After posting my earlier effort at the safety valve bonnet, fellow NERA member Tom Burnham pointed out that I had made an error and the the cover should be oval at the top not round. He kindly provided me with the info to put it right.
These are all destined to fit a North Eastern Railway Class J that is being built on Oz from a set of NER Days etches.
3D drawing has been a bit of a distraction from the other things that life has thrown my way recently but I also made a small upgrade to my parting tool holder for the Unimat.
Due it small size I had to buy a mini parting blade and this is what it looks like below
The bit that’s supposed to hold the blade and keep it from moving is this bit, which is for all the world like a bent washer.
After parting a few items off I noted that on some of them the back of the part was actually convex because the cutting force had bent the “washer” and allowed the parting tool to move to one side as it was cutting.
Having bought my long length of steel from Wickes I decided that I would look at making something a little sturdier.
This is what I came up with.
The slot is wider than the blade (1.45mm) because my smallest milling cutter at present is 3mm but I do have some brass bar that will fit in the remaining slot should I need to take out any slack.
Here it is fitted.
There is a small shim in between the fixture and the tool holder which helps apply an even pressure. The fixture is thick enough not to bend under pressure and long enough to hold the blade inline with the tool holder without being able to twist while cutting.
Next I plan to make a locking handle for my tail stock. It currently locks via a cap head M6 screw which isn’t always very convenient.
A couple of bereavements since my last post on this have slowed things down somewhat but I have made a little more progress.
Getting the rear of the tender and the tank top square and straight up has been a bit of a struggle.
This has mainly been due to the fact that the rear of the tender is mainly half etched. The half etching process in what is quite thick base material, has made it curl in several planes.
A look at one of the tender sides probably helps to illustrate this better than the photos of the tender rear.
I got there in the end.
I am still being distracted by 3D drawing in Fusion. I have also discovered the render tool so the images look so much better.
As I have more than a passing interest in rolling stock I thought I would attempt an NER No2 Axle box.
A friend kindly pointed out that we mostly only model the part in front of the W Iron so I changed the drawing slightly
Moving swiftly along from the brake standard modifications. You may recall that some time ago I made a stove for the brake van using my Silhouette cutter. Although I proved it was possible, it was extremely fiddly to assemble and I certainly wouldn’t want to be doing a lot of them.
It’s also a perfect candidate for 3D printing so yesterday morning (after amending the brake standard files) I started to draw up the stove.
It has proved to be my most ambitious and ultimately satisfying design project to date.
My apologies for the image overload but I am delighted at how well it has turned out.
