Part 1 Kingsbury Michell Aerodynamic Bearing Collab Construction 

I am an aero engineer and I learned more from our shop techs than I ever did from other engineers. Your research is beyond impressive, thanks for uploading so others can learn!

Tom, I’m just catching up on this project and I wanted to say how much I appreciate your video style. It is as if I’m standing there, looking over your shoulder and you are describing the steps as you build something. Thanks, Jim

Came here from watching Steve Mould and find it impressive the amount of work, precision and skills required to make parts like this.

The rabbit hole diagram brings to mind the James Burke series "Connections" from the 70s/80s.

Very familiar and interesting subject, US Navy uses Kingsbury Thrust Bearings in Main Engine shafting, reduction gears, turbine driven blowers and pumps. Oil wedges of course, not aerodynamic but same principle. I was a Machinist Mate in the Navy.

Riveting stuff, where the world's of science, arts and craft collide. Beautiful. Subscribed for life

seeing the indicator barely move as the roter rotates is so nice.. it makes me smile

I'm in tears (of joy and awe) over the rabbit hole diagram. We need more of those.

Hi Tom, I just want to thank you for this great content. I have just completed my first real lap, and it went great, much thanks to you. I made a set of aluminum-laps using the 3 plate method, which I learned from you. The piece I was lapping was the end of a small steel cylinder, diamter 28mm. After only a 3-4 hours, I could wring my mitutoyo blocks to it, and the optical flat (1/10 band) showed completely straight lines all across, except for about 1-1.5mm at the perimeter where it dropped about half a band. I'm looking forward to more lapping content.

I hope that people who come here from Steve's channel take some time to thumb through your back catalog. Not a euphemism.

Happy birthday Tom.

I think this is the coolest video I have ever seen

I've been watching Steve's stuff almost as long as I've been watching you. I always learn something from both of you.

Really liked your finishing quote about accuracy, precision and resolution. Good stuff.

I'm happy to see the KE55 back in action!

Great video, the whole gage block wringing effect is facinating, i have a metrology book showing a bowling ball hanging from a stack of gage blocks. You mention in your chart Faraday and capacitance...you should measure the capacitance across the conductivity terminals and see what it is and if it changes with speed and the effective air cushion thickness.

If you can ever make it onto a Tom Lipton chart with the legend listing you as "Cool Dude" you have officially succeeded in life. :-)

You were talking about that not being a fancy o-ring groove, you could put an o-ring in it, and a small step up motor to spin it real good instead of using a string. Of course I know that would add a bit of complexity to design but I think that would be neat! It could be like a turntable the motor spins it up and then steps to the side.

Just another comment (assuming there were indeed others), letting you know the collab worked, and I discovered your channel by way of Steve Mould's video... I guess its kind of ''self selecting", in that I already had/have an interest in machining (purely as a hobby, even have a small milling machine). This is fascinating to watch (as most machining videos are), and I like your style of videos.

im used to science/math YT creators working together all the time. Gotta LOVE when science/math creators work with maker creators tho, as that's much rarer.

Although I don’t possess the intellectual capability to understand everything you do, I sure appreciate you sharing your trade with us.

Enjoyed....wish you would have mention the grinding wheels (selection)

Great as always, thank you Tom. Really love the blue plastic film you put on the indicator to stop the flare. Image seems crisp and looks like a soution to a long term problem for the youtube machining world.

Loctite 380 is the number Tom was referring to for Black Max. Good stuff Tom

I like the idea the part is hiding in the stock, insane work to take a big old chunk of steel and turn it into a precision component like this

Lovely work as always. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for the video Tom.

I'm no machinist - don't even own a garage / shed yet, much less a lathe (so I'm probably mis-understanding something). I was somewhat surprised though, to see that you drilled the hole and tapped it before you centred the disk. I suppose it doesn't matter as it's not a high speed bearing but still... But other than that observation, very interesting to watch you work. Love the blued steel as it spins off the cutter.

In awe of your machining skills.

Great work as always, Tom. Love the quote. Cheers.

You are having way too much fun, Nice work Mr. Wizard! ATB, Robin

Nice stuff Tom, I'm always learning !! Thanks a bunch, Cliff

That was some very nice work. I am sure in the end this will wind up better than perfect. Thanks for the video.

very cool, thanks for the video and lessons

Keep it coming, Tom!

Man its so cool to see you go through all of your expertise with this stuff, it must have taken ages to learn all of that. . . Thanks for sharing!

Great info Tom, I did not know about the low head cap screws being machined. Great quote at the end too!

