The Webster Chicago

[maury]

I bet y'all thought I abandoned this project. Not so. I've been held up waiting for castings. These sat in a post office (according to the tracking) for almost a month!!! So now I'm back in business. These are the first iron castings, and from the looks of them, I'm pleased.
Now off to the shop.

[maury]

Moving along, I decided to machine the governor side flywheel so I could check the fitting of the governor parts.
It turns out there is a protrusion on the flywheel for the governor weights. This prevented me from using any of the chucks I have for this lathe. It just wouldn't fit. I decided to make a set of soft jaws for the purpose.

With the soft jaws, machining the flywheel was mostly strait forward, but being a 9 1/4" flywheel it almost didn't fit on my 12" Clausing lathe. Go figure. After the lathe work I took the flywheel over to the Bridgeport to make the slots for the  governor weight arms.

[Dave Otto]

The iron castings look to be pretty nice! You must have had some luck finding a good foundry?

Dave

[maury]

Dave, thanks for tuning in.
I am pleased with the quality of the castings too, but in an ideal world there would be a little less grinding and the sand would be a little finer. Interestingly, the sand they use for the cores is much finer.

A new batch of castings has just arrived. There is a bit of shrinkage on the Exhaust cage, needs a riser, and there is obviously some pattern work to be done on the water jacket for the excessive flashing.

maury

[CI]

Those castings look pretty good.
I have seem some scratch a groove in the sand, to prevent flashing, when using bound sand.
The opposite mold face molds into the groove, making a dike of sorts.

And a bead of mold cement could also be used around the window.

For bound sand, if the molds are not allowed to cure completely on a flat surface after they set, they will actually creep/warp just enough to cause a slight misallignment in the mold halves, and lots of flashing results.

Nice pattern work, and great castings.
So nice to see that.
.

[pirmin]

realy nice castings so far.there are model engine casting retailers that care much less about their stuff than you show in your first batch from this foundry! they realy seem to know what they do in the foundry.

[maury]

Guys, thanks for the compliments and suggestions. I think my foundry uses green sand and air set for the cores, but then I'm not sure. I tried to cast the water jacket at home in aluminum, and it was a disaster.

Soon I'll be posting all the fun I'll be having machining the exhaust cage. It has a lot of set ups and holes that have to align between the setups. I have been thinking of how to hold the casting as it has an odd shape. Normally I'd make a base tool to hold it, but I'm going to try to get by with just a vise first. I have the port and bottom squared up so far.

[maury]

Oh My, I am several weeks behind on my posts. Too much fun in the shop and garden. I know it's a bit early for some folks to get their garden in but here in Texas you have to do it early or it burns up. Everything is blooming and I have lots of baby tomatoes and tomatillos on.
So, to finish the exhaust cage. The side hole in Photo Ex Port 3 will be plugged. It's needed internally to complete the port geometry. A core would have been ideal, but that would have been a second core for the part. The top geometry was made with an external core.

[maury]

This the completion of the Webster Chicago hot tube version. I have been waiting for months to get castings for the Igniter version for this engine, they(mostly) have finally arrived. The Post Office lost some of the parts after having destroyed the original package and re-packaging the remains. This will be my next focus in the shop.

[maury]

Starting the build of the Webster Igniter ve4rsion, I began with the head. There are a lot of holes in that head.
I started on the lathe boring the combustion chamber and the top face which are the reference for the rest of the operation. moving to the mill, I cut the bottom surface and the water inlet. flipping the part I cut the head bolt holes and the water passage slots. Finishing with the igniter and exhaust cage flanges. Lots of setups to indicate in with this part.

[55fairlane]

Very nice work!

[CI]

 

[maury]

Continuing the Webster, I'll be doing the water jacket next. Starting out, there several setups which need alignment along the cylinders axis. To do this I'm making a disc for holding the end of the casting in the core print. I then bolt it to the table on the mill and center the head on it. I can then create a reference surface to use for later alignment. The surface is faced, and the liner hole is bored. A well, the water passages and head bolt circle is machined.

[maury]

Using the same setup with the mill head centered over the disc on the bed, I flipped the casting and aligned the main bearing features along the X axis.

I then faced off the main faces, and made the bolt holes for the main caps. Finally, I milled the inner and outer faces for the mains with the bearing caps installed.

[maury]

Next, I need the gears. one set for timing, and one set for the igniter. Making the blanks on the hob arbor in the lathe. Then moving over to the Barber Coleman.