Recent content by old-and-broken

Okay the cheap chinese end mill lasted for about three good cuts then it dulled and started forcing swarf between the laminations. Out with the cheap endmill and back in with the original one. the cuts are all complete. in the picture you can see the damage to a couple of projections where...

The guys at work who cut lots of ACME thread parts, have been in the habit of putting a 'bypass' in a safety shield door switch, so they can touch up the threads with some sandpaper. This is needed to get the threads clean and burr free, for a three wire measurement operation. The new safety...

I've always used a candle stick. I find the wax is less of 'a mess' when it comes to cleaning up later. I just present the side of the candle to the blade and let the blade lightly cut it long enough to coat the entire length of blade. I do this every couple of minutes with a long cut, and...

Okay, the carbide end mill is out and a cheap chinese 3/16 four flute is in. Before After Progress will be slow. Off to the 'job' in a few minutes, after one more cup of joe. till later then.

Alrighty then. I'll spare you guys any more questions of such a difficult nature in the future. I'm going to just wade in and do what I know to do. Should I make any discoveries about small carbide end mills along the way, so much the better. I'll just post the pictures here and chalk up the...

Starting this build with a question. I've never used a carbide end mill before. I've never used an end mill this small before, of any type. I presume the small size will require a bit more speed. I'm working with a 1/8", 2 flute spiral type. I got a picture of the tool as you see. The tool...

Now that you are not needing the first boiler body. You could give "milling the heads of the rivets off" a try, and see how well the endplates match up with the rivet holes when all is rotated 180 degrees. It would make an excellent practice piece for soldering(caulking) practice. :)

I'm no expert. I'm not even a layman when it comes to casting, BUT Aluminum shrinks when cooling, that, I know. Castings are supposed to have a large extra piece of metal attached from where the metal is poured in to the mold. This extra metal forms a reservoir of sorts and provides a source...

I'm sadly unable to sleep tonight. Spent some time modeling the stator and rotor in sketchup. The stator will require machining to remove a small amount of material from the inner most portion. A final diameter of 1.875 will allow me to use the 1/16 thick magnets and leave an air gap all around...

any two will work. Doesn't matter which two.

I have never printed anything from Sketchup, but you can get 2-D views in the progrom. See the 3 steps in the attached picture. Select "PARALLEL PROJECTION" from the camera drop down menu. Again in the camera drop down menu, select a view direction(TOP is selected in the picture) The...

Orbital sander. Much better than hand, and not dangerous to the wood like a belt sander. coarse, medium, then fine grit and the glue will be gone. When that is finished dampen the wood with a sponge and when dry re-sand the wood with a fine grit, following the grain. Do this sanding...

next step was to make some kind of form upon which to put the copper windings. My hope is to fix the wire to the form using superglue or perhaps some type of epoxy then to simply 'slide' the forms into place on the stator iron projections. Before I can do this I need to perform one machining...

That is beautiful. Wonderful work. It makes my little generator plan look like a childs finger painting by comparison. You are a superb model engineer Manfred.

That was quick. The magnets were waiting for me on my front porch when I got home today. Since I haven't decided on the size yet, I ordered both sizes. Next I have to figure out a mounting method for the magnets. milling some flats on the rotor and encapsulating the whole in a clear epoxy...