Well? Can you? I mean... I already know. But you have to watch the video to find out! Instagram: hlaps1990 Patreon: www.patreon.com/hlaps1990 Music from Soundtrackuniverse.com
Good to see you back. Try a round button-style carbide insert tool - they are very strong (for carbide). When you destroy a portion of the edge, just rotate the insert so that the damaged portion is not in the cut - you get a lot of 'edges' that way!. A flat topped (no chip-breaker features) tool works fine on cast iron. I was taught to 'get under the hard skin' as fast as possible, although given the casting that you are working with, you will still have to tough it out though at least one hard surface/skin to get started. I think that you should: 1) Ignore the voids unless planning to run at very high rpm's - cosmetic filler and paint could be your friends here. 2) Definitely keep the '5's' - they look cool! Ian.
Hi Ian I should try a round insert... I've never actually used one before. The inserts at work are mostly for aluminum and stainless so I just kind of guessed with one I use for steel sometimes. I think it would work fine for this application, I'm not totally sure how fast I want to run the mystery machine yet, so steel is probably the safer option.
Most exercise weights are made by foundries when the iron goes "out of spec" as ductile iron only has a short pouring window after magnesium treatment. It is called pigging or making pigs.... it's a way to salvage the iron for re-use or as a product that does not require specific metallurgical chemistry.
actually, no. pig iron comes from the bars they made way back. the bigger ones had about the weigh of a usual house pig. some of that bars also had kind of legs so you could grab it better for transport.
I notice that many flywheel castings have the whole rim cast off center with respect to the center. Unless you get the rim running true, outer and inner rim, you are going to have balance problems. Perhaps you should turn the disk chucking from the inside of the outer rim or from a mandrel which you can adjust radially with shims.
Wow, that's pretty! Best lessons come from when not everything goes according to plan, and the result has much more character. I had similar problems enlarging the center holes of weight plates using a boring head.
Those "sand pockets" from the casting process used to be called "non-metallic inclusions" by our engineers. :) And yes, without good x-rays of the item, it could fly apart under speed/pressure. Been there, done that.
Ya it was totally like sand or something! Ive heard you can give it a smack and listen for a ring to detect voids but this one didnt ring (some of them did) and it still had voids. Ill have to get an x-ray machine :p
This was pretty interesting. I like to utilize scrap or unused metal objects in my projects but this is a piece I hadn't thought of. Good to know and great video. Thank you.
I could see it being ok for low speed stuff on homade tools like a planishing hammer or something to that effect. But not as an engine flywheel that i was thinking of going with, i ended up buying steal cuttofs at a mettal supply place that had no inclusions on it. Thanks for trying this now i wont have to..And I think if you would have mounted it by an arbor through the center hole, i think it might have started a little truer for you. Anyway good job
I recently turned a new backplate for my 3-jaw chuck. I used the shopvac on low-speed with a 3/4" piece of plastic tube stuck on the pipe end with electrical tape, then zip-tied it to the tool-post. As soon as the chip formed it was sucked away. Clean bed, clean lathe, no dusty workshop, no black boogers. (By the way, auto brake rotors are made of a nice cast iron, easy to turn)
good thinking on the shop vac.. I remember when I first started and I made things out of wood I had some pretty elaborate ways of keeping my vacuum nozzle near the cutting area. Sawdust getting into machines is no fun :(. I never thought auto brake rotors would be cast iron, but it looks like you're right. I guess they would have to be a pretty high quality cast iron considering their operating conditions and the consequences of them failing. Thanks for the tip and the comment!
Interesting idea, never though about it. Aren't you concerned about the balance of this wheel? I would have taken another aproach: put the weight flat on the mill and bore the inside hole with the boring bar, then just static balance the load, like a grinding wheel.
The head machinist in our shop suggested the same thing, but suggested turning the OD first and making some soft jaws so I could do the bore, face and pockets all at once. I think after I finished the OD I realized that I would have had a harder time milling such bad material so I opted to continue on the lathe. I was going to worry about balance had the machining worked out, just by using the double-blade setup and a Dremel. As it stands now I'm going to wait for the steel to come in and try to balance that
How did it balance? It looked to be set off centre in the chuck based on the od, inner of the outer ring and the id. I like the idea, but you are correct in how poor the cast quality is and not wanting it spinning at any great RPM.
