A new member from Switzerland

[Daytona68]

Hello everyone!

I registered here on a recommendation and am currently just browsing around.

I'm from Switzerland and have been involved in various aspects of model making since childhood. Among other things, I've built plastic models, a historical sailing ship, and, most recently, a steam engine for a BBQ.

My next project is to build an internal combustion engine. I've acquired several sets of plans for this. I find the Ageless radial engines with 9 and 18 cylinders particularly interesting from a technical standpoint. I'm currently studying these plans diligently – there's a lot to discover!

I'm looking forward to interesting conversations, helpful tips, and exchanging ideas with you all. Of course, I'm happy to share my previous experiences if you'd like.

Oh yes, I heard you want to see pictures… 😉
I'll gladly post some later.

Best regards from Switzerland

[crueby]

Beautiful  model! You could say it really cooks!   




Welcome to the group!

[Rledoux313]

That’s a beautiful steam plant you have, it’s great that you found a task for it as well!

[Kim]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

That is a gorgeous steam engine and boiler model you made there!

Kim

[steam guy willy]

Hi ,looking good and do you have people producing castings for steam engines over there ??  Also you must have a lot of precision tools and machinery to choose from ...including all those Valorbe needle files etc etc

Willy

[Daytona68]

Thanks; I ordered the raw castings from Stuart in England. Unfortunately, I still lack casting experience.

Naturally, all the files I own are from Vallorbe—not just the needle files. Accordingly, my workshop is equipped with a fully refurbished Schaublin 150 and a fully refurbished Aciera 22 drill press—as befits a Swiss.

[Sanjay F]

Welcome to the forum, that's a very nice looking model steam plant and the lathe looks like a fantastic bit of kit .........looking forward to seeing what your next project is 

[Dave Otto]

Welcome to MEM!
Your steam plant is very nice, and the lathe, wow what a beautiful machine!

Dave

[Chipswitheverything]

I share the "Wow" over your beautiful lathe, what a superb machine.  Your steam plant model is lovely.  Dave

[steam guy willy]

is the lathe metric ?? and do you spend a lot of time changing imperial fractions/ to metric decimals  ??.....do you have more models  to make in the pipeline??

willy

[Daytona68]

Yes, the Schaublin lathe is built to metric specifications and meets the accuracy standards of a brand-new machine from that era in every respect. The machine is more precise than my own measuring capabilities allow me to verify.
I generally try to obtain plans with metric dimensions. However, for the Ageless radial engines, I will have to do quite a bit of converting; I am currently in the process of reviewing the plans.
No, I don't have any other models planned at the moment. In fact, I’ve abandoned all other projects over the last few months and am now in the process of selling off a lot of things.
When it comes to the radial engines, I simply take the view that the journey is the destination.

[petertha]

Hi Daytona68. Wow, that is a beautiful lathe.
I also saw your post on HMEM on the thread regarding sourcing parts for Ageless radials. Looks like the ring gear has become increasingly more difficult to find, even for builders inside the USA. Hopefully you will have some luck & it wont break the bank. Ageless radials are unique in their combination of physical size, spark ignition & lubrication system. If you are itching to build a metric designed radial, especially as an intermediary project, I have included some links in case you had not come accross them. I built the Ohrndorf 5-cyl radial which is written up on this forum as well as HMEM. All of these are glow ignition radials burning methanol based fuel. This makes both ignition & lubrication simpler, other pros & cons, but of course is not quite the same as gasoline/spark. But the gears AFAIK are easy to source from the likes of Maedler & significantly less expensive. Only cou can decide if that intermediary project is worth the effort or not.

I have the Ageless plans but havent looked at them in a while. BTW, if you haven't already discovered the HMEM build series by Terry Mayhugh, I highly recommend reading it. He did an excellent job documenting his builds. I have not seen anyone attempting a metric gear version of the Ageless if you were having thoughts along those lines because sourcing module gears would be significantly easier (and cheaper). The ring gear is basically machined down in diameter & thickness anyway, its basically a carrier for the cam lobe plates. Converting basic imperial dimensions to metric for general parts is straightforward, I built the Ohrndorf metric design on my imperial lathe no problem. Bearings, fasteners, again no problem substituting metric. The key issue is the planetary gear drive train for cam  plates. I have done some spreadsheet evaluation of radial gear combinations myself more out of curiosity. A conversion might be possible but my strong hunch is it would have a knock-on effect to several other related components, so a bit of design undertaking. The classic radial gear train is Crankshaft > Idler-1 > idler-2 > Ring Gear. However 1) the pitch diameters must be chosen to be tangent and 2) result must yield an even number gear ratio for 4-stroke firing so only certain combinations work. For example  20>32>13>65 yields 1:8 which means (divide by 2) = 4 cam lobes. And the overal cluster must fit in a specific sized housing. And the tooth size must be of minimum module for the forces involved which might elimiate smaller module combinations that otherwise work. Other gears come into play for ignition & lubrication but I dont think they are as onerous. I'll stop here because maybe this is already old news to you, but thought it worthwhile to mention.

https://www.engineman.de/
https://wtengines.com/index.php/engine-plans/wtstern2323-r9/
https://www.cad-modelltechnik-jung.de/overview-drawings.html

[Daytona68]

