Simplex steam engine Part 1 - Simplex Dampfmaschine Teil 1

Oh yesterday I visited a friend and he has a super neat nice thumb reset upper he's doing aluminum castings in sand and I was there to cast parts for a single cylinder steam engine for a model steam engine the design and patterns were made by him normally he sells these part kits and a link down in the description to his web page and he allowed me to do my own castings of his pattern so and then he also gave me the set of drawings that come with the castings so I took some video footage and some pictures down at his shop and hungry where we where I or and we did the castings I did the mold making and he did the casting ass he's he's used to it I died he's used to the process of the casting and the melting of the alumina but the mold making was down to me so I will show you some footage of that and then we will take a look at the actual castings okay here we start to make a mold for the a330 two halves of the mold box and the split pattern for the a-frame one side of the a-frame goes down into one half of the mold then it gets covered with the oil bounce and the first layer of sand gets saved and I just took a look if everything's all right and some more sieving until the whole model is covered with sand then you just shovel on more sand and then it's just a matter of compressing and stomping the sand - to make for a solid mold and he has this nice mattek-sands dumper that's a professional sand stomper for for foundries and now I'm just filling up the mold with sand covering everything filled up compressing it again and again using diplomatic tool and from time to time I also use a piece of wood to compress it an arm scraping off the remaining sand to make the mold half flat on one side efforts I'd done cleaning off table flipping it around and you can see they have the split model now I will take the other half of the split model put it on get some powder on there and using a fine brush which is in fact a makeup brush to cover the model model evenly this helps as a mold release to get the model out later and also to separate the two half and then it again just matter of filling the mold with sand again the first layer gets sieved then I'm shoveling on the remaining sand and I compress it on the corners with a piece of wood and like if I use the dramatic tool again W Matic tool needs a lot of air it's loud and it's fast and then we just fill up the mold until it's completely full every need is another bag of sand and yes I'm very laughs because the used oil sand is super dirty you get black hands within about 30 seconds and you are compressing the upper layer working in a kind of a spiral pattern adding some more sand press it and scraping off the remaining sand with a piece of sheet metal now I use a hammer knocking the two halves of the mold to release them from each other you have soft mould are aligned with pins but by hammering in you can break this deep bond between the two molds and I just separated them now I can see that the split halves are still in the sand and I'll do some cleanup with the brush where some sand got in areas where it shouldn't and just do some cosmetic work and a cosmetic brush and now I'm going to punch the sprue into the sand and also we add a feeder an alumina a reservoir for the molten aluminum as there is a big mass of material in this small okay and using a copper pipe to cut the sprue and when you knock the copper pipe with of something the sand comes out and I'm using a small spatula to cut the aluminum reservoir this will fill up with aluminum and feed the actual casting with fresh aluminum when it cools down so you don't get shrinkage and I'm cutting the eighths from sprue to the feeder and from the feeder to the actual model yeah Erin there I cut the gate to the model I make sure that there is no loose sand in the model and oh yeah now I'm measuring the position of the feeder and that will cut in the other mold half which will be the lower half a sump in the sump we'll all the dirt from the first entry of the aluminum in the mold be collected so it don't get any of the oxide slag and stuff into your actual model it will stay in this sump and by compressing it with the finger I make sure there is no loose sand in it that might mess up anything I do that to all the skates the feeder and also to sprue itself yeah I will use the airgun to clean up the remaining loose sand from the mold and it will also flip it up and blow in there and there is the sprue from the other side I also dig a small funnel to make the the casting process easier sit down so he has not to aim that precise with the aluminum with the liquid aluminum and also I cut another sump up in there so that collects also some of the first wave of dirt there you can see the thump and yeah that that's the mold making itself and I think yeah now I'm releasing the models out of the out of the mold the model is tapped it's drilled and tapped with six millimeters rats and he has some screws and cap be screwed in and act as a handle when to release the model I knocked the model slightly with a hammer to release it from the sand sideways and on top so it moves slightly and it breaks the bond to the sand I do this always some people don't like to do it I prefer it so it gives some wiggle room when you pull out the model here and now I lift out the model which released very well it went out of the sand pretty good