Casting Big Aluminum Pieces

China’s One Piece EV Frame The Aluminium Engineering Breakthrough
PRV Engineering Ltd

This video is just a marketing blurb. I looked but did not find anything more substantive. This video got me started, but it's just this guy talking for four minutes. The company behind this might be Hantek, but I only found a couple of references to them. The only Hantek I found seems to be mostly involved in electronics.

Aluminium frame wall thickness ranges from 4 mm to 50 mm in a single cast.

This might be the frame Hantek is actually casting. 

Our best experimental mods all in one engine - what will happen?

Our best experimental mods all in one engine - what will happen?
Garage 54

These guys are always doing weird stuff, like putting wooden pistons in an engine. I have to give them credit for trying things. This one is a little more conventional, mostly just cleaning and rebuilding an engine. I'm not sure lightening the crank and flywheel really gained them anything, we aren't building a race car here, and I wonder what became of the crankshaft's balance. Whatever, it didn't seem to affect the engine that much. But the modifications to the camshaft (7:40 mark) is some real third world shit, like something you would see on MacGyver.

I can't listen to the audio, it's dubbed and it just grates. I turn off the audio and read the subtitles. There's a lot of filler, so I tend to skip ahead ten seconds at a time by using the right arrow key.

ROBOFORMING: The Future of Metalworking?

ROBOFORMING: The Future of Metalworking? (I Had NO IDEA This Was Possible) - Smarter Every Day 290
SmarterEveryDay

Cool, a new technique for forming sheet metal parts without having to build complex, expensive stamping dies. One of these days someone will make a video about how the stamping dies are made, but I haven't seen one yet.

Blondihacks

Let's Build a Locomotive! Pennsylvania A3 Switcher, Part 1
Blondihacks

Jack recommended Blondihacks to my attention a couple of months ago and I finally got around to looking her up. I picked this video because I posted about a live steam model train not too long ago. In this one she spends a lot of time laying out the ground work, including sourcing materials, which turns out to be a bigger problem than I imagined. Very entertaining, if you like obscure technical info.

Flame Spray Welding

Repair BROKEN Cast Iron Transmission Housing | Flame Spray Welding
Cutting Edge Engineering AUstralia

I would be curious to see how well the finished repair holds up. It looks like it ought to be strong enough, but I wonder if all that heat might have distorted the case, leading to the misalignment of the internal parts, leading to reduced life span. On the other hand, the machine this came out of likely cost $500,000. A machine like that would need to be generating around $15K a month just to pay for itself, never mind the operating expense, so a couple of months work might pay for a new transmission.

That weld is pretty ugly, but then you need practice to get good, and I expect there won't be that many occasions when you need to weld plate steel to cast iron.

It's kind of amazing how thin they can make cast iron parts. When you look at cast iron parts, the flanges around the edges are pretty thick, but you can't really see how thick the iron is in between those flanges.

Figur Sheet Metal Forming Machine

Reshaping History with Digital Sheet Forming
Desktop Metal

It's about time someone married sheet metal forming and digital technology. The video is basically an ad for Figur sheet metal forming machines, but these machines are wonderful. They are expensive, Google found a price of $500K, but when you consider a good sheet metal man is going to cost you $100K a year, and what that man can do in a week this machine can do an hour, you can see how it could pay off. It's not going to replace sheet metal stamping any time soon, but it's going to be a boon for people making one-off machines. It will be interesting to see how this changes sheet metal creations over the next few years.

Micrograph

Metal Micrograph

The Thermal Spray Guy has a couple of Struers Abramin Polishers for sale. Okay, but what is a Struers Abramin and why do you want to polish it? Struers is the company and they make equipment for examining the microscopic structure of metals. Found the above image on their website. I suspect the actual size of the section shown is about .005" (five thousandths of an inch).

Preparation of a sample for examination takes several steps of grinding and polishing with ever finer grit. They end with grit with a particle size of 500 nanometers. A line drawn on the above sample would hold one hundred thousand of such particles.

Struers has bunch of videos posted on YouTube.

