TB2 - Cam Rings

[GailInNM]

Final cut on Comber (Coomber) cam rings. Just need to polish and engrave.

[youtube=425,350]9eDfD4InvlU[/youtube]

Cutting speed is slow because I am clamping lightly on the cam ring as I do not want to distort it. Using a 25 year old Bridgeport V2E3 CNC with a 1/4 inch 2 flute carbide cutter at 4000 RPM. The inside of the ring has been roughed out with 1/32 of material left for the final cut. I brushed the inside with Tapmatic Edge Liquid for a cutting fluid before mounting the part. The cam profile is generated by a parametric program so the CNC does all the cutter path calculations and the program is only about 160 bytes long.

 

[kustomkb]

Looks great Gail,

The mellow music is very relaxing, theraputic one might say.

Kevin.

 

[GailInNM]

The mellow music is very relaxing, theraputic one might say.

Thanks Kevin. I think hobbies are supposed to be relaxing.

Gail in NM,USA

 

[Brass_Machine]

ooooooh!

That looks nice! Love the music to... what is it?

Eric

 

[GailInNM]

Eric,
The music is Mach Inspire by taboca and being played by taboca. It is a stock track on youtube so it is easy to add.
More of his short works at:
http://ccmixter.org/people/taboca

It is easier to listen to than my old mill running. We all get enough of that. ;D
Gail in NM,USA

http://ccmixter.org/people/taboca

 

[GailInNM]

A finished cam. If anyone notices the extra hole, it is hidden and was put in to provide a racking point if I decided to anodize any of the cams. I still have not set my anodizing tanks up again, so since the color choice seemed to split about 50/50 they will all be silver with black lettering.

 

[Bernd]

Very nice Gail. :bow: I like the engraving. :bow: Would be neat if you added a date perhaps.

I noticed that you were climb cutting. Better finish that way?

Regards,
Bernd

 

[ksouers]

Looking great, Gail. Can't wait to see a completed engine.

By the way I also liked the music. Yes, much preferred over the noise of the mill.

 

[GailInNM]

Thanks Bernd and Kevin.
Climb milling produces the cleanest cut in aluminum as the cut is a shearing cut at the start while conventional milling produces a rubbing cut. Unless you are using flood cooling, the rubbing cut bonds previously cut chips to the finished surface. You have to have a rigid machine with almost no backlash to climb mill however and this mostly means ground ball screws for the feeds and the feeds have to be controlled. Otherwise it gets more exciting than you want to know about.

I was planning on putting the "HMEM" logo on both sides of the cam, but I could put the year on one side if that is what people wanted. I like the logo on both sides myself.

Perhaps a nameplate on the bottom of the base would be good. It could be recessed in a contoured gasket made of art foam that was mounted with an adhesive to provide a cushion for the base or mounted on on the large bearing side of the base. I can put a fair amount of info on something like that with the laser using some black lacquer coated brass plate. Produces black lettering on a black background. I have some that is about 0.025 thick Lots of time to think about that as that would be an add on and people could leave it off if they did not like it. Let me know what you think about it.

Gail in NM,USA

 

[te_gui]

Speaking as the base guy here (who really needs to get off his duff), I could certainly mill a small pocket in the base for a tag if we had the dimensions worked out. I have already increased the thickness to match some material I had so a pocket should be any trouble. I had been playing around with running a radius around the top edge for extra "bling" but then it interferes with the cam ring mounting hole. This working with "rules" is tough, used to doing my own thing and tweaking stuff to match. So recess would be easy, or if I really get busy and Gail was willing I could ship them to him early and engrave directly on. Leave that to be determined

Brian

 

[GailInNM]

Brian,
If you don't mind making a pocket or two on the base, I can make laser engraved nameplates to go in the pockets. It looks like a pocket could go in the bottom that would be a max size of about 1-1/16 x 7/8 inch and something on the valve end of the base 1-3/4 wide with a height depending on how thick you make the base. They would need to be about 30 thou deep or a little more. Rectangular would be nice with a 3/32 or so radius in the corners. I would make a quick die to stamp them out.

I just checked on the material I have and it is 0.20 thick and the mounting tape is 0.005 thick. The plates would want to recess a few thousandths of an inch. With the laser I can engrave this plate down to about 6 point type. The bottom plate could have a list of the builders and maybe one line of other text. It would be small type, but readable if one tried. Some of us older guys would probably have to use a glass to read it. The side plate could have "HMEN Team build 2008" or something like that, probably broken into two lines depending on height of the label. The smaller type would have to be a single stroke font and the laser beam is about 0.005 wide, a touch wider than the normal width of a a laser printer.

We should probably put this in a new thread and see if everyone likes the idea or not, or what they would prefer.

Gail in NM,USA