Machining Bronze Shoes for a Steam Engine Cross Head

[Music] hello keith rucker here at vintagefacing.org guys today got a little project we're working on uh helping out a fellow youtuber and a friend eric over at hand tool rescue contacted me a while back and he is in the process of restoring a little steam engine that he picked up and was needing some help now if you're not familiar with eric's youtube channel i would encourage you to check out hand tool rescue he does all kinds of restoration projects kind of does time lapse videos showing the process from start to finish and does an absolutely amazing job of doing restoration work i have met up with eric a couple of different times at some different events over the years and considered my friend and we kind of chat back and forth with one another fairly regularly and he reached out to me when this steam engine project came up because he had a part that was missing some parts and want to know if i could help him out and the parting question is a cross head that goes in there that was missing the brass shoes that go on it that actually help it go up and down in that steam engine let me zoom in here kind of show you what we got show you the challenges talk about how we went around getting some parts made to make these parts and we're going to be finishing that out doing the machining work in this video and probably going to be a couple of videos to get this project knocked out let's let's take a look at it so this is the casting that eric sent me which there's absolutely nothing wrong with this but it's missing the parts that go on so if you look we have a tapered piece on either end there's a milled flat in here a milled slot i guess you could say the male part that goes into a slot but what is missing is there's some brass shoes that go on here now if you're not familiar with a cross head this is a very common item on a steam engine you would have a crankshaft with a piston rod that came up into this there'll be a pin in here that would allow that piston rod to go back and forth as it's rotating around and then this would go up and down in a guide and that would basically translate the rocking motion of the piston rod down here to a a linear motion above it where it's going up and down and you'd have another piston rod that comes out of this that the actual piston would be attached to inside the bore on the steam engine so this whole purpose is to again take that rocking motion this uh in that that the piston rod on the crank and make it a linear motion going up to it now when eric got steam engine the brass shoes that were on this were missing he reached out and he said hey can you help me with this and i said well i can kind of envision what was there but didn't know exactly how the originals were fortunately eric reached out to one of his youtube viewers who had the same engine and he sent along some photographs of the way it works and the way it looks and this is what we're basically basing our work off of so if you look here there's the crankshaft down below that's your piston rod that comes up to it it goes into that crank pin that rotates back and forth notice on either side we have in the casting a channel that goes up and down in this case it's a circular i forget the diameter i've got it written down someplace else but it's a circular section and it goes up and down in those guys and you have these little brass shoes on either side and they're kind of a wedge-shaped shoe there's a little tab on the top where you can put a bolt in there and adjust them the reason that they have the taper in there is this self-adjusting we're not self-adjusting but adjustable so as the the brass wears in these shoes you can just tighten that up that moves it down when it does you have the wedges that are going against one another and it widens it out so you can adjust this on the fly as wear happens and just keep your engine up and running in good shape so knowing what they looked like we were able to kind of figure out what we needed he sent along a couple of other pictures here just some different shots here's a little bit of an angle there again you can see the screws in there where they adjust up and down here's a shot kind of from the top but using these photographs and having the casting here i was able to come in here and and basically measure the original casting measure what was in the drama and come up with a ratio and basically be able to calculate some dimensions off of this at least get a a rough idea of what those dimensions were from there i drew this part up in some 3d modeling software i used fusion 360 and basically turned that into a pattern so there is what i drew up of that shoe again we have that tapered piece on this side we got the radius on the other side um got the little piece up here for the screw to go in i made it a split pattern so we cut it in half you see the holes here this would be where some dowel pins are the line the top and bottom halves of those and i sent this off to my buddy clark over at windy hill foundry and he was able to take my patterns i 3d printed the patterns by the way he took my patterns and was able to cast some castings to make the shoes out of and here they are so these are what we got back from clark again we have a flat surface here we're going to machine that slot in there but we got the uh little tab up on top and we will of course have to machine the uh the outside diameter of this to the right diameter they're oversized so we should have plenty of metal to be able to remove off of them and make everything work out so this is what we got to work with and the the job for today is is to at least start the process of machining these first thing i want to do is set these up in the middle machine we'll machine this top surface flat get that rough casting off of it just clean it up and then we will cut a one inch wide slot in this that will allow that to sit up on this and adjust up and down like such to tighten and loosen it once we get that part done of course we'll have to get our holes drilled in the top for the adjustments and we will mount these shoes on either side of this and we're going to have to make a fixture to mount this whole thing in the lathe and we will turn the outside diameter to the correct diameter and everything