Section 11 - Valve Gear

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Neidrauer Live Steam Locomotives Photo Albums » Building a Live Steam Locomotive - the Mikado Project » Section 11 - Valve Gear

Valve Gear. Lots of little levers: Link Trunion, tumbling shaft lever, eccentric crank, eccentric rod, radius rod, combination lever, union link, lifting link. July 2008-January 2009

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ValveMotion26Nov08 007 28-Nov-08 At the end of the night, most of the rods have been drilled and bored. Next to drill the Radius Rod, Eccentric Rod and cut the slots and put the bearings in.

ValveMotion26Nov08 006 You can never have enough clamps! Here's what we ended up with to hold the Radius rod in line.

ValveMotion26Nov08 005 Using a magnifying glass to align the clamping fixture under the scribed centerline on the part.

ValveMotion26Nov08 004 To machine the Radius Rod, we start at the valve end and machine a flat for a reference surface.

ValveMotion26Nov08 001 How do you hold these castings? With the draft (taper) in them from the moulding process, there isn't a straight spot to start from.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 009 Preparing to drill the holes.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 008 Cutting the right side lever

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 007 Cutting the other end.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 006 Successful clamping #2 - a backing bar against the lever, and only taking cuts from the left works.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 005 Clamping attempt #1 for the left Tumbling Shaft Lever. This did not have enough support to keep the part from moving under the cutter.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 004 With the machined ends down and under the clamps, we take light cuts on the unsupported end.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 002 Machining the lever for the engineers side. The problem with this clamping setup is that any twist or differences in height between the two legs results in us cutting the ends to the wrong height, the part unbends (moves) when the clamps are removed.

TumblingShaftLever12Nov08 001 12-Nov-08 We start work on the Tumbling Shaft Lever. There's no place to hold these castings! Everywhere we want to clamp we have to machine.

LiftingLink12Nov08 003 Cutting the other side. We are using the end of the vise like a v-block, most of the clamping force is on the left end of the link.

LiftingLink12Nov08 002 Machined ends, one side.

LiftingLink12Nov08 001 12-Nov-08 Using space blocks to hold the Lifting Link in the vise.

ValveGear3Dec08 004 Progress at the end of the night.

ValveGear3Dec08 003 Without disturbing the setup, we drill and bore the Eccentric Rod.

ValveGear3Dec08 002 Next it's a simple step to drill and bore the holes. Not seen is the machinist's jack to support the end of the fixture hanging out of the vise.

ValveGear3Dec08 001 3-Dec-08. To accurately lay out the holes for the Radius Rod and Eccentric Rod, we build a drill fixture. using a piece of aluminum tooling plate, we machined the top and bottom clamping side parallel, then drilled, bored and pushed a dowel pin in which exactly fits the unbushed hole in the radius rod.

ValveGear10Dec08 005 10-Dec-08 Levers with slots! This wraps up another year in the shop, nothing more until after the new year holidays are over.

ValveGear10Dec08 004 We had some discussions on how to hold the Eccentric Rod to mill the slot. In the end we decided to just clamp it in the vise and mill the middle away. The risk of this setup is the vise might put force on the tiny amount of material not machined away, causing the machined part to bend or have taper when done.

ValveGear10Dec08 003 It's hard to hold Combination Lever with an offset in the vise, so a couple of blocks are used to pinch the part in the jaws. Then we mill the slot in a conventional horizontal position.

ValveGear10Dec08 002 Back and forth we go, taking a little more off each time. After we have milled the middle away, we go back and do a finish pass on each side to get the 'ears' to the finished thickness.

ValveGear10Dec08 001 10-Dec-08 time to cut some slots. The lifting link is short enough to hold in the vise jaws. A quick bump of the cutter a close fitting pin allows us to get a reference dimension to set the slot cut depth.

TumblingShaftFinishing31Jan09 005 31-Jan-09 Drilling the roll pin holes for the tumbling shaft lifting arms. Reviewing the blueprint notes, we could not see how we could accurately match drill the arms to the shaft and guarentee the ends of the arms are in the same position on both sides of the locomotive.

