Author Topic: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel  (Read 574329 times)

Offline Steamer5

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #900 on: March 23, 2018, 03:57:09 AM »
Chris,
 Sounds like you are going to have to punish the elves for making a mistake like that!
Don’t with hold cookies though, they may go on strike!

The boom just gets better and better!

Cheers Kerrin
Get excited and make something!

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #901 on: March 23, 2018, 06:17:06 PM »
What an absolutely stunning piece of work this is. The Lombard was also superb and I know that you are a stickler for accuracy. Thus I am very reluctant to point out that the top sheave in your photo of the full size machine has 3 holes - not 4. Hate me if you must!
Thanks for pointing that one out - turns out I needed to pull the sheaves again for other work, so I plugged three of the holes in each and drilled two new ones in the right place - that would have bugged me later on if I found out then.
   :cheers:

Chris,
 Sounds like you are going to have to punish the elves for making a mistake like that!
Don’t with hold cookies though, they may go on strike!

The boom just gets better and better!

Cheers Kerrin
Well, tried blaming them, but they pulled up the shop security video and showed it was me who did it. Sigh...  :Lol:

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #902 on: March 23, 2018, 06:32:48 PM »
Catching up with the pictures from yesterday and today - I made up the top caps for the bearing blocks yesterday afternoon, same technique as before, except since the parts are small, I used a thin piece of rod to space it from the axle hole, which left enough low down to grip in the vise. As long as the rod it touching the 'top' of the hole, at whatever angle the part is at, this works fine.





Finished caps in place:

On the original, the axle would be fixed in the sheave, and turn in the bearing block. On the model, since aligning the blocks to that degree of accuracy would be a lot harder (and given the little bit of flex the thin upright has), I decided to have the axle clamped in the blocks, and the sheaves spin on their own bearings on the axle. The end behavior is the same, and this is more robust for the model.

The next parts up are the bails that hold the end of the support rods from the A-frame top cap. These rods keep the boom at a 45 degree angle, and while they look like cables with eye splices in the ends, they were actually forged out of one bar (not sure of the alloy, the catalogs mention it is a fibrous crystal structure in the iron/steel that allow some give). These bails bolt through the end of the boom near the sheaves. I tried bending them up, but could not get a good curve in the end by the bolts, so decided to piece them up from a larger brass rod and thinner steel rod. The steel was bent over a 3/8" rod to get the curve, then the legs were cut to length. They were then silver soldered into holes in the brass bar:

After cleaning up the flux and sawing the two lengths of bar apart, put them in the chuck on the rotary table, and milled the shape in the ends under the rod - the mill ran just up to the steel bar, so an inside cirve was left there:

After both ends of each bar were done the same way, the centers were cut out of the brass with a hacksaw, leaving this:

A little clean up with a file, and they were bolted onto the boom - they will come off again later to insert the eye of the rod back to the A-frame over the bail.

After plugging and redrilling the three holes in the top sheaves, here is the current set of parts:

I've started laying out the parts for the A-frame stay rods - they will be pieced up in a similar way.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 09:13:01 PM by crueby »

Offline Gas_mantle

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #903 on: March 23, 2018, 06:53:00 PM »
Looks great Chris  :)

I dread to think how many nuts and bolts you have needed

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #904 on: March 23, 2018, 07:01:48 PM »
Looks great Chris  :)

I dread to think how many nuts and bolts you have needed
There are over 250 studs in the main boom, about 400 nuts. So far...!  :o

Thats why I bought the bundles of threaded rod, I'd be going (even more) crazy  :insane: threading all that rod stock. Same for the nuts, bought a big bag of 2-56 small pattern nuts.

The main boom is the biggest user of nuts and bolts in the whole model, way more than the dipper boom. If they had made it from one large casting it wouldn't have had them all, but the fact that they bolted up a steel shell around a white oak core for all the booms really upped the count!

Offline Dan Rowe

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #905 on: March 23, 2018, 07:22:29 PM »
not sure of the alloy, the catalogs mention it is a fibrous crystal structure in the iron/steel that allow some give

Chris, that description sounds like wrought iron which was the common material used for that type of forging in that era.

Dan
ShaylocoDan

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #906 on: March 23, 2018, 09:01:14 PM »
not sure of the alloy, the catalogs mention it is a fibrous crystal structure in the iron/steel that allow some give

Chris, that description sounds like wrought iron which was the common material used for that type of forging in that era.

Dan
Probably something like that. In the 1909 catalog they talk a lot about having their own iron and steel production, open hearth, converters, and mention that they have several of there own special alloys for many parts (chain and dipper especially), but no details of what those alloys are. Their 25 acre factory complex would have been an amazing place to tour! Like so many, its all gone now, last of it closed up in the 90's when Bucyrus bought them out.

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #907 on: March 23, 2018, 11:46:21 PM »
Made up the ends for the stays that run from the bails on the main boom back to the A-frame. On the original these were forged all in one piece with the stay, but for the model I am piecing them up. Started with some brass flat bar, drilled for the end opening and a small second hole at the end, and bolted them to the rotary table to shape the outside edges. Ran passes down the outside to do the straight sections, 10 degrees either side of center, then ran around the large end with the rotary table.

Then over to the bench vise, and cut in the V opening with a small hacksaw blade.

Trimmed off the narrow ends to get rid of the small hole used to hold it in the mill, and drilled the ends to take the stay rod.

Some filing and sanding, and ready to silver solder them to the rods. I am only doing one end at this point, I want to wait to do the second end to get the exact length when the A-frame and turntable are ready - way too many parts in between to build up tolerances for me to assume that I'll get the length perfect from the plans! So, I'll do one end now and finish it up later.

