Hey guy's!
I have been working 6 days a week and have had very little time for projects. I cannot find more than an hour
here or there so I decided rather than do nothing, I'm going to make a few simple things here and there.
Jimmy, One of the guy's in my club wanted me to redesign Mr. Graham's HOSC engine into a twin cylinder. I liked
it so much that I blew it up to double size and decided to build it out of Corian countertop material. Jimmy
stops in at a cabinet shop and one of the workers there gives him the sink cutouts and scraps for free. Others
have made custom pens and YoYo's and other things out of the corian to give back as a thank you for letting
us have the scraps. I'm going to build this air engine to give back to the corian guy to thank him for the
pieces I have gotten over the years. If you have seen the base plates for the Peewee and Demon and the spark
plug insulators, they were all made from this persons generosity.
My plan is to make a part a week. With Mr. Graham's permission I will make the plans and the Gcode available
to anyone who wants to build one. The plans and Gcode will be attached to the post. I will try to get the post
up every Sunday. The plans will only contain the information required to finish the part so this will be a CNC
only thing. The CNC parts will be the base, standards, flywheel, and cylinders. The manually made pieces will
be the pistons, crankshaft parts, and finishing the CNC'd parts.
CAUTION: The Gcode was written to be used on corian. This material is like plastic so the speeds, feeds, and depth
of cut may be way to aggressive for aluminum.
This will not be as easy as it seems. Corian has no standard thickness. I have measured pieces from .445 to .485
depending on the type and color. As the pieces are made and the project moves forward, there will be some
adjustments that have to be made. If you are the kind of person who can run into the unexpected and just roll
with it, this is your project.
First I found the center (X0,Y0) of a 7 X 5 inch piece. The top surface will be Z0 for all tools. You need to
setup this way because I wrote the code to cut .525 deep to make sure the thickness of any piece will work. You
can also stack 2 pieces on the table to protect your table when the cutter goes thru.
The holes are center drilled, and drilled with a #37 drill bit and a 1/4 inch drill bit.
Then a 1/8 inch endmill was used to cut out enough of the part to allow the next step. I know you are thinking
that a larger endmill could have been used but my mill has a small spindle motor and gets real hot with the
larger bits. I used the smaller bit and cut at 60 inches a minute and it goes fast.
Don't worry about the funny looking cut down the middle. That was operator error and not the Gcode.
A 1/16 inch radius cutting endmill with a 1/4 inch tip was used to clean up the edge. If you don't have
this cutter and don't want to buy one, you could just leave the 1/8 inch endmill in and press cycle
start. The mill will go thru all the moves and when prompted for the 1/8 endmill again, it is already in
so cycle start again and you can continue having skipped the radius step.
Then the 1/8 inch mill was loaded and the piece was cut out.
The corian is brittle so cutting the tabs with a plier caused the piece to chip. Cutting it out with a band
saw might take a bit longer but will avoid damage. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to feed the
air to it so that won't be addressed at this time.
View attachment Standard.tap
View attachment Standards.pdf
I have been working 6 days a week and have had very little time for projects. I cannot find more than an hour
here or there so I decided rather than do nothing, I'm going to make a few simple things here and there.
Jimmy, One of the guy's in my club wanted me to redesign Mr. Graham's HOSC engine into a twin cylinder. I liked
it so much that I blew it up to double size and decided to build it out of Corian countertop material. Jimmy
stops in at a cabinet shop and one of the workers there gives him the sink cutouts and scraps for free. Others
have made custom pens and YoYo's and other things out of the corian to give back as a thank you for letting
us have the scraps. I'm going to build this air engine to give back to the corian guy to thank him for the
pieces I have gotten over the years. If you have seen the base plates for the Peewee and Demon and the spark
plug insulators, they were all made from this persons generosity.
My plan is to make a part a week. With Mr. Graham's permission I will make the plans and the Gcode available
to anyone who wants to build one. The plans and Gcode will be attached to the post. I will try to get the post
up every Sunday. The plans will only contain the information required to finish the part so this will be a CNC
only thing. The CNC parts will be the base, standards, flywheel, and cylinders. The manually made pieces will
be the pistons, crankshaft parts, and finishing the CNC'd parts.
CAUTION: The Gcode was written to be used on corian. This material is like plastic so the speeds, feeds, and depth
of cut may be way to aggressive for aluminum.
This will not be as easy as it seems. Corian has no standard thickness. I have measured pieces from .445 to .485
depending on the type and color. As the pieces are made and the project moves forward, there will be some
adjustments that have to be made. If you are the kind of person who can run into the unexpected and just roll
with it, this is your project.
First I found the center (X0,Y0) of a 7 X 5 inch piece. The top surface will be Z0 for all tools. You need to
setup this way because I wrote the code to cut .525 deep to make sure the thickness of any piece will work. You
can also stack 2 pieces on the table to protect your table when the cutter goes thru.
The holes are center drilled, and drilled with a #37 drill bit and a 1/4 inch drill bit.
Then a 1/8 inch endmill was used to cut out enough of the part to allow the next step. I know you are thinking
that a larger endmill could have been used but my mill has a small spindle motor and gets real hot with the
larger bits. I used the smaller bit and cut at 60 inches a minute and it goes fast.
Don't worry about the funny looking cut down the middle. That was operator error and not the Gcode.
A 1/16 inch radius cutting endmill with a 1/4 inch tip was used to clean up the edge. If you don't have
this cutter and don't want to buy one, you could just leave the 1/8 inch endmill in and press cycle
start. The mill will go thru all the moves and when prompted for the 1/8 endmill again, it is already in
so cycle start again and you can continue having skipped the radius step.
Then the 1/8 inch mill was loaded and the piece was cut out.
The corian is brittle so cutting the tabs with a plier caused the piece to chip. Cutting it out with a band
saw might take a bit longer but will avoid damage. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to feed the
air to it so that won't be addressed at this time.
View attachment Standard.tap
View attachment Standards.pdf