Thanks again Tom!

Shoot yeah!! I love Tom Lipton projects!!

So glad I found this channel from your colab with Steve. Your workmanship is really impressive and very fun to watch!

Lapping is a gateway drug :)

I'm curious about any "balancing" that may need to be done on the rotor, you know, since we're doing all this precision machining and grinding from a "Not-so-secret" government lab Machinist "extraordinaire"!! I'd actually would have liked to seen the Ox-Tool logo engraved in a Triad arrangement to facilitate the minuscule amount material removed. (This whole build is something I find very cool and I'm nerding out on!! If ONLY I had a lathe and surface grinder!! Amazing Sh!t!

You are the best. Big Like.

Can’t wait to make this

"This isn't a fancy O-ring groove" Actually I had the idea of putting a fat and slightly undersized diameter O-ring in that groove. This would allow a friction surface to externally spin the top disc. A Dremel tool or similar with a round puck on low speed should do the trick.

I was just using anchor lube while taping some aluminum plate. I find the product to work just great.

If RU-vid had a star rating, this video would be 4/5 starts. With metric units 5/5!

i almost didn't watch this series, i don't have much interest in the spinning top. but as usual your tools and techniques for getting a job done have sucked me in. keep it coming tom.

Love it!!

To fully appreciate the portent of these bearings is how they are defacto standard in all Navy Vessels today. And this was all for seen, hence the battles for patent rights.

36:30 y'all KNOW my boy Tom knows a thing or two about getting WAP

Big deep cuts 😍

Dimensioning your string groove in the OD. I was taught it was bad practice to indicate a dimension more than once on a drawing. In the future if you or someone else decides to change a dimension on the drawing, the should have to search the drawing to figure out where else either directly or indirectly that dimension is indicated. A drawing that shows the same feature with two different dimensions is sin buena.

32:50 I now know what the 3 sea shells are for!!!

Nice!!

So what's the McMaster part number for the continuity octopus?

Hamilton Beach Temper & Toast, every shop should have one. Makes a nice little heat em and eat em pizza too.

Every time you mention Mr. Wizard I think of Don Herbert on the TV show I used to watch as a kid. He has an interesting history and various episodes are available on RU-vid. I'm sure he was a very positive influence on many kids that are now scientists and engineers. What an interesting device! Great project! Could this be made from mild steel without the heat treat? You could embed some magnets and use some simple electronics to make a self contained motor. Look at RU-vid "Tinker Jim" for a very clever ultra low power motor. The electronics are fairly simple but to achieve low low power he used a hand made coil with 10,000 turns of fine wire. I made a PCB for him. On a small battery this would spin forever. When and where will the drawings be available?

Nice! A little concerned with the imbalance introduced with the logo cutout on one side. Thanks Tom

Is the Rabbit Hole Diagram on the website? Cuz it's fabulous. I especially like marking "lapping" as the Gateway Drug.

For anyone who is interested, the first link will take you to some further information on Michell, and the second to a collection of photos and exhibits mostly to do with him using his slipper bearing to design crankless engines. The size of his crankless engine in the engine bay (so as to speak) of his personal early Buick makes you wonder where the engine has gone. It never caught on despite his efforts, too much money was already invested in the well established conventional engine. adb.anu.edu.au/biography/michell-anthony-george-maldon-7567 collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/3625 There is debate as to who actually invented the tilting slipper bearing system, Michell or Kingsbury and really, it doesn't matter. Kingsbury appears to have been first although Michell patented his design earlier. What is clear is that they developed their two versions totally independently. Michell took a more theoretical path to his design. He wrote a number of papers on Lubrication and a complete monograph in later life. Lubrication was not his only field of study, In 1904 Michell published a paper on structural optimisation which is widely considered to be the seminal paper in the discipline. A discipline that would only come to fruition some 50 years later. Bob

Must have been tough deciding between blue and yellow for Charles Babbage

Speaking of rabbit holes, I had some machining lessons back in high school >25 years ago. Wasn't anything super in-depth, I think it was 2 hours every other week, and I haven't really done anything with it since, but I get some of the basics so it's not too hard for me to conceptualize things like depth of cut, feed rates, what the different axis do and whatnot. From my position at the mouth of this particular rabbit hole, I can see down the ways a bit, and it's also not that hard to see that with more knowledge of these concepts, experience, knowledge of the capabilities of the machine you're working on etc. more refined projects are possible. Not that I'd be able to do it, but I think I have at least some idea of what I don't know. Except 4 jaw chucks. Whenever I see someone, like Tom in this video or Abom or This old Tony or... centering a workpiece in one of those and get it to incredible precision within 2-3 revolutions, that's just magic to me. Usually by the time they finish, my brain is still stuck on the first adjustment "ok, so that bit was sticking out a bit so that jaw needs to get tightened in a bit". I guess that's the mark of an experienced machinist. Also, the brushes to apply cooling fluid/oil, is there some sign above every workshop saying "your brush must be at least this ratty before use"? :D

On lathe videos, I always see the center drill move around radially just as it touches the workpiece. Does that affect the accuracy of the the center hole location?

