Black Steel

Victoria Steam Engine And Bandsaw Design Progress

Published December 28, 2013 | By admin

Progress on Building the Stuart Turner Victoria Horizontal Steam Engine And Designing The Frame For The Makita 2107F Bandsaw

The Stuart Turner Victoria Horizontal Steam Engine

I’m still working on the base for this engine. Actually this is the second base – the Stuart Turner casting kit has the real base but it needs a sub base to sit on. The sub-base was, in the real engine, made from wood, but I had a piece of steel channel that I decided to use at least as a temporary base. I may change it for wood in the future.

The holding-down lugs have been brazed on to the channel steel base and the ends closed with plates sawn from a 1 m square sheet of 2.83 mm black steel using the Bosch GST 25M Professional jigsaw.

Now I have milled and filed down the lugd and end plates to match the steel channel and covered the whole baseplate with car body filler.

Sanding flat is in hand at the moment.

I’m sanding the base outside to keep the dust out of the workshop but because it’s a boring and slow job and it’s cold outside (16 Deg C – freezing for Thailand) I do a few rubs on the sandpaper then go do something else. Like writing this Post. Then go do another rub on the sandpaper.

Designing The Frame For The Makita 2107F Bandsaw

I’m still working on this using AutoCAD to make the drawings.

The (updated) prototype has been such a success and so useful that it’s a permanent (temporary) attachment to the work bench. It will remain so until the real one is built.

The prototype Makita 2107F Bandsaw frame on the workbench has also proven vital to obtaining some vital dimensions to use in the actuel CAD design. Centre-line of fixing screws to centre-line of cutting blade, just for one example.

Update 15 Dec 2013

Published December 15, 2013 | By admin

What I’m Up To And General Update Of The Model Engineering In Thailand Website And What I’m Up To

Victoria Steam Engine

I have been slowly building the Stuart Turner Victoria mill engine for many months.

Progress is slow because:-

I don’t have all the small tools I need. This will be improved when I get my imported tools (see below).
Because I don’t have these tools I get diverted into making them. Like the Makita 2107F cut-off bandsaw frame to name just one example.
Other things interfere. Can’t say much about this but I’m always busy with other things.

Assembly Of The Part-Built Stuart Turner Victoria

I decided to give myself a boost and instead of making more of the small parts for the Victoria instead I decided to assemble the parts I had already made. These are the baseplate, the flywheel, main shaft, cylinder and main bearings.

I thought that if these are assembled it woud look like I’m making progress rather than looking at just a growing pile of parts.

The Stuart Turner baseplate itself needs another baseplate under it which is not supplied as part of the kit. It should be made from wood but to cut corners and to ensure accurate alignment of the main shaft bearings, I’m using a piece of steel channel. (I may change to wood later)

I need to add some bolting-down lugs to the steel channel and to fill in the ends with steel plate.

So I made up the bar material blanks for the lugs, a laborious process of cutting from black steel and milling to size, and I made a few spare blanks to practice… arc welding.

My intention was to weld the lugs to the steel channel base.

Yesterday I purchased an Electric Arc Welder primarily for the purpose of welding up the frame for the Makita 2107F bandsaw frames.

So I decided to practice my arc welding skills using scrap steel typical of those I will use to build the Makita 2107F bandsaw frames and also the lugs for the Victoria bedplate.

The SESE MMA 200 Amp DC Inverter Arc Welder

This cost me 5,500 Baht at Ying Jaleaum and included the cables, electrode holder and welding mask.

I don’t know if that is a good price or not compared to U.K. It sounds reasonable to me but the most important this is not the price it is will it do the job?

The Results Of My Arc Welding Practice

Before I get into this subject let just mention two issues I immediately had with the SESE MMA 200 Amp DC Inverter Arc Welder:-

The Polarity Of The Cables

The instructions cleary said negative to the electrode and positive to the work.

The outlets and the connections on the machine are colour coded as are the cables:-

Negative:- Red

Positive:- Black

I would have expected it to be the other way round so I connected red to red and black to black.

Results on trial not very good.

On investigation, the red is connected to the work clamp. i.e. the opposite of what it should be.

I swapped the cables over and it worked better. Not good, but better.

Welding Glass Colour

There is probably a technical name for this but I found it very dark indeed. In fact all I could see was the arc and that was just a green coloured light.

I couldn’t see the work at all.

Results Of Practice Arc Welding Using The SESE MMA 200 Amp DC Inverter Arc Welder

Lousy.

I have done miles of arc welding in my past including welding widening rims and roll cages on racing cars that got past the scrutineers so I cant be that bad a welder.

But the results from today’s practice session were atrocious.

I have some photos but I’ll make a page devoted to Arc Welding Using The SESE MMA 200 Amp DC Inverter Arc Welder and post them there.

Needless to say I won’t be welding the lugs to the Victoria steam engine base and I won’t be welding the Makita 2107F bandsaw frames until I have this sorted out.

My next action it to go back to Ying Jaleaum ad get a lighter welding glass. Then more practice.

Updates On The Website

New Pages added:-

Importing Tools From UK
Some Examples Of Tools And Equipment I Imported (/Am Importing) From The U.K.

RDG Tools Order
An Order For Tools From RDG Tools In The UK Shipped Directly To My House In Thailand

Contact

Pages Updated:-

Model Engineering In Thailand

Comments:-

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