my Stuart #9, I was designing for 12 volts at 1200 RPM and pretty much hit the target.  I'm looking at your dynamo and it appears to not have any ferrous parts in the armature, only conductors ? That would make it both pretty difficult to design from fundamentals (Faraday's law of induction, etc) and unlikely to ever generate much power (the field strength is inherently weak because so much of the magnetic circuit is air rather than iron). When I originally saw photos from the Ford Museum and started thinking about doing my own model of this engine & dynamo I thought I would put a more traditional armature in there, but then seeing your more faithful and historically accurate model has me re-thinkng, and if it only ever has to light up some LEDs well that's probably good enough (even though LEDs aren't historically accurate!).  Anyway I really like your project, how can I get in on a casting set ???
Pete Lawrence (San Jose, BAEM)

 

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