Only two tool projects added to my list out of this one... wonderful stuff Tom. One question: How did you maintain surface perpendicularity with the center threaded hole after the heat treat? You took out the bow with the cool washer trick, but what aligned the surface plane with the center hole axis or didn't it matter?

Anyone else catch his reference to Mr Wizard? I loved watching that show when I was a kid.

i think i would implement these bearings inside of a large Stirling Engine... As long as the engine isn't bumped around a lot and the bearing parts are the same temperature and material.... should work a treat. probably fill it with helium working gas.

less a rabbit hole diagram and more a james burke episode of ‘connections’ style...

Did your grinder come with coolant or did you add that and perhaps some or all of the dust shield? Do you have a video on modifying your lathe chuck and making the standoffs?

I studied maxwell's equations in calculus based physics II, it's a rabbit hole alright.

I'm always curious regarding surface grinders. Does the decay of the stone over the part never come into play? Surely some materials will remove some of the stones material over the course of grinding a part. Is it noticeable or just beyond measurement?

I know you have been at this a long time and I love to learn so don’t know if you know this trick on the late I mark two of my four jaws on my chuck with a marker and barely loosen up two that are not marked so when I flip my part the two marked stay the same and tighten the two not marked most of the time I get all most perfect every time less time with indicator

Dear Tom, will the marking influence the concentricity of the disk while spinning? And if yes, are you going to balance it 🤠 As allways, love your builds and explonations Stay save Regards from Switzerland

Tom, what are you using to write your G-Code? Also, does your Fanuc control run modern code (thousands of tiny G1 moves)?

I love you Tom!!! Is that a Bush poster in the back?

Looking to build one for a school project and was wondering if the bearing will still work well if I make it at a smaller diameter

Sorry i'm french ; but am i experiencing an optical illusion when around 26 minutes i see the grounding head tilting upward when passing on the piece ? hope i made sense. Cheers anyway ! ps: what are the applications of such a cool and weird piece of ingineering ?

So if you’d made them symmetrical, so that they had a recess on both sides, do you think that would have avoided the cupping, or would it have just cupped in a random direction?

Did it warp because you dumped it on the aluminium block, rapidly cooling one side before the other? Beautiful job as usual!

Very informative, how come you didn't rotary grind them, just curious. Also entertaining as usual.

Can you give us a link for the octopus 🐙

Hello Tom. Do you know how difficult it would be to use 440C stainless steel instead of A2? This would reduce potential corrosion issues on the bearing surfaces.

at 6:59 pass are very deep and surface is very clean; does somebody know the reference of the tool profile and ref of the carbide ? Thanks

So this is probably a stupid question but why did you buff down the washers if you were just going to take them off later?

Tom, not asking for a deep dive... but, "Cool Dude" piqued my interest...

👍

fun fact, Hard drives use hydrodynamic bearings as well. they have a 5 micron gap... because of surface speed.

Tom, I wonder: is your pen name "Unknown"?

The higher the resolution the bigger the problems lol. This reminds of the LIGO, which detects changes to within 1/10,000 the width of a stupid proton lol. Think of the rabbit holes there sheesh. Looking forward to the next one.

where is Steve Mold comment here?

"Lapping" is a Gateway Drug... hahaha

Has the Makino CNC been on a meatloaf before?

Million dollar question: So could this be built using simple cold rolled material or some other cheap steel?

🔧😊👍

Hi Tom, Why don’t you face off the back stop?

It is kinda same reason to float as paper or a card

26:22 dot matrix printer

I wonder how functional a 3D printed one could be. Probably need steel or ceramic balls for the pivots.

why put so many holes in the pice just go around twice , on the same plat .

Just thinking Tom how many viewers would see this tool useful in there shop ? . I THINK a Face Driver expertly explaid by you would be more useful to them it's not well known but it's a jewel in gunsmithing and tool and Die work . Cary on . 😹 .