Peak Behind the Curtain

Roll Levelling Machine
with detail of the sheet bending between the rolls

When I hear about 'infrastructure' in discussions about the economy, I think of roads and bridges and dams, huge things that you can't friggin' miss if you go outside. What isn't often mentioned, and what you seldom see is all of the machinery inside of all of the factories that are busy making all the widgets that make our cushy, civilized life possible.

Driveshafts connecting the gearbox (foreground) to the 'large leveler' (background)

Bustednuckles has a post up that gives us a peak behind the curtain. He  had a very long day at work yesterday installing a gear box for a 'large leveler'. This machine is for relieving internal stresses in sheet metal as it is taken off of big rolls. The way it works is nuts. Why would bending sheet metal back and forth multiple times relieve stress? Sounds like it would just add more stress, but what do I know? Evidently it's a proven technique, so every place that is taking in big rolls of sheet metal direct from the rolling mill is going to have at least one of these.

Ancient Machine Work

The Ancient Invisible Fastening Pins of The Antikythera Mechanism
Clickspring Clips

I'm not sure, but it kind of looks like this guy is trying to reproduce the Antikythera Mechanism using just hand tools. Going by the amount of work he's doing to accomplish this one little step, it's probably going to take him a couple of years to complete it.

More Power!

Shades of Jeremy Clarkson.

331 Cadillac motor with 5 carburetors

Briggs Cunningham used it in the 1950 24 hrs of Le Mans.

The Feral Irishman (NSFW) got me started with this pic:

Manifold with 5 two-barrel carburetors

Mac's Motor City Garage has a story with more photos. 

Some people think these were made by welding adapters onto a standard manifold. I doubt that, to me they look like somebody went to the trouble to make a mold and get them cast. Besides, I suspect that welding cast iron back in the fifties would have been a bit of a trick.

Ruger Firearms

How Its Made
RugerFirearms

Tam posted a link to a hipster's review of the Ruger P89 semiautomatic handgun. To my mind, Ruger has always been 'one of the other gun companies', meaning they weren't Colt or Smith & Wesson or Winchester. And somehow their guns just weren't as sexy as the ones from the big three. Can guns really be sexy? I think it's just another way of saying 'pretty'. 

Ruger Blackhawk

For instance, I never liked the way the Blackhawk looked with that rear sight hanging out like that, looks like it could easily snag on something and break off. Never mind that Ruger might know what they are doing.

Anyway, on to the main point of this post.

Ruger makes their guns by casting as opposed to forging. Casting is simpler and therefore cheaper than forging, which means Ruger can sell their guns for less. If it's done right, cast parts can be as strong as forged parts, though it generally means the cast parts will be slightly thicker than their forged counterparts, which means they will also be slightly heavier, which brings us to this line from the hipster's review:

The P89 makes “kerchunk” feel like a lifestyle choice.

Ruger has done a whole series of short videos on how they make their guns. They are great. If the video at top doesn't automatically lead to the next one, the whole playlist can be found here.

I made six ridiculous pencil sharpeners

I started watching this thinking I might get some laughs, and I did, but he also spends some time talking about his new Flow Mach 200 waterjet, a high pressure water cutting machine, which is definitely very cool.

Bob McDemus VVD P004 V001 1920x1080 R001 August 2023

Not the greatest video, I found the super bouncy young guy super annoying, but maybe that's just me. It does give you some idea of what Thermal Spray is (Wikipedia page).

I get an occasional newsletter from Thermal Spray Guy and this video was included. The newsletter opens with this list:

There is a wide range of thermal spray applications that are commonly known:

• Corrosion protection for bridges
• Dimensional restoration of diesel engine blocks and heads
• Thermal barrier coatings on aerospace turbine blades
• CP titanium and hydroxyapatite bone growth alloys for medical implants
• Ceramic materials for electrical insulation applications

Most of those are beyond me, but "Dimensional restoration of diesel engine blocks and heads", that's something I can wrap my head around. With all the equipment, knowledge and experience needed to perform such work, it's not something you would want to try in your garage. If you had an expensive engine that needed such work, and there was a competent thermal spray shop within driving distance, it could be viable solution. 

That axle that Wes was working on could have used some of it, except even attempting to repair it didn't pencil out.

1927 Cummins Model P

This image got me started.

