New Featherweight Design 18" SE/Prism/Parallel/Precision Level Nearing Nearly Done

New Featherweight Design 18" SE/Prism/Parallel/Precision Level. Nearly Done

I am working on a new Featherweight 18" SE that includes a Prism, top rail, and location for a Geieer and Bluhm Precision Level Vial. The pattern has been made and the initial test casting successfully made. As cast it weighs 11.5 pounds and when machined as intended it will weigh about 7.5 to 8 pounds but will retain excellent rigidity.

Interesting!

(And, coincidemtally, I have several of their levels...)

Lucky7

lucky7 said:

Interesting!

Have you considered pressing in or loctiting in a cast iron boss/ plug threaded top side only to hold the level? One could then have uninterupted scraped base.

(And, coincidemtally, I have several of their levels...)

Lucky7

Click to expand...

That is more or less my backup plan. I was thinking a blind bushing with inserted stud. That would provide an essentially uninterrupted cast iron sole. If done neatly it would be almost invisible and functionally a continuous surface.

Denis

Apparently I've been working too many night shifts. Missed your point about gluing in a bushing in my first read thru and response. I'd gone back and edited out my suggestion apparently while you were typing as you'd already thought this thru.

To me, your design looks like it would handle as well or better than Metal Lathe Acces's 18" fitters SE. Their's has been unavailable for years (got mine at Stephen Thomas's suggestion some twenty plus years ago) so yours would fill a needed void in the market and add some useful features.

Again, congrats!

Lucky7

BTW Denis, yer message box is full... ;-)

L7

Cleaned out some space. I sure wish those boxes weren't so small.
Email works better for me, really.
denisgfoster at
gma il dott comm

I like it Dennis

Wow, three orders already! The castings will generally be sold unmachined and in standard thermally stress relieved condition. Machining the faces and top rail will be done on request at additional (reasonable to be determined) cost as will boring and setting mounting studs from the inside face not the scraped the face..

They are coming out of the sand very straight and probably will clean up with only 60 thou removed from each face though it was intended that .125 be removed from each face.

Denis

First "for sale" casting made today

Until now I had been testing out my new pattern with test casting varying the runner and sprue setup to make everything work just right.

Today I made the first casting intended for milling and sale. See attached pics. It is sold to a repeat customer from my 36 sales and five more are spoken for.

I am am going to make a custom single-purpose drilling device to attach to my mill so I can drill stud sockets for a Geier and Bluhm precision vial. It will reach into the center bay of the casting and bore part way through the face from inside leaving the scraped face intact. At least that is the plan. The body of the device will be a custom cast iron casting. I will update this thread as progress is made on the drilling attachment and will likely start a thread in the general section detailing the device. Of course, I can't guarantee it will work as hoped, but we'll let the chips fall where they may as they say.

Incidentally, this casting fits in a flat rate USPS box. So, shipping is not so painful. If sold as a raw casting, the runner, gates, and sprue are notched for a clean break and cracked off.

Here are some pics. I included the last end-on one to show how straight the casting is as it is pulled out of the sand---nearly no warp.

That looks great!

One question: wouldn't it make sense to remove the runner, gates and sprue BEFORE stress relieving the casting? Or do you leave these in place because they help to hold everything aligned for the stress relieving?

ballen said:

That looks great!

One question: wouldn't it make sense to remove the runner, gates and sprue BEFORE stress relieving the casting? Or do you leave these in place because they help to hold everything aligned for the stress relieving?

Click to expand...

He didn't say they were "left in place".

If sold as a raw casting, the runner, gates, and sprue are notched for a clean break and cracked off.

Click to expand...

Denis, are you casting these yourself? Or sending them off to a foundry?


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ballen said:

Denis, are you casting these yourself? Or sending them off to a foundry?


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Click to expand...

It would be far simpler to send them off for casting. But I am doing them myself in my own foundry as I can tweak the process to make as perfect a casting as possible. Another factor in the decision to do my own casting was the fact that my patterns weigh less than a pound or two are made of wood and are fairly delicate compared to run-of-the-mill fifty to thousand pound wood or even metal patterns that the regional foundry is used to. My net casting might not weigh as much as one or two risers a large foundry is used to knocking off one of their castings. So, the workers there are used to pretty rough practices. After a few casts of my pattern, I routinely had to spend hours fixing it due to rough handling---a pattern has to be super smooth to print well in thin sections with deep draw. And the commercial castings had a rougher finish and were more subject to being less straight as they came out of the sand. (The very sympathetic and capable foundry owner who has mentored me and I could never figure out why I get less warping than his process, but it was a fact. That warping was NOT due to casting instability but was simply a matter of the cooled and stress relieved pattern having subtle curvature in planes intended to be flat and is an inherent factor in all casting manufacture. It was no problem to mill them flat and mattered little from a practical point of view.)

When done on a small scale, the casting process is very very labor-intensive and is quite labor-intensive even on a large scale. So, there is no question that this is a labor of love and not economics. That said, there are enough variables to keep track of and constantly adjust to make the process an interesting puzzle to solve. It is very exciting to cast a new pattern as that is when the rubber meets the road and you find out if your "great idea" actually will work. It is not easy to let the casting cool slowly in the sand (best practice) and then come back hours later to dig it out and see what you have. A friend likens opening a mold after casting to Christmas morning. :-)

Denis

ballen said:

That looks great!

One question: wouldn't it make sense to remove the runner, gates and sprue BEFORE stress relieving the casting? Or do you leave these in place because they help to hold everything aligned for the stress relieving?

Click to expand...

Certainly the gates and runner are removed and any clean-up grinding is done before stress relief. I pictured the casting above still warm just as it emerged from the sand being only brushed off with a metal whisk broom. I am pleased with the fact that there are no fins of metal to deal with and the surface finish is quite good as is.

Denis

Denis,

Thanks for sending me your link. WOW, very impressive. looks to me that what we are witnessing here is the rebirth of Old World Craftsmanship! Both in the design and your understanding of how to manage the casting and pattern making process. Looking forward to seeing one of these in person.

Glenn

Glenn Brooks said:

Denis,

Thanks for sending me your link. WOW, very impressive. looks to me that what we are witnessing here is the rebirth of Old World Craftsmanship! Both in the design and your understanding of how to manage the casting and pattern making process. Looking forward to seeing one of these in person.

Glenn

Click to expand...

These straight edge projects have taught me much about casting and I know I have only scratched the surface. But I now feel like I have the various production kinks pretty well dialed and intend to concentrate, to the extent family activities and other obligations allow, on getting some more castings made, especially 36's. I have a good stock of 18's but have not yet released them for sale as I want t concentrate on 36's.

I love casting them. Every time you melt and then pour molten iron there is a definite feeling of excitement. Then having to wait 12 to 24 hours for the casting to cool before digging it out of the sand to see if the casting was successful can test patience. Then it is time to tweak equipment, mull sand, pack a mold, melt metal, and start the cycle all over.


Denis

It is fascinating to watch this project develop.
There was a chap over here in the UK in south Manchester that started making small numbers of castings for SE and similar machine rebuilding tooling. Sadly he passed away earlier this year in his late 80's, I have not been able to establish if anything was left of his patterns, castings or shop. Another missed opportunity to see first hand such skills.

looking forward to seeing a finished SE all scraped up and painted ready to go.
Thanks for the thread.

Mat