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From Kits/Castings / Re: The Bolton -Bertinat -Bailey Triple expansion engine
« Last post by steam guy willy on Today at 03:09:23 AM »
Hi Charles, yes I shall do this   and the plates and the casting are tined  on the mating surfaces. When I tin them ready for sweating together I actually flick off the excess solder on to the floor ready to scrape it up to recycle. when I tined the casting I had to drill the holes out again and re tap them to remove the solder that had penetrated into them The plates are then attached with the 6 counter sunk screws with my nifty screwdriver.  The casting is returned to my stove and when the solder flows I screw the plate down..about 1/2 a turn to seat it dead flat. the other end will be soldered on in the same way. I did managed to touch the casting with my fingertip whist soldering so I rushed into the loo and thrust my finger in the lavatory pan ?!! this is a  good source of cold water that stays cold because of the porcelain ..I then left it in there for 8 minuets to keep it cold to prevent further damage ??!!

Willy
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From Kits/Castings / Re: The Bolton -Bertinat -Bailey Triple expansion engine
« Last post by steam guy willy on Today at 02:47:01 AM »
Quote from: Michael S. on July 09, 2025, 06:55:27 PM
In principle, Willy can solder the brass plate and the tubes to the cast part. The lids will then have a seal.

Hi "M" thanks for this and have read through  J Bertinats  write up the plates are soldered however there're no instructions as to how this was achieved ???!!

Willy
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Oddball / Re: Strutt Epicyclic Train Clock (maybe?)
« Last post by petertha on Today at 02:10:06 AM »
Quote from: kvom on Today at 12:27:24 AM
I had a struggle with this as SW got into a never-ending loop trying to replicate the tooth-form splines 144 times.  I generated the gear with the external teeth, copied one and mirrored it, then ensured that the completed single tooth form covered exactly 2.5 degrees of the circle.  The mirrored teeth will be slightly closer together than the external version.

Unless I'm missing a key aspect of the design, I would go about this differently. Generate the single tooth A using your tooth sketch, extrude that however it needs to be extruded. Then use the circular pattern command & define how many instances (teeth). Boom, done. Repeat for inner tooth B which allows for a different tooth sketch form & count as required. This is the power of parametric design. If you later need to modify the tooth form, you just alter the single sketch which defines it, then all the downstream steps magically refreshes & updates. Same goes for altering tooth count (or angle between, they are related) just enter a different integer.
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Oddball / Re: Strutt Epicyclic Train Clock (maybe?)
« Last post by petertha on Today at 01:52:38 AM »
Quote from: kvom on July 09, 2025, 12:35:41 AM
Some progress and some frustration with SolidWorks.  The progress was in figuring how to trace an image to generate the plates.  The answer is to scan the drawing in the plan book to a BMP file, and then use the Insert Sketch Image into the open sketch.  Then I was able to do the points/splines and circles on one half, then mirror it to get the entire plate.  The result was over 5 times the needed size, but I could measure the paper sketch to obtain the scale factor, and then scale the SW sketch.

Just a few FYI's. The source image can be any of the common formats, JPEG etc. (not just BMP). Perhaps you missed a feature step where you can 'scale' the image to some convenient known dimension on the image using the blue line start/end points. It can be from anywhere to anywhere, not necessarily orthogonal. This is best done early in the modelling tracing exercise, not later. Look for an important dominant dimension or a relatively large span of known length, click the image points & enter the value directly. The image shrinks/grows accordingly & now you are more in tune with the actual modelling. Of course this does not correct image distortion issues, its a good start.

https://help.solidworks.com/2025/english/SWConnected/swdotworks/t_insert_and_resize_pictures.htm

There is also a semi-automated way SW can generate outline splines if the source image has decent contrast &resolution. Usually its a recipe for disaster on any kind of mechanical image because it will inevitably guess wrong, but the capability does it does have its place. My friend sent me a snapshot of rather complicated decal on a car hood he wanted a DXF file to use for subsequent cutting. The auto-trace did a great job on 95% of it, I just had to do some minor cleanup which was a lot easier than developing every sketch element from scratch. This video touched on both these concepts but there are other tutorial on the interweb.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL_dkhFncUo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL_dkhFncUo</a>
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Oddball / Re: Strutt Epicyclic Train Clock (maybe?)
« Last post by crueby on Today at 12:56:46 AM »
Bet that burnned up a big box of electrons!

Question: are there the same number of teeth on the inside set? Not going to count them! For the same size tooth, the inner set would have to be a lower tooth count? To my eye, the gaps on the inner ones look to be smaller than on the outer ones, but that could just be an optical delusion. The gaps on the inner ones just need to be wider than the wire size used on the lantern pinion, at the base as well as where they start to curve near the ends where they are closest together.
Chris
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Oddball / Re: Strutt Epicyclic Train Clock (maybe?)
« Last post by kvom on Today at 12:27:24 AM »
I had a struggle with this as SW got into a never-ending loop trying to replicate the tooth-form splines 144 times.  I generated the gear with the external teeth, copied one and mirrored it, then ensured that the completed single tooth form covered exactly 2.5 degrees of the circle.  The mirrored teeth will be slightly closer together than the external version. 
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Restoration of Model Engines / Re: Another mystery engine.....
« Last post by redhouseluv on July 14, 2025, 09:20:44 PM »
Quote from: Jasonb on July 14, 2025, 08:48:34 PM
You can often look through the inlet hole in the side of the chest and watch the valve, as there is no nut put a mark centrally on the sid eof the valve so you can see that it moves equally each side of central.

There should be a bolt with knurled nut or lever to lock the position of the valve lever to the quadrant that is part of the top of the valve chest

Looking through the inlet, that'a a good idea, I'll do that now! I've just put a 7BA nut and bolt through the hole in the lever for now and it's starting to behave less erratically.

The flywheel screws onto the crankshaft and is then locked with a nut on the front. I've never seen that before but the trouble is it pushes the back of the flywheel against the metal base, so will need another nut or spacer behind it to prevent that happening
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Tooling & Machines / Re: Yet another Quorn
« Last post by rklopp on July 14, 2025, 09:12:47 PM »
Charles,

That is top tier craftsmanship. My hat is off.

RKlopp
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Restoration of Model Engines / Re: Another mystery engine.....
« Last post by Jasonb on July 14, 2025, 08:48:34 PM »
You can often look through the inlet hole in the side of the chest and watch the valve, as there is no nut put a mark centrally on the sid eof the valve so you can see that it moves equally each side of central.

There should be a bolt with knurled nut or lever to lock the position of the valve lever to the quadrant that is part of the top of the valve chest
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Restoration of Model Engines / Re: Another mystery engine.....
« Last post by crueby on July 14, 2025, 08:31:03 PM »
Yes, normally there would be a bolt in that hole at the top and through the curved slot to keep it in position, with some sort of levered or winged nut so you could put it in position and lock it there..
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