Hello Peterha,
Many thanks for the detailed explanations.
Regarding the metric plans: I am already familiar with the three websites you linked. I have the plans from Ohrndorf for the 9-cylinder, 14-cylinder, and V12 models here. In my view, each of the three designers has their own interesting approach. However, all three concepts involve glow-ignition engines with ball bearings. That is precisely where I see a special technical appeal in the Ageless engines: spark ignition instead of glow ignition, and a plain bearing for the crankshaft.
Fundamentally, none of these engines are easy to build, and they all require a significant amount of time. 😊
As for gears, I usually buy mine from Mädler. However, they aren't exactly cheap there either. I’ve briefly looked into the effort involved in replacing the imperial gears specified in the plans with metric versions. It turns out that this would entail quite a few modifications. Besides, I’ve never manufactured gears myself, so I don't really see that as a primary option right now.
As I mentioned, I’m still somewhat in the decision-making phase. I could well imagine deliberately choosing a hybrid approach: using metric screws and threads consistently, while retaining the imperial pitches and dimensions for the gears and converting—or redefining—the other component dimensions into metric measurements accordingly.
In my experience, the crucial thing with this kind of approach is to be clear about the chosen measurement system before actual construction begins. Once the initial design elements are set, you really need to stick to that system consistently. Otherwise, you quickly run into unnecessary modifications and inconsistencies. However, there are still a few fundamental considerations I need to address.
On top of that, I notice various details in virtually all the sets of plans that I would prefer to handle differently from a design standpoint. For instance, regarding the Ageless engines, I am not particularly fond of the way the crankshaft gear is executed. I would like to explore whether there is a solution that is more elegant in terms of design and perhaps more cost-effective to manufacture.
With the Ohrndorf 9-cylinder engine—which I have since almost fully modeled in CAD—it is the connecting rods, in particular, that do not seem optimal to me. Their geometry necessitates cutouts in the cylinder area; while this is feasible from a design perspective, it doesn't really appeal to me.
In this context, I am also wondering whether the connecting rods should be arranged in the classic side-by-side configuration (or attached regularly to the master rod) or if a corrected or irregular attachment method might make more sense. Multi-cylinder radial engines, after all, offer some interesting design possibilities and constraints in this regard.
As you can see, there are still a number of points I need to gather and think through before committing to a specific engine concept. It is more important to me to thoroughly evaluate these fundamental decisions upfront than to discover later, during manufacturing, that various design choices conflict with one another.
I have largely finished reading Terry Mayhugh’s build log. I imagine I will be referring back to it frequently as I continue the design process and eventually move on to the actual build. For a project like this, the insights gained from an engine that has actually been built are likely just as valuable as the plans themselves.

[petertha]

Yes, the connecting rod vs liner skirt issue seems to rear its head on model radials amazingly often. I modified many aspects of my Ohrndorf-5 (O5) and this was one of them. Thankfully my CAD program offers collision detection & thats the first thing I checked. Maybe model designers made cross sections through the mid plane of cylinder & get tricked into a sufficient clearance gap, when in fact the corner of con rods intersect a different position of the liner first. I have seen some threads where the builder discovers this at the stage the parts are assembled which would be more frustrating. There are options depending on how much can be accomodated - chamferred skirt (also assists piston/ring insertion), filleted or chamferred rectangular rods, reduced section or circular section rods. Just have to pay attention to strength & recipprocating mass issues.

Rod layout in radials is interesting because if you space the rods equally about the master rod accordingto cylinder count, something else must give as a consequence. Either stroke length or piston TDC height relative to crankshaft axis or TDC timing as a function of rotation angle. Glow ignition are particularly sensitive to mismatched compression ratio's. So either the rod layout must be angle compensated, or cylinder-specific alterations to piston/head relationship.

One last note I forgot, you certainly can go spark ignition on methanol based engines as opposed to glow plugs. Commercial plug even share the same thread 1/4-32. CDI modules have advance/retard. Nitro can safely be ommitted from methanol with appropriate CR which is better for corrosion, But doesn't really solve what many people are not fond of, higher oil content in the pre-mix which we see & smell in exhaust. Methanol is burned at higher rate than gasoline & tends to wash oil so necessitates higher premix%. I find synthetic oil does not insult my nostrils the same way castor does but its still there. The the benefit is methanol generally runs cooler & many off the shelf carburators. So many pros & cons no matter what path you take.

Another bar stock radial to consider is the 5-cyl 1/4-sc Kinner featured in SIC magazine. No ring gear! Gasoline/spark, oil pump, a long stroke 'thumper' LOL. Featured on this website as well ad Ageless-9 & Wright Whirlwind.
https://modelicengine.la.coocan.jp/index%20english.htm

Sounds like you are well into evaluation mode, so good luck & keen to see what you decide to build.

[Daytona68]

I also only discovered the collision between the cylinder wall and the connecting rod while using the collision detection feature in my CAD software. I use Alibre Design Expert for drafting; it’s practical and affordable. After that, I looked into the connecting rod linkage and realized just how complex it is for a radial engine. Up to that point, I had really only dealt with car and motorcycle engines. Discovering issues like that during assembly is unpleasant—something I try hard to avoid. Once I’ve definitely decided which engine to build, I’ll likely model it in CAD; the software allows me to work with both measurement systems.
For the Ohrndorf 9-cylinder engine, I recalculated the connecting rods for an irregular linkage arrangement, hoping it would resolve the collision issue, but it didn't help.

I haven't really looked into the various types of fuel and their properties until now. Most of the engines I’ve worked on were either modified for higher performance or simply maintained by me, so in-depth knowledge of fuel wasn't crucial. However, I’m now facing this issue for the first time with a mini-project: I bought a 1:3 scale Bouland Cosworth DF V8 Formula 1 engine and plan to start it up in the near future.

I based my design on the "Kinner" 5-cylinder engine; it’s a very interesting engine, and the whole website is fascinating, too.
I’m leaning towards the "Ageless" engines—specifically the 9- and 18-cylinder models. But it requires careful consideration, as the decision marks the start of a long journey.