Jinxed

Do you recall that last shedweek I mentioned that making the live axle was going to be trivial? Well, it wasn't, it should have been but it turned into an epic waste of time and materials. In the end I got there after 3 attempts. The turning was easy, as it should have been, but the threading was the hard part.

Top two are scrap, the bottom one is good.

The difficulty is that the threads need to be a very tight fit with no measurable play between the male and female parts. Try this test, pick a brand new, matched nut and bolt and thread them together. Then wiggle the nut about, I guarantee that it will have some play, however slight. Now imagine that that nut is the adjuster that takes the slack out of the bearings. Any measurable play will cause uneven wear on the bearing surfaces. The 5/8" cycle thread die, taper and plug tap that I used cut a set of threads with measurable play despite best practises. On the first attempt I used the die on it's own, on the second attempt I screw cut the thread to 90% of depth and finished off with the die spread wide, this climbed slightly out of true and cut a poor thread, On the final attempt, I screw cut the entire thread which is what I should have done from the start. We learn from our mistakes.

Finally with a decent axle, I could assemble the left hand arm and adjuster into the hub.

I need to do this to measure the gap between the sun gear and the crank arm with feeler gauges. I'd calculated this to be 0.050" and it was extremely close. I need this dimension so that I can machine the gap to be the same on the planet gear to ensure that both gears are aligned.

Next step is to retrieve the planet gear from the oily rag where it's lived for the last 14 months
 I'd deliberately machined the planet between centres so I can easily machine the bearing surface concentric to the teeth. I can repeatedly remove the work and check the fit manually without loss of accuracy.

The original planet gear.

First job is to hollow out the gear and rough out the bearing surface. 

I wondered why the original has the second, larger, outer recess into the gear. It isn't used for anything other than possibly a felt washer. The answer becomes obvious when you try to machine it, you need clearance for the cutting tool. The hollow is 0.350" deep and even with custom ground and relieved tools, clearance is exceedingly tight.

Polish the bearing and cut the thread. Screw cut the thread. Check the thread depth after every pass using the three wires method. Ruining the planet at this stage would have caused a shallow earthquake in my immediate vicinity.

The size of the wires is important, in this case pins proved suitable.

Now machine off the thread from the end of the planet gear for the fixed connecting rod...

...and machine the angled ramp for Renouf's patent wedge, 

this is the same size and shape as that used to hold the sun gear to the hub.

Next machine off the temporary boss that facilitated so many of the machining operations...

...and machine the decorative relief into the rear of the gear

Done. Hoorah.

Finally I can do a trial fit up and check that the gears are aligned and more importantly that the centres aren't too tight.  Everything appears to be spot on and the planet orbits happily around the sun, the centre spacing is good with just a little backlash as there should be. The gears are perfectly aligned, but you knew they would be didn't you? <cough> OCD </cough>

In other news, my lovely wife has been most unwell. She complained of abdominal pain one night last week and the following morning she was unable to get out of bed. Despite protests, we went to the doctor who promptly sent her straight to hospital. Two hours later and she had been relieved of her appendix. She has the tiniest set of scars, mine are huge but I had mine out when I was 13, over a hundred years ago now. Sadly her recovery has not been straightforward, and her complications now have complications. My boss has been very supportive since I've had a lot of time off work. On the plus side though, the house is full of flowers from good friends. Thank you.

Planetary Alignment

Syzygy, get that one on a triple word score and I reckon you'd clean up. But I digress.

So this shedweek I've been back on the tools again. With my repaired mill working properly again I've been able to make a start on the left hand crank arm. This arm also doubles as the planet gear carrier that holds the planet in constant mesh with the sun. It is a complex part in that it has three bearing surfaces, two of which are concentric and the third has to be very accurately positioned relative to the first two. This bearing spacing is what determines the gear centres and must be carefully measured.

The left crank arm / plant gear carrier from the original geared facile.

Roughly half of the originals I have seen have this face slightly hollowed out.

This one doesn't, it has the patent information stamped on it instead.

We know from previously that my gears run on theoretical centres of 2.977". I wanted to check this empirically before spending hours making a component that doesn't fit. I contrived a set up in the lathe where I drove the sun gear in the chuck and was able to feed the planet gear in and out of mesh on the cross slide. It turns out that my gears are happiest at centres of 2.970", only a 7 thou difference but I'm a pedant (no, really?) The nitriding process will very slightly increase the size of the gears, but this will not be measurable with my equipment. Also recall that involute gears can cope well with incorrectly spaced centres but I'd much rather make the centres too wide than too tight. The original facile I rode had very sloppy gears and it was unnoticeable when riding.