After silver soldering, took it to the belt sander to blend in the ends of the brass to the rods.

Looking good, on to the next parts!
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 09:13:17 PM by crueby »

Offline vcutajar

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #908 on: March 24, 2018, 01:29:50 PM »
Quote
Looking good

Looking extra good.

Vince

Offline 90LX_Notch

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #909 on: March 24, 2018, 05:38:58 PM »
Wow Chris, l haven't checked in for some time.  Unbelievable work and progress.  Your builds always amaze me.

-Bob
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My Engine Videos on YouTube-
http://www.youtube.com/user/Notch90usa/videos

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #910 on: March 24, 2018, 07:08:40 PM »
Thanks Bob/Vince, nice to see you down here in the quarry!

Number of little fiddly-bits on the main boom this afternoon, variety of steps on the side, drilling/tapping holes in the sheave holder that the crowd engine throttle lever will attach to, and also the hole for the bucket door release rope.

Coming down to the last parts before I start on the turntable and A-frame, the bearing blocks that hold the shipper shaft (not sure where that name comes from, its the axle that the gears driven from the crowd engine sit on, that drive the dipper boom in and out). After that is the large gears that are on that axle outboard of the ones moving the dipper gear rack, and the curved guards that go around them.


« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 09:13:35 PM by crueby »

Online sco

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #911 on: March 24, 2018, 09:03:47 PM »
Just watched a couple of videos of steam shovels to see how the dipper boom worked - operator had to be pretty skilled to coordinate the in/out up/down motion of the bucket.

Simon.
Ars longa, vita brevis.

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #912 on: March 24, 2018, 09:53:37 PM »
Just watched a couple of videos of steam shovels to see how the dipper boom worked - operator had to be pretty skilled to coordinate the in/out up/down motion of the bucket.

Simon.
On ones of this type there were two operators for digging, one did the hoist and swing of the bucket, the other one (out on the turntable at the base of the main boom) controlled the crowd engine, running the bucket in and out. Must have been quite a skill to have the two guys work as one, the experienced ones worked quite quickly. The one on the turntable also pulled the rope to dump the load from the bucket.

In Marion's catalog, they talk about how the up/down, left/right, and in/out motions were controlled by a single lever each on their machines, since the internal valves on the swing and crowd engines controlled BOTH speed and direction with one lever, and the hoist engine had a bypass so pushing the throttle lever back all the way would vent the cylinders, letting them freewheel, and letting the operator lower the bucket without having to move the clutch or brake levers. Very clever stuff - with two levers, the main operator could raise/lower and swing the boom side to side, and with one lever the second operator could run the dipper boom in and out.

I had this little animation on an earlier post, here it is again:

« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 09:13:44 PM by crueby »

Offline crueby

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #913 on: March 25, 2018, 02:00:20 AM »
Got a start on the bearing blocks tonight - split a length of 3/8" x 1-14/" stainless down the middle to get the blanks, squared them up, and traced out a cardstock template of the outline. This outline is not a critical shape, so I am not going to get too picky on the milling, going for fair curves and as close as I can get to the dimensions. The important dimension is the total height to the center of the shaft. Since milling a block to a shape like this can allow the manufacturing stresses in the metal to cause some bending down the length (which it did slightly when splitting the block), I left the blanks 50 thou tall till the curves were cut in.

Then back over to the (you guessed it) trusty tooling plate on the rotary table, where the blanks were clamped down with a piece of cardstock underneath to give the end mill clearance to the table. Then, hogged off the majority of the metal in straight passes, then did a series of finer cuts with the rotary table to mill in the inner curve, blending that out to the straight outer ends with a little Etcha-Sketch action.

After doing both blanks, here is the blocks so far, set next to the row of bolts that they will sit on:

Its impossible to tell on the real machine how they handled the bolts under the block, whether they flush countersunk them like on the dipper boom, inlet them into the bottom of these blocks with notches, or drilled/tapped the bottom of the blocks to use the through-bolts to help hold them down. I am going to go with the last option, and add a set of studs at the outer ends between the through-bolts.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 09:13:52 PM by crueby »

Online sco

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Re: Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel
« Reply #914 on: March 25, 2018, 06:12:56 AM »
Just watched a couple of videos of steam shovels to see how the dipper boom worked - operator had to be pretty skilled to coordinate the in/out up/down motion of the bucket.

Simon.
On ones of this type there were two operators for digging, one did the hoist and swing of the bucket, the other one (out on the turntable at the base of the main boom) controlled the crowd engine, running the bucket in and out. Must have been quite a skill to have the two guys work as one, the experienced ones worked quite quickly. The one on the turntable also pulled the rope to dump the load from the bucket.

In Marion's catalog, they talk about how the up/down, left/right, and in/out motions were controlled by a single lever each on their machines, since the internal valves on the swing and crowd engines controlled BOTH speed and direction with one lever, and the hoist engine had a bypass so pushing the throttle lever back all the way would vent the cylinders, letting them freewheel, and letting the operator lower the bucket without having to move the clutch or brake levers. Very clever stuff - with two levers, the main operator could raise/lower and swing the boom side to side, and with one lever the second operator could run the dipper boom in and out.

I had this little animation on an earlier post, here it is again:


Missed that animation first time round Chris but it shows well the motion of the bucket.  In the labelled CAD picture you showed a couple of posts ago is there a bit missing that keeps the boom rack in mesh with the gear - in some of the videos some of the shovals seemed to have a hoop over the boom to control the gear mesh.  This bit;

Ars longa, vita brevis.

 

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