Model Engine Maker

Engines => From Kits/Castings => Topic started by: maury on August 22, 2017, 03:50:27 PM

Title: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on August 22, 2017, 03:50:27 PM
Well folks, with the home improvements mostly behind me now it's time to get back into the shop. On my
trip to NAMES this spring I had the opportunity to pay a visit to Dennis Howe of former Historic Model
Design. He is and had been for about a year working on a new scale model. The Dickson! It's a triple
expansion marine engine fitted for stationary use with 2 large dynamos.During our visit it we decided
I would join the project as well, I will be bringing design and casting experience to the project.A
third guy, John Ugo is also in the group, he is designing the electrics for the dynamos.

This is a really magnificent engine, It uses Joys valve gear, has steam valving to allow the engine
to operate as a triple expansion, or 1,2,or 3 cylinder mode and also some combinations of cylinders.
The engine was used in the Henry Ford Plant to operate electric motors for the assembly lines. As I
understand there were 7 of these engines in the plant. The one in the includes pics is located in the
Henry Ford Museum in Detroit. Fortunately, Dennis has been able to dig up some of the original drawings.

That id Dennis standing by the Dickson.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: b.lindsey on August 22, 2017, 04:41:29 PM
What a fabulous project Maury. I am sure your expertise will be most helpful to the group as well.

Bill
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: jeff l on August 22, 2017, 04:50:32 PM
Nice project for sure , but the engine was never in a Ford plant . It was owned buy the Edison Illuminating Company and was in service at the Duane Street station in New York it was in service from 1891-1928 after which it was donated to the Edison Institute which is now the Henry Ford . Jeff
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Ye-Ole Steam Dude on August 22, 2017, 05:08:19 PM

This is going to be a wonderful project to follow. Thanks for sharing.

Thomas
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on August 22, 2017, 10:25:22 PM
Thanks for the encouraging words guys, and JeffI, thanks for the historical correction. Guess I misunderstood or was mis-informed. There is a lot of history associated with this engine, for example, it was during that time that the AC/DC wars were going on. Seems AC won out, obsoleting this electrical design.

A few more pics, the piping is what I'm currently working on.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Johnmcc69 on August 23, 2017, 01:14:53 AM
Now that is cool! Looking forward to seeing it come to life!

 John
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on August 23, 2017, 02:04:00 AM
Fun project Maury!
And right up your ally; looking forward to seeing the updates on this project.


Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: steamer on August 23, 2017, 03:40:17 AM
Oh that's nice!!!

Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Jasonb on August 23, 2017, 09:48:57 AM
That should keep you quiet this winter and maybe a few more too.

What sort of scale are you going for? It's a big engine so you will have to strike a good balance between a practical size to machine but one that does not make the smaller details a watch makers project or simplify things by leaving some items out.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on August 23, 2017, 08:24:34 PM
That is a magnificent machine  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp: I look forward to the model  :wine1:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on August 25, 2017, 02:11:06 PM
Guys, thanks again for the kind words.

Dennis has chosen a scale of 1/20. This will make some of the detail difficult. but at that scale the model will end up being close to 100#. That's big enough. There is no problem with out machines, we have machine capacity for large models.

The piping and valve models are coming along, the precarious thing is getting them to fit with the cylinders. Dennis is doing the cylinders. Also, there is no give in the piping, as it's all flanged together.


maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Jasonb on August 25, 2017, 02:53:01 PM
Would you not make the pihework up working out from the cylinder soldering the flanges, pipe and bends as you go in much the same way the original pipework was welded up. You could have a dummy tooling plate to represent the cylinders and a dummy valve body.

Is that just the chosen colour on the model or are you casting/machining the lagging integral to the pipework and just painting it white?
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 25, 2017, 03:45:43 PM
Hi Maury,  Thank you for starting this thread. This is my first experience in a group build with everyone building the same engine and I am finding it quite enjoyable.

Here is some more history on the Dickson:

This engine was the first time a triple expansion engine was direct connected to two dynamos and represents a big step forward in mass producing electricity for commercial and home use.  The engine was built by the Dickson Manufacturing co. in Scranton PA and the two DC dynamos were built by the Edison Electro co. in Schenectady NY.  The engine and dynamos were installed in Edison's Duane Street generating station Dec 15, 1891.

The three cylinder bores are 18, 27 and 40 inch with a 30 inch stroke developing 650 HP.  the dynamo output is 120 V DC from each dynamo.  Power was delivered by way of a three wire system with each dynamo feeding one of the wires and a neutral wire to tie the two dynamos together.

The Dickson Manufacturing company has some interesting history also.  Started in 1856 by Thomas Dickson in Scranton PA, the company produced stationary engine, blowing engines and steam powered mine cable hoists.  There was also a Locomotive division which Dickson is best know for.  In 1901, the locomotive division was merged with seven other companies to form the American Locomotive Company and the remaining steam engine operations became Allis-Chalmers.

The model is 1:20 scale which makes a lot of small parts, especially in the dynamos, but that was a trade off between making small parts and still having a manageable model.  Even at 1;20 scale, this model is going to be quite a lump with finished.  In hind site, I think 1:16 scale would have been easier to work with but we have too many patterns made now and parts cast to start over.

I will post some machining photos as soon as I learn how to work the posting process. 

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on August 25, 2017, 03:54:27 PM
Jason, we are modeling the entire engine in Solidworks. The models are combined in an assembly drawing and tested for fit. We will also be making precise shop drawings for each part. The precarious part is if there is a mis-communication between Dennis and myself.

Actually, I am using a dummy tooling plate, that part in the Picture is a representation of the flanges, size, and placement.

The parts will have to be machined precisely per the drawing, but that is standard practice in all model building. That being the case, everything should fit properly.

The lagging is going to be cast into the pipe members. This simplifies the work during finishing the model. Guess we could have wrapped the pipes with paper covered with plaster, but that's messy.

It's way too early to think about paint, but the lagging will probably get paint.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: sco on August 25, 2017, 04:13:18 PM
Dennis, Maury,

This looks like it will be a fantastic project to follow - thanks for posting the history and the modelling work done.

Best wishes,

Simon.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Jasonb on August 25, 2017, 08:12:06 PM
Thanks Maury, I can see the way you are going now - a casting for each section of pipework including insulation with a flange on each end to be machined.

Looking forward to seeing some machining photos Dennis but would also be interested to see the patterns too.

J
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 28, 2017, 02:18:47 PM
Jason,
Here are some photos of the iron parts patterns I have cast so far.  I have been documenting the machining steps and including photos of the machining steps in the drawings I make, however they are difficult to share.  And when converted to PDF files, the files are much too large to post here.  Perhaps some time in the future when time permits we will make them available in a different way.   Solid Works is a wonderful and easy program to use and document a project, until your try to share the drawings with someone else who is not using the same year release as you are. 

The parts that have been cast and partially machined so far are the bed plate, foundation, field coil rings and field coil posts.

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 28, 2017, 02:29:18 PM
Hello everyone,

Here is a photo of the partially machined castings cast so far.  I have been working on the iron castings patterns and a prototype foundry in the Detroit area has been doing the casting.  All of the castings are ductile iron and machine very nice but quite messy. 

Maury has been working on the brass parts and making castings in his home foundry.  There are five brass castings and seven iron castings in each armature.  I have been slowly working at machining the first armature castings to prove out the design and patterns.  When complete, I update the drawings for John and Maury to use on their engines.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: jeff l on August 28, 2017, 06:19:47 PM
Top notch pattern work and machining .
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Jasonb on August 28, 2017, 06:41:51 PM
That's looking very good Dennis. Could you give an idea of size, maybe the diameter of the ring?
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Zephyrin on August 28, 2017, 11:08:19 PM
I wonder why there are several wooden models (beautiful in their own!) that look identical, I would have thought it was simpler to make several molds (sand?) With the same model ...

It is really a grand project, wow !
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 29, 2017, 12:44:53 AM
Jason,

Here are some dimensions:

The field ring is about 10 inches in diameter, The foundation casting is about 15 1/2 in long.  When the model is complete with a dynamo on both ends, I thing it will be well over 100 pounds, already getting heavy with the parts in the photo.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 29, 2017, 01:12:43 AM
Zephyrin,

You make a good observation Zephyrn.  On the larger parts, like the dynamo ring, there is only one pattern, split between cope and drag of the pattern board and that works quite well.  That would be the normal way to get multiple cast parts.

Here is my thinking that led to multiple parts on one pattern for this part:

The pattern pieces you see multiple copies of in the photos are the pins for the field coils.  There are 14 field coils on each dynamo,  I just started machining the field coil posts so in a couple of weeks I will have a better photo to show that will make more sense.

I made 16 copies of the pattern so I could get the poles for one dynamo cast in one mold and still have a couple of spares to cover my mistakes.  The foundry I use has a minimum charge per mold which this pattern falls into because the parts only weigh about 1 1/2 pounds each.  Because the pattern for the field coil post is so simple and easy to make, I thought it would be to my advantage cost wise to have a full set of parts on one pattern.

We thought about just machining the parts from square bar stock because the end of the post is 1 1/2 X 1 3/4 inch but the ductile iron casting will have better magnetic properties than the steel. 