The sun is driving the planet. Of course in use, the planet will drive the sun.

As before the crank arm will be made from 4140 and nitrided, the most economical way to get 4140 of the right thickness is to start with round bar. A little trig to calculate the minimum size that contains the shape and then get busy on the mill.

Mill a flat on one side of the appropriate depth. In this case 0.375" which happens to be...

...the thickness of an old bearing. Bearings make excellent parallel spacers so I can flip 

it over and machine the opposite side and ensure both faces are parallel.

Now we have to apply a little thought about how to get those two holes accurately centred. Clearly, two centre punch marks aren't going to be accurate enough, the quickest and easiest way is to use the dials on the mill and the mill as a drill. First part is to saw off the work and remount directly on the mill bed such that it is parallel to the ways, in this case the y-axis. A dial gauge is invaluable here. Then using an edge finder, we can determine the centre of the work and lock the y-axis. Any hole then drilled along the x-axis will be on the centre line. Next use the edge finder to calculate the x position of the first hole on one of the bosses. Lock the x-axis and centre drill that hole. Then simply move the bed 2.977" using the x-axis dial, lock and centre drill the second hole.

Holes at 2.977" centres (reasonably accurately)

Then we have to remount on the faceplate for the next operation. Use a live centre to hold the work centred on the planet boss and clamp (very) firmly. Anything mounted this eccentrically is going to cause serious vibrations when run at any speed so it is crucial to balance the faceplate. In Sparey's book, he features lots of pictures of change gears used as counterbalances. I don't like doing this, change gears are expensive and should be treated with a little more respect whereas lumps of scrap metal with holes are plentiful and cheap. I have a cunning little tool that helps enormously with balancing faceplate setups, I simply turn the tail stock around and mount it in the Morse taper and hang the faceplate off the end of the lathe, it spins freely and will always hang heaviest part down. By playing around with counterweights and sliding them in or out, it is possible to balance even the most awful set-ups.

A balanced set-up.

Using a live centre as a steady, and periodically checking for deflection with a dial gauge directly onto the live centre, it is now possible to machine the boss. Small feeds are needed as this is an interrupted cut and any hard blows will knock the work off centre. Not what we want.

The planet gear boss at final size.

On all of the faceplate set-ups, I periodically check for movement of the centre with a dial gauge.

Now I can make a faceplate clamp just to suit this boss, to hold the work very tightly 

so I can bore the hole and the inner bearing surface for the planet gear.

Then flip it over, re centre and machine the outer bearing surface.

Stuff the outer bearing full of balls and check for fit with the adjuster in place.

Next remount (again) and machine the live axle boss and bearing surface into the other end. 

Also tap the boss for the live axle (5/8" cycle thread).  I didn't need to make a special clamp for this end as the other end has a through hole by now which made the set-up more secure than before. These faceplate set-ups were very quick to machine but took much longer to align. The difficulty is that as you start to bolt things down to the faceplate, you get movement, not much but enough to throw the work off centre or out of alignment. My dial gauge is very sensitive at 10,000 of an inch increments and it make the adjustments easier. you have to go through a cycle of tighten, check, adjust, re tighten etc. until everything was exactly in the right place and tightly bolted up

All the machining is now complete. I just needed to 

clean up the faces with a file ready to mark out the profile. 

A few minutes with a hacksaw and then a little longer with a file.

I still need to drill and tap for the oiler and the patent information needs to be stamped into the outer face, but I need excellent light for this so I'll do it outside at the weekend. Also the tapered holes to lock the arm to the axle still need to be figured out. More later.

Next week, I'll make the live axle which is trivial and then tackle the planet gear, how exciting is that?


In other news, the bridge over the Ashley river reopened for a nanosecond allowing me to get a ride in on my favoured route. We had a full day of heavy rain yesterday so it is now shut again. Sigh. A work colleague suggested that the current state of affairs is no different to having a ford instead of the broken bridge. When the river is low, you can drive over and when it is high you can't. It would be a lot cheaper.

Also, the Old Waimakariri Bridge is now also shut for unknown reasons since the river is very low. I'm not sure if cyclists are allowed over it. If not I'll be forced to ride down the motorway which is Not Fun. Honestly, the infrastructure around here is pants, none of it is even earthquake damage.