else using mounted to this so that it will all be concentric and be just right so that's kind of the game plan let's go do some machining all right so we're going to set up over here on my vertical milling machine to deck off the top of that flat surface there and cut that slot in here and uh the setup is going to be a little bit on the tricky side not too bad i'm just going to grip it in my vise kind of like such but here's the challenge this this surface right here is really kind of the reference surface that this whole thing is going to be built around and we've got some taper built into that and everything else at least in the pattern we did i want to make sure that we're not don't have this thing all cocked in here at a weird angle so to mount this in here this is this is my game plan you know we're not looking for any kind of total perfection here this is a rough casting but we do need to kind of get it close so i've got some parallels the depth of that slot is about 200 000 so we're gonna have to deck a little bit off the top of this so i need to get this up off the vise i'm going to just do 250 thousandths i think we can get it cleaned up and everything with that so i've got some parallels here these parallels when they stack two of them together that's 250 thousandths and i know that the tops of my jaws are nice and parallel to one another so we're just going to kind of use that as a reference to kind of get this thing roughly to the right depth and again it doesn't have to be perfect because it is a rough casting we're going to be machining this will become our reference surface i'm also going to take another parallel here and just kind of put across that and let's just kind of cut it flush right across the top and now i've got it positioned where i should be able to do all my machining and i'm going to get this good and tight over here in the vise and let's get an end mill or something on here to face that off and we'll get started milling this thing out and i got a face mill on here i'm just gonna drop this down until it's just barely touching there we'll come off and let's see how fast we're going here that'll be fine and let's just uh just going to go across it without doing any down feed on this first pass i said there's a rough cast i'm sure it's going to touch in a few places i just want to clean this part up [Applause] so i'm just going to do about ten thousandths up feed let's do some light passes here and get it cleaned up [Applause] the feet across there all right i think we are good pull that back around there where you guys can take a look at it so i just took about ten thousandths really it cleaned up pretty easily yes we got a little bit in the middle that didn't clean up but remember we're going to cut a slot through there so all that will get cleaned up when we do that really the only parts that's going to be left to this are the two edges so that's all going to get milled out all right let me uh do some figuring here and get set up to cut that slot in there all right next thing i want to do is find the center of this part roughly the center part again it's a rough casting so it's not going to be perfect i've got an edge finder on here we're going to find the edge we'll zero my digital readout come find the other edge and then using whatever measurement that is take half of it and that'll get me in the center of this part or at least very very close to it again because this is a rough casting on the sides uh it's probably not going to be perfectly in the middle but it gives us that reference that we're going to create that that will make that the center and then we'll clean it up later actually there's no need to but we could clean it up later so that it was the same width on either side let's uh come in here using our edge finder we'll go over until that just pops over right there i'll zero out my digital readout and just uh verify here yep we're good i go to the other side come in on it again same thing just ease that table in until it jumps over right there and [Applause] i just halved that measurement and i'll dial my table into zero which is right there and again there is the cross head that we are going to be making a slot for so this needs to be down it's one inch wide and it's actually i think i said 200 000 steep it's 150 thousandths deep is how deep that trough needs to go i just took a sharpie and put some rough pencil marks or pen marks on there that is not a precision mark by any means but it just kind of helps me make sure while i'm doing this and i'm not about to screw something up and what i'm going to do here is this is a half inch end mill again our width is needs to be one inch which means that if i make a slot all the way down the center i'm going to have to go over a quarter of an inch on either side a quarter of an inch plus a quarter of an inch is a half inch plus a half inch is one inch so that's my reasoning there and that will get me down or to the right width now what i'm going to do is i'm going to probably just instead of going 250 thou i'm gonna go 240 thou which will leave about ten thousands on either side to clean up at the very end and i can have to once i get the final depth i'll get that my edges nice and uh one cut so i'm going to leave a little bit of material in there to the end all right let's uh get her done here we'll fire up our machine i'm just going to raise my table up here until i see a chip all right we're into it there i'm gonna back off just a little bit and i'll re-zero that out right there that's going to be close all right i'm going to try to do some light cuts i think here just concerned my work holding's not the greatest in the world so i really don't want to be making super aggressive cuts so uh let's just go up let's just go up 25 which is right there and just cut right across that i'm going to bring my table over towards me right here in this direction 25 thou or 250 cal rather 200 240 foul we want to be a little shy and we'll come down that back side there and now we'll go the other side to 25 thousandths past center for 250 thou again rather 240 and come back down [Applause] so here we go we're just going to continue on i'm going to raise my table up to 50 thou and which will be 25 000 more it's going to eat it away [Applause] what's up and right