Chris's Build of Battleship Ohio Engine

[cnr6400]

Hello Chris,

Lots more intricate parts. Nice work. 

Any idea what your swarf to parts ratio is?

Cheers 

Mike

That ratio varies a lot, all depends on the parts. Lathe work usually generates a lot more swarf volume, especially when boring out cylinders, aside from that its hard to judge.

Hard to count the swarf volume too, when Chris' shop elves haul it off to the scrapyard and get cash for Elfensteiner stubbies (bottles of beer) so often.   

[crueby]

After cutting all the plates from the long bar, they needed to be trimmed to a consistant length. The pairs of plates were screwed together with some short 2-56 screws, and held in the finger clamp fixture (which has been used for many parts over the years, modified lots of times) for milling. To get them all in the same location, two 2-56 clearance holes were drilled near the edge so the two screws in each set would sit down in them. Then set the milling distance from the end once, and just ran all the parts through, one pass per end.

Here are the parts - the three on the left were trimmed, the rest of the pile on the right was ready to go. You can see how the ones on the right are all slightly different lengths.

After trimming a quick touch on the belt sander cleaned up the burrs left by the end mill. Here two sets have been screwed to one of the yokes to show where they will go. Still need to make the bearing blocks that will be held between the plates, and need to silver solder all the bottom plates to the yokes. The center screws will hold them for soldering, then the screw heads can be trimmed off.


And I also need to make another similar set for the links from the crank arms to the center posts...  Lots and lots of parts just in these reversing links!

[cnr6400]

  Lots more bits! It will be a marathon soldering session for all the yokes. 

[Kim]

Great progress on the yoke attachment gizmos. 

You know Chris, it seems like 40-50 pages ago you had said you were about done with the x4 parts.  guess that's true. It's given away to the x9 and x18 parts!  So many little bits that have to be done dozens of times.

You never tackle a small project, do you, Chris? 

Kim

[crueby]

Great progress on the yoke attachment gizmos. 

You know Chris, it seems like 40-50 pages ago you had said you were about done with the x4 parts.  guess that's true. It's given away to the x9 and x18 parts!  So many little bits that have to be done dozens of times.

You never tackle a small project, do you, Chris? 

Kim

Just did a small project, the steam hammer! Went by in an hour... 

[crueby]

CNR, the soldering actually went pretty quickly. I screwed on and aligned all the plates, then the shop elves put on their little fire suits and got the parts all fluxed up (  ) for me.


Closer look - using Harris Black flux, comes as a powder in a little plastic jar. I added water and mixed it all up a long time ago, add a little water now and then to keep a little water over the top. Use a dental pick to scoop out some of the paste and run it in the joints.

Got out the mapp gas torch with a pencil flame tip, and ran down the line heating up each post and plate in turn. When the flux ran and started to turn clear, touched the joint with some X-easy silver solder wire and kept heating to get it to flow around each joint. Just took a few minutes to go down the line.

Letting them cool off now, will give them a rinse and brush off the soot then give them a soak in some vinegar with salt added for the afternoon to clean them up.

Need to make up more batches of the plates, both for the links over to the crank arms and also for the bottom ends of the eccentric arms where they bolt to the eccentric straps...

[ddmckee54]

Better tell the elves that they need some fire-proof spats to go over those shoes, they look like they'd melt.

Kim is right, at the rate you keep increasing the size of the projects, pretty soon you're going to be working on a 1:1 scale Pratt & Whitney Model 4360 28 cylinder radial engine.

[crueby]

Better tell the elves that they need some fire-proof spats to go over those shoes, they look like they'd melt.

Kim is right, at the rate you keep increasing the size of the projects, pretty soon you're going to be working on a 1:1 scale Pratt & Whitney Model 4360 28 cylinder radial engine.

[Kim]

Great progress on the yoke attachment gizmos. 

You know Chris, it seems like 40-50 pages ago you had said you were about done with the x4 parts.  guess that's true. It's given away to the x9 and x18 parts!  So many little bits that have to be done dozens of times.

You never tackle a small project, do you, Chris? 

Kim

Just did a small project, the steam hammer! Went by in an hour... 

Ah, you got me there, Chris!  You did do a little project!  I stand corrected. 

Kim

[crueby]

Nothing new to show today, am in the process of making the rest of the little flat plates for the rest of the connecting links in the reversing mechanism. 16 more pairs for the upper links to the crank arms, and 9 for the eccentric strap top ends. All are drilled, ready for tapping and cutting apart/trimming to length. All is being done just like the first batch I posted the last couple of days. Going to be getting ready for our next outdoor RC boat run this weekend, should be back to showing new parts on Monday.
 

[wagnmkr]

Have you reached the 2000 part mark yet? Asking for a friend. 

[crueby]

Have you reached the 2000 part mark yet? Asking for a friend. 

Well, back when making the bed frame I think the count was 300 pieces. Since then I've added another 500, not counting off-the-shelf fasteners!  So, not up to 2000 yet, but going up fast!
 

[crueby]

Got the rest of the little plates made for all the links/bearing blocks:

Glad all those are done!  Now, looks like its time to make another big pile, this time all the bearing blocks for the links. Need 32 of them...   

[crueby]

Got the blanks for the bearing blocks all cut on the bandsaw - fortunately it has an adjustable length stop so that went quick...

Then, the shop elves must have come back from lunch (finally) and thought I had left them a bonus pile of gold bricks. I guess their freight elevator wasn't strong enough...

 

[cnr6400]