Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel

[crueby]

Catching up on progress from yesterday and today - while giving the batch of brass stock cut yesterday a bake in the oven to stress relieve it (since many will have one side cut away to form the shapes), a quick turning job was to make the axle shafts for the front tracks, which go through the track supports and then will go through the center of the vertical track castings. Drilled a cross hole at the end for the retaining pin which holds a ring outside the track castings.

Then back to the rear track support. Again, here is what the whole assembly is going to look like:

Turned a length of 1-7/8" round bar to shape and drilled/bored the 1/2" hole in the center which lets it fit over the vertical post coming off the bottom of the main frame.

Fairly simple shape, cylinder with some steps on the top end to go through a plate and form the bearing surface on top.The 'tiller' part of the unit will be made from two sandwiched plates - one that extends over and around the main pillar just turned, the other in front and underneath to make up the rest of the thickness of the tiller. The top plate includes a row of angled gusset plates around the top of the pillar. I could make this by adding seperate plates for each gusset, but that would be a lot of tiny parts to line up and hold in place for soldering - that option quickly went out the window and down the hill.Next option was to mill the top plate and the gussets out of one thicker piece of bar - with the rotary table, that should be not much different than doing spokes on a gear. So, drilled a hole in the center of one end to position the plate on the rotary table, with that hole centered on the table's rotation axis. Then, milled out a slot to the depth that left the top plate material. This slot is a ways inside the diameter of the finished hole, which let me do some test cuts for the gussets without risking the entire piece.I lined up the side of the small end mill with the centerline through the rotary tables axis, then moved over another .031" to line up with one edge of the gusset plates. With the part square to the table, made a pass out to the outer edge and back, then rotated the table 18 degrees and repeated the pass for each gusset. The gussets extend halfway around the hole, and then one more. The positions towards the tiller are not cut, since that is where the main block of the tiller is.


Then, moved the table over the opposite direction by .062" plus the thickness of the cutter, which got it lined up with the opposite side of the gusset plates, and made another series of passes, which left the gussets standing alone, plus a set of wedges between them out at the edges. This picture was taken halfway through the second set of passes - the gussets on the right are formed, those on the left only have the one pass made.


Here all the gussets are formed, and the wedges have been nibbled away as well.

Next step was to come back and narrow the center post to less than 1/2" so I could use the pillar to check the diameter of the center opening, and then made a set of light passes to open up the center space till it matched the outer diameter of the pillar.

Then went around the outside, with a series of light cuts (so I did not bend any gussets) and took them to width. The gussets are fairly narrow, and later on the outside edge will be tapered in to meet the pillar. Yes, it seems like a long way to go for a minor detail, but its those little details I love to see in the models.

At this point, it looks like BrassHenge! Hmmm, maybe the shop elves are Druids??   
Last step on this are was to lower the cutter and make a circle cut to free the remaining post in the middle - first checked my clamps to make sure they were tight, and also left a narrow connector to the outside until I had made a few passes and had the diameter dialed it. Then, cut through that last bit to free the post. Here is the plate with the pillar set in place, nice snug fit!

Next job will be to screw the second tiller plate to the top plate, and mill the tapered section towards the front and the rounded corners at the back. Then will mill the flat on the front of the pillar and join up all three pieces. I think I will use screws and loctite again, no need for silver solder, which would be tricky with the thin gussets on the surface of the mass of the pillar.

[Steamer5]

Hi Chris,
 Thought you might find that link interesting! What / how did you translate the pages......you can tell I didn’t look.....I was just gob smacked at the work!

Parts are looking good!

Cheers Kerrin

[crueby]

Hi Chris,
 Thought you might find that link interesting! What / how did you translate the pages......you can tell I didn’t look.....I was just gob smacked at the work!

Parts are looking good!

Cheers Kerrin

Used the google translate feature - on the google search page, put in 'translate:www.foo.com' in the search box, where www.foo.com is the page you want to translate. It should figure out the other language, and do the work. Very handy feature.
His models are awesome - depends some on friends with very high end cnc and 3d metal printing, but still wonderful stuff.

[crueby]

More done on the rear track support, milled the flat on the pillar piece, and drilled/tapped holes to hold the three parts together. They were then assembled with some Loctite retaining compound, and sketched on the shapes to be milled next.



The screw heads will be milled off after the loctite has had time to set up.



Started by trimming the front end, then milled the slot for the cross axle to go it. This is deep enough to allow the axle to rock side to side as it goes over uneven ground. Still need to cut in for the cross axle pivot.



Started shaping down the sides, where they taper to the front of the tiller portion. Started with a stop cut where it transitions back to the square section, then will start on the angled part.

[b.lindsey]

Still checking in Chris and following along, even if quietly. Nice looking cut off saw btw 

Bill

[crueby]

Still checking in Chris and following along, even if quietly. Nice looking cut off saw btw 

Bill

Thanks Bill!  It passed its trial runs with flying colors, saved me a lot of time and pressure on the hand.

On another note - several months ago my photo host (PostImage) had some oddball issues with their domain name, were forced to change the .org ending to .cc instead (this was NOT a PhotoSuckit type money grab, they are still free, they just got tossed out of the .org namespace). Anyway, I had been in touch with Ade to see if he could do a global search/replace of the address phrase in the database and update all photos there to the new ending. He has been/still is buried at his real work, sounds like, and has not been able to get a chance to try it.So, I was able to find a text search/replace plugin to help, and have manually gone through my Lombard and Marion build threads, and gotten those pictures back!  Looking much better, but definitely a lot of work and hard on the hands (even with my new vertical mouse). I have not done my Corliss Twin thread, or any others I have attached photos to. The Shay thread was before I switched to hosting, and had just attached the photos.Still hoping that Ade will get a chance to try the global replace for the tons of photos I have in other threads, but at least my current main ones are back. This is where Murphies Law kicks in and gets me arrested, he is probably doing that work right NOW...   
Anyway, if any of you spot any of my posts with broken photo links in the Marion or Lombard threads, please let me know which post number, I could well have missed some of them.
Thanks all!   
Back to the build!

