OK, thanks!

 

I'm still working on the fixture for my router to go on the wood working lathe. It is going to be sort of in the nature of a tool post grinder as on a metal lathe. I have it nearly complete save for two more threaded holes to bolt it together and then two threaded larger holes for the position stops near the bottom. With those I will be able to limit the travel or the depth of cut of the router.

Then I still have to drill and tap two horizintal holes for allthread which I will use to drive the router left and right to the different positions for the cuts I want to make. The router will slide left and right in the two groves I have milled in the cross pieces of the jig. The router will have right at 6 inches of travel before I will need to crank it back and reset it. That will be enough to do each segment of the accordian groves in this tube project. I think it is going to be very precise and will do just what I want.

Here are a couple of pictures. The heavy bar stock along the bottom that is clampled in my mill vise is what will be clamped to the tool rest on the lathe.

 

I worked on this in the night and made some change, at least in my mind. I haven't held this thing up to my lathe yet but have been wondering about where the router bit will come out in respect to the center of turning on the wood workpiece. It has seemed obvious that it will come out quite high above the centerline, but I kind of thought that it could then articulate sort of over the top. Then it occurred to me that with the depth adjustment stops that is not going to be possible.

So, It occurred to me to just eliminate the tool post and the idea of clamping this to it, and just make this framis into its own tool post. So that is what I am going to do. I'll shorten the base bar on the ends so they don't stick out so much and put the depth adjustments bolts in it, then simply bolt a piece of round bar the the middle of the base bar for its own tool post and go with that. I'll work that up today and see if it will fit and work better than it was going to.

 

I am also still working on just how to set up another one of my trim routers to mill the bevel on the edges of the ABS material that I am going to use in this project. I plan to try some 1/16 inch material first (and stay with it if it works) and I am thinking that a bevel about 3/8 ionch wide will be just about right. When I draw that out on paper it measures as a 9 degree angle.

So I am going to work up some plexiglass that is screwed together is some configuration for a new face for the router and will allow me to simply run the edge of the ABS through it to cut the correct bevel. Just how to set it up is still not coming together in my mind, but I'm making progress on that.

I did something similar to a trim router that I set up to cut a mortise (or rabbit?) along the outside surface at the edge of plexiglass in order to mount new windows I made into the canopy of my airplane so that the outer surface of the plexiglass would be flush with the outer surface of the aluminum they were mounted in. I think I am going to do something like that.

 

I finally got that little sub-project finished. I put it on its own post which clamps into the lathe. The router slides back and forth nice and snuggly. I just need to get some longer allthread so it will slide the whole travel available--6 inches.

 

Now I have the router jig for beveling the ABS figured out and have russeled up some material to make it out of. It is going to take only three pieces. I'll make the base out of 3/16 inch aluminum plate and fix to it two planes of plexiglass set up at the correct angle and adjustable for the depth of the cut and for the thickness of the ABS being beveled. I think I'll make it at 7 degrees instead of 9 to give myself a little wider bevel and/or to also allow for a little thicker joint, just because; and it will not have to be changed if I have to go to thinner materail in the final product.

 

Here are the major things I need yet to accomplish to make this work, if it will work at all:

1. Fabricate the rigging for the trim router being set up to bevel the ABS plastic sheet. (DONE)

2. Work up some large tubing (probably aluminum irrigation tube or pipe) to use as a clamping jig for the tubing seam.

3. Finish up the Intake Tube design and turn the blank into the first tubing form.

4. Work up the Vacuum pump and sump.

5. Design and fabricate the oven to hang the assembled project in to heat the plastic.

6. Devise a heat shield/guide to use to heat a spot on the formed Intake Tubes at the point they need to kink or bend in order to heat the valley of about three of the grooves to form the bend. (This is likely to be necessary because I think the Tubes as formed are going to be fairly rigid and not likely to want to free-form themselves around the front corner of the Intake Plenums.)

Each of the foregoing steps will require varying degrees of effort to accomplish, but none of them are insurmountable. The oven will be the largest project, but I should be able to make that in about the time it took me to do the router jig fixture for the lathe. That took more time than I had expected, but then, they almost always do. I have the heat bars coming from China, it turns out, so that will be a week or two yet. I also have the basic design of the oven worked out so I can start to form parts of it out of sheet aluminum.

I have the vacuum sump that I showed before which is a 30 gallon tank left over from a compressor I took the motor and pump off of. I also have the vacuum pump that will mount on the tank and then I'll plumb them together.

I still have to take some measurements in the 85 to be sure of the final design of the tube form. Then I can make a final assembly of the form blank and start to turn it. I'll be showing some of those steps as I proceed.

 

Now I have finished up the trim router attachment to use to put the bevels on the flat ABS sheets to make the tubing to form these intake tubes out of.

I have it set up so that the bottom acrylic plate is mounted firmly just at the edge of the router bit. It is milled at the 7 degree angle I mentioned before. Then the top plate is mounted atop it but leaving a space in between to the correct thickness of ABS which can slip between them wihile the bevel is being cut.

I worked most of this up before dinner and brought it in for a few pictures, then went out after dinner and cut the large opening in the top plate for router bit clearance and for someplace for the chips to go.

In the last picture I have my clear plastic ruler in between the two plates and pushed up against the router bit blade. You can see just about what the width of the bevel will be by the space between the ruler and the aluminum base of the fixture.

