- Joined
- Mar 22, 2013
- Messages
- 215
Gentlemen,
I have been working on this project for about a year and a half now. I have just completed it. I must say it's been one of the hardest projects I've taken on mainly because it wasn't just machining but bending metal, forming metal and fixturing, lots of fixtures.
I won't go into a lot of detail here because the video explains a lot of things. When I took on the project I told my friends that it would be a working model, and it is. Every gear set, U-joint, sliding coupling has been replicated in 1/12 scale to the best of my ability. Probably one of the most tedious parts of the build was making hundreds of square head nuts and bolts which were the norm for that era. The sizes range from 1 mm to 1-72 with the largest percentage being 1.2 x .25 mm.
Early on in the build I started to have second thoughts but as the parts were made and assembled and the machine started to look like the full sized version my interest grew.
I started by visiting the actual machine and taking hundreds of dimensions and photographs. With all the information in hand I drew the machine full size in Autocad. From there I scaled that drawing down to 1/12th and adjusting metal thicknesses and shaft diameters so that it would be a working model without being extremely fragile.
All the gears, miter, worm and curved racks required home made cutters and fixtures to hold them for machining. The tiny U-joints are a little out of scale but making them any smaller would have rendered them inoperable.
The full sized machine is mainly riveted together but there would be almost no way to replicate an actual rivet with the upset head on the other side so I made rivet bolts. I turned the bolt then formed the rivet head. With it in place I used a square nut to secure it in place. If it wasn't brought to one's attention it probably would never be noticed.
If anyone would like particular information please don't hesitate to ask.
gbritnell
I have been working on this project for about a year and a half now. I have just completed it. I must say it's been one of the hardest projects I've taken on mainly because it wasn't just machining but bending metal, forming metal and fixturing, lots of fixtures.
I won't go into a lot of detail here because the video explains a lot of things. When I took on the project I told my friends that it would be a working model, and it is. Every gear set, U-joint, sliding coupling has been replicated in 1/12 scale to the best of my ability. Probably one of the most tedious parts of the build was making hundreds of square head nuts and bolts which were the norm for that era. The sizes range from 1 mm to 1-72 with the largest percentage being 1.2 x .25 mm.
Early on in the build I started to have second thoughts but as the parts were made and assembled and the machine started to look like the full sized version my interest grew.
I started by visiting the actual machine and taking hundreds of dimensions and photographs. With all the information in hand I drew the machine full size in Autocad. From there I scaled that drawing down to 1/12th and adjusting metal thicknesses and shaft diameters so that it would be a working model without being extremely fragile.
All the gears, miter, worm and curved racks required home made cutters and fixtures to hold them for machining. The tiny U-joints are a little out of scale but making them any smaller would have rendered them inoperable.
The full sized machine is mainly riveted together but there would be almost no way to replicate an actual rivet with the upset head on the other side so I made rivet bolts. I turned the bolt then formed the rivet head. With it in place I used a square nut to secure it in place. If it wasn't brought to one's attention it probably would never be noticed.
If anyone would like particular information please don't hesitate to ask.
gbritnell
