The Home Machinist!

Some interesting resource sites

http://users.ids.net/%7enewsm/links.html

Interesting site from professional historians.

http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/

I've received a number of questions from people about vacuum investment casting so I am posting my reply here for others to view. Investment equipment- The vacuum casting system is fairly simple and is composed of a few components. A vacuum pump that can pull at least 28”Hg vacuum. The larger the pu...

There shouldn't be any significant difference. I've done hundreds of investment castings with 6061 Al. The important thing is to get a good vacuum and do a single continuous pour when you turn the vacuum on. I expect that an alloy specifically made for casting like A356 would produce excellent resul...

Dick, Thanks for your reply. I would also be interested in any pictures or drawings that you may have of the injector setups that you have worked on. I have done some lapping for a sterling engine project where the pistons had to fit the cylinders to a close tolerance because of the lack of piston r...

Has anyone built their own fuel injectors for a diesel engine? I understand that building injectors is a high precision operation, and that most engine builders farm out the pump/injector work to a specialty company. What techniques are involved in building an injector? Any links to references?

To bevel the edges of the firebrick I used a masonary sawblade on a cheap $99 table saw. The sawing of the bricks really mars the surface of the table saw, so I don't suggest doing this on your nice saw. And I don't even want to think what the dust does to the bearings! Nonetheless, after sawing the...

Many of you have built home made melting furnaces to cast aluminum. Most of these are uncontrolled other than watching them by eye. When I built my furnace I was disappointed by the lack of a controller and the inability to carefully adjust the temperature. I checked into buying a controller but fou...

OK, it appears that many people have tried to download the big file and have either dropped or quit. So, I put a folder with all the page images in the directory with the big file. The folder is SteamTurbinePages, within which you will find the 35 images of book pages. You can download them one at a...

Just an update. The downloads appear to take about 30-40 min with a broadband connection. Download by doing a right mouse click to save to disk. Don't just left mouse click the file name as this will cause Word to open. If it fails to open for some reason then you loose the download.

You can download a copy of The Model Engineer Series, #23, "Model Steam Turbines, How to design and build them" for a limited time. Like, for as long as I have the ftp server running. The file is a Word doc and is big. 65MB! Mainly because I don't know how to reduce the size without loosin...

You might also try The Model Engineer Series, #23, "Model Steam Turbines, How to design and build them", Harrison, H. H.

This has some very readable principles and a design section. It also has plans for a DeLaval style turbine engine.