here i'm going to take a moment and i want to get a depth micrometer check this depth and um so we can dial in the right much for that that last pass let me go get a depth micrometer all right first thing i want to do is make feel make sure i don't have a burr or anything on that edge and i don't feels good and according to my digital readout we're at a 125 let's say 126 thousands for right there at it i'm gonna put my let's see back that off a little bit put my depth micrometer in there and let's come down and measure that depth and it looks like we are right at 130 thousandths deep so i'm just going to change this on my digital readout from 125 or 0.8 to 130 so we'll just 0.130 enter all right so that will make sure we're at the right depth i want to go to 150 000 so we got 20 more thou to come out of there and while we're at it let's just uh let's measure this i don't really have a super good we're about ten thousands undersized so that's good all right let's do our final pass here [Applause] come across 240 again [Applause] and i need about five more thousands each side so we're gonna go to 245 and come back down each side how about that 245 now we'll come down this side i'm just cleaning up the edge now the depth is the same i'm just taking about five thou off all the way down [Applause] all right i'm just gonna get a good measurement across that again and we need to go do the same thing on the other side 245 clean that side up yeah we're maybe a thou under but the part is about 5 000 under so i think it's going to be just fine yes that's going to be perfect all right i think we've got this one uh machined out for the back side i'm just going to go ahead and take her on out of the device and we'll do the other one well i got my second one milled off camera but you can see here we got our finished parts and everything appears to be working on here just like it ought to this is kind of the way that these will go they will mount on there we've still got to drill the holes through here for the screw to adjust it up and down but the next step i want to do here is there is a screw on each one side of these that fits into right here and there's a little slot in the the the the casting here that captures that that allows that to move up and down but what this does is it holds that bottom in it keeps it keeps it in there nice and tight now i don't know what kind of screw they originally use i got these little button uh hex head screws and that's what i am going to use it's tapped quarter 20 that's what was originally in the casting so what i want to do is transfer these uh holes from there over to the casting so that i know where that hole goes and then we will drill a slot and then we're also going to drill a little bit larger slot for that head to fit down into so that it can move back and forth so that's be going to be up next let's uh let's get her done so to start out with i just took my sharpie and i marked the sides a and b once we start drilling these holes in here i don't think that they're going to be able to swap from one side to the other the holes are not neither neither this hole on the side nor the hole in the top appear to be in an exact position they're just kind of wherever they ended up at so i just marked those that way we can keep them separate now to transfer this this hole what i'm going to do is use a set of transfer screws and i've already confirmed that hole is quarter 20 one quarter inch 20 threads per inch so i got my little quarter 20 transfer screw here what this is is kind of like a set screw but it has a center punch in the very center you use the tool to insert it just like such there's a little hex ground on the end and you can see it's like a little center punch and what we'll do there is put that one in there and make sure i got a and a and i want that to be kind of right at the bottom and i'll just take a hammer pop it and i've got a center hole punch there and we'll do the same thing on the other side let me pull this one out we'll flip it over put the transfer screw in this side and same thing this is a piece b it's on the b side and we have our center punch hole all right i've got my parts set back over here at the mill machine and as you can see that hole is nowhere near the center but that is where it's at and that's where it needs to be at uh i have a center punch just kind of chucked up in my chuck and what i have done is i have lined it up directly over that hole and we're going to take our center punch out put a quarter inch drill bit in here and drill a hole all the way through the part and then we'll come back and slide it with the milling cutter so let's go ahead and drill that hole first all right all right i got a quarter inch end mill in there start it up and i'm just going to raise the table up we're going to go right down that hole we've already drilled and uh let me peek over here need to go all the way down until we come out the other side and we are out now and i'm just going to zero out my digital readout and i'm going to go 50 000 in each direction to just give me a little bit of a slot in there don't need a whole lot well we may do 75 000 give us a little bit more room that's 50 60 seventy five right there and we'll come back the other direction do the same thing the five all right all right so up next what we need to do is we need to make a slot for this head to actually drop down below the surface now i've done some measuring and calculating and what i want is i want to have about a hundred thousandths of a area in the bottom of the slot that's still quarter inch and i measured the head we're going to use a half inch end mill which is just a little bit larger than that head to give us room for a slot now to measure that what i'm going to do is i'm going to i got some parallels here and i'm going to just drop that all the way down until it's touching the parallel and i'm going to zero out my digital readout and i know that this piece here is 150 thousandths deep i want another 100 000 so i need to basically raise my cutter up a quarter of an inch or 250 thousandths so i'm going to do just that i'll just watch it on my digital readout we'll drop the table down until we get to 250 which is about right there i lock my table and now that's where i need to be at okay but we've got to