Hope this answers your question.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on August 29, 2017, 01:22:31 AM
Wonderful work guys, having worked with Maury on a project in the past I can only guess that you guys are having a great time!
I hope that Maury is keeping his feet dry through this terrible mess going on in Texas and the the other affected states.

Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: kvom on August 29, 2017, 03:00:02 PM
My experience with Dennis' Joy engine led me to believe that 100lb models are pretty hard to drag to shows if you fly to them.  This is the same Dennis who told me he was out of the large engine business because the castings were too heavy to manage.  I'm glad he's abandoned that idea, as this engine looks like a winner.   :ThumbsUp:

I've seen the original at the Henry Ford a couple of times, and in fact it was Dennis who pointed out that it used Joy valves.  The radius rod is so thin that it's hard to see at first glance.  Since the engine doesn't need to be reversed I wonder why they chose this type of valve.  :shrug:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 29, 2017, 10:40:31 PM
Hi Kurt,

Glad you like the model.  I have been thinking about this engine since before we did the Gothic engine 20 years ago.  It is finally taking shape.

As you say, the engine would never be reversed in a power plant so it really doesn't need the Joy's Valve Gear, however, the engine itself was designed for marine use.  I do not know how many engines were built for the marine industry.  It was John Van Vleck, the chief engineer for Edison General Electric Company, who did the design work to adapt the two dynamos to the engine.  The photos and information I found of the Duane Street generating station shows seven of these engines with dual dynamos in the power station. Must have been quite a place.

And yes, I had to leave the model business because I can't lift the heavy castings any more, however I have a son who is willing to help occasionally.  I am building the engine a piece at a time and adding each part to the assembly, when complete I will invite my son to dinner and have him move it.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Zephyrin on August 30, 2017, 08:34:42 AM
Hi,
thanks for the answers, I did not notice the spliced part of the coils frame.

Even if reversing is useless here, the advantage of a geared steam distribution, Joy's in this case, lies also in the possibility of notching and adapting at best the steam expansion and reduces coal consumption.

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on August 30, 2017, 06:36:29 PM
Dave, thanks for the concern about the storm, We were on the outskirts of it. There was a little wind, and rain for about 3 days, but the rain only totaled about 3". Conditions in costal areas are another matter.

I've been mostly hunkered down in the shop. Over the past weeks the CNC got a real workout. I've been making patterns for the castings for the Dickson piping. Over all, there will be about 35 castings or so. I've completed the match plates for the piping, except for the Governor Valve and Main Steam Valve, still need design work on those.

Some of the pipe parts will be made in halves so the interior can be milled out, then the halves will be silver soldered together before machining the flanges. These parts are small, and there will be a lot of 1-72 threading.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: jeff l on August 30, 2017, 06:50:31 PM
Those patterns look great Maury .Jeff
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: kvom on August 30, 2017, 09:54:25 PM
After all the 0-80 fasteners on my current project, 1-72 sounds big.   :LickLips:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 31, 2017, 06:04:27 PM
Glad you area safe Maury.

The piping patterns look great, The cnc is really great for patterns like this.   A nice approach to making small complicated piping. 

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on October 05, 2017, 07:51:23 PM
Well, folks, it's been a while, s o I thought I'd post a bit of an update.
Since I have been working on the valves and piping it has become evident
that some of the parts would not work with sand casting, leaving 2
alternatives. Investment casting seemed the only acceptable choice, so
I set about seeing how I could make that happen. Idid some reading and
talking with folks and also foundry. Well it came down to me having to set
up here at home.  I bought a burn out oven, but the accessories were harder
to come by. I ended up making the racks and tongs. I couldn't find the
proper size wax tray, and I don't have a finger break, so I had to settle
for a smaller one than I wanted. Here are some pics of the back end
equipment I have. On a later post I'll show making the molds, the waxes, and
the trees.

maury

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on November 19, 2017, 03:23:57 PM
Well folks, it's been a while, so I thought I'd give an update. The project is not dead.  It's cooling off a bit, so I am able to do a bit of foundry work. Unfortunately, I've been less successful on this project than some in the past. I seem to have trouble getting my sand molds to fill properly, and so far my investment casting has been a disaster.

Included are a couple of pics of castings. The piping and valve tops are done in sand, There has been some issues with filling, so I spread the parts between 3 patterns instead of 2, and improved the gating. Will be casting these new patterns before too long.

The second pic shows the 3 sizes of gate valves, the valve body being cast in investment. I have a few parts, none of which are really nice, but good enough to machine and verify the design. None of the valve handwheels have turned out so far.

Kind of a bummer, but making progress and learning a lot.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: fumopuc on November 19, 2017, 04:26:59 PM
Hi Maury, I am following along with big interest.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on November 19, 2017, 04:36:08 PM
Hi Maury

Looks like good progress, are the patterns for the investment wax or some other material?

Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Jasonb on November 19, 2017, 05:09:31 PM
They look a lot better than quite a few castings we are expected to pay for!

Interested to see how you machine the U shape for the gate to slide in
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 28, 2018, 04:35:42 PM
Well, contrary to what it may seem, the Dickson is NOT dead.It's been a while, but what happened was I wasted a lot
of time and and investment trying to investment cast the valve bodies and handwheels. Sorry to say it was a complete
failure so I decided not to wast any more time on investment casting and redisigned the valve bodies for sand casting
and fabrication of the flanges.Also the handwheels are now being done on the CNC.

There are 3 sizes of scaled gate valves, and the engine needs a total of 9 valves. I have goof patterns that I have made
castings from, and have started machining them.
I'm including pictures of ine of them through the process.
1) the casting
2) Cutting the pass through to Dim.
3) I didn't show making the flanges from bar stock I cat, but here they are being soldered to the body.
4)Cutting the Flanges thickness to Dim.
5) Drilling the pass through.
6) Drilling and tapping the bolt circle on the Flange.The setup allows the other side to be done after centering.
7) Setup for the valve body top and cutting to dim.
8) Cutting the slot for the gate.

The bolt pattern is then drilled and tapped on the the top. Boring picture, but it really helps a lot
to have a DRO. If you don't have one you need to get one.

More on the valves later.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Mcgyver on February 28, 2018, 05:59:18 PM
Hi Maury,

can you explain a bit more whey the investment casting didn't work and what you think went wrong?  The stuff in post 32 looks great?  Investment casting is something I look forward to trying so am curious what happened
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 28, 2018, 08:39:49 PM
Mcgyver,thanks for asking. The bottom line is I just could not get my molds to fill. Those 3 valve body castings you see in post 32 were 3 of 4 out that molded ok out of at least 50 to 75 that I poured. I'll post a pict of the handwheel  later. I did everything by the book, that is the jewelry casting book suggested by another member on this board. I vaccuumed the investment before and after pouring into the mold, I used recommended  burn out times, poured the metal at the right temperature into the molds which were at the correct temperature, and on my final try, I even vented the waxes thinking there might be too much air getting into the mold. All no go.

Hope this helps,
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dan Rowe on February 28, 2018, 08:50:27 PM
Maury, were you using a solid flask on a vacuum table when you made the pour? I use 1/8" sprues for all but the smallest parts and the vacuum is needed to draw the metal into the mold.

Come down to my shop or I can visit you if you want to see my process.

Dan
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Mcgyver on February 28, 2018, 09:42:55 PM
Maury,
thanks for explaining more, I feel the frustration.  If nothing else I won't feel so lonesome if I have trouble.   I'm inexperienced but have been collecting the equipment and reading up on it.  The one thing you said that struck me was vacuuming before and after; I thought you vacuumed during the pour to pull the metal in as Dan notes?


Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 28, 2018, 09:53:31 PM
Dan, thanks for the offer. I would like to hook up with you next time you do a pour. I can PM you my phone number, and I'll need a GPS address for you.

I don't have a method for pouring the metal under a vaccuum. This may be what my problem is. So, I thought the investment was porus enough to allow gravity to get the metal into the mold cavity. I am using 4" solid flasks, 4" high.


McGyver, I was using the vaccuum to get the bubbles out of the investment while making the mold. Not while I was pouring the mold.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dan Rowe on February 28, 2018, 09:56:09 PM
The investment is mixed then vacuumed before pouring into the flasks. Then it is vacuumed again to remove any bubbles. This needs to be all ready to go as the working time of the investment is 12 to 15 minutes.

I have had trouble getting vacuum a few times before a pour and made the pour anyway... the results are usually disappointing.

We were posting at the same time. I will let you know the next pour I have.

Dan
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 04, 2018, 10:15:32 PM
So here are more parts for the gate valves. It seems the piping and valve work has been about as much as building a whole steam engine from a kit. Been having fun though, and learning a lot: even at my age.

1) This is the part I modeled and wanted to investment cast for the valve handwheels. This the only part which filled as well as it did, and the one of very few that filled more than about 50%

2)These are the Handwheels I made on the CNC. They are a 2 setup job, and take about an hour to cut. Multiple tool changes, and 3D milling The handwheels are about 1" in Dia.

3) The valve stem and the gate. The stem is made of .0925 drill rod with a collar soldered on. The thread going into the stem is left hand.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Kim on March 05, 2018, 05:28:44 AM
Wow, Maury, those are beautiful hand wheels!  Well worth the effort.  Sorry the investment casting didn't work out as well as you'd have liked.
Kim
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 06, 2018, 04:12:18 PM
Kim. thanks for the compliment.

