Day 21.2: Pattern is completely done, ready to mold tomorrow, we set up the flask on molding station 3 but it is to large to spin so we are going to set it up on line 4 tomorrow, luck we did it before we left or we would be spending 2 hours extra tomorrow getting it set up. i also took a video of our CAM software simulating the CNC cutting of our rotors, ill upload it and hopefully post it in an hour or two. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- tough filled ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Down sprue put in -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Risers cut and ground with pads, bolting them down tomorrow, then painted and the pattern should be ready to mold. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1/4" holes drilled out for the pins ------------------------------------------------------------------------ grinded the edges of the pattern down so the flask latches could have more clearance, but its not enough... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So we improvise ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Better ----------------------------------------------------------------------- These latches work by a cam, as you twist them the tighten up and close the flask, this way when the machine squeezes the sand, u just release the latches and are able to easily pull the flask off the mold. open Closed ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Open(gap between the plates, foam is in between them) Closed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Risers sitting inside ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Squeeze board being cut to allow it to not crush the riser boards when the sand is compacted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Flask being setup and aligned in the molding machine, its not going to fit though so we will be moving it to line 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- arms that will lift up and allow the molder to spin the flask around to squeeze the cope and drag. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jaws or teeth, used to clamp onto the cope to pull it off the mold, so that the molder can pull the pattern and set the cores in the mold.
Molding in about 30min , i just like to thank everyone for following this build and also say, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59fPX4CAQwk also, i cant seem to get that video of the rotors uploaded but im still trying
Day 22: Casting Lot of photos today, had a few problems molding but we've sorted it out, have the casting ban sawed and ready to be taken to the cleaning room. You will see this in the photos but we are going to be pouring these cases with X-ray quality metal, we've degassed our metal twice and will be sending one of our cases to X-ray and for lab testing. To give you an idea though, we just got back our lab results of some castings we did last week that where also X-ray quality, there tensile strength was around 33,000-35,000. I will have photos up of the results when we get them and pictures of the x-rays. which will all be in the video too. Still can't get youtube to upload my rotor video. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- liquid parting line being sprayed on the flask and pattern -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sand being dropped down into the flask -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ramming the sand with a air rammer -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bottom board being placed -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Squeezing, not positive but i believe this machine squeeze above 120psi -------------------------------------------------------------------------- rolling over to mold cope -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Liquid parting on the cope side -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ramming the sand -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ramming tools -------------------------------------------------------------------------- squeeze board -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mold being squeezed, we squeeze once, fill with sand again and squeeze, or just called double squeezing -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compressed over 2", hard as a rock, i punched it and didn't even leave a dent -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Squeeze board off, you can see the risers sticking out -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The second squeeze
Day 22.2: Casting Blowing out the risers and down sprues ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lifting off the cope ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cope and pattern off the drag --------------------------------------------------------------------- Placing cores ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Putting the cope back on the drag ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lifting the flask up and placing it on the pallet to roll down the pouring deck --------------------------------------------------------------------- Latches on the flask are released and it is pulled off the mold ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jacket is placed onto the mold ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This was done while we where molding but this is the degasser, it pumps nitrogen into the metal and spins down in the metal, this causes the unwanted gasses to form and catch on the bigger bubbles as they rise up through the metal, then the impurities just float on the top of the metal and we skim them off. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- After we are done degassing and skimming we take a small sample of the metal and place it in a machine which sucks all the air out, creating a vacuum around the metal sample, so atmospheric pressure which is around 14.1psi(Indiana is about 1000ft above sea level) is dropped to 0 or negative. This causes the gas bubbles inside the metal to expand very easily, and cool much slower(no air to release heat) so they have more time to expand, the result will become exaggerated and expand beyond what they normally would, so when we cut the sample in half, we can see the bubbles in the metal which we normally wouldn't see.