and I didn't do much damage to the actual mold and this the release of the model is always a bit die yeah you need to be careful but yeah let's get just just pull it out and be fine there you go and I'm pleased okay there we go with the second model again turning in the screws of course by tapping the model in the mold you slightly change the dimension of it you you move it side to side you compress the sand in some areas and yes you change the dimensions but it may be a few tenths of a millimeter so it's not super critical and oh yeah this went yes this one went even better than the first one and make sure that you pull the model out very straight don't don't tip it to one side I'm doing some cosmetic work I'm burnishing the edges slightly with my finger and my head is in a way so you can see it I'm burnishing the edges slightly versa where there is loose sand or something like that that might fall into the mold and also I'm looking for loose sand and in the sprue and feeder and compressed air is your friend when you do this and you have to be careful not to blow in with six six bar of pressure or you've might damage the mold and I have my hand there not to blow the sand all over in this shop and I found some loose sand in there so I I went over with the finger burnished some of it now I'm standing up the lower half of the mold also blowing out the loose sand make sure everything is on right and now we will put the mold halves back together yet now we will put it back together make sure you put it back on the right direction look for the alignment pin and just drop it on carefully there you go that's the that's the mold and here we have the molten aluminum freshly out of the oven in a graphite crucible here he is getting rid of slack and did the casting you just filled up the mold with molten aluminum this is the a-frame go again a full crucible and fill in the mold and another one also note the full protection equipment the fireproof suit the wiser yes the proper shoes and hand gloves okay there you can see the oven the furnace blower burner is firing dark into the chamber of the oven and there we go for another run of casting scooping off the slack that would interfere with castings that would give a bad surface and might give inclusions in the aluminum and there we go filling the molds with aluminum and when he fills the second mold you will see on the right side that her smoke when I built this mold I had the pattern a bit close to the side of the mold box and there some aluminum got out of the mold so it still went went okay and now it's up to open the mold and get the castings out there the castings and the sand are still pretty hot so you have to be careful not to burn yourself with with one or the other and there is the cylinder and some of the smaller parts and just releasing them from the sand and really be careful not to get the hot sand on your bare skin that had hurts and then it's on the time to get the to get the sand out of the mold boxes and that later it will be reprocessed in the in the sand ruler so okay that's it that's the casting process back into the shop okay we're back in my shop and I see a song I closed on really a whole lot of fun his furnace setup is super neat it works like a charm it's just it's it were just working he's using a oil burner from a house furnace and he's running it on diesel and you just flip the switch and the whole furnace starts up does it starting procedure and then fires up the burner and then you wait 15 20 minutes and you can do your casting but now we will take a look at the actual castings that I did there leave it there okay here we have the set of castings for a steam engine we have this part this is the base plate yeah it's hollow on the backside and when we did the casting there was almost we did a row of mold and this was the last one in the row and there was almost not enough aluminium left in the crucible and for that reason the the mold didn't fill up all the way and that's why there is big radii here and it's also about five millimeters shorter than it should be but it doesn't matter this is just a base plate my machine will be a bit lower than ever everybody else's that has these castings Machine decide flat flip it around and machine the mounting surfaces for da frame and the crankshaft and we have the a frame which is a really nice part the patterns he made are just gorgeous they have a super nice finish they are easy to release out of the molds and and they'd our Justin's super nice and you can see that castings are also very very neat the surface finish is incredible he's using a all bouncing and that really shows every detail in in the finished casting and we have the cylinder we did this with a core with a sand core there is still part of the core in there and I will break this out later this can just be removed with screwdriver and we have the wealth cover it's just a cover plate that goes on here and we have the cap of the cylinder with which goes on here and we have two bearing blocks and bearing caps and we'll machine all these parts and we have asked to make some parts from stock material like small flanges the crankshaft will be machined and some more parts so let's see how we tackle these castings castings are always but not not it's it's different now but different castings have draft to them that means these sides are not square to have an angle to them and you need that so