So, now I have completed 1 of each of the 3 sizes of gate valves.

Pics below.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: b.lindsey on March 06, 2018, 07:12:02 PM
Those look great! Maury. Sorry the investment process didn't work but the sand cast bodied look the part for sure and then handwheels are beautiful with the CNC work.

Bill
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 06, 2018, 10:55:43 PM
Thanks for the compliment Lindsey, it's appreciated.

Working on some of the piping castings, I started with a simple one. The 10" scale extension pipe. It has 2 identical flanges, Drilled for 1-72 screws. The pics:

1) the casting
2) Facing the first flange in the lathe
3) Drilling the passage hole
4) cutoff finishes the lathe work
5) A setup is needed to make sure the flanges are centered on the casting and they line up end to end.
6) Using the DRO I first center drilled the BC, then drilled the 1-72 clear holes. Don't have another pict, but I flipped the
part, aligned with the lower BC, then drilled the upper BC.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 15, 2018, 01:50:37 PM
Making the pipe_8_8_8_8 was a little more challenging. there are 4 flanges, all the scaled 8" size, but must
be in alignment on the through passage. The other 2 flanges must be perpendicular to the through flanges , and
have different ofsets. The fully assembled piping structure is bolted to all 3 cylinders, and is hard, as in
no adjustment to the structure. it is critical that each piece is spot on dimension.

Additionally, the part includes a difficult coring challenge. I avoided that by making a 2 piece casting set,
requiring the machining of the passage way and subsequently soldering the parts together. This has actually
worked out quite well. Other parts in the piping part of the Dickson project also use this method.

After the part is soldered together, it may be machined as a regular casting.

1) cutting the passage uses a 1/4" ball endmill, and is cut to a depth of .125. This of course gives a 1/4"
Dia passage. Note, the passage is not milled to an accuracy that will allow using it for a reference to later
operations. The OD of the flanges is carefully measured and used, the BCs on these flanges will be centered
on this OD measurement.

2) The halves soldered together. Note, the parts were sanded with rough sandpaper on a flat surface before
 the passages were cut. The castings were good, and it was not difficult getting a flat clean surface.

3) First OP: I didn't show a setup pict. but the part is setup in the vise with the tops of the 2 pass through
flanges parallel to the X axis of the mill. Measurements in the Z are setup on the Z DRO, and the flanges are cut.

4) The Bolt Circles are drilled

5) Second OP: The vise holding the part is then rotated in the Mill vise, exposing the next flange to be cut,
and keeping everything square. Next the vise is rotated again exposing the final flange.

Hope this gave some ideas for those challenging casting setups.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 16, 2018, 07:07:00 PM
Hi Folks, well there has been a lot of plug & chug here. The piping sub assemblies are coming together. I need more castings to finish the valves and my knee is out of commission, so it may be a few weeks. I still have the governor and a couple  more pipe fittings to build, will keep me busy for a while.

I'll be glad to get to the next phase of the project, there are lots of bolt patterns to make on these parts, and over 200 tapped holes. Almost all are 1-72. Still having fun.

1) Pics 1,2,3 are the High Pressure Cyl to Intermediate Pressure cyl  piping connections.
2) Pics 4,5,6 are the Intermediate pressure to Low Pressure cyl piping connections.
3) Pics 7,8 are the Exhaust piping connection from the Low pressure cyl.

maury

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 20, 2018, 08:55:16 PM
OK Folks, a little shift away from working on the piping. I have the drawings from Dennis for the base parts of the Dickson, so I thought I'd start on the crank shaft. I need to fettle the castings before I start on them. I made models of the crank parts in Solidworks, Also changed the design a little I won't be exactly scale because of this, but I wanted to make the crankshaft shaft with a single piece of drill rod. The original engine design has the crank shaft built in 3 pieces and bolted together with flanges. My experience tells me I won't be able to make that design accurate enough without the crank binding a bit.

I had a couple of busy days in the shop with 4 machines running. Had a great time. Here's what I've made so far.

1) I ran the model for the crank bell on the CNC. (actually did this 6 times). I chose to use round stock.  So to prepare the stock I faced  both ends of a piece in the lathe to get a parallel surface with a good finish for the face. I ran the part in the CNC, then used the band saw to cut it off a bit proud of the needed Dim.

2) I also made a Solidworks model for a tool to face off the other face. The pattern is a few thou bigger than the bell, and uses 2 set screws to hold the part in while facing. The bells were faced to Dim.

3) The 6 crank bells then needed the holes reamed because my CNC has a bit of backlash and the holes are not only not exactly round they are not quite the right size. Fortunately, they are smaller than Dim. I want a medium press fit with the shaft. After assembly, the bells will be pinned to the shaft.

Next time the counterweights, They should be even more fun.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 21, 2018, 08:48:04 PM
Well Folks, another fun day in the shop. Today I worked on the Crankshaft counterweights. I had to diddle with the geometry a bit to get a nice tight fit between the bell and the counterweight to compensate for the backlash in the CNC. Hit it on the first try. I was able to cut two parts before my tool showed too much wear to go on. it is an old 3 flute carbide tool, and it has made a lot of steel parts. ( Chuck: if you are tuned in could you send me the contact info for the tool place in Round Rock please? )

I used a 3D tool path to avoid making any heavy cuts, balanced with cutting air. The part is about a 1 1/2 hour run.

1&2) CNC cutting the part.

3) The counterweight after being cut off in the band saw and facing the back face in the lathe.

4)The counterweight and bell assembled. I was planning to use set screws to hold the parts together, but  they fit tight enough that I may use LockTite.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on March 21, 2018, 11:50:35 PM
Nice looking parts Maury!


Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 23, 2018, 12:04:20 PM
Dave, thanks for the compliment.

Also looking forward to seeing more of your excellent work. Max tells me the Pacific is getting lonely.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on March 25, 2018, 04:53:29 PM
The Pacific is lonely, I havent been able to work on it since I made the pulley back in November. Part being busy with other projects and part procrastination.
Max walked by it the other day and mumbled something about that thing needs some paint. :lolb:
Hopefully I will get back to it soon.

Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on March 30, 2018, 03:51:48 PM
Moving along on the crank shaft, I am assembling the 3 throws as sub-assemblies before
assembling the whole crankshaft.

1) The Throw parts. The new part is the little shaft made from drill rod. It has a tight
press fit into the crank bells.

2) The Throw tool holds the shaft vertically while pressing. I use a manual press, one of the
cheap ones, and while pressing it seems to like skewing the components off vertical. The tool
helps that.

3) Ready to press.

4) After pressing one crank bell to the shaft, the second one is aligned with piece of drill rod.
The fit is a light press.

5) the finished crank throw.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on March 30, 2018, 06:14:13 PM
Interesting jig for assembling the throws  :ThumbsUp:
I'm guessing that you will make another to assemble the complete crank .... will it also have features that ensures that the throw angles are correct or  :thinking:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 02, 2018, 02:23:37 PM
Admiral, thanks for the question. Actually, I was going to make a 60 deg. jig to hold the frank
 for drilling the holes for pinning the throws to the crank, but the light turned on. I ended up
using the spin index. Worked out well. I'm including pics for the setup of each throw, and some
shots of the finished crank.

maury.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on April 02, 2018, 09:36:18 PM
So if I understand the pictures correctly - you pinned / screwed the throws onto the shaft - though I do not see the evidence on the last pictures  :thinking:

Thanks and best wishes

Per
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on April 02, 2018, 10:53:22 PM
That is a nice looking Crank shaft Maury.  I really like the way you put the parts together and the idea for setting the rotation angle on the individual cranks.  Did you use the 308 stainless for the crank parts? 

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: b.lindsey on April 03, 2018, 01:07:19 AM
Wow, very nice looking crankshaft maury!! All these details are going to make a fine looking model for sure

Bill
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 04, 2018, 02:50:18 PM
Guys, thanks for all the nice comments!

I guess I was in a bit of a hurry when I posted last.
As I said I used the spin index to get the proper rotation of the cranks. So What I did was to position the first throw on the shaft using Locktite262. After hardening, I drilled and reamed the pin holes for .125 pins. Then rotated the spin index 120 deg. and repeated the process for the other 2 throws.

The reason the pins don't show on the final pic is because they are covered by the counterweights. I thought it more attractive to hide them.

The materials I used were:
Drill Rod for the shaft parts, I like it because it's ground to a nice finish and it's harder than the usual softer steels.
I had some 1144 in my bin, this is my favorite steel to use for most general applications because of the finish I get and the nice way it machines. Also, machined this dry. Almost like cast iron but without the mess. I used it for the counterweights
The throws were made from 1018 because I had some of the size I needed. I will use 1018, but it's gummy and doesn't give a great finish with using oil. Thus a mess.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: gbritnell on April 04, 2018, 07:25:01 PM
HI Maury,
Great work as usual! I really like the crankshaft.
gbritnell
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 05, 2018, 05:11:13 PM
George, Thanks! I appreciate the compliment
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 09, 2018, 10:07:59 PM
Hi Folks, I cut the pattern for the drag side of the Low Pressure cylinder today. Dennis is designing these parts and sending me .step files so I can run them on my CNC. This was a 3D run, and was about 8 hours. It is made from REN, a really nice material for making foundry patterns. I used a 3/8 tool for roughing, 1/8 for rest roughing, and a 3/16 ball end mill for finish.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: J.L. on April 10, 2018, 01:07:05 AM
HI Maury,
Absolutely stunning work.
John
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on April 22, 2018, 10:26:19 PM
Hello everyone,

Finished up the patterns and core boxes for the 6 columns for the Dickson model last week and got them to the foundry.  Here is a photo of the pattern for the three front side columns and their core boxes.  These are simple "strike off" core boxes cut on my CNC router.  The pattern pieces were also cut on my CNC router.  I will post photos of the parts when they are cast but not sure when that will be.  The foundry looked busy and I didn't ask the lead time, just grateful they will still cast my small volume parts.