I haven'ty tried this yet, but will get some of the 1/16 inch material tomorrow and give it a try. I don't happen to have any on hand right now.

I'll also try to find some 3 inch lite aluminum tube to make some clamping jigs out of so I can start making tubes that will have plenty of time to cure before they go in the oven, when I get that built.

Next I'm going to start on the form itself; and I have that just about fully designed. I still need to measure the diameter of the air vent from the TB cavity, and determine its relative plane, relative to the bottom of the tubing inlet and outlet, inlet mostly. Then I have a bit of work to do to the bundle of sticks, ******, as it were, before I chuck it in the lathe and start turning.

Murphies Law, Seventh Corollary, says that when setting out to do something, something else must be done first. That certainly applies about five fold here.

 

I learned a couple of interesting things today. One was that ABS that is 1/16 inch thick is probably too stiff for me to form cold into the tubes that I am going to need to make these newly formed intake tubes out of. I am going to have to go to .040 thick which I think will form cold ok. I really don't need to be trying to figure out some way to hot form the heavier plastic.

The other thing I learned is that the setup on the router to bevel the edges of the plastic is not going to work, at least not with the two-bladed bit I have in the router. What it does with the .040 ABS is beat it with each blade as it passes and causes it to rebound enough for the next blade to carve out a big chunk of it. What I am going to have to try next is the use of a multi-toothed rotary file that is spiral ground. I hope that will cut the plastic smoothly without causing it to bounce or vibrate up into the cut.

It that doesn't work I guess I'll be trying to form the tubes with a flat lap for the joint and just forming the tubes with the joint on the bottom, where it will be anyway, and hope that it will form adequately along the joint with the double thick seam.

I also found out the the Aluminum tubing I was hoping to use to make some jigs to glue the tubes up with is $12 a foot, and I want to set up about 6 of them 29 inches long so I can prepare more that one tube workpiece a day. I have to see where I might get some irrigation tubing cheaper than that. In the meantime, while I was at the plastic supplier telling one of the guys there about it he and I both glanced up and saw on a rack a short piece of very heavy paper tube that was from a mailing tube or some core to a roll of something. It is just about the exact diameter that I will need. He gave it to me and I'll try to use it to make further progress at least on the tube workpiece phase of this project. If that works I may simply try to find some more of that and use it. I'll have to devise some means to keep the ABS glue from sticking to it, but maybe just with masking tape.

 

I have the ****** assembled and clamped together with wax paper in between the outer segments. Then I have it set up in the lathe and have started turning it to shape. I found that the hole or recess I put in it for the vent from the TB cover is in the wrong place by an inch, so now I have to figure out how I can still make it work without starting over.

I want to have a flat on the bottom at the opening so that segment of the form will need to be turned and milled by hand. I'm going to use the router attachment to mill it with while I rotate the workpiece by hand.

 

Beautiful, Jerry. Thank you for doing this for all of us S3-ers.

 

Hi Scott. Like Stan said--I enjoy a challenge.

I went out after dinner and put a plug in the original misplaced hole and glued it in with epoxy. By morning I think it will be cured enough to work; then I'll relocate it. I had allowed about an inch and a half on each end of the workpiece for clamping and such, so I can move the hole/recess about 3/4 inch and still have the extra material at the end to do what I need to do. Otherwise I would have to fabricate some additional tooling or form devise to work the form an inch farther down the ******.

Earlier, I used the lathe adapter for the router with a straight bit in the router to cut the 5/8 inch smaller end on the first end of the form. That one I need to have smaller so I can use a smaller hose clamp to hold the form together and still be able to slip the tubing over the form before forming. The adapter worked great to do that; and I think it is going to work pretty well on the accordian groves.

It occurred to me that the bottom end will also need a hose clamp the hold the form together, but that it does not need to be smaller. With the limited extra material I'm going to end up with on that end that will work out just fine. In fact, I may not need to move the recess more than about a half inch. I'll see tomorrow.

This will change the shape of the flat spot where the recess is located, but even that will result in a slightly more pleasing design; I hope.

 

Thursday I received the four heat elements that I had ordered. They are about 30 inches long and are each rated at 800 watts. I think that is going to be more than plenty of heat to make the oven work. I will start this week to accumulate the material I have in mind to make the oven. I have the configuration of it drawn up so I can make it with 8 pieces of aluminum sheet and end up with about a two inch wall thickness that I can insulate so I don't get burned using it. Maybe today I can work up some copper bar like I used to mount the elements in the WW Liner blow oven and make some mounting pieces for these elements. Then I will need some angle iron to work up some kind of stand for it. And, finally I'll need some electrical stuff to wire it up.

 

Jerry, like Scott said, thank you for your efforts.
I'm another S3 guy, and I am grateful for your work and ready to purchase a set as soon as you finish.
Regards.

 

Thanks, Dave. If I were smart I would probably have done all this development and only then, if it worked out, start a thread and post a new product and a few of the pictures that I might have taken along the way to show how I did it. However, there are those who know why I am doing it this way.

I have some confidence that this will work out, but there are still some issues that I will need to deal with to get there. Then, when I think I have it all worked out, I may find that something, like the seam in the tubing I'm going to have to make will not hold in the forming process, or something else, will be fatal to the project. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

I too, hope there will be something for you to purchase if and when I get to the end of the development and can produce these.