new gas pipes under construction

[Steve Seebold]

Good morning Loring, I remember not too terribly long ago you and Mike were in SoCal for a boating event at Legg Lake ant the two of you stopped by RC Boatworks. While you were there, the two of you stopped by my shop which was 2 doors away.

I made it another couple of years there before some major health issues forced me to close the place down and sell the equipment.

After that I made an attempt at retirement but that only lasted about 3 months.

I worked part time for David Rippe at Hyperformance Procducts for about 9 months but got laid off right before Christmas 2008.

I tuffed it out till summer of 2011 when I decided I can't do this anymore.

I bought my Tormach mill in July 2011 and have never regretted my decision.

I continued doing job shop work for about 5 years then last summer, I decided I don't want to work that hard anymore.

Since then I have been making parts for gas powered boats. Now I'm considering adding gas powered 1/5 scale trucks. And I only work when I want to.

My wife is always telling me she sees no redeeming qualities in my boats and I tell her "they satisfy my need for speed and when they crash there's no blood".

I know that I were depending on model boat parts to make a living, I would have been broke and out of business a long time ago, so I use my machine to keep my mind sharp. I do it because my 92 year old mother has dementia and watching her go downhill just scares the hell out of me.

 

[john urbowicz]

Jim,

You need a CNC mill.

Bob

Bob,

I have a CNC Mill & a CNC lathe. Neither are used to make model boat parts, however they are used to make money!

JA

hey jim. when are you going to run that carbon cat. how about some video?

 

[Jim Allen]

Hi John,

I'm working on it. Tested one of the new pipes last week & found an overheating problem with the 34 cc engine. A manufactured rudder with one .0938" hole & another .1094" hole is insufficient to cool this engine. It didn't matter that the lines running to the engine & pipe were 5/32" inside diameter. I will modify the rudder, if possible, or make a new piece with 1/8 " inside diameter lines everywhere, including the rudder blade fitting points. It doesn't matter where the restriction is, larger diameter lines will not solve the problem.

 

[dave roach]

Dayton,Oh was #2 the the US for tool shops with about 1400 or so with NCR,GM McCalls,and orther factorys.Today you would be lucky to fined 300 and the small shops doe's not like small parts runs.

Dave

 

[BobHorowitz]

Jim,

You need a CNC mill.

Bob

Obviously he doesn't. You young fellows never worked in shops with only manual machines. It's quite possible to do all the fancy shapes with a combination of castings and manual machines with special fixtures. It just takes more time and gets expensive for small production runs. A small shop doing custom machining would have maybe a dozen machinists, a tool and die shop to make fixtures, and maybe an "engineering" department to work out the design. Today you have one man with a computer and several CNC machines doing the same work.

Lohring Miller

I'm not such a young fellow. I'm 65 and I've been doing tool and die work since I was about 20. So that was before there were many NC or CNC machines around. Saw card operated machines, tape operated machines and cam operated screw machines. We got rid of the last of the cam operated screw machines only a few years ago. I kind of know my way around manual machines. I still do most of my work on them. Most of our CNC stuff is used for production work. I do have a Bridgeport sized CNC mill in my toolroom that I use rather then doing multiple set-ups. We make dental instruments, and it's mostly CNC screw machine work. In the past it was all cam screw machines.

Bob

 

[henry velasco]

Just wondering if my rudders ate still in the machine , that CNC sure works slow

 

[Jim Allen]

Bob,

I"m also a senior citizen (76 yr young). I have been an apprentice trained tool maker for more than 55 years. My traning goes back to the days when metals were heat treated by color. When considering what is necessary to make toy boat stuff or even an entire toy engine, no CNC equipment of any type would be necessary! However the basic knowledge & use of things such as a dividing head, a sine bar, basic trigonometry, a planers gauge, gauge blocks & pins, deltronic pins, surface plate, height gauge, jigs & fixtures, etc., etc., etc., has been lost. Many present day "machinist" can not read a typical vernier scale that is still common on many measuring tools & machines. I bet if a question was asked as to what is the pitch of the thread used on any micrometer that reads in .001" of an inch, many sold called "machinist" could not answer. Maybe this is what happens with progesss?

I still work in a very well equiped CNC production machine shop (Aero Precision Machine Inc) where the Nelson .45 pylon racing engines are manufactured & built. During a recent interview of a prospective employee, I asked him if he was familar with manual tool room type lathes. He replied yes, "I have worked on many tool room type manual machines". I then asked him, "which manual tool room type lathes have the 5-C collet seat ground in the spindle, after the head stock is assembled to the lathe's bed". He was unaware of what I was talking about. Maybe this is what happens with progress?

When I consider what can be done without any CNC type of equipment being available, including the machining of the internal transfer passage ways in a bar stock crankcase or the machining of windows in a cylinder, I wonder about what happens with progress?