The High pressure and intermediate pressure cylinder patterns are being assembled in the shop now.  Maury machined the pattern pieces from REN board and it is really nice to work with.  First time for me with the REN board, wish I could afford to use it more but it is quite expensive.  The core boxes for the cylinders and steam passages are much more complicated than the column core boxes.  The cylinder core boxes are made in two parts and they will be closed with several vents on one side and multiple high pressure fill tubes on the other side.  Not sure what this process is called but it makes a very dense and strong core.  The foundry guys taught me about this process when I was having trouble making cores that would hold together for the compound condensing marine engine river gypsy built.  I will post some cylinder pattern and core box photos when one of them is finished. 

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: 10KPete on April 23, 2018, 02:36:27 AM
Sodium silicate or CO2 cores.  Wonderful invention.....

Pete
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 23, 2018, 06:57:35 PM
Dennis, great looking core box.

10K, you can't use sodium silicate on iron, it will fuse like glass and you will never get it out. Actually, it might even melt and deform. I believe the foundry is using either baked cores or Air set sand.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: 10KPete on April 23, 2018, 07:13:36 PM
Dennis, great looking core box.

10K, you can't use sodium silicate on iron, it will fuse like glass and you will never get it out. Actually, it might even melt and deform. I believe the foundry is using either baked cores or Air set sand.

maury

Maury, the silicate is not used alone in making a CO2 core. There are other additives/factors which are used/accounted for in using this system, which was invented/patented around 1959. Silicate cores have been used for iron since day one.

Here is some basic information on the system:

http://www.hillandgriffith.com/green-sand-metalcasting-foundry-news/sodium-silicate-binders

https://www.budgetcastingsupply.com/product-p/1025-qt.htm

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2883723

I hope this helps,

Pete
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on April 23, 2018, 10:01:11 PM
Pete,

Thank you for the additional information.  I will make good use of it.  My pattern making and foundry experience is from trial and error so every little bit helps.  I make something and when it doesn't work the guys at the foundry are kind enough to explain why.  Wonderful people and I have been working with them for 20 years now.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 26, 2018, 08:52:20 PM
Guys, Thanks for all the nice comments. I decided to jump in on the main castings for the Dickson.
The base Plate seems like a good place to start.

1) the casting was a bit rough, so I did some initial fettling to get it where I could get a good
setup for the first cut. This is important because everything will be referenced to it.


2)Bearing Mount Holes: After the first cut, the casting was fettled some more to get a good top side
setup.This setup was maintained for the remainder of the machining of the part. The column pads and
main bearing cap pads were machined to finish height. Then the stud holes for the mains were drilled.

3) Base Mount Holes: The base mounting holes were located and drilled. There were small discrepencies
between the Dims and the locations of the pads on the casting.So I centered the holes on the pads and
recorded the dims on the drawing for future use on the foundation casting.

4) Mains: Since the stud Holes intersect the trough for the mains, they were done first. Then the
trough was cut to Dim.

5) Columns: Notice the hankypanky with the clamps. They were moved one at a time to preserve the setup.
Had to do this twice. I did sanity check the setup with the DRO before proceeding each time.The 48 column mounting holes were drilled and tapped. a bit tedious.

6) the machined bed plate.


maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: crueby on April 26, 2018, 09:12:27 PM
Great job on the base, thats a lot of holes to get lined up.   :ThumbsUp:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on April 27, 2018, 04:28:41 PM
Crueby, thanks for the compliment.
If it weren't for my DRO I would never have been able to Get all those holes right. Thanks for technology.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on June 03, 2018, 07:55:29 PM
Hi everyone,

Last Friday, I picked up the cast columns, bearing caps and cylinder heads for the Dickson engine model.  Did some trimming on the castings and the first set of parts (in the photo) will ship to Maury Monday morning.  Still with a lot of trimming to do.

In the photo, the in-gate for the columns is at the top of the column.  I left most of the gate on the parts in case we wanted to use it to clamp the columns down for machining.  The workers at the foundry cutting off the gating can get a little heavy with their grinders and saws so I always tell them to trim the gates at least a half inch from the part.

The cylinder heads all have a large chucking post on the back side which makes them easier to hold for machining.  I left the bearing caps attached to a strip of runner so they wouldn't get lost so easy.

The three cylinder patterns and core boxes are being worked on now.  They are nearly finished so at least one of them should be at the foundry late next week to see how the pattern and core box are going to work.  We want to be sure the cores in the steam chest area and steam passages will be strong enough before running all of the patterns. 

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: sco on June 03, 2018, 08:26:37 PM
They look nice and crisp!

Simon.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on June 04, 2018, 04:11:31 PM
Dennis, great looking castings! I know the columns were a particularly interesting challenge because of the cores and curved parting line. Great work. Can't wait to get some.

maury

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on July 25, 2018, 08:18:38 PM
Hello everyone, I can't believe how long it has been since I updated the Dickson build, but we have been working on it.

This afternoon I went to the foundry to pick up castings for the HP and IP cylinders.  There are photos below.

Photo 1. the pattern for one of the cylinders.  I only put one cylinder on each pattern board. I was concerned there would be a lot of bad castings at the foundry because of the small internal passages I tried to cast into the part.  However, that wasn't the case

Photo 2. the assembled core box for the internal piston valve steam passages and the cylinder bore.  The core sand is blown into the mold under pressure and I am told this makes a stronger one piece core. 

Photo 3. the core box opened up.  The cores are about 3/16 inch thick in the thinnest areas so I was trying to get the strongest core I could.  When I was walking through the casting area, most of the cores there could be measured in inches, not 1/16ths.  It takes more work to make the core box this way but the results are really good and there were no bad castings at the foundry.

Photo 4. Finally, the HP and IP cylinders as they came from the foundry.

One more pattern to go, the Low Pressure cylinder.  The LP cylinder core is even more complicated because there are two sets of piston valves to get the volume of steam needed for this large cylinder to operate.  The cylinder bore, and each of the piston valves are on separate planes so a simple two piece core box won't work.  The pattern is about 80% complete and I will post photos when it is done.

I have also been updating and making additional drawings for the project.  Up to 240 sheets so far.  Everything has been checked for clearance as far as I can with Solid Works assemblies which is quite a lot.  However I am sure there will be a lot of corrections to the drawings as we machine more parts. 

I'm looking forward to getting back to the metal side of the shop to machine some of these castings.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on September 07, 2018, 09:03:47 PM
After setting the Dickson aside for a couple of months, it's time to get back to work on it. I was waiting
for Dennis to finish up the shop drawings for the columns and valve gear.There are over 200 pages of
drawings, so he has worked quite fevorishly on this task. I was working on the Tank cooled mogul during
this time, when I get some time I might post the progress on it.

So the work on the columns is an interesting challenge.These castings don't have any easy ways to hold in
the machine for work, so I thought I'd post what I did. Don't know if this is the best way, but it seemed
to work.

Step1: machine the flat surface for the cross slide. This will be a reference for all other machining
of the part. The height of the back of the foot is measured, and the height of the back of the top foot
is added. A spacer is made to raise the back of the top foot to the calculated height, and the cross
slide is machined to the calculated height.

Step2: The Feet are machined. With the part clamped parallel to the front plane, it must alsp be aligned
with the right plane.This is done by measuring and centering 2 sets of features, The insides of the feet,
and the width of the casting at marked points near the cross slide. This step is tricky and precrious and
care must be taken.The feet are then machined to thickness and trimmed to their proper size.

Step3: The easy part. The DRO is setup and the mounting holes are drilled.

Step4: After the feet are machined, the part is set up in the top plane and right plane using the 2 machined
surfaces.The cross slide for the valves is machined to height, the the DRO is set up again.

Step5,6: The holes for the cross slide caps are drilled and tapped.

Step7.8: Time to make the slots for the valve gear. Using the same setup, the slots are milled.

The tops of the feet will have to be cleaned up a bit for the bolts to fit down nice. After all the columns
are machined they will be assembled to the engine base for machining the tops and the pads which are at
angles on the fronts and backs. This will be for another day.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on September 08, 2018, 11:39:54 PM
Big step forward Maury!

Thanks for posting the photos,  the best way to machine a part is the way that works for you and the resources you have. 

I like the way you machined the column and will be following your lead when I get to machining my columns.  Securing that casting to the milling machine table is a real challenge when the only flat cast surface is the first surface that needs to be machined.   I'm going to look at the drawing sequence and make sure the multiple drawings for each column follow the machining sequence you used. 

