Recent content by bhusted

Thanks guys. The only reason I was able to get this far so quickly is because I simplified the design by not making it run. Maybe someday I'll have time to dedicate to making a real running model. For right now, this is better than those plastic models and my son loves to look at it. The...

Almost there! I've finished both heads and begun the assembly process. I still have yet to make the spring retainers, pushrods, and rocker pivots. Tomorrow is the last day in the shop and most of that is dedicated to cleanup. I'll have to finish the remaining parts on my own. I'm proud of...

More progress has been made on the heads. I got my dovetails milled first thing and did a dry run. Everything looked good, so I went for it. Here we are part way into the roughing operations: After drilling some more holes in it: The next step is to rough out the inside for the rockers...

The gears for the starter and flywheel as well as the motor came from ServoCity. They supply lots of parts for the robotics team that I coach and so I already was familiar with them.

Good question. Here's what's left: Cylinder Heads Spring Retainers Rocker Arm Pivots Engine Stand Mounts Push Rods The cylinder heads are obviously the most complicated of these and probably where I'll focus my time for next week. If necessary I could make the other parts on my little 12"...

Sorry for the lack of updates, but progress on my engine was slow this week. It took some time to get all of the journals on the crank finished to size, but I'm proud of how it turned out. I wanted to profile the webs to look more realistic, but I'm running out of time. Since I was turning...

Steve, thanks for the link. I had a look though it and while it didn't necessarily address everything I wanted, it gave me the confidence to just give it a try. The reason for doing this all on the manual lathe is that my instructor required that one major part of the project be done...

I guess I don't have enough kung fu to get the grasshopper thing. My instructor is actually a little younger than me. I'll give that a try for blending the tool marks on the valves. Today did not go as planned. I got the tombstone mounted on the 4th axis and dialed in (~2hrs), but had to...

Progress! All of the valves are completed, plus some spares. These are 17-4 stainless and my first time single point threading on the CNC lathe. I had a little challenge of not getting a taper with such a long, thin part. The first try had about .0015 taper over the length of the stem. No...

Today I finished got the cam sprocket finished. I was glad to have that one done in one try. I just need to broach the keyway for the camshaft and take a couple of links out of the chain. I decided that the sandpaper finish on the tops of the pistons had to go, so I cobbled together a stop...

I wouldn't say that I've figured it out as much as I can fake my way through it. Thanks though. I did try and take a video today of the lathe running the pistons. It was a last minute idea and the phone ziptied to a mag base wasn't the best. I sped it up 8 times, and while I tried to run...

Another short day in the shop, but productive none the less. I finished running the last few pistons and while I was waiting I cleaned up the tops of the pistons. For now they are just sanded with 400 grit sandpaper. I'll either run them on the buffing wheel to polish them or make some sort...

Originally I had planned to make the pistons from Delrin so that they would be self lubricating in the cylinder bores. As fate would have it, my local plastic supplier was out of stock yesterday and I really wanted to make some more progress today. I decided to just go ahead with running the...

Thanks guys. Today was productive, but not a lot to show. I started by finishing up the connecting rods. There were just a couple more to run for the third operation from yesterday. The hole where the rod connects to the crank was just interpolated with an endmill and still needed to be...

The connecting rods are nearing completion. I did some testing this morning to make sure that I didn't get the same offset issue I had previously and things were looking good. There is still a little work to do on the rods before they are completely done, but we're getting closer. With...