T head engine by Brian

[Cuttings]

Mother said there would be days like that. I haven't gotten into any trouble yet because I haven't gone out to the shop yet. Pretty hot here again. I was just thinking of going out to see if I could accomplish a thing or two before it gets too hot in the shop. Hope the rest of your day goes better.

[brian Rupnow]

Okay, maybe it's time for some wheeling and dealing. Any of you CNC guys out there want to make me a couple of cams as shown? Surface around outside has to be good quality finish and 3/8" center-hole must be reamed to 3/8" finished size. There are other holes to go in but I can do them later, and I can do the hardening later. In return, I will send you a complete set of detail drawings to build this engine.----Brian

[sid pileski]

I could do them.
Do you have a part file?

Sid

[Toolguy]

I'll do them for free without a part file. I just program it off the drawing. Start and stop tangent points of the radii would be helpful, but not required.

[brian Rupnow]

Sid---What format do you want. Send me a private message with your email on it.---Thank you.--Toolguy, thank you for your offer.---Brian

[sid pileski]

Brian- I can take a stp or a SW file

sid.

[brian Rupnow]

Sid--I've sent you off an email with a stp file and a pdf of the drawing. If you need anything else, please let me know.---Brian

[brian Rupnow]

I like to make my one piece crankshafts from 1144 stress proof steel. It moves very little while machining, far less than mild steel or cold rolled steel. The only catch is, it is not available in flat-bar. This means that you buy a round piece and machine a flat-bar from it, before you can actually start to machine the crankshaft. I always start by machining one side off in the milling machine, so you have a flat reference to machine or saw away the other side. In this case, I had to machine to a depth of 0.531". Next step will be to saw off the other flat, or flip it over in the milling vice and machine away the other side. Milling is probably as fast as sawing, because my sawblades are always a bit dull, and you end up having to machine that sawed side anyways to get it flat. My mill seems comfortable with 0.015" depth of cut, so that is a lot of cranking back and forth to take off 0.531".

[nickel-city-fab]

Brian --
I dunno if you've ever read the forums at smokstak.com, but there was a fellow there a few years back, who was restoring an early 1900's Lombard logging truck. Way up in Maine, it had half-tracks and an ENORMOUS T-head engine. Straight-8 if I recall. Pistons the size of coffee cans. Early style where auxiliaries was outside the crank case on lay shafts. Half the engine was made of bronze, and he was casting the missing parts from period illustrations and direct measurements. The guy is some kind of teacher at the university up there, so he has access to stuff. Last I saw he had finished it and was driving it for the local historical society. What blew my mind in reading his thread, is the sheer genius and creativity of the designers a hundred years ago. It was just beautiful.

[brian Rupnow]

When I started in engineering in 1965, I worked with some of those people near the end of their careers. They were truly impressive.---Brian

[Ringo]

Those old school engineers were amazing.
The Boeing 747 was the last aircraft Boeing drew by hand. Imagine something the size of a 747, with 4 engines, fuel, hydraulics, pressurized cabin, fire suppression, avionics, electrical, redundant systems, seating for couple hundred, cargo holds, interior coffee pots, food warmers, toilets, retractable landing gear, thrust reversers, et al.,,,,,
and every bit of it was drawn with pencil/paper/ slide rules.
Slide rules,, does anybody remember those??

[aostling]

Slide rules,, does anybody remember those??

They could not add or subtract. For that, we had Friden calculators (which could also multiply and divide).

[nickel-city-fab]

Those old school engineers were amazing.

and every bit of it was drawn with pencil/paper/ slide rules.
Slide rules,, does anybody remember those??

Yup, my dad used to use one.

[J Tiers]

.......................
Slide rules,, does anybody remember those??

Sure, used one in engineering school.

In some ways they are much better than calculators, although I do use pocket calculators now, and started as soon as they were available. Rockwell was the first, then two HP, a 21 and a 41CV. The 41CV died, but I found another. The batteries are special a bit hard to find. I actually use TI 30 solar calculators mostly, for that reason. The 'CV would even do circuit analysis.... or anything else you had a program module for, without pounding a lot of keys.

Slide rules require only enough light to read them, and possibly some paper to keep track of decimal point placement.

And, slide rules continually remind you that you do not know the numbers to as many decimal places as a calculator lets you see.

[brian Rupnow]

Back at the beginning of my career, my company was involved with a lot of steel structures. All beam, column, girts, perlins, and angle bracing. There were literally thousands of trigonometry based calculations to determine length and connection points of angle bracing between columns. There were no calculators then, so everybody had their own personal copy of "Smoleys Four Combined Tables of Logarithmic Functions". We all had to buy our own sliderule, but actually ended up using them very little.