It is really good to see some more parts taking shape. 

Great work figuring out the column machining.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: mechman48 on September 09, 2018, 11:33:11 AM
Very impressed with the progress so far; read through your write up so far, well thought out & presented, inc. pics...  :drinking-41: look forward to eventually seeing the completed model in operation … :ThumbsUp:

George.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on September 14, 2018, 10:00:52 PM
George, thanks for the nice comments.

Interesting week on the CNC. I have made tool paths for about half a dozen parts for the valve gear, and decided to start with the levers. I think these are the hardest and most precarious parts in the valve gear. Mostly because of their size. It took a few tries to get the tool paths tweaked in so I liked the results. Most of the work was done on the CNC, but I finished up on the Bridgeport.

Maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Ye-Ole Steam Dude on September 14, 2018, 10:14:57 PM
Hi Maury,

Nice work and good looking parts.

Have a great day,
Thomas
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on September 16, 2018, 07:28:36 PM
Thomas, thanks for the compliment.

Well, I worked up a CNC job to make a cross slide part for the Dickson. It is a 3D job with 2 setups. The first one turned out badly, due to excessive backlash on the Y axis. I adjusted it best I could this morning, and made the second part. it turned out usable, but not really what I would have liked. I think I will have to be replacing the ball screw and thrust bearings on the Y axis in the not too distant future, or just maybe ask Santa for a new machine for Christmas.

The part:

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: 90LX_Notch on September 16, 2018, 10:13:42 PM
Following along Maury.

-Bob
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on September 17, 2018, 11:01:11 PM
Folks, had a break from the CNC today and back to the lathe and mill.
I made some valve linkage parts, all from 303 stainless.
The linkage is the adjustable part in the linkage, and the screw is RT hand on
the lower end and LH thread on the upper.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on September 19, 2018, 08:19:40 PM
Good progress Maury,
Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on September 20, 2018, 09:10:50 PM
Dennis, thanks for the comment.

Back to the CNC, thought I'd work on the rockers. THis is a difficult part to hold, so As I posted earlier, I made a new fixture. I'm using 3/8 square 303 stock. Was planning to make the part out of 1/8 stock and use a screw to hold the post on. decided to 3D the whole part. This is the first time I used the tab feature in my BobCam. nice feature. Also, to avoid cutting the fixture, I put some .008 brass shim under the stock. Seems to have worked out nice.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on November 19, 2018, 09:29:14 PM
I finally made the trip to Houston to get my foundry sand mulled. It is so much better now.
So I did a Bronze pour and made some castings for the Dickson.
I've been wanting to get the crank I made put in, so I cast the Mains and the Con Rod parts.
Working on the mains first.

To start with I worked on the lower bronzes.

1) the shaken out casting, turned out good.
2) the parts cut off and cleaned
3) The bar stock is squared up and the first cut is for the side notches.
4) Second cut is the bottom notch
5) The finished part. The bore will be dine with all the bearing bronzes assembled to the base.
6)The end lower bronze is fitted to the base. The fit is quite snug, and is had to be tapped into the base.
7)All of the lower bronzes fitted to the base.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Ye-Ole Steam Dude on November 19, 2018, 10:15:55 PM
Hi Maury,

Those castings sure do look nice.

Have a great day,
Thomas
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on November 24, 2018, 10:49:19 PM
Thomas, thanks for the compliment.

I'm back from the Thanksgiving trip, so I thought I'd post a bit more progress.

I've finished the upper mains, or bearing caps. The photos show some of the steps along the way.

Next step is to order a long 39/64 drill to bore the mains. I have a .626 reamer. Next post will show the setup and steps.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: crueby on November 24, 2018, 11:48:56 PM
Very nice progress! Looking forward to seeing how you do the boring, going through that many bearings always makes me pause and think. A lot.
 :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on December 01, 2018, 08:59:25 PM
Cruby, thanks for the compliment.

Boring the mains is not as much a challeng for me as it is for my equipment.
I have a Bridgeport, and still had to improvise. The 39/64 drill came in yesterday, I already had
the .626 reamer, so I got started.

1) The first pic shows the main setup jig I used. I have a square tower block that I used to hold the
engine base. I needed it to be above the table a bit, so I raised it a bit. The tower isn't exactly
square so I had to shim the base a bit to get everything square with the table. This took a bit of fiddeling,
but it wasn't bad.

2) After that I found the zero on the bearing, and set up ther DRO in case my  work was interrupted.

3) Center Drilling where the hole will be bored.

4) Since my Bridgeport can't accomodate a 12" drill on top of the base I have, I used my 39/64 Jobber drill
to start the hole. I was able to drill the top 2 bearings and start a nice centering hole for the long drill.

5) With the table all the way down, I removed the top 2 bearing caps and was able to get the long drill
into the chuck.I was able to complete drilling all the bearings.

6) Reaming, the reamer was shorter, and fit into the space if I used a collet to hold it. All the bearings
were reamed.

7) Finish on reamed bearings.

8) There was a generous amount of burring on the soft leaded bronze. I cleaned up the parts, and assembled
the crank to the base and added the caps. The moment of truth! Did I bore the holes straight, and did I
get the crank straight? It turns out the fir is silky smooth through the rotation, and just a little bit
snug to turn. I probably could have used a .627 reamer, but I didn't have one. I've found that when reaming
soft leaded bronze, the fit may be a little tight. It'll wear in nicely.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: 10KPete on December 01, 2018, 11:12:29 PM
That's just beautiful!!

Pete
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: b.lindsey on December 02, 2018, 01:13:19 AM
Awesome Maury!!  Had missed a few posts but caught back up again now.

Bill
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: PJPickard on December 02, 2018, 03:14:20 AM
OK now that I found this thread I will be following closely!
Nice work!
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on December 02, 2018, 03:44:13 PM
Really good work Maury, thanks for posting your progress on the crank.  I have been looking forward to seeing that assembly.  You are getting way ahead of me!  I like the way you made the bearings and crank shaft, and the assembly looks perfect.  I am working the drawings and photos you sent me into the drawing package so all the options will be there. 

My crankshaft material is cut and squared with the machining centers in the ends.  I decided to make the machined crankshaft because I have never done that before.  I'll never learn any younger.

I will be looking forward to seeing your base with the columns and cylinders installed.  The low pressure cylinder pattern has been at the foundry for 7 weeks now so we should have parts soon.  I know they are very busy and our pattern is not the highest priority.

Paul, glad you found the Dickson thread.  Welcome, I hope you enjoy following it.  Maybe we will see a new thread on your compound engine one of these days?
Dennis

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: J.L. on December 02, 2018, 03:54:38 PM
Incredible work!
John
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on December 07, 2018, 11:10:58 PM
Hay guys, Thanks so much for the compliments, I appreciate them a lot.
]So, I have some progress to report in the con rods. I have completed one, and will finish the con rod assembly on my next post.
here is the progress on the  cross slide and the  throw bearing parts.

1, 2, 3 ) The cross slide part was made on the CNC, but there was material left over to be trimmed off to match up with the cross slide bearings on the columns after they are machined. This will happen in a later post. The original drawings show the part to be more than 1 piece, but since there are no cross slide shoes on this engine, I made it in 1 piece to simplify the construction.

4) The castings are fettled, drilled and tapped, then cut with a 1/16 saw in the Bridgeport.
5) Then, they are mounted in the lathe, center drilled, and drilled for boring.
6) Boring to about .01 under size.
7) Reaming to final size: .626

maury


Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: steamer on December 16, 2018, 04:15:58 PM
Maury.....this is great    watching along!
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on January 13, 2019, 09:18:01 PM
It's been a while folks, so I thought I'd give an update on the Dickson. Still haven't gotten the LP cylinder casting, so I'm trying to make progress on the valve gear. This is an intricate contraption, and I'm not sure I fully understand how it works. I have made all the parts for the HP cylinder, and have fitted them to the engine base ans columns. After working through a few minor interference issues, it does seem to work. The true test will happen when I actually try to get it to run. The CNC has been busy, and will be even busier this week when I will be duplicating those valve gear parts for the other 2 cylinders.

I have a few shots of the lower engine assembled with what I have completed so far. Enjoy.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on January 29, 2019, 03:48:58 PM
Hi Maury, Thanks for posting the assembly photos for the Dickson, I have been wondering how it would look as the columns went on and it looks really nice.  I talked with the foundry this morning and they are having problems with the LP cylinder cores.  We are going to get together next week (after the cold breaks) to figure out another way to make the valve cores.  With two piston valves in the cylinder casting, the internal passages are quite complicated.  It seems that every time the foundry teaches me something new, we push the design detail a little farther and get in trouble again.  Looking forward to next weeks meeting and learning more.
Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on October 15, 2019, 10:48:20 PM
OK Folks, I'm back on the Dickson. I was waiting for a casting, the LP Cylinder which has very complex cores internally. The foundry just couldn't make the cores, so they had to be redone. I now have the LP Cyl casting, but there are some interesting caviats. I'll be posting progress on this thread again soon, so now is a good time for those interested to re-familiarize with it.

In the mean time, I worked on the Forest 1889 6 cyl engine design, and built a Bob Bromps Tank Mogul engine kit I had. I might post that when I finish it and get it running.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on October 16, 2019, 05:09:22 PM
Dennis dropped off the patterns and core boxes at the foundry just at the beginning of the year.
So we have been waiting about 9 months for this casting. Overall, the casting seems to look ok,
but closer analysis has shown a number of issues.

