RC Locomotive 'Diesel-Electric'

[Roog]

The first few parts have started to arrive, yes the misfit RC modeller/Model engineer is at it again!

This could be my undoing, there is so much riding on this, I have neighbors who have booked their kids a ride on my garden train and there isn't so much as a foot of track laid yet!

Bearings, pullies and rough sawn wheel blanks in EN8 have arrived, I am so grateful to 'M Machine' materials suppliers who agreed to saw a 3" bar of steel in to 8 No. 1/2" thick discs for me. This has saved me a task and a half just to saw em.

The plan is to build the wheels and bogies and test them out on the club track to make sure they ride OK, then move on to the chassis, one good thing, weight is quite important to get traction so I should be right at home as my models always end up a bit heavy!

The plan is to build a 3 1/2" gauge Class 93, diesel electric hybrid locomotive, the real thing has only just hit the tracks for trials. Despite the relatively narrow gauge the overall length should be about 4 ft' 2 1/2" and look a bit like this:

 

[WickedFog]

Watching!

 

[CertifiedMike]

This is gonna be great!!! .

No pressure but RCTALK is collecting for a group field trip. We are ALL coming to the grand opening and we ALL want a ride too!!!

 

[Doom!]

You love punishing yourself! This is going to be a cool project if you survive.

 

[Roog]

You love punishing yourself! This is going to be a cool project if you survive.

Will I survive? that is the question, for a start, I have wheels to machine ideally all the same! :0( I did consider getting a local machine shop to CNC them, but that would be cheating

 

[Roog]

This is gonna be great!!! .

No pressure but RCTALK is collecting for a group field trip. We are ALL coming to the grand opening and we ALL want a ride too!!!

Ha ha, I’ll organise some sandwiches !

 

[WickedFog]

Ha ha, I’ll organise some sandwiches !

Figure out a process, and machine an aluminum one to test. If it works, machine all the blanks one process at a time. Turn the test piece into a locomotive themed clock

 

[Roog]

Figure out a process, and machine an aluminum one to test. If it works, machine all the blanks one process at a time. Turn the test piece into a locomotive themed clock

Good call @WickedFog i did trawl the www for people’s wisdom and was surprised by the number of suggestions to cut the wheel blanks from flat plate. But I have written out a process and will give it a go.

 

[WickedFog]

Good call @WickedFog i did trawl the www for people’s wisdom and was surprised by the number of suggestions to cut the wheel blanks from flat plate. But I have written out a process and will give it a go.

It's much harder to cut blanks from a plate than it is to use a drop saw to hack off a piece of bar stock. Then holding a sawn out blank in a chuck is a little less stable unless you had them cut out with a water jet, which is $$$. And even then, I'd still prefer chucking on bar stock blanks

I know you already had the blanks cut, but you don't have a drop saw? They're pretty cheap over here. And one of the most used tools for lathe work.

 

[Roog]

It's much harder to cut blanks from a plate than it is to use a drop saw to hack off a piece of bar stock. Then holding a sawn out blank in a chuck is a little less stable unless you had them cut out with a water jet, which is $$$. And even then, I'd still prefer chucking on bar stock blanks

I know you already had the blanks cut, but you don't have a drop saw? They're pretty cheap over here. And one of the most used tools for lathe work.

Yes I was supprised at the idea of cutting circles out of flat plate, especially the one that involved a rotary table and a small milling cutter, seemed like a lot of expensive tool wear to create blanks. ChatGPT offered a reasonable explanation, “older books may suggest this solution because hobbyists are more likely to make do with what they had to hand” . I do have a metal ‘drop’ band saw but I thought it a bit cruel to repeatedly cut 3” bar with it. I keep seeing old mechanical hack saws for sale on eBay and gumtree the only problem is I doubt if I could move one!

 

[WickedFog]

Yes I was supprised at the idea of cutting circles out of plat plate, especially the one that involved a rotary table and a small milling cutter, seemed like a lot of expensive tool wear to create blanks. ChatGPT offered a reasonable explanation, “older books may suggest this solution because hobbyists are more likely to make do with what they had to hand” . I do have a metal ‘drop’ band saw but I thought it a bit cruel to repeatedly cut 3” bar with it. I keep seeing old mechanical hack saws for sale on eBay and gumtree the only problem is I doubt if I could move one!

If you have good blade tension, and not too much weight on the drop saw it will cut through pretty easy. We ran a machine shop which cut 8" diameter steel tubing with a 1.25" wall. Poor kids sawed 1000 parts off those tubes every shift. Lifting it by hand, pulling tube through, etc.

 

[Roog]

If you have good blade tension, and not too much weight on the drop saw it will cut through pretty easy. We ran a machine shop which cut 8" diameter steel tubing with a 1.25" wall. Poor kids sawed 1000 parts off those tubes every shift. Lifting it by hand, pulling tube through, etc.

I will have my opportunity to give this a go soon enough, my experience of my saw so far has not been great, because I mainly use aluminium for my car projects I found that the saw ‘grabbed’ quite a bit. Hopefully mild steel will give a smoother cut? Must remember to change the blade!

 

[WickedFog]

I will have my opportunity to give this a go soon enough, my experience of my saw so far has not been great, because I mainly use aluminium for my car projects I found that the saw ‘grabbed’ quite a bit. Hopefully mild steel will give a smoother cut? Must remember to change the blade!

Yeah, it should be smoother.

 

[Roog]

Clear afternoon today and for once it isn’t freezing, so i thought id sneak off to the shed to cut some chips. Sadly i seem to have serious belt slip on the final drive of the lathe. After half an hour of tipping the shed upside down i found some new belts. Much cleaning of pullies, new belt fitted and adjusted and were off! I have a feeling that all it needed was an adjustment as it was suspiciously loose

 

[Roog]

Start off by mounting a wheel blank and facing off both sides reducing the width of the disc to 9.52mm final wheel size. The metal supplier did a great job of rough cutting the blanks making the initial machining straight forward.

 

[Roog]

View attachment 266454Start off by mounting a wheel blank and facing off both sides reducing the width of the disc to 9.52mm final wheel size. The metal supplier did a great job of rough cutting the blanks making the initial machining straight forward. View attachment 266455View attachment 266456

Drilling the centre and opening the hole out to finish off with reamer

 

[Roog]

Here is the sized blank awaiting the correct diameter, flange and wheel face to be cut.

 

[Roog]

Looking at it now i could have cut the rebated outer face whilst it was in the chuck, oh well accuracy isn’t critical in the beatification, hopefully it will start to warm up next week

 

[Doom!]

Off to good start, glad you had warm enough weather to get out there.

 

[Roog]

Off to good start, glad you had warm enough weather to get out there.

Cheers @Doom! 8 no. of these to make, but fear not ill not post images of all of them being machined. But yes I'm on my way.