drop it down farther so that i can get my part up underneath there but i'm going to zero out at 250 thousandths and i'm just gonna crank my table down we'll slide our part up underneath it i'm just eyeballing this i've got a little bit of extra room in there uh to on my my width so if it's not perfect it's still we should be fine but uh we'll just get that centered up like such i think that's centered right there i'm just gonna clamp it down and i didn't move my table even though i flipped it over we're still lined up in this direction that's right on zero so now what do we do we're just going to raise the table up until we go back to zero on the digital readout that should be my proper depth and we'll move it back and forth 75 out just like we did before all right here we go coming up i'm just gonna have all that yeah i think we're centered up really good all right i'm just going to watch my digital readout and go down until it gets to zero we've got about a 125 style to go hundreds out to go [Applause] zero right there and now we'll go in and out 75 just like we did before there we go that should do it all right let's see how we did there's our slot screw coal goes to the bottom our quarter 20 screw fits through there we got a little bit of a slot in there which is just what we want and let's put it on there and see how it does all right we're almost bottomed out there got a little bit of room and we got some adjustment in there that's just what we want we might want to make that slot a little bit longer um i may adjust that off camera but i think we are in good place here to to be and we will get our other side put on here as well so guys there's our finished slot and i will just say that once i brought this over here i realized my slot wasn't quite long enough at least in the up direction the bottom going down it was fine but i needed some more travel going in that direction so i set it back up and made it a little bit longer same basic principle but there's our slot our button head screw fits right down in there slides back and forth and now we can tighten that up and we've got nice travel up and down we can lock this in place wherever we need to and um that will just keep that help hold that in place on the steam engine and we can adjust the height of it using the screws and stuff up top and again that just adjusts makes this a variable width with these uh bevels in here so anyway moving right along i'll do the other one off camera and we'll be getting even closer to being done with this so off camera i got the slots cut in the second piece everything's been test fit everything looks good the next uh step here we need to do is drill the hole the clearance hole in the top of this that will allow that screw to go through there to adjust this up and down and to do that uh what i'm going to do is again use uh these uh transfer screws so these are 5 16 18. we'll just drive those right in there to the proper depth these can stick a little proud to be fine i got two of these we'll do one on each side make sure i got b here we'll put that in the slot slide it down take this over to the edge of the table where this can slide up and down and drop off the edge here we'll take our hammer and tap it and we got a nice center punch hole there flip this around grab the a part do the same thing here there we go all right here we go now the full size me move just a little bit let me move it back [Music] there we go i think we got them both drilled let's go test them out and see how they work all right we're moving along here i think i've got my clearance issue taken care of but i've ran into another little problem and that is the top of these pieces here they had draft in them plus because of the the angles that were on these are not parallel to this the bottom of this cap screw when i'm tightening it up it's hitting on one side before the other and it's causing it to kind of want to push the part away from it so i think what i'm going to do is take this whole set up over to the middle machine and just kind of deck the top of this where it's flat all the way across and i think that'll really kind of help us out so let's go set up and do that real quick i just got this set down in the vise it's clamped in there our set screws are our set not set screws but those screws are attached in the bottom to kind of squeeze this in tight i just put some vice grips across the top here to make sure we got it held in tight nice and snug on there and i just want to cut these where they're parallel to every parallel to the world here so let's uh and we'll just drop down to that level right there take a light pass across here [Applause] do about another five foul [Applause] raise my part up here we'll go to the other side [Music] and with that i think that we have our shoes mounted to the cross head and the next step will be to turn this diameter to the correct diameter on the lathe like i said we're going to have to make a couple of fixtures to do that to hold it on the lathe and that's going to be a separate video but i'm real happy that we got this project this far along here's our slots for our screws in there that's not going to hurt anything as far as a bearing surface goes not a problem at all and got the adjustment in there we will machine it with them all the way up so that over time you can pull the washer out and tighten these up one side at a time to take out adjustment if necessary down the road there we go there we go got that part of the project knocked out real happy with that i think eric will be very happy with the results as well and looking forward to this part two here and getting uh getting this thing set up over on the lathe so that we can finish it up guys that will be a wrap as always thanks for watching please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already thumbs up and comments are appreciated and we'll catch you on the next video thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 89,858

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Metalworking, How to run a lathe, how to run a mill, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, steam engine, cross head, hand tool rescue, bronze, pattern making, casting

Id: wnXJACcQTAU

Length: 37min 21sec (2241 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021