1) Looking at the bottom view one can see where the foundry has unfortunately cut off the mounting
foot at the rear side of the cylinder. I have designed a foot part that will replace the cut off
part. I will show it on a later post.

2) The cylinder bore core apparently floated up a bit and put the cored out metal off center. This
would not normally be a problem, and is actually expected. Unfortunately the  core should have
been a smaller dia. This can be taken care of with a pressed in liner. I want to press it in because
the bolt circle for the head may intersect it, and probably near the OD.

3) I'm still looking at this issue, so there may be some changes later. It appears the cores for
the valve cutouts have been placed too high in the cylinder. I believe there is enough metal as
to not compromize the internal geometry and the valve operation, but the problem is at the top
of the cylinder. There is not enough metal there to keep the part geometry in dimension. If the
cyl height is held to dim, one of the ports will be cut into. The first solution I have thought
of is to add height to the cyl casting by attaching a plate above the casting. This compromizes
the scale , but may be necessary to make the engine work.

Some of you may think this is a disaster, but I look at as a challenge. We don't want to go through
the expense and long wait for a better casting. so we will do what we have to do to make the best
of it. This is a bit of an extreem example of a problem with a casting, but it will be a good
experience doing the fixes to make it work.

1- Top of cylinder casting showing the bore and cast in valve ports.
2- Bottom of cylinder showing the cut off foot area.
3- Bottom of cylinder showing the cast in valve ports.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Art K on October 16, 2019, 05:43:16 PM
Dennis & Maury,
I have seen this post but haven't read it till now due to the length. But as you say it's a good time to re familiarize myself with it. Vacation can work wonders for the amount of time one has to read & get caught up with interesting threads. I have to say that the work that has gone into this build so far is just amazing. Seeing some of the setups used to machine complex shaped parts is a learning experience. Thanks for the detail you are putting into your posts.
Art
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on October 24, 2019, 05:09:18 PM
Progress on the Dickson. Making the Foot. The casting was machined on top and bottom
to get reference surfaces for later steps. There is an ofset both on top and bottom.
By the way, issue 3 mentioned in my previous post is not nearly as bad as I thought,
I misread the prints not realizing there was a step on the top side.

Today I'm making the foot. The casting cleaned up with .406 for the bottom step, a bit
more than the prints, but now it's .406. I leave about .003 for the JB weld joint, so
the foot will be .403 high.

First I prepared stock and set up in the CNC to cut the curves. Just easier than setting
up the rotary  table.

Next, I cut the slots in for bolt clearance.

Finally, I made the bolt pattern.

The completed part. It will be JB Welded to the casting at assembly to insure good  bolt
alignment with the columns.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on January 12, 2020, 07:59:51 PM
Well Folks, it's been a while and I'm a bit behind in my posts. I was working on the LP cylinder, but I had to do a little fill in. so I set it aside, and will gt back to it later.
in the mean time, I have done some work on the Governor lift jack and the coupling to the valve gear. The governor uses a hydraulic jack to control the angle of the valve sliders. unfortunately, it was just not practical to model the hydraulics at this scale, so I made a screw adjustable lift jack. The jack then lifts the valve sliders via a shaft with lift arms, and a turn buckle adjustable coupling. The lift arms are attached to the shaft using 6/0 taper pins to avoid any slippage. Lots of fun parts to make!

1) CNC machining the mount brackets
2) The mount brackets installed on the base
3) Fitting the lift Jack
4) drilling the lift shaft for taper pins
5) Reaming the lift shaft for taper pins
6) Lift Shaft assembled
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on January 12, 2020, 10:35:40 PM
Nice work Maury, thanks for posting the photos.
Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on January 13, 2020, 09:29:26 PM
Dennis, thanks for tuning in.

Well, there is more progress to post. The Dickson is a triple expansion steam engine with A Joys valve gear setup. There
is a lot of action to watch as this engine rotates. There are also a lot of parts. I have completed making the parts and fitting them to the engine. There was a lot of hand fitting to be done. All the parts were made on the CNC, out of 303 stainless steel. This is my material of choice for non-painted bar stock parts. I machines quite easily, gives an excellebt finish, and doesn't rust.

below are various views of the valve gear.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: kvom on January 13, 2020, 11:11:20 PM
Quote
There is a lot of action to watch as this engine rotates.

That is a true statement.  Watching the full-size engine at the Henry Ford is quite hypnotic.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on January 15, 2020, 05:44:21 PM
Kvom, thanks for tuning in.
I plan to be exhibiting this engine (uncompleted) at NAMES this year, hope to see you there.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: kvom on January 16, 2020, 12:12:14 AM
I do plan to attend.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on January 16, 2020, 07:33:33 PM
Hi Maury,
the engine looks really good.  You don't get the full appreciation for how many parts there really are until you see the engine start to go together. 
I have been fighting a bad cold for a few weeks now and haven't been in the shop but still hope to have my bed plate mounted on the foundation and one of the generator rings and armature ( incomplete of course) mounted on the foundation for the NAMES show.  I borrowed a drill and reamer from my son to machine the main crank shaft bearings but haven't started the work yet. 
If you make it to the show I hope we can set the two models together.
Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on January 28, 2020, 08:57:48 PM
Making more progress on the Dickson. As I have previously posted about the steam manifold, I have finally come to the place where I can install it on the engine.  So far I have installed 2 cylinders of the manifold, still need to complete machining of the low pressure cylinder. It mostly went together nicely, though I had to add a small shim under the high pressure cylinder. probably my imperfect machining. With a setup like this, everything has to be spot on.

Hopefully the LP cylinder will go as smoothly.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on February 02, 2020, 02:48:41 PM
Hi Maury,
That valve bank looks awesome! There must be as much work in the valve bank as in a small engine.  You did a great job on the valve design and casting.
Denni
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 05, 2020, 07:38:26 PM
Dennis, thanks for the compliment.
Progressing to the LP cylinder, I have to make two angle couplers to connect to the manifold. These are difficult to cast, so I will be making them from bar stock. Probably no less difficult. The angle and spacing of the flanges provides the challenge.
I decided to make the flanges and the pipe as sections and solder them together. The easy part. The hard part is the parts need to be held precisely in 4 dimensions, so I'll have to make a jig. The pics make the process self explanitory...

unfortunately, I was not able to get a decent picture of the assembly to the engine.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 13, 2020, 08:26:49 PM
Here is the completion of the final fitting for the steam manifold. I made it the same way as I did the one in the previous post, except I had to make another soldering jig.  The angle and the flanges were different.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: gbritnell on February 13, 2020, 08:45:32 PM
HI Maury,
Outstanding work on a very interesting engine! I hope to see you at NAMES this year. It's been quite awhile since we've had a chance to talk in person.
gbritnell
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 13, 2020, 10:09:24 PM
George, thanks for the compliment, I appreciate it.

Actually, Dennis Howe deserves a big attaboy for the work he has done on this project as well. Three years ago I visited him while being up there for NAMES. He showed me this project, which he had already spent several years researching, modeling, and making patterns for the castings. He invited me to come aboard, and I picked up some of the design and casting that was left to do. There is still a lot of work to do, especially with the dynamos.

I'm looking forward to being at NAMES this year. I missed the last two years because I couldn't spend the time sitting in a car for the drive from Texas to Detroit. I have been exercising a lot, and my back, hips and knees feel a lot better because of it. I should be able to make the trip this year.

This is my first triple expansion steam engine, and with the Joys valve gear its a real challenge. As well, it is unusual in
that there is really a lot of action during it's motion.

Looking forward to seeing all the guys at NAMES.

maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Johnmcc69 on February 14, 2020, 01:56:10 PM
Very nice work Maury! A very interesting engine.
 I gotta ask..what do all those hand operated valves do?

 John
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Johnmcc69 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury on February 15, 2020, 07:21:02 PM
Thanks for tuning in guys, thanks for the valve explanation dennis.
maury
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: maury 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: jeff l on April 07, 2020, 04:16:43 PM
outstanding!
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: scc 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis 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".
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: crueby 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?
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk 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.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis 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
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on June 01, 2020, 08:27:19 AM
The additional permeant magnets is a neat trick  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp:  :wine1:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Peter A Lawrence 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)
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Peter A Lawrence on August 13, 2020, 12:23:11 AM
Guys, Ahha, photo #3 is an iron armature core, so it should be easy to calculate after all. Sorry for my confusion. Peter.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Peter A Lawrence on August 15, 2020, 07:13:42 PM
Guys,  I always make my bobbins out of Delrin, the perfect plastic for machining,
very dimensionally stable and uses regular cutting tools.  The secret to winding
level coils is a layer of paper between each layer of winding.  The secret to the
paper layers is to use velum rather than paper, its strong enough that it doesn't
collapse at the ends.  I've been using "16 lb traditional" weight (.003") for wire
in the range #36 all the way up to #26, and I'm sure you could go thicker.
HTH, Pete Lawrence (BAEM).
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on August 25, 2020, 11:22:45 PM
Thank you for the information Peter, and the good ideas.
My son ground a special cutter for the UHMW I used for the coil bobbins and it works very good.  I have some Delrin in the shop left over from another project but not enough to make all the bobbins, the Delrin machines a little easier and I would recommend using it over UHMW.