you can release them from the mold otherwise if you have a 90 degree square you have a hard time to get them out of the mold signal sent or all bounced and so that's the first challenge and also you have to decide where to reference off as it's a raw casting you don't have any references you have to do a rough layout and then shift it so it's nice and either saying with parts like this a frame you have to decide where to start and 50 a frame I think first we are going to machine the lower surfaces and then bore out the guide for the cone rod and also machine the upper flange here the bearing blocks are pretty straightforward it's just sir-sir facing the lower lower bottom so facing the upper drilling screen cap on and then drilling and we or boring the the opening for the bearings itself there will be brass bearings playing brass bearings in there the cylinder will get no liner there will be a brass piston running in the aluminum and that will hold up fine I was thinking about doing a line or a steel liner but I don't think it's necessary this machine will not run for hundreds and hundreds of hours so ok here we have to certainly still with sand core in it and it has we drop the pieces after casting and water to get rid of the oil burned oil sand but the sand core in it is still in there and this is a chop to be pulled out with a screwdriver when you're working with castings you want to get rid of all this sand because the sand on one hand will ruin your cutters and on the other hand it's really bad for the guide waves of your machines it's like emery this can ruin your day I will rinse the remaining sand up under with water so ok here we are back with the remaining sand washed out and we have a pretty nice for insulin of course this will board over to the right diameter of the cylinder later but for now this is a pretty nice casting not too bad of a surface finish there's some shrinkage here and here that's because of this bulk of material here and there is a lot of material in a casting it's when cooling down it's pulling the material in as it shrinks and there are ways to accommodate this but which to this is just really a lot of material and the shrinkage is not too bad okay we will start with the base of the steam engine and this is pretty straightforward we have to surf face down the rear side ye and the surface it will sit later and we'll flip it around strap clamp it down to the table and serve face these four pads rollin and tap them some of them are three millimeter tapped holes and some are too little bit of tapped holes so that might get interesting but first we have to get rid of the these these two guys this is part of the sprue where the aluminium ran into the casting okay I clamped it careful in the bench wise and never just hacksaw these locks away okay now we can do some proper machining on this part as these two things are away okay we're over at the milling machine and I filled out a set up it's way simpler than I thought the reference surfaces are these four paths these have to be somewhat square to the bottom surface and these are still raw casts or phases but you take something more or less straight you can see they're pretty precise and those in that direction and I just put two parallels in my wife and I will arrest these two paths on the parallels and the draft on the side of the part is steep enough so I can still clamp on that and it's not going to move on me of course I have to push the part down onto the parallels while I clamp because I can't really knock this down on to the parallels when I clamp it and I have to use some brass shims or the sharp edges of the vise jaws don't dig into the material and I have a big role as this 1/10 millimeter breast shim stock that I have always around and I use this always on a milling machine for shimming and protecting surface I use it also in life when I have to check up critical surfaces and the three jaw Chuck and I can test with the parallels of course I can move them the depart is not really sucked down on to device but there is little play down there and I'm pretty confident that the setup will hold up to the machining and we only have to run a small n mill around the edges to clean it up and the end while we are going to use this a high speed steel high helix cutter for aluminum specially this is one of the few occasions that I still use high speed steel cutters when a machine aluminum andis high speed steel one's 50 high helix specially designed for aluminum there are really nice day if you don't use them on steel they hold up forever and they are not super expensive finding one of these is 15 or 20 bucks so that's quite reasonable and you can even you can resharpen them yourself on the front surfaces or you can send them out to have them reach out and on a diameter okay let's run this at about thousand rpm and skim the outer boundary of this piece and hope that nothing goes flies out of the white but I'm pretty confident in the setup and also we are not going to take a super heavy cut and it helps if you switch on the machines main power okay as you see I have most most of the perimeter of the part cleaned up there are some bits left or the end mill boss not wide enough so I have to take another walk around it but overall works out great and the material and the cast aluminum machine super nice it gives a nice short chip as long as you add some at least a bit of lubrication there is