M.B. Naegle
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
- Location
- Conroe, TX USA
I'm gathering all the bits and pieces to pour some Babbitt for a couple projects and I had a couple questions.
Project #1 is a couple of Babbitt lined bearings for some overhead shafting hangers that I'll be using to power my Whitcomb Blaisdell lathe. The info on the web and a few old books I have makes it seem fairly straight forward, however most every example I've seen they used the actual shaft and other parts to hold everything square in the machine itself. In my case, overhead shafting is fairly long and cumbersome to move around, so I plan to just use a short drop that is the same diameter and make some kind of spacers that will hold it in the center of the cast iron shells that encase the Babbitt. The cast iron shells have no machined surfaces on them and are the kind that have oiler rings inside so I'll also need to create a couple of voids in the top caps for the rings. Each bearing has the two halves, as well as a lower reservoir shell. Do you guys have any tips for bearing of this style? Do they need to be scraped afterward (how?) and how elaborate should I get with oil grooves? It doesn't look like they had them before.
I'll re-use the existing Babbitt, and I have a couple new ingots to add to it. I also just got a pound of Rotometal casting putty to dam everything in, and a cup of tinning paste to help the Babbitt bond to the iron.
Project #2 is the half-nuts for my 1909 Hendey 16" lathe. The original Babbitt is gone and instead a prior owner made a set of bronze inserts and pinned them to the half-nut shells. Only one side of the bronze is still there and it was very worn, so I cut it out and cleaned the cast iron shells and am going back to the old Babbitt system. Similar to the bearing project, the only half-nut re-pour examples I'm aware of use an un-worn portion of the machines lead screw for the center core. My lead screw is long and difficult to move around and has a key-way cut through one side, so I'm thinking about threading a short piece of round stock (without the key-way) to match a virgin portion of the lead screw and making a fixture that will hold it squarely in the center of the half-nuts. I might only need to use it once every 50 years, but I think it would be easier than a make-shift arrangement.
Anything else I should be aware of with these two cases? I know about using acetylene smoke as a release agent on the shaft/screw section, and I should pour the bearings one half at a time. Now that I have the ingredients to pour the Babbitt, I need to make the fixture to hold the half-nuts and a piece to do the bearings with. I'll post my progress as it comes.
Project #1 is a couple of Babbitt lined bearings for some overhead shafting hangers that I'll be using to power my Whitcomb Blaisdell lathe. The info on the web and a few old books I have makes it seem fairly straight forward, however most every example I've seen they used the actual shaft and other parts to hold everything square in the machine itself. In my case, overhead shafting is fairly long and cumbersome to move around, so I plan to just use a short drop that is the same diameter and make some kind of spacers that will hold it in the center of the cast iron shells that encase the Babbitt. The cast iron shells have no machined surfaces on them and are the kind that have oiler rings inside so I'll also need to create a couple of voids in the top caps for the rings. Each bearing has the two halves, as well as a lower reservoir shell. Do you guys have any tips for bearing of this style? Do they need to be scraped afterward (how?) and how elaborate should I get with oil grooves? It doesn't look like they had them before.
I'll re-use the existing Babbitt, and I have a couple new ingots to add to it. I also just got a pound of Rotometal casting putty to dam everything in, and a cup of tinning paste to help the Babbitt bond to the iron.
Project #2 is the half-nuts for my 1909 Hendey 16" lathe. The original Babbitt is gone and instead a prior owner made a set of bronze inserts and pinned them to the half-nut shells. Only one side of the bronze is still there and it was very worn, so I cut it out and cleaned the cast iron shells and am going back to the old Babbitt system. Similar to the bearing project, the only half-nut re-pour examples I'm aware of use an un-worn portion of the machines lead screw for the center core. My lead screw is long and difficult to move around and has a key-way cut through one side, so I'm thinking about threading a short piece of round stock (without the key-way) to match a virgin portion of the lead screw and making a fixture that will hold it squarely in the center of the half-nuts. I might only need to use it once every 50 years, but I think it would be easier than a make-shift arrangement.
Anything else I should be aware of with these two cases? I know about using acetylene smoke as a release agent on the shaft/screw section, and I should pour the bearings one half at a time. Now that I have the ingredients to pour the Babbitt, I need to make the fixture to hold the half-nuts and a piece to do the bearings with. I'll post my progress as it comes.
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