I will try the layer of velum between layers when I rewind my bobbins.  I had given up on getting a flat winding and sent my bobbins and mandrill to a coil winding company.  The coils were as good as they promised but not as good as I want for my model.  Their engineer said everything was fine until the last 3 layers and they would loose control at that point.  I don't have enough experience at winding to understand why this would happen.

How thick was the velum you use between layers?

Getting a set of castings may be more difficult than winding the coils.  If you are interested, contact me separately at dandshowe@aol.com and we can discuss offline.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on July 19, 2022, 09:47:05 PM
Hello everyone, I need to apologize for not posting for the last two years.  This project has been stalled for a long time due to many reasons, however I have started working on the engine again and have made some progress on the dynamos.  I am building three dynamos, two for my model and one for Maury's model.  The machining is nearly complete on all three and I have been reworking the field coils to make them look better.  Cleaning and priming the castings is next and then completing the brush holders. 

I want to especially thank Peter for his comments about the secret to getting a good level coil winding.  Peter your suggestions work perfectly.  I think the commercial coil winder I used should contract with you as a consultant.

As soon as the parts are primed and assembled, I will be posting some photos.

I should also add, that most of the patterns have been donated to a foundry in North Dakota to hopefully make castings available for anyone who is interested.  You can contact me separately at: dandshowe@aol.com
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: GWRdriver on July 20, 2022, 01:06:33 AM
Glad to see you back in the saddle again Dennis!   :ThumbsUp:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on July 20, 2022, 07:29:07 PM
Glad to see you back on this  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp: There is a lot of stuff to be learnt out there  ::)
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 12, 2022, 07:58:03 PM
Hello everyone, As I said earlier, I have started working on the Dickson project again.  The attached photo is the field for the dynamo.  The coils are wound, dipped and installed.  The dynamo will be shunt wound with the 14 coils in parallel as the original engine was.  I do still have to connect all the coil leads so I am learning more about soldering before I start work on the actual armature connections.  For those of you with soldering experience, do you have any recommendations for cleaning the magnet wire leads before soldering?

The armatures are completely machined and ready for winding.  I have been experimenting with armature windings a little bit and decided to do a lap winding instead of the series windings on the original engine.  More to follow on that idea later.  I have made a form and started winding the coils but it is a slow process.

The commutators are also machined and ready to install.  I want to get the coils in place before adding the commutator to the assembly.

I will try to post progress phots more consistently in the next few weeks.
Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on October 13, 2022, 11:09:06 AM
Looks really good  :ThumbsUp:

Modern Transfomer Wire is really nice to work on compared to the old stuff  :)

The old stuff required you to manually remove the Lacquer before any solder opperation was possible (knife, sandpaper etc.)  :cussing:

With the modern stuff - you just heat it the wire with the Soldering Iron set to 300-350C and apply some Flux-Core Solder to the Tip + Wire. This both Strip the Lacquer away and Pre-Tin the wire - so it is ready for soldering together with other items  :)

Per
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Don1966 on October 14, 2022, 02:20:23 AM
Hi Dennis very nice job on the field cold. I am interested in your commutator fabrication and see if you will show how you went about it. Cutting the Mica and forming the V in the ends of the hard copper commutator bars that will be squeezed together by a threaded V groove washer. Are you making a jig to assemble it?

PS I am also interested in the connection type your using since you said your making a series winding. A Lap winding is a parallel connection a wave is a parallel connection but only two coils are parallel at any time where’s as lap has as many parallel as poles. The lap connect produces more current.  Correct me if I am wrong…

Regards Don
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on October 15, 2022, 08:01:50 AM
Glad to see you back on this  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp:  :wine1:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 15, 2022, 06:45:54 PM
Don and Admiral,
Thank you both for your comments and suggestions.
 
First, I will try the higher temperatures with soldering tomorrow, That will save a lot of work making connections.  Thank you for the suggestion Admiral.

Second, I made a big mistake when I said I was going to use a lap wind on the armature.  My apologies!  It has been 55 years since I took the AC/DC motor course in collage and this is the first time I have used that knowledge since.  Don, the windings are going to be wave and you are correct, the lap winding develops a higher amperage while the wave windings develops a higher voltage.  I hope I have that correct this time.

The original machine has a lap winding which I am sure was for the higher amperage.  However, duplicating that on my model ended up being very difficult because I did not leave enough room between the armature core and the support for all of the wires to pass through.  I will post a picture of the armature as soon as I get one completed and that design error will be obvious. 

The commutators are nearly finished and I will post photos of them soon.  When I started designing the commutator, I wanted it to be vertical like the original but the parts ending up being too small for me to work with.  As a result, I came up with an idea to use potting compound to hold the commutator segments.  The commutator ring was machined in one piece and a backing plate was machined to hold the commutator ring.  Then the commutator ring was bedded in the backing plate with potting compound.  After curing a few days, the commutator segments (70) were cut with a slitting saw using a rotary table on my milling machine.  A very delicate process.  The cut was deep enough to cut through the copper ring and into the potting compound making separate segments.  After cutting the segments, the cuts between segments were also filled with potting compound.  Finally, parts of the backing ring were machined away to expose the ends of the commutator segments.  The backing ring also served as a mounting base for the commutator.  I will make some sketches and take a couple of photos to show this design better in my next post.  Everything I have now is much too large of a file to attach.

Thanks again for coming back to this thread after such a long pause in postings.  I appreciate your comments and advice, I am not an electrical engineer so this is learning experience for me trying to be as true as I can to the original machine but make a design that others can build.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 15, 2022, 06:49:43 PM
I just saw that the PDF file will attach and you can download it so here is the commutator drawing which I hope will clarify my description above.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Don1966 on October 15, 2022, 08:25:50 PM
Awesome it will interested in seeing it develop, thanks for the drawing.


Regards Don
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on December 28, 2022, 06:11:27 PM
Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

I have been meaning to get these photos uploaded with some progress for several weeks now so here goes.

First, there are two photos of the commutator assembly.  The commutator will bolt to the face of the armature after the armature is wound.  In the first photo you can see the segments separated by the potting compound that holds everything together.  In the second photo, you can see how the brass holder has been machined on the edges to expose the ends of the commutator segments.  When the winding is complete, I will cut a small notch in each end of the commutator segments and bolt the commutator to the armature face.  The small notches in the commutator segments will hold the winding wires and the wires will be soldered in place. 

The last photo shows the armature winding in progress.  In the photo, the first 9 coils are laid in.  The wave winding spans 5 slots which is equal to the face of each pole.  Winding the armature is proving to be more of a challenge than I expected, mainly do to lack of experience with dynamos and electronics.  After 5 attempts I am finally making some slow progress. 

If anyone wants to share their experience with winding, I would love to hear from you.  I have a lot to learn about dynamos.

Thanks for reading this thread.
Dennis

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on May 01, 2023, 09:05:32 PM
Just to let everyone know, I am still slowly working on the Dickson Dynamo.  The included photo shows the first armature with all 70 of the coils installed and labeled, ready to be attached to the commutator.  A time consuming task, made more so by my fat fingers and leaving Michigan for several weeks over the winter months. 

Next task to to bolt the commutator to the armature and solder the 140 leads to the 70 commutator segments.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dave Otto on May 01, 2023, 09:39:39 PM
Wow what an amazing amount of work!
Thanks for the update.

Dave
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Kim on May 01, 2023, 11:48:40 PM
Wow!  What Dave said!   :popcorn:

That's a lot of little copper wires to keep track of - hope you don't lose any of the labels!  :o

Kim
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: jcge on May 02, 2023, 12:26:36 AM
Very impressive work Dennis !!
John
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: crueby on May 02, 2023, 03:45:53 AM
That is a LOT of leads to keep track of! Quite impressive work on it all.   :popcorn:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on May 02, 2023, 12:09:58 PM
Very impressive work and (way too) many wires to keep track off  :praise2:   :praise2:

Per    :cheers:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on May 06, 2023, 08:05:33 AM
Splendid  :praise2:  :praise2: That's some fiddley work coming up next  ::)
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on June 05, 2023, 11:15:25 PM
A few more weeks have passed and I can say without a doubt, you were all correct!! There were a lot of wires to keep track of, some labels fell off, and they are all small and delicate. 

After making all of the connections and checking them three or four times, there are still a lot of leads but only half as many as before.  Cleaning the leads was a big chore, I purchased one of the electric enamel strippers and it worked very well even though my leads were a size smaller than the minimum size the tool is recommended for.  The magnet wire I purchased had a heavy coating of a high temp insulating material.  If I got the wire hot enough to burn off the insulation, the wire melted.  The manufacturer said the only way to get it off was to scrape it or use sandpaper.  Both suggestions worked but it was difficult.

The long leads were the easiest to deal with because I could spread them out to get to the other wires.  Next time, I plan to make all of the coils, clean the ends and make the connections as each coil is inserted.  That will at least eliminate the birds nest of loose ends to sort out after all the coils are installed.

