Pennsylvania A3 Switcher (Kozo)

[cnr6400]

Major achievement to finish the tender Kim. Well done!   

[joe d]

 Major milestone achieved!       Looking forward to more.

Cheers, Joe

[Kim]

Thanks CNR and Joe!
Kim

[Kim]

I don’t usually get time during the week to play in my shop.  But this week, I’m taking some vacation days.  It’s a use-it-or-lose-it situation, so I’m opting to use it   With the Covid situation and all, any of my standard type vacations were canceled for one reason or another, so I find myself with a few weeks to use before the end of the year.  So I’m going to be taking some time off over the next few months.  What fun!

Anyway, on with the shop update.

Chapter 9.8 - Assembling the Tender (Powder Coating the Tank)

This week, I started painting the tank.  If you’ll recall, I have already powder coated the wheels, trucks and frames.  So now I’m working on the tank.  But that’s a lot of parts!
First step, of course, was to disassemble the tank to the units that will be painted.  I chose to leave some pieces together for painting if it seemed unlikely that they’d need to come apart again during construction or use, like the riser for the headlamp – I’m painting the cover separately since it has to come off to mount the headlamp. But the riser will stay put.  I left several other pieces like that together for painting too.  Here are the disassembled parts:



I started with the tank itself because I was most worried about that part fitting in the oven!  But I made it work   Here it is, ready for powder coating, following a thorough cleaning.  You can see the grounding lug clipped to one of the screws I’m using to support the tank.  You’ll also notice that I covered the oven rack with aluminum foil, so it didn’t come out black.  And there’s some scrap pieces of plate under the supporting screws to keep them from poking through the foil.  Seemed to work out OK.



And here we are with the coating of powder, ready for popping in the oven!



After taking it out of the oven I was a little disappointed because the sides didn’t get very good coverage.  It’s pretty easy to see that in this picture.  The sides aren’t that big of a deal because they will have a cover plate over them.  The really sad part is that the underside of the verge around the horseshoe didn’t get a very good coating either. You can’t see that due to the lighting, but believe me, in person with good lighting, it’s very visible.



After my initial disappointment, I decided to do a second coat right away.  It’s hard to get good coverage in those little nooks and crannies with the powder gun.   But I tried again.  And after the 2nd time in the easy-bake oven, I’m much more satisfied.  You can still see a little coverage problem right along the bottom edge, but in addition to not being overly noticeable, I don’t care because it will be covered by the side plates.  And the under-verge part came out very nice!



Just another shot because it’s so fun!



And last, but not least for today, is the tank baseplate cooling after its time baking. (The weird silver thing above the base plate is the foil-wrapped oven rack that it's wired to.)


That’s it for today. It was starting to get hot out in the garage and I wanted to come in for lunch.  So, there you have it.  Hopefully, I’ll get the rest of it covered tomorrow.

Thanks for looking,
Kim

[Don1966]

Excellent work Kim, I am all caught up on your thread you have some amazing work going on in it......


 
Don

[Kim]

Thank you Don!
I may not move quickly, but I just keep plugging away!
Kim

[Roger B]

Excellent progress      I hadn't thought up until now that the pipe from the tender hand pump has to carry full boiler pressure  Obvious once you know 

[Kim]

Completed painting the parts for the tender today.

Here’s another tray of parts just out of the oven:


And the final parts – the side panels.  These will have the lettering on them eventually.


And here’s the family shot of all the painted parts, before assembly.


Based on more excellent advice from the fine people of this forum, I’ve now ordered the following image cut in white vinyl.  This will be the lettering for the side panels of the tender.


Hopefully that should get here in a week or so, then we’ll see how it all works, eh?

Thanks for looking in,
Kim

[cnr6400]

Top notch paintjob Kim. 

[Kim]

Thank you CNR! 
Kim

[Steamer5]

 Nice work Kim.

The first steam up is getting closer!

Cheers Kerrin

[kvom]

My powder gun is dual voltage, with supposedly the lower voltage best for getting into the tight spots.  Yours turned out great with two coats.

[Kim]

Thanks Kerrin!

My powder gun is dual voltage, with supposedly the lower voltage best for getting into the tight spots.  Yours turned out great with two coats.

Yes, mine has a dual voltage switch also.  Do you find that helps?

The little pamphlet that comes with the unit says the higher voltage may be required for larger parts, and since this was a fairly large part, I was using the higher voltage in this case.  That may have been incorrect.  However, I have found that those tight spots like that are hard to get in regardless of the voltage I use.  In some cases, that little deflector piece that fits over the tip can help, but not always.  I've found (in my very limited experience) that the best thing is just to make sure the air doesn't blast coming out of the gun or it will remove more powder than it deposites.  I try to keep the gun far back and use low pressure, or not point directly at the thing I'm coating, just close by.

I do find it hard to tell when I've got a good-enough coating, but not too much.

But my technique is improving!

Thanks KVOM,
Kim

[Kim]

I’ve got the tender re-assembled after painting but the vinyl lettering hasn’t arrived yet.  So, while I’m waiting I went ahead and started on the engine!

Chapter 10.1 – Side Frames

As with the tender, we’ll start the engine by making the frame.  And the first element of the frame are the sides.  These will be made from 1-1/4" x 1/4" 1018 bar (cold rolled steel).  Since there are some fairly sizable chunks to be taken out of the frames it will undoubtedly go banana on me and have to be straightened out.   But to help minimize the bananazation of these rather long parts, I did some stress relief with a good heating, then letting them cool slowly.



The left and right sides are symmetrical in many of their features so I double sticky-taped the two sides together. However, it is important to note that the two sides are NOT identical.  So, the trick will be to make sure I poke all the holes and cut all the notches that need to line up while the sides are together, but NOT do any of the asymmetrical work until they are separated.  Let’s see if I can actually do that!

Here's the parts taped together and marked up for machining.



After indicating them in on the mill, I trimmed both ends square, and to exact length.  The complicating factor here was to get the full travel required for this part, I had to remove the power X-drive off the table.  At the extreme end of travel it was hitting part of the DRO fixturing and limiting the last few inches of movement of the table (something I’d never noticed before).  So I took he power drive off for this operation.  It’s not hard to re-attach when needed.


After making them the correct length, I drilled, tapped and countersunk 3 places in the sides so they could be screwed together.  Kozo has already done the work of finding 3 places that won’t screw anything else up, so I went ahead and used his locations.  I considered skipping this since I’ve had good luck with the double-sided sticky tape, but decided to take the belt and suspenders approach 


And finally, I spent many hours calculating the exact location for all the symmetrical holes and just where to drill to get the rounded corners in the cut-outs, then drilling them.  Following this, I made some slots as places to get the hacksaw blade in place so I can cut out the chunks.


But the actual work of sawing will have to wait till next time…

Ah… the anticipation!
Kim

[Dave Otto]

Hi Kim

I'm curious what happened to the old limit switch? 
Nice start on the engine frame.


Dave