A Small Inverted Vertical Steam Engine

[ProdEng]

Hi George,

The Sherline runs up to 2800 rpm and, being such a light machine, provides good feel of feed force even with small cutters.  I intended to use a slitting saw to cut the part off but the bar was too long to mount vertically and I was too lazy to rotate the mill head!

With most of the parts made I have now turned my attention to doing a bit of sculpting and finishing.  The base still needed to be shaped and boss added to mount the stay bar.  A draft angle of 2 degrees was milled on the base using the angle table.  After milling the edges where rounded with a file and sanded to blend.



I only had a vague idea of how the boss was to be made and fitted.  Started off by milling a pocket in the front of the base to take the boss.  The base is held down with two clamps and there is a parallel between the base and angle table to resist rotation.



Leaving the base on the mill, I started to turn the boss.  A test fit showed that the parts where in alignment.



Before gluing the boss was shaped to provide access for the fixing nut.  The boss will be fared in using JB Weld followed by a bit of filing and sanding.



A mountain of filing and fitting now awaits my attention but at least assembly can follow just behind

[Don1966]

Great work Jan, I am really getting anxious to see you complete it. The flywheel will be a challenge and an interesting bit of work. I look forward to seeing it built. Your base and standard looks great.

Don

[zeeprogrammer]

Nice post on making that valve. It helped me to see it.
And the base came out real good.

[smfr]

Nice work! Is that a shop-made angle table? It looks pretty handy.

Simon

[ProdEng]

Thanks for the comments guys. 

Simon the angle plate is a Sherline acccesory and it is designed to fit a vice, lathe chuck or rotary table.  Here is a shot of the rotary table mounted to make a leadscrew dial for my lathe.



Some progress has been made with the engine, mainly fitting work. The crank, rod and crosshead now play well together   Still no material for the flywheel, brass is very expensive.  Looks as if I will make it from 1/2" steel plate, not very elegant but effective.

[ProdEng]

Work started on the flywheel, I have a piece of 16mm steel plate so the price was right!  I cut a very rough blank with an angle grinder and improved it with the bandsaw, wearing the blade out along the way.  The flywheel is only 11mm thick when finished so a lot of material to remove.  A 95mm diameter disc fits in the 4 jaw chuck but the C3 is less than happy machining steel of this size.  There simply is not enough power or rigidity in the machine.  As a result progress is SLOW and quite boring.  Anyway after lots of hours of tiny cuts the disc is turned both sides and after the bore is finished I can move to the mill to do the spokes.  The picture shows the first operation, the other side looks the same when it is finished .

[ProdEng]

Managed to squeeze in another hour so I bored the flywheel to fit the crank and slipped the flywheel on to see how it looks.  It looks a bit massive with no spokes but the sizes where taken off a drawing so it should work out.

[gbritnell]

Jan,
A big flywheel will work better than a small one but I agree it does look a little large compared to the engine.
gbritnell

[ProdEng]

Well it has been a while since anything was done on my engine but I have been distracted by some of lifes ugliness.  Getting back to the workshop was a bit strange, everything left exactly as it was with, to my eternal shame, thin layers of rust on a few things!

I wasn't looking forward to milling the flywheel or to making a tooling plate to go on the RT but in the end it went reasonably well and I learned a lot along the way.  The machined finish on a lot of the spokes loked as if it had been chewed out by a rat but a bit of file work saved the day

Hope to be able to get some regular machining sessions going now and also catching up with what everybody else has been up to.

[Captain Jerry]

Hi Jan

It is great to see your return and to see this project revived.  She is a beauty and you have shown a good eye for detail and proportion.  I'm also glad that life's challenges have allowed you rejoin us.

Jerry

[vcutajar]

Hi Jan

Great to see you back at it.  Really looking good.

Vince

[Don1966]

Hi Jan, I am also glad to see you back. You engine needs finishing and I for one would like to see it running. Nice work on the flywheel and engine.

Don

[steamer]

Hi Jan

Great to see you back at it.  Really looking good.

Vince

Absolutely!....welcome back Jan!

Dave

[NickG]

Really nice looking engine, well done 

[Jo]

Welcome back Jan looking forward to seing more of this engine  .

Any chance of jotting down a few notes of what you leant? I for one still have to learn how to use a rotary table 

Jo