a high content of silicon in this aluminum and that tends to gall and almost smear on your cutter and also it dulls the cutter pretty fast or faster as normal aluminum especially the free cutting aluminum is you can run a mill forever in that stuff but this will dull an end mill okay I was just checking the surface heights of these pads will machine later and the the accuracy in this castings this is really good and that's body really good patterns he made for this parts and these two surfaces are within plus 200 so on the limit and minus 1/10 of a millimeter so these are virtually at one level and these two pads need to be family to higher and they are within plus let's see + 15 + + 47 hundredths of a millimeter and that's really really good with a machine the lower surfaces or will we now we will first cut the hot knee upper surfaces then we will machine the lower surface to be exactly 5 millimeters below below these pads and also what I noticed is when I get that dial indicator on the corner piece and a second level brand down the camera and when I try to tip the part there is almost no needle movement on the dial indicator try this corner and as maybe have a hundredths of a millimeter but that's really good torque didn't warp on the machining and that's a good sign so we can proceed with the machining of these surfaces and these are virtually the most important surfaces on the space as they align everything to each other okay I clamp down the baseplate with four clamps onto the machine table I have brass shims everywhere to protect the surface of the casting and I have a small fly cutter in the machine spill and now we're going to surface these upper pads and with a surface you lower past and we'll take a measurement and machine these to their final height we need a distance of five millimeters between these height difference of five millimeters now yes also distance so let's see okay I swung the koomer around so you can see better what's happening there first I'm going to touch off and then we'll take like that and see how it goes that's a thousand rpm there okay let's take a spin test okay and his first pass worked up pretty well it cleaned up the whole surface of the front pad which was the lower one and of course the back pad which was 5/10 of milling the higher in some spots also cleaned up yeah I don't think that there is much more to do I will take another very fine pass to give him a nice surface this is kind of rough right now also we're going to add some lubrication which also helps okay that's that's our two pets the higher hats which will hold the a-frame and the surface finish is pretty good now we can mesh machine machine the lower pads yeah it helps the Finke engage the gears okay we got both of the pads surface and also should be on the right height on these remember this needs to be five millimeters and my me territorial status indicator here with the depth measuring gauge and it's set to zero and when we drop it on to step here oh we are one hundredth of a millimeter low yeah that's okay that's I think that's the tolerances for a steam engine back here sorry can I just can turn it around so you see it at least a bit and back here we have also one hundredth of a millimeter low so I'm guessing that both to pet both pads are at the same height to these two but one hundreds of a millimeter low and that's fine okay I glued up two surfaces so you can see better what's going on I have a spotting drill in there and I'm going to Center all the all the positions for the threaded holes in the base Verdi Philip locks and the a frames will be built to not at 200 rpm okay now we have all the positions spot drilled I was just running off the numbers on the Dro and and taking a small and drilled a small spot there so these are going to be m2 these are also going to and two threads and these are M 3 that means metric thread string on the nominal diameter these are 2 millimeter threads the tap drill for MC m3 is 2.5 millimeters and the taps read for an m2 is 1.6 but I have to look it up they're not under percent sure about this okay let's take a look and our good old reference book and we have metric Isis rat m2 drill diameter one point six millimeters okay I had that right in mind so that's good okay I drilled all the tap holes and right now I'm threading the three millimeter shred powered happy so let's go I did already these two now we're going for the other two on this side get some cutting oil on there and you did I mention how much I love power tapping I think I did I think I mentioned this every time I do some tapping on the machine how much I love it it's just a great process it's so reliable there we go that's the screamo notes reps and now we need to tap the two millimeters reps with this tiny tap I never power tapped a two-millimeter threat but it seems that it works pretty good yeah I will do the remaining ones off-camera I think that's it for the first episode we saw how the castings were made we machine the first one so I think that's enough for this time thank you for watching and see you next time

Channel: Stefan Gotteswinter

Views: 42,553

Rating: 4.9768114 out of 5

Keywords: steam engine, dampfmaschine, aluguss, casting, sandguss, ölsand, formenbau, backyard foundry, gießerei, gießen, gingery, fräsmaschine, zx7045, rf45, optimum mb4

Id: jOg6LH2mC_Q

Length: 43min 15sec (2595 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2015