The Home Machinist!

As a founder of a MakerSpace (www.lovelandcreatorspace.com), I can whole heartedly endorse the idea of using a makerspace to gain access to equipment needed to construct a locomotive. However, that comes with some constraints. For example, you can't do a setup on a mill and leave it for a week until...

Let me first say, that all of my steam experience is with running G-Scale live steam and an 1891 Groton Traction engine I used to own. Yesterday, we had a situation at our track where a new member with a 1" scale steam engine had a low/no water situation. The engine is one that he and his fathe...

After reading your inputs, we went back to the folks that donated the mill to us and they are going to have their chief machinist come out to help us restore the mill to working order or at least as close as we can get. It does not appear the conversion to a different controller is in the cards for ...

Our maker space has been "gifted" a 1991 HAAS VF-1 CNC Mill. It was apparently running when removed from service, but did have occasional issues with the ATC where tool change would fail for some reason. Before attempting to restore the original controller, I wanted to know of anyone had c...

Western Wheeled Scraper used to make side dump cars on a frame like that. They also offered a flat car version.

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:YIKES! You guys are very brave for going that route!

Sometimes there is a slim difference between brave and stupid ...

Not sure what you mean....if you purchase a copied Arduino board (uno, mini, nano, maxi, & etc ) - it is a 'knock-off' and usually the clue is that it will cost about a third what the pedigree parts will cost - just like the resistors and capacitors being discussed. That's the temptation to pur...

The new owner had run the engine on air at home and steamed it up (before my inspection) and run successfully on a treadmill. We did the inspection at the track, but the engine refused to run once he took it out of the steaming bay. Inevitably, the water got low, so I had him drop the fire. While th...

Thanks for all of the inputs. I think the pins that lift the ball are missing on two of the ends. (From what the new owner has described to me.) As a result, he had a water lock when at the track last Saturday. I was surprised that the condensed water did not shoot up the stack, as I am sure that th...

I have a member in my club who purchased an Allen Mogul that was built in 1990 by Don Morgan. The cylinder drains on this engine are manual and have a thin maybe 1/2" tall bar that runs along the bottom of the cylinders with two "divots" the correspond to the placement of the drain ho...

The Filer and Stowell locomotive used oscillating cylinders instead of valves. In this type of steam engine, the cylinder moves to cover/uncover the steam input/output ports. If you want to "play" with this type of steam engine, they are very easy to build. Some references: https://en.wiki...

Have you priced the 3D printed version?