Here is my first steam engine. This is the Three
Sisters 3-Cylinder steam engine
that I built following the plans on Prof. McCabe's web page.
I deviated slightly from McCabe's plans. Instead of a main
bearing bushing, I pressed in a 1/4" ID ball bearing. I plumbed
the air lines with 1/8" copper tubing and manufactured miniature flare
fittings out of brass 10-32 hardware. I eventually want to run
the engine on steam, so I didn't want to use plastic tubing. I
polished and clear
coated the brass and copper. All of the machining was done on a
small
lathe and drill press. This is my first engine project.
This is my second steam engine. It was plagiarized from Dave Goodfellow's Siamese
Twins project.
I changed it slightly to use materials that I was able to buy
locally.
Mine has a 1/2" bore and 3/4" stroke. All of the rotating parts
are rolling on R/C car bearings. The frame and flywheels are
powder coated. I have about 100 hours invested in this project so
far.
Yup, this is my third steam engine. It is a PM
Research castings
kit. I work slow and it took me about 50 hours to
complete. The colour is bright purple but the flash on my digital
camera distorted it somewhat. It is double acting (a power stroke
in both piston directions) with a 1/2" bore and 3/4" stroke.
Here is engine # 4. It started life as a set of aluminum castings
I purchased on Ebay. It was originally two separate single
cylinder kits that I made into a dual cylinder version. It is
double acting, and the cranks are offset by 90 degrees to make it self
starting without touching the flywheel. It has 5/8" bores and
3/4" strokes.
This is # 5. Big Red is the first steam engine that I designed
myself. It has 5/8" bores and 5/8" strokes. I had trouble
visualizing how all the moving parts would interact, so I made a 1:1
scale CAD drawing before I starting cutting metal. This engine is
mostly aluminum, with a copper insert pressed into the flywheel.
Here
is my lathe and mill. The lathe is a Chinese Sieg 10X22"
import. Sieg
Industries Home Page The mill is a Sieg X1 and is sold under
the Harbour Freight SKU of
47158. Since these photos were taken, I've added Shumatech
digital readouts (DRO's) to the lathe and mill. I'll update this
page once the conversions are complete. Here is
something to look at in the meantime.
Ball Turner
Project
This is the ball turner that I built for my Sieg C6 lathe. The
idea was shamelessly stolen from Steve Bedair. Thanks
for the great lathe projects Steve.
I modified Steve's dimensions slightly to fit my lathe.
The base is 3/4" thick to house a 30X62X16mm (6206-2RS) ball
bearing. The bearing is pressed into both half's of
the toolpost. It has some resistance and has almost zero wobble
with the upper turret just touching the base. The area above the
bearing, and under the turret was machined out about 0.050" to allow
thick grease to be injected. I forgot to take a picture of that
before it was pressed all together. A 6-32 hole was drilled and
tapped into the the bottom of the tool holder groove for the addition
of the grease after final assembly. The hole is plugged with a
6-32X1/4" set-screw. The action is very smooth and is a real
treat to use. Kudos to Steve for an excellent design. I can
add some additional photos if anyone is interested.
I made the tool holder do double duty. Set this way, it cuts
convex shapes.
Turn the tool holder around the other way, move the carbide insert and
it cuts concave shapes.
Another view of the tool holder.
Here's a shot of it mounted on the lathe. Of course the first
ball produced was installed on the ball turner handle.
Tap & Die
Holders
This is the tailstock tap and die
holder I built. It allows me to create straight threads on items
held in the lathe's headstock chuck. The tailstock arbour
originally started out with a MT-2 taper, but I abandon that half way
through the conversion to make the holder more universal. The
arbour I decided on is a simple 1/2" diameter length of drill
rod. This allows me to use the holders in my drill press and
milling machine too. I marked the drill rod every 1/4" so I can
keep track of thread length (or depth).
Here is the cheap tap wrenches I bought. The set of four was on
sale for about
$12. They hold tap sizes from 2-56 to 1/2". That pretty
much covers 99% of what I need. There is no way I could begin to
build something like this for $12. You gotta' love imported
tools.
This is after the conversion. I removed the T handles and turned
the OD at the handle end of the two smaller wrenches to 0.501".
This made a press fit inside a 0.500" reamed hole in the knurled
extension. The two larger wrenches got turned to 0.626" for a
press fit into a 0.625" (5/8") hole. I cross drilled the
extension before pressing together, and then
re-attached the handles afterwards.
Tap holder mounted on tailstock.
Here is the die holder. It is made for the 1" die set that I
have. The die holder slides on the same 1/2" arbour that the tap
holder uses. This was built in two pieces. The die holder
part is cold rolled steel, and the hollow shaft part is 3/4" drill
rod. They were joined together in a hydraulic press. The
1/4" handle holes, and the 6-32 die holding set screw holes were
drilled and tapped in my little mill with the aid of a 4" Little
Machine Shop rotary
table.
Here it is, mounted on the lathe. You can see that I've gone
completely insane with the ball turner.
