Oops! well no worries about moving the eccentrics 180 degrees. Even the Navy has to come about now and then! 

Just have to make sure I move the eccentrics, and not the rest of the crane!  Whoops, crane is upside-down!      I think that happened to Wile E Coyote with the catapult...

I used SE2025 to make a new Assembly this evening.

I used various alignments - axial, mate, planar etc and whilst the UI seemed slightly different, I didn't notice anything too different.

However, it seems you are making progress anyway, so I can only suggest that you just keep using the tool and with practice it will get easier.

Regards,


IanT 

Well, if you look closely, that scale boxcar is LOWERING, and the car is slowly filling up with cable!   

What none of us (especially me) noticed is that the engine is running in REVERSE!        

Sigh. Well, thats why its a good idea to walk away and come back after a nice read/nap in the sun out on the front porch!  I couldn't resist and cranked up the compressor again, and thought I'd look for that squeeking noise at one spot in the rotation (no, the shop elves pet hamster is in its little cage and not under the flywheel. This time.)


Thats when I happened to look up and noticed that the large gear was running so that the top was heading towards the boom. That is where the cable will be when it runs up to the end of the boom. With the engine running, it should be reeling IN the cable at the top of the drum. Whoops!

Easy fix - just need to rotate the eccentrics 180 degrees, and it will run the other direction. I had just tightened up a couple screws that had vibrated loose here and there, and made a note to back them all out a bit and put in drops of blue (low strength) Loctite. Well, guess I'll do that AND rotate the eccentrics around. They are held with set screws under the eccentric straps, and there are holes in the bottom of the strap so a long hex wrench can reach through to the set screws, so its easy to do.

Decided to go with steel for the valves, seeing as I have some... but first, Mr Tightwad saved the ends of the chuck key handle he cut off yesterday and decided to make use of them...

The finished item just needs the one spool soldering in the correct position:

Made the second one from bar stock which meant it was 10 times quicker:


The fit of these is less than optimal but at least they don't stick in the bore so I'm sure they'll be fine. Still haven't decided how to make the yokes, will probably wake up at 3am and think about it instead of sleeping!

Congratulations on a great first run, Chris! 

I'm sure there will be many more to follow.  And you're right - those valve levers don't move very far, do they!  You knew what you were talking about all along!   (not that I EVER doubted you  )

Congrats!
Kim

Thanks Kim!

One thing I forgot to mention that needed doing this morning to get it to run was that the adjusting nut was sticking slightly in the slot in the back of the slider, so the valve was not able to move and seat against the valve face, so all it did was blow air past into the exhaust. Took longer to remove/replace the steam chest lid than it did to take a couple swipes with a file inside the slot for the adjusting nut, then it sealed just fine.
Its a great spring day today, fast moving up to 70, sunny, calm, so outside I go!