One of the Round pieces of 7075 aluminum that I recently purchased was for the radial five engine. I figure I better start with the easiest turned objects and save the more complex pieces until I feel more comfortable on the Southbend.
Here is a photo of the blueprints that I am following. Remember I already modeled this piece in Rhinoceros, so I have a three dimensional model to compare my parts too.
I started first by facing the material and then center drilling to find the center of my stock. I then drilled a 0.125" hole applying oil as a lubricant. Turning on a metal lathe is very similar to turning on a wood lathe, so I went about turning these valve retainers in a similar fashion to how I would go about making plugs.
I got the stock down to the correct size, and then using a caliper I was able to mark out my shoulder and area I was going to loose when I cut off each piece. In the above picture you can see that not all of the pieces are exactly the same (at least not yet).
The first valve retainer after being parted off! An exciting moment as this is my first time making a part on the metal lathe!
By the end of the day I finished making over 10 valve retainers. Near the end of doing this I was able to get these parts within thousands of each other (0.001"). That is the advantage of the metal lathe, such precision is possible. That being said, I don't know if these will be the end all, be all, valve retainers for the engine as I feel like I could do even BETTER on the next set.
Stay tuned to check out the progress!
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