Cummins and his first diesel

Google found this on the Cummins website:

THE LEGACY OF THE CUMMINS NO. 8 RACE CAR by Michael Nagel

May 15, 2015

Of all the Cummins race cars, none is as well-traveled as the 1931 No. 8 Cummins Diesel. From the famous Indianapolis speedway to a tour round the world, the No. 8 car was the model for efficiency and reliability.

Cummins founder Clessie Cummins originally installed his 4-cylinder model U engine in a Duesenberg chassis and in February 1931, drove it to Daytona Beach and set a new diesel speed record averaging 100.755 miles per hour (mph).

In May of 1931 Clessie took the Cummins-Powered Duesenberg as the No. 8 Cummins Diesel to the Indy 500 and finished 13th with an average speed of just over 86 mph. It was the first car in racing history to complete all 500 miles without any pit stops.

The No. 8 car wasn’t retired after the race. Cummins founders W.G. Irwin and Clessie Cummins drove it on a European tour through France, Monaco, Italy, Germany and England to promote the efficiency and reliability of the diesels.

So now I'm looking for some information about this Model U engine. Wikipedia coughs up:

The Cummins Engine Company was founded in Columbus, Indiana, on February 3, 1919, by mechanic Clessie Cummins and banker William Glanton Irwin. The company focused on developing the diesel engine invented 20 years earlier. Despite several well-publicized endurance trials, it was not until 1933 that their Model H engine, used in small railroad switchers, proved successful.

So two years after the founders made their world tour, business came their way. So now I'm looking for this Model H engine, but I'm not getting anywhere. Probably because there's only three guys who have the info and they're so old they don't even know about the internet. So instead of anything useful, we get to watch this even older engine get run through it's paces.

Can you imagine trying to set up a factory to build an engine? Now-a-days to be competitive, you would probably need a billion dollars. There are a few specialty shops building engines, big and small. I wonder if any of those small shops are casting their own iron blocks? Casting iron is a big deal, not like casting aluminum. That crazy old coot who rode the The World's Fastest Indian was casting pistons in his backyard. Casting iron takes a lot of heat. How much, you ask? Let's see what we can find.

From THUNDER SAID ENERGY:

A good rule of thumb is 25 kWh of useful energy to heat each ton of material by each 100ºC. (1) Thermodynamics 101. Heating and melting materials requires energy, inducing particles to vibrate more (specific heat) and ultimately to break the bonds that hold them together as a solid or liquid (latent heat).

Density of iron is 7.874 grams / cc. Density of aluminum is like 2.7 grams / cc, so iron is three times as dense as aluminum so the same size object would weigh three times as much and require three times as much energy. Except iron has a much higher melting point than aluminum. Aluminum melts at 1200 degrees C, iron melts at 2800 degrees C, so, assuming we are heating the metal on a cold winter's day, iron is going to take:

(7.874/2.7) * (2800/1200) = 6.8 times as much energy to heat to the melting point as aluminum.

Third World Industry

Most Incredible Manufacturing Process of Rebar Steel
Random Things

Probably very like what industry looked like in the west a hundred years ago -  a bunch of guys feeding some very large and very dangerous machines. Only difference is that the building and the machinery looks to be a hundred years old while in the west it would have been new. Shoot, they are probably the same machines, just uprooted from the midwest or Sheffield and shipped to southern Asia. One big difference is they might be using natural gas instead of coal for heating.

Located in Lahore Pakistan.

Excelsior Board Track Racer, Part 2

How I made a motorcycle from an old Black and White photo // Paul Brodie's Shop
paul brodie
I put up a post about this guy and his project a while back. Ten years later he tells us how he did it.

Russia, Airlines & Metallurgy

Is Russia about to NATIONALIZE Foreign Aircraft?! | Mentour NOW!
Mentour Now!
This guy covers a wide scope, all the factors that he can think of that are going to affect the airline industry, from where is the ore being mined to how things are financed. It's pretty great.

3D Printing Metal Parts

Turbo Manifold 3D Printed from Inconel Powder
PapadakisRacing

This video packs a whole bunch of sophisticated high technology into this short story. Parts of the video sound like an ad for SolidWorks. That's okay, you're going to need some kind of CAD software if you want to attempt any kind of 3D printing. SolidWorks is one of the more sophisticated packages. Carries a pretty sophisticated price tag as well. There's also the FARO digitizer that I ran into last month. Then there's the 3D printer. The last time I ran into a 3D printer that printed metal, they were using a different technique. This method looks like it should work better, but you have to wait until it's done to see if it really delivered what you want. Minor screwups can result in a useless print, and since the printing process is slow, this can mean delays in getting what you want.

