Flywheel from a gym weight ?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- "No project is ever a complete failure - it can always serve as a bad example."
I need a 95mm (~4") flywheel for a small model engine and the builder notes suggest it could be made from a gym weight. In this video I share my attempt to do this and the functional, but unsatisfactory, outcome.
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Alan all castings have a hard surface finish owing to the chilling affect of molten metal hitting the sand mould . The first cut should be as deep as possible to get under the skin . A good sorce of quality cast iron is car fly wheels and crankshafts.
Kit from up north
Gday Alan, I’ve never been keen on using weights for a source of cast iron, I’ve had many people tell me that the material that’s used is the dregs off the floor, im glad your not using this, I’d hate for it to fly apart when the engine is running, cheers
It was tempting to try as I had a weight that was just the right size sitting on the shelf. Now I'll have to source something else that'll probably cost a few bob.
But such is life :)
Hi Alan. Not sure if you saw my hit & miss engine build which is still ongoing. In part 1 I machined 2 of the larger weights down. I can confirm it was hard going. The writing on the side was the worst part to machine away. Great video thanks for sharing.
Steve.
The turned flywheel blank made that you made looked really good Stevie. The weights you had seemed to be much better quality than mine - the hole was machined not cast-in and the face features ran quite true. I had previously used another weight as a source of C.I. (for my Briggs and Stratton compressor project) and it machined quite nicely - unlike this latest effort :(
Thanks for your comment.
Interesting and informative experiment Alan.
Thanks Allen.
Interesting. Thanks
G'day Alan,, i have had some strange so called cast iron adventures too. in the end i keep an old 8 cylinder cast crank under the bench and hack off the big counter weights when a serious lump is needed. i do like a bit of cast iron. your chips did'nt look like cast chips at times. good vid cheers👍👍
Thanks Graedon.
I also have had mixed results with those weights, some are better quality then others, it's frustrating.
Its also a bit frustrating for me as I have a pile of the wretched things :(
The only real use i find for cast iron weights of this kind is lapping plates... They have a hole in the middle, so it offsets some of the lapping plate issues when you are making them with 3 plates method after machining, resulting in a much shorter lap forming time, but other than that, they are best avoided as any real project material... Especially for rotary implementation... The casting quality is questionable at best and a hazard at worst... A good, supplier bought rod of cast iron is one thing, and is still very limited in max rpm allowance, these however are a hazard... Dont try to make gears, chuck back plates, flywheels or really any spinning parts outta these... You can make machine handles outta them, for that they are great as they come in bunch of sizes and ``styles``... Lapping plates as i said are also a good thing to make outta these, but anything that demands any inherent stability and uniform material structure should be done with either certified, industry stock or industry stock scraps... Salvage yards are full of tossed good stock - unknown grade or alloy, but still industrial offcuts of marketable quality...
Thank you for taking the time to offer this commentary Camillo. Given the poor outcome of my flywheel project, I'm quite inclined to agree with your thoughts and recommendations. I had a look at your videos on the Habegger lathe - returning that machine to service is quite a challenge. I'll be interested to follow your progress.
Cheers, Alan.
@@alanshomeworkshop
Thanks, I think she will be relatively easy to approach from the mechanical standpoint, as the ways are fixture surfaces and everything as said is adjustable, so getting her to a proper precision levels should not be as hard as it would with other machines... Converting her to cnc operated hydraulics on the other hand... Yikes... That will definitely be a job and a half... However, the vast array of operations and geometries she will be able to make once finished will make the trouble worth it...
Also, if you are looking forward to that, just wait until you see other 10 machines that i have to restore aswell, each in different state of disarray or disrepair... I kinda shot myself in both feet, and then shot myself in both knees just to make sure i wont be making any quick progress anytime soon...
If nothing, i guess it will at least provide hours of video footage...
Regarding the weights, well, its just my own experience with similar stock sources... I have a few tractor end weights, few tractor wheel weights, few thick grates, lifting weights and so on in cast iron stock, and truth be told, other than tractor end weights, the castings are usually crap... Either full of chilled spots which may as well be glass, or they have the tendency to chip out/crack/shatter when being worked by anything other than abrasives as was the case with your attempt...
All the best and kind regards!
Well, seems like you've dived headfirst into the deep end of the machining pool - I'm happy paddling in the shallow end :)
@@alanshomeworkshop
Yeah, its kinda like jumping head first into fresh poured concrete...
I mostly underestimated the requirement for a massive surface plate of very high grade for most of the machines i will be restoring... Nothing that cant be obtained, in many ways at that, but its a massive hurdle at the moment... I will likely post a 3 plate lapping method video series of me making a huge steel surface plate, well, 3 in fact, but the other 2 will be lapping plates charged with diamond after they are lapped in with frangible abrasives that dont charge the surface... Its going to be a hell of a lot of work, but when you look at the price of a new, massive 00 or better grade surface plate, well, you might as well start investing into decent sized diamonds rather than diamond dust... :P
Or would dia. dust be a better investment, as you can make 3 large plates with ease and sell them for a shit ton... Quite the conundrum...
I probably would have used jbweld to fill the voids, or silver solder, so that I could use this. A weld will also hold, I have welded cast with a flux core welder successfully. aside from a pin hole you can't tell.
Tempting idea...
may sound a bit odd but I kind of like it with the writing, makes it a bit steam punk ish? thanks for sharing👍
Doesn't sound odd to me Paul. I actually had a similar thought when I mounted it in the 4 jaw and saw the first side ran fairly true. However, the run out in the features of the other side put me off that idea. Thanks for your comment.
would it be possible to titivate up the inside rim a bit so it looks to run true? I've had to do this myself before with miss matched castings especially the bosses.@@alanshomeworkshop
I probably could do something like that but I don't have a carbide internal radius tool. This material is very hard and I don't think a HSS form tool would get the job done. What tooling have you used for this ?
for the internal rim a small 6mm carbide button as you need a small radius, for the hub just normal carbide. Looking at the material HSS will definitely not be up to the job, you could always just buy the button and the torx screw and make the toolholder. I love the buttons they give a great finish, when they are worn or chipped you can just turn them round a bit and you have a fresh edge, like any carbide as long as you don't massively abuse them they last for ages. hope this helps. @@alanshomeworkshop
Thanks Paul. I do have an external holder for 5mm buttons so I'll think about making an internal holder. Cheers.
I had same experience, don't recommend it either.