Jim Allen

 

[BobHorowitz]

Jim,

Basically, I agree with you. I believe there are some changes in the wind. I recently hired a young man that came out of a local community college program. His basic manual shop skills are pretty good. He just needs more time. His CNC programming skills are also good. More importantly, he is a dogged worker. He keeps his nose to the grindstone. I really have high hopes for him. I often have him do things the old fashioned way, rather then on a CNC. Turntables, sine bars, and some of the other things you mentioned. He actually gets a kick out of learning how us old farts used to do it and sometimes still do. Not too long ago I needed to cut some custom gears, and he was just amazed. He had no idea how it was done. It's actually been kind of a pleasure having him on board. Some locales seem to be instituting more tech programs. I think that there is some hope.

Bob

 

[Jim Allen]

Preliminary testing of the tuned pipe chamber shown is working extremely well. The first modification was the shortening of the flat section from 2.750" to 1.750". The measured tuned length from the header to the beginning of the flat section is still 12.500". The 35 cc engine's RPM's of 20,600 were recorded with a Tiny tach. The amount of oil used per gallon is 14 ozs. We will get some videos of test runs after the Nationals at the end of the month. The test hull is an 18 lb carbon fiber mono. It was also necessary to increase the rudder water pickup to .125" ID & the exhaust manifold to 2 lines in plus 2 lines out. All water lines used are .1562" ID.

JA

 

[NeilSharman]

Hi Jim. Can I ask what prop you were using during the test that showed 20,600rpm?

Did you happen to record the top speed as well?

Neil.

 

[Jim Allen]

Neil,

I don't think this person's prop was the best thing available. I'll send you a private E-mail because I do not want to step on some manufacturer's product that may not have been properly prepared by the owner.

Jim

 

[Steve Seebold]

You guys are funny. I know that Hardinge lathes and chuckers come with a 5C collet taper ground into the spindle nose, and the thread pitch of a .001 micrometer is .025.

As I was growing up, my dad was a tool and die maker so I grew up around machine shops then in 1959 he was invited to buy into a shop with 2 other men and they formed Trio Tool and Die.

I worked there weekends and summers till I graduated from high school.

The summer I graduated, my dad sold his interest in Trio to his partners.

I went to trade school after that because I liked liked working in the shop using my hands and I still had a lot to learn.

Then one day at school I was browsing through a Modern Machine Shop magazine when I came across a picture of a Bridgeport mill. That Bridgeport looked strange but I couldn't figure out why. Oh well, off to class.

The next day I found that magazine again and I opened it to that Bridgeport again, then it hit me. "This machine doesn't have any handles on it.

After reading the article I decided right then that was the direction I wanted to go. I went out the next day and found a night shift job at a company that had 2 Milwaukee Matic horizontal NC milling machines.

After a 2 year stint in the US Navy during the Vietnam war and about 5 years working and learning NC and CNC controls I finally took the plunge and bought a CNC lathe. And the rest is history.

 

[henry velasco]

WOW

With all this no how and equipment I should have had my rudders months ago huh ?

 

[Steve Seebold]

Henry, you're right. I have lots of know how and some really cool equipment in my garage, but ya know what I'm really short on? I'm short on ambition. I'm not even working on my own stuff.

 

[Jim Allen]

Steve,

If you're short on ambition, why should I consider what you posted here (post #30)??? "I have a CNC mill in my garage that sits idle most of the time. I can help".

JA

Note:

Hardinge is not the only lathe that had the collet seat ground in the spindle after the head stock was mounted to the bed?????

 

[Steve Seebold]

Steve,

If you're short on ambition, why should I consider what you posted here (post #30)??? "I have a CNC mill in my garage that sits idle most of the time. I can help".

JA

Note:

Hardinge is not the only lathe that had the collet seat ground in the spindle after the head stock was mounted to the bed?????

I know there are a few other machines with a 5C collet taper ground into the spindle, but I can't remember what they are. I know there's Acra and Feeler and I'm sure there are others.

 

[Jim Allen]

Sorry Steve,

Neither of these machines have the seat for 5-C collets ground in the spindle after the headstock is mounted to the bed. The Feeler lathe is a fair copy of a Hardinge tool room lathe, but it is not a Hardinge. Here is a tool makers evaluation of the Acra lathe; "One thing I am not happy about is the runout in the taper spindle. It runs about .00035. Runout on the spindle OD is less than a tenth, and the machine turns almost dead nuts round so it appears something went amiss whilst cutting the taper."

I have checked many Hardinge 5-C collet seats with .00005" indicators. The Hardinge spindle is one of a very few that use preloaded ABEC-7 ball bearings. The measured runout was less than .00002".

Jim Allen

 

[Steve Seebold]

I learned a long time ago to ONLY buy Hardinge collets. Yeah, they cost about 4 times what the Chinese collets do, but they run almost dead nuts round.

 

[henry velasco]

Well Steve it looks like I'm never going to get my rudder's and I am playfully tired of harassing you for them so please cancel the order , let's just call it lack of ambition

Still your friend

Henry

 

[Steve Seebold]

Henry, I'm going to go ahead and make rudders. EVENTUALLY. If you still want them when i finish, that's a good thing. If not, oh well.

Yep, still friends.