I didn't try to balance it yet but I'm sure its probably hopeless. I think the OD, ID and where i gripped it were all out of concentricity to one another, so I guess you basically pick one feature and fix the other two:P
I wonder if it would work out if you bought a better quality weight. Maybe that would be too expensive and you would lose the cost savings vs buying the right steel in the first place.
Manny Calavera ya, considering how low the quality of the mold apparently is, given it’s eccentricities, I’d be seriously questioning the quality of the metal, let alone the quality of the cast. Like you, I’d be seriously concerned that the thing would fly apart at high revs.
I refuse to heed you're results. As soon as I can get ahold of several 45 lb plates. They will asap be attached to a homemade kinetic wood splitter that's been on pause for a while because I don't plan ahead or think things through when i get a idea..
Yea you can make a flywheel out of a weight... how fast are you spinning it? Is this for a car? would you really want that spinning 6000 rpm next to your feet? Not me.
use to make cast iron diaphragms plates for pneumatic valves at a factory on a cnc lathe. Cast iron is nasty stuff. my sympathy goes out to you. from my experience a carbide insert with a large nose radius for ruffing out the piece then use what your using to finish the piece will give you far better results. cast iron that is sand cast is the worst to work with. You came up with the same conclusion I took to my boss and he told me the company was too cheap to buy steel blanks for the job even though it would have saved more money on tooling and machine time than what processing the cast iron cost. Corporate stupid.
If your turning more than 1000rpm i would build a scattershild due to the unknown casting consistency it the weight they make us run billit aluminum flywheels on our race mower if we turn more than the factory 3800rpm maybe gran a billet and try to build from scratch
the disc shaped weights are good for cast iron diamond lapping wheels , once you get through the crust they are usually full of meaty ductile goodness. they wear the crap outa cheap shitty cemented carbide , (which is what the lapping plates are used for)
somebody else : That is right. I used to do that when I was machining in a manual lathe. The cast-iron in this video isn't the best quality and I would call it more like casting-steel. The chips and swarf doesn't match the look of cast-iron chips and swarf.
The engine in my avatar has a flywheel made this way, it was definitely some weird stuff to work with. It's just a show toy that runs slow so I'm not worried about it coming apart.
Nice work man, has a “This Old tony” humor vibe to it. And who doesn’t love watching this ole tony??? Anywho, a furnace and casting operation shouldn’t be too bad if you can afford a lathe that nice.LOL.... what brand/model lathe is that by the way? This is the first video of yours I’ve seen. I’m in the market for a new/another lathe and you’s looks just like the flavor I want. “Modern”:). I’ve got an old (really Old) 14-16 inch Sidney, the bed and carriage is 10ft long but it’s from the era of belts hanging out of the ceiling to all machines in the factory. Big 4-6 inch wide belt drive. My other is a small blue bench top around 80ish years old. My dad has put a million miles on that little thing. Ok I’ll shut up:; nice video man
This Old Tony humor is the best humor, so thank you! So my work actually lets employees use the shop after hours for personal projects, so it's their lathe, and I remain poor :P. It's a big 14" South Bend toolroom lathe. It's a very nice machine and as far as I know they come in lots of different sizes. Depending on your price range, I'd say South Bend is a really good bet, and if you're going for lower cost bench top, there's a brand called Precision Matthews that I have used and like. Thanks for the comment!
Might I recommend "Coffee Can Forge" ... aluminum oxide, silica sand, and Plaster of Paris... Use a new paintcan... and envision the lid a a nicely sealing door ... all good ?? CastIron needs only to be annealed... build the forge. I don't think 1800's CastIron tradesmen cared about voids and contaminents within... right ??
It can be possible to machine weights ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HrpZAQo8VNw.html but also this video explains some of the issues with poor quality cast iron castings ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gXawScCIuYU.html
Hey thanks for posting! I had heard that Steve Jordan machined a weight but I couldn't find it. Perhaps weights without cutouts are easier to cast and thus get fewer voids -- it looks great when he's machining it. I think the second video is more my experience :P
I'm glad you found it interesting. I wouldn't beat yourself up about your results, I can imagine there's quite a wide range of casting quality when it comes to buying weights with no way (until you start machining them) of knowing. But Steve Jordan sure proves it ca be done and to create a precision part like a chuck back-plate too. I enjoyed watching your video. Thanks :-)
I have one Question, regards "the Stresses" within the cast iron weight you lathed into shape: "Just how fast will your Flywheel be turning"? I mean, it would Blow if it was hooked up to a Super Charged Muscle Car, but I would be thinking even a couple hundred RPM would not cause Undo Stress Levels. But I also know that for much of my own work, I stand OVER the Line known as "Perfectionist" !!!