Day 22.3: Casting cooling the sample off in our high tech low pressure submersible cooling machine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cutting the sample --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sample one, we where not happen with this so we ran another degas cycle. It is hard to see in the photos but there are minute bubbles in the metal, again, exaggerated from the zero pressure test. They would not be visible by the human eye if cooled normally. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sample two is on the left and we are good to pour now, the other sample is from another furnace found a while back, i just wanted to show a bad sample with a good. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Mold being slide down the line ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2000lb furnace, about 1000lb in it now ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The far ladle is 55lb of metal, the closer one is 35lbs of metal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Filling up the mold ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thats all that is left off the 55lb, 35lb was empty --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mold being dumped into the shakeout trough -------------------------------------------------------------------- Being hooked up to the crane
Day 22.4: Casting Taken to the scales and weighed with the core still in it. 136lbs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sitting outside to cool down before knockout ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We have been testing a new chemical for our airset that is a 50/50 blend, it works so well that we didn't even have to hook up the casting to the knock out, it just feel apart with a few hammer hits. And this core was actually not hollowed out, it is pure solid sand. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Band sawed and weighed, 47lbs, this will be a little less once it is ground and machined to size ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This machine is the knockout machine, which works by clamping jaws down to the risers and ramming them extremely fast and vibrating the core apart, we just brought it in here though to blow it off with some air to see the casting better. These photos are of the very first casting off the line. We like to do it right the first time , this will also be the one X-rayed and tested. It is still a little dirty but once it is ground and ran through the shot blast machine it will look awesome. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thats it for now, i will try to get the case ground and shot blast so you can see it cleaned up a bit, but i have a wedding rehearsal to be at in a few hours so we will see. Ill probably go in sat our sun to work on it a bit and get a few more photos and get the video up as fast as i can
here is the video i made talking about making the rotors <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K2X6StLi9oU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Have you considered any improvements like Hardcoat anodizing the inside with impregnated teflon added? I'm also a gearhead toolmaker and interested in this project. I can't afford one but would really like to have one---just because they look soo cool and indicate some "real" power.
If your referring to low friction coatings then yes, we will be test a few different coating. Also going to experiment with some fins
I really did not understand how the two halves of the mold were going to work, until I saw the last pictures. Great fun, very interesting stuff, and thanks for all the pictures, I know posting them must have been more work than the casting!
Day 22.5: Casting Here is the blower after ran through the shot blast, hasn't been grinded yet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is our 2 pallet 4th axis brothers that we are talking about machining the rotors on.
I have been following along during the process and I am in awe of this! Your work is fantastic. Thanks for sharing the knowledge with everyone.
Very awesome engineering and execution. I've been following but am curious as to the goal. Is this a one off? Sorry if i missed the explanation. It's going to have massive rotor support. Some people prune all that away. Are you planning to produce? Compared to the GMC it is sort of bulky? Sam made mention to the mounting flange? 7/16 bolts and nuts may need a machined hole? Is this for top fuel?
This build is the complete documentation of a designed part going into full production, we will be mass producing and selling these to anyone that wants one. The ends are design with a lot of machine stock, so we can make them as thin or as thick as we want and to also be able to machining the ends to fit any style plates we want, these blowers will be capable of running nitro with just a few special coatings. The next step in this build is the CNC side of producing a part. Ill be documenting building CNC fixtures, proper CNC setup, programming the machines, cutting, facing, bolt holes, porting, boring, testing tolerances, testings the accurateness of the machined product with our CMM machine.
And also because we wanted our own blower . If these actually start to take off and sell, the next step will be producing a permanent mold and shell core box. permanent molds will run a lot faster and be cheaper piece wise. It will probably be cut out of 2 slabs of grey iron approximately weighing 1500lbs each and be 24"x30"x8" big. all of course, will be documented .
