The Front Hub

I've spent a little time this week making the front hub for the facile. This is a complicated affair and has 6 bearing surfaces that must all be concentric. It is hollow and has several holes and ramps that all need to accurately located. Lots of 4 jaw and fixed steady use.

Once again a series of photos to illustrate the various processes, click for larger versions.

Centre the ends, machine a plain surface to use the fixed
steady on and bore a pilot from either end. The pilot holes
met accurately (not too easy with a 7" bar)

Cut the first pair of bearing surfaces,
the end of the hub is also now at final size.

Now enlarge the bore to final size from this end.

Then machine the inner bearing race and clean up the bore,
These three bearing surface are now all concentric.

Now flip the hub around and repeat on the other end.

The centre section needs to be thinned to size.

Like this.

Then all that's left is to drill the holes to poke the balls through,
mill the key ways to lock the gunmetal flanges...

... and mill the angled ramp that is used to lock the sun gear to the  hub.

Finally after all that I can trial a fit up with all the parts assembled.
The hub spins beautifully on it's 60(!) balls.

In other news, my parents are arriving for an extended holiday with us. This has meant a flurry of activity around the house. The workshop has been tidied, the garden weeded, the lawn cut and the children polished. I only hope that the work so far on the geared facile bears Dad's scrutiny. I just know he'll be out fiddling with stuff whilst I'm at work. I'll have a word with Mum.

I reported last time that I didn't feel the magnitude 6.0 aftershock as I was riding home at the time. It appears that I did feel it, I just didn't realise it. On the way home I had caught up with a mate of mine, another local cyclist, at a set of traffic lights. Matt has a new fangled bike computer that does GPS stuff as well as speed etc.  I'm a retrogrouch and only need a calendar to calculate my average speed these days. This means that given the exact time of the 6.0 from geonet, he was able to work out very accurately where we were at the time. At the spot in question we were almost home and on a very wide straight road so we were riding two abreast and chatting. I remember that very suddenly we clipped handlebars for no reason, I dismissed it as either Matt, myself or both of us being a crap cyclist. Now Matt's a handy rider so that just left me. I'm just glad that my ego is intact.