Thanks dkmc, Garen goes 1,000 mph some times, lol. My job is to rein him in a bit and your post served its purpose. It never hurts to get slapped upside the head every once in a while so yesterday he got slapped. No more 1,000 mph decimal places. The laws of physics, tolerance and aluminum flowing down hill apply to Phillips Patterns and Diamondp also. We are a quality shop but no better that a lot of shops out there.
Thanks for taking the time to show us this project! It looks like there is a great deal of time and expense putting out a product like this one. I wish you guys luck in making this a commercial success. Keep up the good work! ~Alden
Day 278 Wednesday July 25, 2012 Didn't get much done yesterday or today, was working on some other jobs. Today i got 2 of the 4 key ways cut to size, tomorrow im going to finish up the other two then cut all the holes for the pads and locators. Then hopefully cut a few cases ... and the second fixture plate :/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indicating in the center hole of the fixture plate to set the machines WPC(work piece coordinate). Used a snout coupler to keep the co-ax straight . --------------------------------------------------------------------- Finishing passes on the key ways. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Key Fits
Day 280 Friday July 27, 2012 "So Close" Im trying my hardest to get this thing done, next week i might be put on making another fixture for one of our customers and might be forced to stop working on the blower again. I worked till 10pm last night and was able to finish up the back side and cut half the holes on the front. Today i finished up the top side, rest of the 1/2-13 holes and reamed holes for the locators. Right now im finishing hand tapping all the holes, i have four more 1/4-20 holes and six 1/2-13 left to tap then this fixture will be ready to cut some blowers! I probably wont get to cut a blower tonight and tomorrow im racing at our local Night of Fire... but sunday... ------------------------------------------------------------------ Hand tapping the holes for the keys on the bottom side of the fixture ------------------------------------------------------------------- Stoning off the Forklift's Forks to make sure not to scratch or damage the fixture. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Drilling the holes on the top side --------------------------------------------------------------------- All the holes are cut and reamed on the top side. You can see the locator pins sticking out on the right side, they fit perfectly. -------------------------------------------------------------------- All the dimension i need to manual move the CNC over each hole, then drop down a tap center tool to keep the tap from moving around as i hand tap each hole. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a better way of seeing what im doing, i use the dimension to manually move the machine into position. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here you can see the spindle and tap center is directly over the hole. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The spindle brought up and the tap handle put into place. You can see the tap center over the tap handle, the needle is spring loaded as to put a little bit of pressure on the handle to keep it in place, but not enough to damage anything. P.S. this is the part that sucks the most, I've spent the past 3-4 hour tapping, and the hole time im scared to death that the tap is going to break off. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dropping all the locator and pads down just to see if the all fit correctly, so far everything looks good, dow pins hold them in perfectly. --------------------------------------------------------------------- And finally, a blower sitting on it i still have some holes to tap though. Not to mention the second fixture i have to cut for Op2 :/
Garen, I really appreciate the time and talent it takes to do something like this. I am just glad that you are posting this up so we all can see the time, patience and skill it takes. Len
Not A problem I know, now that im home and not completely worn out, all im thinking about is going back to work to get them done .
Hello Garen- Just lurking a bit at this thread tonight, reading comments. Yeah, I agree with what you said about my comment, not plagiarizing past works, copying and then taking credit. Hope I didn't come across that way. If I designed something, and someone 'stole' it, I'd be steamed too. But if you do get to do other stuff, I don't know, maybe research some old magazines, and then just try to have a nice old style vintage vibe to them....rounded corners, nice shapes, and if any logo, maybe an old style script, or that old style foundry lettering? I know billet and laser engraving seem to be the order of today, but that stuff doesn't do it for me. Seems like you and your family have the capability of doing it the old style way- hope you choose that path, at least for some of your products. Good Luck!
Yes I am dirt. I would like to claim some dad glory on my son but he pretty much was like he is from the start and on his own. I never had to motivate him much, he always just dug into things he is interested in. We have 3 operations on the case to do and we will get though 2 this week which is the top & bottom. The last operation is on our Mazak H500 horizontal and the boring bar people will be in to demonstrate their tool on the bore which will decide if we buy the bars or not. We designed the case to be able to do both small and large bore rotors. I don't know if that's a mistake or not. We can change that with a simple adjustment to the core prints and core box if we decide to do large bore only. With the large bore our metal wall will be .375 or so thick and with the small bore .500. Its added some weight but should be a very strong case. Most of the case's I have seen have are .250-.300 thick metal wall.
Dzuari and Suprcub, awesome thread, thanks for posting everything. I'm sure learning a lot! Keep up the good work, can't wait to see the finished product..