Here is a photo of the semi tamed "wild thing".  It has been a learning experience for sure, This armature is for Maury's model so there are still two more to make for my own model.  I will let you know how the learning curve shapes up.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on June 06, 2023, 10:47:54 AM
Not quite finished - but a lot of work done  :praise2:

Regarding stripping the wires - ALL Modern wires of this kind, is meant to be stripped with heat and solder as this is much simpler and easier to do + no risk of shortening it while doing so.
If you have a thermostat on the soldering Iron - set it to around 350C, heat end of wire and apply Rosin-Cored-Solder => Enamel is replaced with solder, ready for connection. Alternatively - dip ends in molten solder, and hold until wire is ready - 3-15 seconds depending on wire diameter.
So strange if your supplier only had more than 40 year old wire in stock ....  :headscratch:

Per           
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on June 06, 2023, 05:14:25 PM
Thank you for the suggestions, Admiral, I have a lot to learn in the electronics area.  The wire I purchased had a polymide coating with a 240 degree C rating. (465 F)  I was concerned about scraping off the insulation as I was going to sew the wire around the core and thought it might be scrapped as I pulled it through the openings causing a short.  The polymide was recommended because it is the toughest.  When I ordered the wire, the stripping of the coil leads never entered my mind.  I purchased a solder hot pot and set it to it's highest temperature but it did not remove the coating.  I just looked at the supplier's web page and there are 3 magnet wires available with much lower service temperatures than the one I purchased.  All part of the learning process, next time I will be better prepared to make the selection.

With this project and previous projects, I have received only good advice and suggestions from readers which I appreciate very much.  My only regret is I didn't start about 50 years sooner.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on June 06, 2023, 10:17:50 PM
Polymide coating is a good thing + I'm pretty sure that this only stable up to 240C (very high compared to most others) .... - the majorety are 150C or 180C ....

My Weller Soldering Irons will go to 450C - so I would expect the Iron to remove your polymide coating too  :mischief:        .... but most cheap Irons can't  :wallbang:

None the less - I would try if I was you - as it is so much simpler   :cheers:

Per
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on July 07, 2023, 04:25:28 PM
The dynamo armature is finally completely assembled!!!!  Here is a photo of the finished armature showing the commutator bolted to the armature and the windings soldered to the commutator segments.  This has been a real learning experience (my first venture into power generation).  Holding the armature on a temporary shaft mounted between test centers made it more convenient to solder the armature coil leads to the commutator and secure the windings.

Many of the difficulties I encountered could have been avoided by:
1 cleaning the coil leads before inserting them into the armature core
2 leaving the leads longer and trimming them after soldering to the commutator
3 making the coil connections as the coils are inserted into the armature core
4 use magnet wire with the lower temperature coatings that can be more easily cleaned off

I hope this is helpful to anyone building a dynamo for the first time.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Kim on July 07, 2023, 05:24:55 PM
Wow!  That was quite the project!  Nicely done.  Looking forward to seeing it work!   :ThumbsUp: :popcorn:

Kim
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on July 07, 2023, 05:36:17 PM
Great to see that you have copleted the Armature  :praise2:

Quite a big amount off work for 'Just one Piece'  ;D - bet you are very pleased that this one is behind you now  :cheers:

Per
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on July 10, 2023, 05:30:30 PM
 :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 08, 2023, 10:52:16 PM
Hello to the people still following this thread.  Thank you for your continued interest in this slow moving project.

I have made some more progress on the Dickson Dynamo, completing the brush holders and brush lifting assembly.  Progress has been slow over the last few months with some backtracking and redesigning, Finally there is some progress to show. 

Photo one shows the brush holders assembly.  The original dynamo was designed with two brushes on each of the 24 poles.  I believe this was to prevent system downtime in the event of one brush failing in service. 

Photo two shows the brush lifting linkages.  This assembly has a lot of little parts for fat fingers to deal with.  The lifting mechanism works the same way as the original dynamo, however, I did change the design a little to make the parts easier to produce.

Photo three is the full brush holder and brush lifting assembly.  The assembly is a little stiffer than I would like so I am hoping with a little exercise it will loosen up.  There are 130 machined parts in this assembly and 160 fastener type parts.  All of the threaded connections were assembled with lock tight to keep them from vibrating loose.  At this scale, getting to any of the many fasteners to tighten a loose nut is virtually impossible without some extensive disassembly.

Photo four is the original dynamo at Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI. for anyone who has not had the opportunity to see engine in person.

Next step will be installing the brushes and wiring harness, which I hope will be a lot faster the building the assembly.  There are still about 20 machined parts to make before the dynamo is completed and ready to run.

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Kim on October 08, 2023, 11:52:02 PM
Wow! That's quite the astounding mechanism!  :o

Can't wait to see it all work!  :ThumbsUp: :popcorn: :popcorn:

Kim
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 13, 2023, 10:15:39 PM
This week I was able to get the wiring harness/brushes made and installed.  Photo one show's the two harness soldered and the joints are covered with liquid tape.  Photo two show's the wiring assembled on the brush holder ring.  Next steps will be machining the parts to raise and lower the brushes and the parts to adjust the location of where the brushes contact the commutator.   
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on October 14, 2023, 08:44:06 AM
Looks good to me  :ThumbsUp:

Are the ends of the wires to be used as the Brushes ?

Liquid Tape - that is a new one to me - where do you find it / Brand ?

Per             :cheers:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 14, 2023, 07:37:11 PM
Hello Admiral,
Originally, I designed a copper leaf brush and clamping system for the dynamo, however, the scale was just too small for my skills to make the design work.  Instead, I am using the ends of the wire leads as brushes and the wire insulation isolates the conductor so the brush holder does not have to be insulated from the other metal components.  I selected an 18 AWG silicone coated stranded wire with 150 very fine, tinned wires.  The cable is extremely flexible.

When I made the connections, I tried to use small strips of electrical tape to insulate the joints, however, the tape would normally fall off or unravel after a couple of days in the shop.  While searching for an alternative, I came across this Liquid Tape product on Amazon.com.  I comes in multiple colors and and can be brushed on the joints to insulate the connection.  The material is very thick and I found that two coats work quite well.  The dried material is quite flexible and has proven to be a good insulator.  This is my first experience with the material but so far, it appears to work very well.

The product I purchased was made by Gardner Bender and available in many sizes.  The label does not have any details about the product, however, there is a short description on the product web page.  There were several companies selling the same product on Amazon.

Attached is a photo for the two bottles I purchased.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on October 14, 2023, 08:02:13 PM
Thank you for the reply  :ThumbsUp:

I originally asked about the brushes as I couldn't see them  ::) - then it kind of dawned on me - but just to be sure  ;)

I found quite a number of sources when I tried 'Liquid Electric Tape' (as written on the bottle in your picture) - intersting stuff  :thinking:

Per          :cheers:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 29, 2023, 06:34:17 PM
There has been some more progress on the Dickson Dynamo over the last two weeks. 

The brush assembly is completely assembled and works.  The lever to raise and lower the brushes has been redesigned and remade, it now will raise and lower the brushes as intended.  This assemble has revealed several design changes that could be made to make future models more efficient and easier to assemble.  They are on my change list for the final copy of the drawings.

The two attached photos show the assembly mounted on the tripod that supports the brush assembly and is bolted to the field frame with standoffs.  The next projects will be the crank mechanism that adjusts the location of the brushes on the commutator and the standoffs for the tripod to be bolted to the field frame.
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on October 29, 2023, 06:38:05 PM
Here is the second photo of the brush holder assembly
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Admiral_dk on October 30, 2023, 07:15:14 AM
Quite a complex assembly for the brushes   :insane:

Glad to hear that it works as it should and that you like the result  :ThumbsUp:

Per    :cheers:

Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on October 30, 2023, 02:45:55 PM
That's some fine work  :praise2: The tools give a good idea of the size  :)

I'm looking forward to completion and testing  :ThumbsUp: :wine1:
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Dennis on December 18, 2023, 08:32:21 PM
Hello everyone,
I made some more progress on the Dickson dynamos over the last few weeks and thought I should post it for the holidays.

The dynamo is assembled but still needs a lot of tweaking and a locking mechanism to adjust and hold the brushes in place.  Also I not happy with the brushes and springs that hold the brushes against the commutator yet, so the brushes need improvement but I am not sure what that will look like yet.  For me, this is a learn as you go project and has been quite rewarding.  I have made a lot of changes to the drawings as I work through this build. I also thank everyone who has made suggestions along the way.

The photo shows the assembled dynamo on a test stand that I worked up from scraps on the metal shelf.  My engine model is not far enough along to use as a best bed so the simple fixture will have to do.  The first thing I learned is how sensitive the location of the brushes on the commutator is.  A very slight movement can make a huge difference in output.  After I get everything working correctly, I plan to do some experimenting with different wiring configurations to show how they affect the output of the dynamo and make notes for the drawings package.

In the mean time, I want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas with a lot of time for modeling.

Dennis
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Kim on December 18, 2023, 10:47:14 PM
That is pretty cool looking!  :ThumbsUp: :popcorn: :popcorn:

And a very Merry Christmas to you too, Dennis!

Kim
Title: Re: The Dickson!
Post by: Roger B on December 26, 2023, 08:20:09 AM
Looking good  :praise2:

The angle between pole pieces on that design is quite small so it will be very sensitive to the brush position and also the consistency of brush positioning around the commutator.
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