> Paul: You, any one else, ever look at RB's aluminum end and center
housings
> and wonder how much trouble to machine out of solid aluminum billets for
> PPort engines? After all, they won't need intake ports in them.
> jofarr, soddy tn
>
> Can't be done because they are hollow. Now if somebody invented
> a tiny robot milling machine that you could put down a small hole
> and have it mine out cavities in the material that would work.
>
> No intake ports would certainly help.
>
> If you made them in two pieces that would also work if you could
> figure out a way to seal the internal joints. Could be done with
> some sort of gasket or O-rings and that is exactly what Richard
> Sohn is working on.
>
> Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.
>
> Paul,
> Those two pieces could easily be furnace brazed together. According to
> Alan Tolle Everett even did a steel 2 piece milled and furnace brazed.
> For the "superlite" engine. For aluminum the problem remains the
coating.
> I'm convinced that it would be "do able" just expensive. I think that
the
> state of milling equipment probably do a better and faster job than
> casting.
> Bill Jepson

> hi Bill, this is the way my machinist and i have planned to do it. what
> would you estimate the cost of casting them? just so i could compare
costs.
>thanks , wyo. walt.

Walt
The problem is the cost of the pattern making. You could easily spend 10K
to 15K setting up the patterns to cast the various parts. That is before
making a single casting. Additionally the sad thing is you could find
that your
casting still didn't work due to porosity or core shift. The fact is
that billet
construction would probably be cheaper until at least the 100 unit mark.
machining from billet you have a reasonable expectation that your first
part
would work. All the aluminum concerns about coating are about the same.
Bill Jepson

One possible problem I can see Bill is the compressive strength
of furnace braze is not as high as the base material.
The tension bolts put a lot of compressive stress on
the engine end housings.

Paul Lamar

Paul,
This is a reasonable concern, but with proper layout shouldn't be a problem
The key is to place the braze material around the piers or in a center
reservoir
so the base material is in near contact. (a super thin film is wicked to
the base
material by heat and usually a flux) The way I've seen this done is to
weight
the two parts together to force out excess. Your separate wear surface idea
with o-ring seals is another way to do this. (I thought that hot rivets
from
opposite sides could hold the plates in place) Lastly, modern thermally
conductive epoxies could be used to fasten interlocking opposite sides. For
the CNC milled parts that might be the most effective method of all. the
parts could be well located and pressed together during cure. Detgun
coating
for least unwanted heat transfer. There are many ways to go after this, I
wish I had the money to pursue it. FWIW

Bill Jepson

JB Weld them together might work.

Paul Lamar

Paul,
If you setup the edges that come together like this, with a small clearance
to allow the epoxy somewhere to go, it would work fine. You could do the
brazed part exactly the same way, only the clearances would change.
Pardon the crude model but the concept is obvious.
Bill Jepson

That jpg did not work.

Paul Lamar

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