I turned it at 160 RPM and my life juuuuust started flashing before my eyes. The design is for 300-500RPM, so I may fire it up and hide somewhere for a bit. The new steel will probably be here this Friday, so I may just skip ahead to that :P
If you are looking for a chunky, circular, and yet cheap source of steel, have you considered getting an old brake rotor from a scrap yard? It will be better quality steel, and you can be confident that it won't disintegrate at high RPM.
It makes sense they wouldn't use good cast iron for what is literally dead weight. Good try though. Interesting video. And for sourcing steel of that size and shape, instead of going to a supplier, see if there's a shop nearby that handles big bar stock and bargain for cut-offs.
Ya I think that that's the big lesson here. Why use good material for something that just has to be heavy? Some suppliers do actually sell short, large diameter rounds at really good prices, but I should start sleuthing junkyards more :P
Interesting! (goes on the pile of cool ideas for the future, I don't have a furnace either) Thanks for sharing Allthough the quality is kind of ehm "not optimal" it may be usefull for low RPM situations?
Maybe... I wonder if higher quality weights are made of better material... I mean there's no reason for them to be (all they have to do is be heavy), but maybe there are steel weights or something out there. At $1/lb and being roughly the right shape it sure would be nice if it worked :P
i think the casting itself would be a little better , think most of the inclusions is caused by faults made during the casting itself and isnt caused by bad quality metal
Like a really thick one? perhaps, though this was supposed to be a quick, easy and easily purchased source of a flywheel (even though it turned out not to be,) so I'd think antique frypans would be hard to find
Tabletop Machine Shop Yeah those old ones with the real thick base. But as you say, they'd be hard to find I guess. Still, be interesting to see the quality inside between a good old one and the cheap Chinese ones.
No, but for a few reasons! 1) I was originally planning on finish turning it on an arbor (before I decided that it was a dismal failure:P) 2) This chuck happens to only run out by 0.001" or so -- You can't rely on that in a process but it's nice when it works out that way 3) This weight has three spokes and I wanted to get the jaws on the spokes to avoid breaking through the rim
Ya the grip isnt perfect but i tried a bunch of different ways and it did get a little better with some sketchier setups but ultimately to cut it i felt this was a good compromise
Without an adjustable 3-jaw or 4-jaw, it's really going to be challenging to get it as concentric as possible. Shims are really the only option which is probably excessive for an experiment. That said, this flywheel would be perfectly adequate for low speed applications regardless.
I guess on the bright side I could ask the doctors to film removing flywheel pieces from my skull. Maybe I could even make it a series where I have to re-learn english!
I don't understand the cover with rag comment? On cnc's we turn cast slugs with foundry draft easily by boring a set of aluminum jaws with matching draft angle. Then rotate the slug around until you get maximum contact, each slug is different. Sometimes we will turn an arbor with an end cap for the slugs and start thar way first.
I think he wanted to cover the ways of the lathe with cloth to prevent the cast iron chips from falling in and mucking everything up. I don't know enough about cast iron to understand why it's worse than other metals though, maybe the way it chips means it's more likely to fall into the machine rather than behind it, or maybe it's harder to clean out.
I believe it is the same reason you don't use abrasives on metal lathes. Cast iron is super hard and the small chips make a paste when they get covered in coolant/cutting oil and it wrecks the ways
Paul B. True but most lathes now days have telescopic way covers and lead screw wipes to protect the ball screws and lead screws. They also have wipes to protect the linear ways and filtration systems on the coolant tanks to catch the muck! Can't say I ever had a problem with cast but I guess your mileage may vary.
It's a Southbend toolroom lathe. I forget the model number, but its a 14 or 16" swing and probably a 40-60" bed. I used to use a Taig lathe at home. I find this to be an improvement.
Did you not just make things hard for yourself by not truing the centre up first ?... The od was a mile out because the id was a mile out ?!? I've never watched your channel before but these are rookie mistakes .