Can you guys help me identify this car? We were going through some old photos of the shop and this is the oldest one we could find. The white building to the right is where this company started back in 1947 making patterns out of my grandfathers chicken coupe. Im trying to figure out what year this could have been taken and i figured this forum could be a better place to ask about the car. I was told he had a 48' studebaker ---------------- Here is some other photos of the past we found. --------------------------------------------------------------- The pattern shop after building onto it. some time between the 50-60's ------------------------------------------------------------------ Larry Rodken(Uncle) working on a riser it looks like. -------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Phillips(Current Owner,Left) and Chuck Vandercamp(Right) working on a pattern ----------------------------------------------------------------- The foundry sometime in the 60-80's ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This photo was taken some time around 1999 and is 1 of 4 of our buildings.
a few years back i passed on one of two i think it was blower intakes for a dodge 325 hemi. that a fellow hamber had cast..have regretted it ever since...back then i did not realise how few of them were ever made....guy was on the hamb here, but i don't remember his name....wish ii knew who cast them for him....i would find it hard to beleive that they cast em and pitched the molds........
We actually had a guy contact us a few months ago that was selling some old tooling for a blower made in the 30-50's for a modified ford running a Ferrari engine i believe. It was missing a few pieces that would need to be remade but you could tell it was really old and a handmade pattern. They only made two or three castings and they didn't work very well but it was cool as hell and we wanted it but by the time we got back with him he decided he didn't want to sell it. The thing used bushings instead of bearings and leaked horribly .
all he had cast was the intake manifold,,,it was to take a standard 471 blower on top of it....pretty much the perfect size for the small displacement 325 dodge hemi
top shelf stuff here ill be looking foward to getting one or two.you dont by chance have a pattern for a y block blower manifold in you stash do you if so ill take one when you get a chance
No manifolds yet, sorry. but, as soon as we get our 3D scanner you will probably start seeing a lot of manifolds pop up on our product list.
Day 283 Monday July 30, 2012 Quick update, i have to get out of here but I'm cutting a blower -------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, powder coat update. Building the environmental room
Have been following this thread for some time. VERY cool stuff. Have even linked this thread to other sites I visit. Question,,, If someone sends you a manifold made in the early 60's, can you repop it?? If so, any idea about how much $$$ It would be for a Pontiac 4 cylinder for a 4-71.
thank you and we can but i can't give you rough idea of cost without seeing the castings. I can pretty much guarantee it wont be less than a couple grand for a one off. The alternative, if we feel we can make a profit on it and sell a few of them, you can send us it and we will absorb all the cost of tooling and machining and just sell you one for the best discount we can for providing us with the casting. If you could find a few people that would be interested in buy one that would help a lot and if they'd be willing to put money down that would be even better. Like i said in some earlier post though, I don't really approve of a 100% repop of vintage parts or something of nostalgia if that is what you are going for. If we do remake old parts, they will be distinctively different from any originals. I see exact repops as a slap in the face to the people that did exactly what i do now, but they did it with a lot less.
Don't know y'all from Adam, but I'm so proud of y'all for fighting thru everything it means to keep making cool parts in the US...Know first hand it is very hard to do! Been following along since the beginning, amazing footage and story to go along for one of the best posts ever. Heck, I'd be willing to buy a DiamondP Blower tshirt as long as it says Made In U.S.A. on it Lookin forward to buyin a blower someday... -QQ
Hi Quad, were working on it. The day we get our first 671 built and pictures we will be off to the T-shirt shop. I announced a moto for our T shirts in a meeting the other day, ''Our Blowers Don't Suck'' I got pelted with bolts and chased from the room, lol,. I liked it even if some of the guys have absolutely no since of humor.
Garen, I have been watching along with alot of other people and thanks for all the effort to show off your guys' work. I appreciate the work it takes to start from a napkin drawing and make a final product. I have not worked in casting other than in college, but i do similar projects at work so I have a very good idea what you are going through. So, thanks again. BTW, do some research on the laser scanner add on from FARO, when I played with one 3-4 yrs ago it was not up to the hype. I believe that you will have better results just using the touch probe. The pattern shop my father inlaw works at has an older model arm and he has a MasterCam add on that puts the data directly into MC and he makes much cleaner geometry that way. The laser just produced too much, yes it did pick up very fine detail, but it also picked up all the defects, it even picked up the hair on my hand. It was also hard to translate the faro info to any program we had. If you are very good in solidworks, you can produce the geometry better and quicker from the touch probe info. Now, throw all that out the window if you have different experiences and my experience is a couple years old and they may be much better now. Don't get one without making them go from scan to CAM package on your computer and machines Thanks for keeping it here in the US. Jason
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