TumblingShaftFinishing31Jan09 004 31-Jan-09 With the shaft held between centers (we had drilled center holes in the ends before bending), we use a dial indicator to measure the total indicated runout after the bending operation. The stresses of the cold-formed bend caused the ends to move around, with a very large runout next to the bend point. We focused on getting each end to be within a thou of each other, around the area held in the pillow block. With this we are confident the tumbler shaft will rotate without binding.

TumblingShaftFinishing31Jan09 003 With a guess on how much spring-back to accommodate, we crank the vise down and the bending jig goes to work.

TumblingShaftFinishing31Jan09 002

TumblingShaftFinishing31Jan09 001 31-Jan-09 The bending jig loaded and secured for use.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication24Jan09 006 24-Jan-09 A mock-up of the bending jig.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication24Jan09 005 Using a depth mike to measure the depth of the block relative to the hole. We do this on both sides to make sure the machined surface is parallel to the reamed hole.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication24Jan09 004 Using an indicator to roughly make the hole level with the table.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication24Jan09 003 Drilling the pilot hole, then we will enlarge the holes and ream to a finish through the block. Deep drilling a hole like this will make you wish for a lever action tailstock.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication24Jan09 002 The Tumbling Shaft bending jig needs to hold the bar ends in place during the bending operation. We will use two 4

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication21Jan09 013 The tool and the finished pass.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication21Jan09 011 Bill keeps one hand on the carriage crank and the other on the tool holder keeping a tool bit shim from rattling out during the interrupted cut.

TumblingShaftFixtureFabrication21Jan09 002 21-Jan-09 The big 1925 Rahn-Larmon cone head lathe is fired up to turn a 12

Rods14Jan09 007 With the redundant hub nearly gone, the eccentric rod is close to being finished.

Rods14Jan09 006 Taking a light cut and CONVENTIONAL milling the end of the eccentric rod.

Rods14Jan09 005 Foregoing the hassle of setting up a rotary table, we clamp a dowel pin in the vise, and making sure to take light cuts and CONVENTIONAL mill only, we rotate the eccentric rod by hand and cut away the redundant nub on each rod.

Rods14Jan09 004 My eccentric rods were cast as both lefts and rights, and needed to have the 'oil fitting' nub machined off.

Rods14Jan09 003 Using a small 1/4

Rods14Jan09 001 14-Jan-08 Time to drill some oil holes! Using a protractor and eye-ball-that-oughta-do alignment method to put the oil hole near the center of the shaft hole, we then use the wiggler to line up the hole location. Our drill bits were just barely long enough to drill the holes before the chuck body interfered with the side of the part.

LinkBoltsFinished23Jan09 While Bill was making the Tumbling Shaft bending jig, I finished making the six bolts for the valve gear. The quality of what I can make has improved since we started this project several years ago I'm happy to report!

FinshedLinkage19Jan09 003 I managed to make a few bolts on the lathe and hold the dimensions pretty good.

FinshedLinkage19Jan09 002 19-Jan-09. The end of another night and this section is nearly complete.

FinshedLinkage19Jan09 001 19-Jan-09 Turning our attention back to the unfinished Tumbling Shaft Levers, we re-use the tooling plate fixture to hold the levers perfectly square. We have put two dowel pins in the plate, one for the right lever pin hole and another shorter pin that both levers have been slipped over and clamped across. With the tooling plate clamped to an angle plate and indicated flat to the table, we can insure the Tumbling Shaft pinning holes are in line with each other.

ANewFixedJawForTheVice19Jan09 002 Drilling the bolting holes for the vise bending fixture.

ANewFixedJawForTheVice19Jan09 001 19-Jan-09 Bill and I have been puzzling how to put that 6

RadiusRod7Jan09 010 The second step to machine the radius rod is to put a spacer in the ends of the finished 'ears' which is exactly the same width as the slot opening. We then reclamp the part on the finished end so we can mill away the middle while securely holding it.

RadiusRod7Jan09 007 Checking the thickness to get the finished size.

RadiusRod7Jan09 006 The finished first step.

RadiusRod7Jan09 004 The first step is to mill about 3/4 of the slot away, which also allows us to set our numbers on the DRO.

RadiusRod7Jan09 002 Because the 'ears' of the radius rod are so long and thin and will not leave us much material left to clamp with when we are done, We decide to cut the radius rod slot in two steps.

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