[Dave Otto]

Interesting thing about your pictures Chris, for awhile a few weeks or so back my anti-malware program (Malware Bytes) was blocking all of your pictures. Then it all started working again, must have been when you fixed all the file names. I was only looking at the recent updates on the shovel. For some reason they didn't like the site that was hosting the photos.

Dave

[crueby]

Interesting thing about your pictures Chris, for awhile a few weeks or so back my anti-malware program (Malware Bytes) was blocking all of your pictures. Then it all started working again, must have been when you fixed all the file names. I was only looking at the recent updates on the shovel. For some reason they didn't like the site that was hosting the photos.

Dave

I fixed the Lombard photos a couple weeks ago, over time. Just finished the Marion ones this afternoon. All the recent photos in the last couple months were on the new server name anyway, they have not changed.
 

[crueby]

Today's fun was going over to Buffalo NY for the annual tour of the Ward Pumping Station, which takes water from Lake Erie and supplies it to the city of Buffalo. This facility has five enormous triple compound steam engines that each drove three cylinder pumps to push the water into the water mains. Each engine could deliver 30 million gallons per day. They stopped using the steam engines several decades ago, but they are still intact, and the heritage society over there is hoping to get a couple running again someday. They have one day a year when they hold an open house and tour (the facility is still owned by the city water department, modern pumps are in one end still supplying water to the city).
Here is the outside of the building:

And a view down the line of the engines:
The narrower vertical pipe on the left is the steam inlet, the larger angled one on the right is the exhaust down to the condensers. The pipes and such below the main floor level are the pumps and feed pipes, inlet side from the lake is on the left, output to the city on the right.
Closer view of the engines:


View from one end, showing the gauges and the two 30 ton flywheels in each engine.


Spec sheet of the engines:

In this shot you can see the governer on one of the engines, right of center. The shaft it is driven from also drives the corliss valve gear, one set of valves per cylinder.


Said valve gear, this one on the high pressure cylinder, along with the lubricator mechanism:


The low pressure cylinders all have this mechanism on the top of them, I don't know what it is, maybe some sort of release valve for condensate? It appears to have a counterweight holding it closed.


At one end of the building, there is this collection of modern pumps doing the job of the older steam engines - it fits in the lower level area the size of one of the steam engines. They said that the facility was designed to have 6 of the big steam engines, but it turned out 5 was enough so they never installed the last one. The modern pumps co-existed with the steam engines for a long time, and they used a combination of both for decades, it gave the ability to shut down some for maintenance while keeping up supply.

A very interesting tour - hope they can get one running again someday! The boilers were in another building behind this one, we could not get in there so I don't know what condition they are in.
Tomorrow, back on the Marion build!
 

[Farmboy]

What scale will you be using for this project? 

[wagnmkr]

...and will you be installing the 6th steam engine and scrapping the modern stuff?

Lovely pics ... Thanks

Tom

[crueby]

What scale will you be using for this project? 

1:1,  am building it nexr to the lake in Buffalo... !  It looks very realistic!   

...and will you be installing the 6th steam engine and scrapping the modern stuff?

Lovely pics ... Thanks

Tom

Only if Jo has the right casting set!


 

[crueby]

Back on the build today - finished tapering the sides of the tiller section, leaving a slight overhang at the top:


On thing I just realized, was that I had cut one too few gussets along the top of the pillar section. Two of them get overlaid by larger projections either side of the bottom slot, and there was supposed to be one more in front. So, luckily there was some material left there and used that to form the last gussets each side.


For the two side posts to have a place to be attached, milled small flats either side of the bottom slot, which removed two of the gussets. The side posts will get screwed on in a while.


There is a fore-and-aft axle at the bottom that acts as a pivot so the track axle can rock side to side. To drill that hole, which is halfway into the pillar, I bolted on a block large enough to form the bearing block caps from and drilled the hole for the axle - had to put the drill in the three jaw chuck to get enough height on the mill.


There needs to be a lip around the end of the axle, so I used the boring head to widen out the end of the axle hole. This will get a short bit of tube to form the lip.


Side note - in one of the tech tips from Sherline, or maybe a post in one of the threads here, someone suggested using a 3/4-16 jam nut as a puller for the morse taper tools, to avoid having to hit the tool from the back end to remove it. This is first time I tried that, worked perfectly - screwed it on the spindle before installing the boring head, then when it was time to remove the head I loosened the drawbar, put a tommy bar in the spindle hole, and used a wrench to back out the jam nut - popped the boring head right out with no impacts.


Finishing up on the tiller end, milled a .400 wide by .225 deep groove in the end. This will take the holder (to be made still) for the post that goes out to the threaded rod which will run crossways frmo the frame. This holder will allow the post to slide in and out, since the distance to the threaded rod will change as the tiller bar swings side to side. With the tiller sides tapered, it was easiest to clamp the part to the rotary tool plate for milling.


Then tapered the bottom of the tiller up to the front end. The square base of the part was held in the vise, with a small machinist jack supporting the tiller end. A small block on the mill table kept the jack from slipping out.


Here is the part so far - next is to make the side posts next to the bottom slot, shape the bearing caps, then make the tiller end post holder.

[10KPete]

 

Pete

[Farmboy]

A real masterclass in both workholding and fabrication. I'm building up a great store of tips for when I eventually find time to spend in the workshop 

This thread is always my first port of call every morning