Garens (Dzauri) dad here. I can't call him Dzuari and he doesn't call me Suprcub, lol. As you can imagine I am extremely proud of Garen. He is following in our family's tradition and to say the least I think he will be the best we have had. He was one of those kids when he got a toy he swiped a screw driver and pliers and looked inside to see what made it tick. After a all nighter one Christmas when he was about 8 he asked me to help him put a erector set robot together and I told him ''Let me get a couple hours sleep first then we'll do it''. He took off upstairs and 3 hours later I go to his room to see a 4 foot robot compete with wiring standing right next to Garen as he put on the finishing touches with his new tool set we bought him, lol. We have been in business for 65 years and made alot of tooling and poured tons of castings. My father started the ''shop'' in 1947 in a chicken coop after he was promised a .05 raise to get him to .95 per hour and the owner of the pattern shop told him he would never make it as a pattern maker. So he quit and started his own shop at 19 years old. I started sweeping the shop at 10 and went to work full time at 18 years old and worked with my dad until his death in 2008. He died April 30th of that year and the crunch hit us 4 months later. In a way I'm thankful he didn't have to go though those tough times at 82 years old. We went from 51 people to 16 by November of that year. At one time we had 3 days work and then we were closing the doors for awhile. At that time we had to do something so we decided to develop our own product line. I was tired of loosing work to over sea's competition so we started DiamondP Industries. I was pretty sure the DiamondP management wouldn't sell out Phillips Patterns for cheaper castings and machining, lol. We started with a simple valve cover, then to shift knobs and now to the super charger's. We are making the blower's for hot rod guys. We race our 1971 Super Pro Camaro and Garen does the driving and as you might guess is damn good at it. I'm sure one of our first blowers may find its way into some sort of vehicle in the near future to run down the track, lol. I decided to make the first one a 671 so we bought one and yep Garen started taking it apart. We will follow with a 871 probably in the summer of next year. I wanted to make it strong with the case maintaining a .375 metal wall when machined for the large bore rotors and leaving the front & rear bearing plate surfaces with plenty of stock so we can play around with some design shapes and machine the case to match. It will add some weight to the assembly but I want these to be around for awhile. I want you guys to pass your blower on to your kids and grand kids, lol. Our snouts will be 6061 bar stock along with the pulley's. Our splines and couplers will be 4140 heat treated to a 38-42 Rockwell with a black oxide coating. We are learning as we go but we will follow what we have always done and that's to make the highest quality parts at a fair price that we can. This spring we are adding a automated powder coat line so I'm sure we will come up with some interesting color scheme's. Visit us at Diamondp.com or Phillipspatterns.com. We are always glad to hear your opinions and views.
Day 28: Sent the casings to heat treat, not sure when we will get them back. Our horizontal is down for right now and all our other mills are running jobs so we can't start on making the fixtures yet. The horizontal should be up by the end of the week and hopefully get started on the fixtures next week. We also had the boring bar salesmen in today to discuss buying 2 roughers for small bore and big bore and 1 finisher. So for now im working and discussing how we are going to be making the cores and molds for the rotors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cleaning room deburring and grinding the cases before sending out to heat treat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Measured the top of the case just to see what the shrink was, my casting model was measured at 15.296, the actually casting is 15.328. So the casting is off by 0.032, not bad considering greensand has a tolerance of ±0.030 and the casting is 15" long. So technically the casting is only off 0.002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Front plate sitting on the raw Casting
Thanks for sharing this entire process with everyone. Very interesting thread. I need one of these for '39 Olds coupe gasser with a BBC.
Day 29: back over in the greensand foundry today running some production jobs that were due yesterday , its the same job that i spoke about earlier that is x-ray quality, took some photos of the castings but i guess my camera didn't want to take a picture of the molds. also saw the adapter plates before they were shipped off. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- adapter plates sitting in the basket, just bandsawed, they still need to be ground, shot blast, and CNC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here are the castings that we make that are x-ray quality, they are some kind of hydraulic housing for aeronautical company. The mold, which i didn't get to take a picture of cause my camera decided not to, weighs over 500lb of airset sand. Im gonna be molding them for the next few days with another guy, and they are all hand lifted :/
Reminds me of the time my dad said ''Truck load of mahogany just arrived, unload it and put it in the racks make sure you keep the 2'' and 3'' thick stuff separate. You got 95 of em to make Garen that's only a total of 24 tons. That will keep you in shape, lol, (good job).
day 29.2: Got the photos of the molds for those x-ray castings, they don't look big but these are over 500lbs a piece --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some people have been asking me why greensand is called green if it isn't green at all. There is some debate between foundrymen and why greensand is called greensand, some say its because of the color, others say its merely the state its in(new, unused). Most everyone i've asked doesn't really have a definite answer, While this sand does look green, there is also many different kinds of sand; silica base, graphite, olivine that don't look too green. foundry work and molding dates back to before 3000BC so to really know why its called greensand, i couldn't tell ya.
It is great to see this type of labor intensive work still being done here in the USA! As an engineer and i am very impressed by your skill level and dedication. Thanks for posting and good luck with your project!
The Jalopy Journal
