Wichendon Machine Shop (restart)

[deemery]

After a couple of days of not feeling well, I got back to the machine shop.  I started work on a second pulley/shifter assembly.  Since that's fiddly work and I burn out on it, I also dug out my "small blacksmith set" from Sierra West Scale Models.  These are 3d castings, and the size is perfect for the space.  But the bellows need to be mounted above the forge hood, so that's some picky design work.  I'll have to run the smokestack through the 2nd floor and then the 3rd floor and roof. 

The casting set was expensive, but as you'd expect, the quality is superb...

Pictures once I get stuff figured out...

dave

[Philip]

I forgot to take my meds this morning and mowed all day.  Wondering why I was light headed and not feeling right in this 103° heat....

Take care!

[Ensign]

Dave, you attention to detail on this project has very insightful for me.
I still have a roundhouse machine shop I need to complete.
So you are teaching me a lot of things when it comes to the inner workings of one.
Keep up the great work!

Greg

[deemery]

Greg, I'm glad you're finding the detailed narration of interest, that was my hope for anyone contemplating a machine shop project.  

Today's big accomplishment was doing the pad for the forge area.  I found some nice looking weathered brick texture on the internet, printed it to about the same size as the bricks in the forge, glued that to thin styrene, touched up the edges, and then glued that to the floor where the forge will go.  Then I primed and painted the forge piece itself (except for the iron grate, I'll do that tomorrow.)  

The kit has laser cut ceiling joists, but I'm seriously considering omitting them.  It's a detail that just won't be visible, and those pieces are really fragile.  

dave

[deemery]

Well, I discovered another issue today.  Here's the Rio Grande Models instruction sheet showing the layout of the shifters (look on the right drawing.)

The belt to be shifted on the RGM drawing is the belt from a drive shaft DOWN TO THE TOOL.  There are two problems with this:  (1) that would require an idler pulley on the tool (that's the diameter of the smallest tool pulley on the tool's cone, so -2- pulleys that size, but that's not how the cones are done.)  (2) that wasn't how I had planned it. My plan was to have the belt shifter work on the belt from the main drive shaft to the per-tool drive shaft, with a pair of pulleys (idler and driven) on the tool drive shaft.  For that, the main drive shaft has a wide pulley, and there are 2 equal size pulleys on the tool shaft.  The one closest to the cone is the drive pulley, and the other is the idler.  The shifted belt would move from driven to idler on the tool shaft, and just move over a bit on the double-wide main shaft pulley.

Now studying the RGM diagram more, it seems the shifter is not to disengage the tool from the main drive shaft, but only to shift along the cones to change tool speed.  But watching videos of machine shops, the machinist can do that shifting pretty easily ("Iron_Jonesey" uses a Crescent Wrench in one video I watched.)

So what to do?  Options so far:
(1) Install the shifters per the RGM diagram and ignore the "turn off the tool" problem.
(2) Rework the shifters and shifter lever so the shifters are between the main drive shaft and tool shaft.  The shifter arms really aren't positioned for that option very well. 
(3) Forget about the shifters altogether  (That's very tempting, given how much hassle they've been so far...)
(4) Mount the arms but not the shifter paddles.
(5) Come up with an alternate design for shifter and shifter paddles altogether.

sigh...

dave

[nycjeff]

Hello Dave, I'm starting to get a headache just by following along with your process. I can't imagine what you are going through. But, it will look great when you're done- just keep telling yourself that.

[friscomike]

Howdy Dave,

Unless you are making a museum model that must be perfect, I'd go for option 3. Otherwise, you might reach the point of diminishing returns for all that work. 

That said, if emulating the real mechanisms is what you like to do, then the other options make sense.

Have fun,
mike

[Jerry]

Dave have you looked at pictures of how Brian Nolan & Chuck Doan did there's?
And have you looked at how Brett's booklet on the machine shop shows how they were done?

Jerry

[Philip]

I just viewed that Jonesy video and when you compare the Rio model photo the shifter are in the wrong position. The inside radius should be placed over the top of the pulley in order to shift the belts. Just my take and I really doubt if Rio models actually researched the businesses that had this set-up. Do your best Dave. The video I viewed he used a file handle to change belt location.

I also read shifters (Guardrails) were used on flat pulley's to keep the belt from walking off unlike the glorious crown type pulley

Also watched  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxK8iYtgD5A So your headaches are just starting. Interesting stuff.

The important thing is to have fun.
Philip

[deemery]

Fortunately, nothing in my machine shop has to turn....       I went back and looked at Bernie Kempinski's machine shop.  He has only 1 tool with a cone pulley.  Those without a cone can be driven from the main shaft, but generally he uses an aux shaft with the 'on-off' shifter on the aux shaft.

dave

[deemery]

I located the paper I want to use for the leather belts.  I cut one strip with a Fiskars rotary cutter, but I need to replace the cutter and cutting pad underneath.  But that one strip should work to test out my installation approach on a drill press that has an internal belt.

dave

[Larry C]

Dave nice work so far. Belt lines can be fiddly so take your time with them. Also as a FYI, I use strips of Tyvek, USPS envelope, to make belts and it works great for me.

[deemery]

Well, I got some progress on the machine shafts.  That's awfully finicky work, even before the belts.  I also did a bit of work on the forge stack, which I now realize will pass through the boiler house.  That's actually reasonable for the forge.

dave

[deemery]

I got 2 more aux drive assemblies done today.  It seems "2" is the limit of my patience for that picky work!  But I've used 2 tools I got a couple years ago that are perfect for this work.  One is a set of small diameter reamers, and the other is flush-cutting wire cutters.  The latter are I think an orthodontist's tool.   I should finish the shafts tomorrow.  The plan from there is to tack glue the belts to the aux shaft pulleys, and then glue the aux shaft assemblies into position.  That requires me to invert the whole assembly.  When that's done, I should be able to do the aux shaft to main drive shaft belts, which will be much easier than the aux shafts down to each tool.

dave