I kind of imagined that 3D printing would be useful for resurrecting old machines that you could no longer get parts for, but as this video shows, it takes a lot of very expensive equipment to make these parts. You could no doubt hire people who have these expensive machines to make a water pump for your antique Goober-Snorter, but it's still going to cost you a pretty penny. Building new stuff that couldn't have been built before is a more likely application.

Drawbar Action

Jack's Drawbar Wrenches

Jack has a small vertical milling machine. It sits on a bench in his garage. The machine and the bench are each about three feet high. Together they are a tad over six feet. The mill has a vertical shaft that holds a cutting tool. The shaft and the tool spin, the adjustable structure of the machine allows the cutting tool to be brought to bear on the work piece in a controlled manner and so shape the work piece as desired.

Machine tool bit, collet and drawbar assembled within the spindle.

The shaft is not solid, but is a hollow tube called the spindle. The inside of the bottom end of the spindle is tapered.

Set of machine tool collets

A collet is used to hold the actual cutting tool. It acts much like a three jaw chuck, but it only works with one size shaft. The inside of the collet is cylindrical, the outside is tapered to match the inside of the spindle. The back, or top, end of the collet is threaded. The drawbar is threaded to match. To mount a cutting tool in the machine, you insert it in the correct size collet, insert the collet into the spindle, screw the drawbar into the collet and then tighten the drawbar.

With Jack's machine sitting on the bench the hex head on the top end of the drawbar is just over his head. The shape of the machine means he's working by feel everytime he needs to tighten or loosen the drawbar, so he finally decided to dedicate a wrench to the job.

His first attempt was to take a Craftsman deep socket and drill a hole through it so he could mount a handle (center of top picture). Turns out Craftsman sockets are really tough. He was able to drill a small hole through it sideways (after he ground the chrome off), but when he tried to enlarge the hole with a larger size drill bit he got nowhere. Time for some heat treatment to make the steel a little softer, anneal it if you will. Heating it up red hot and then letting it cool down on a bed of sand worked well for one side, the side that was facing the sand, but did nothing for the side facing up. So he heated it up again and then buried it in the sand. Evidently the speed at which steel cools has a big effect on how hard it is. Metallurgical black magic. Now he can drill a hole through the other side. Unfortunately, with all this monkeying around, the two holes are no longer lined up.

Compare this with Mr. Wheels turning down a deep socket on a wood lathe. I can only conclude that Mr. Wheels was dealing with a cheap Chinese made socket.

Ingersoll Rand Impact Wrench

A little reading on the internet reveals that impact sockets (that is, sockets designed to be used with impact wrenches*) are not as hard as regular sockets, so Jack buys one of those and easily drills straight through both sides. Vunderbar!

He uses the holes to attach a handle to the socket (bottom of top picture) and attaches a small piece of brass to the drive end of the socket to use as a hammer. Once the collet has been drawn into the spindle it is pretty well stuck. Tapping on the drawbar will release the collet from the taper so it can be removed. So now he has a single tool to deal with the drawbar.

He revels in his success for a bit, but then he realizes a socket wrench might not be the best choice for this job. You can let go of the handle while the wrench is engaged with the drawbar and it will just sit there. Forget that you left it there and turn on the machine and it will sit there for a bit until the handle gains enough momentum to unbalance it and it is going to be flung at high velocity in some random direction. Not good.

Which brings us to the tool at the top of the top picture. Better to use an open-end wrench that will come off immediately as soon as the tool starts up. Jack just added the brass hammer faces. Two so he can whack it with either side.

* Impact wrenches are what the tire guys use to remove lug nuts when dismounting the wheels from you car.

Material Science 101

CAN YOU FORGE A METEORITE!?
Playing with hot metal is great fun. Metal we get from the store has been refined to within an inch of it's life, not like a meteorite. This makes ancient daggers made from meteorites even more impressive.