New Bucket for an old FEL

mjncad · Jun 5, 2009

Larry:

I've been wondering what you've been up to, and I can hardly wait to see the finished product.

GuglioLS · Jun 7, 2009

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your interest in this project. I can hardly wait myself, I've been wanting to do this for almost 25 years. Better late than never I guess.

I made a little more progress this weekend machining pins and bushings. Two of the pins needed to be modified to accept grease fittings. Those pins are the ones to be installed into the FEL arms as the original FEL had no grease fittings at those pivot points. All the bushings will be welded to adapter brackets for the QA. The shoulders of the pins were turned off to give the pins a little more usable length and to use the pre-drilled holes for retaining the pins into the bushings.

The first step to make a grease-able pin was to bury a 3/16 drill bit 3-1/2" into the center of the pin, then tap for a 1/4-27 grease fittng after that drill an 1/8" exit hole for the grease in the center of the pin:

Larry

GuglioLS · Jun 8, 2009

Next was to cut all the bushings from DOM stock and transfer holes already drilled in the pins to the bushings. This shows how that was accomplished. Lynch pins will be used to retain the pins to the bushings:

Next is to weld all the bushings onto the QA FEL mounting brackets.

Larry

GuglioLS · Jun 8, 2009

Welding bushings onto the FEL QA adapter brackets required the bushings be clamped square and tight against the brackets. A couple of 8" long X 1" dia bolts came in handy for that.

After everything cooled to ambient temperature, the clamping bolts were removed to test fit the FEL arms. Everything seems to line up quite nicely. The FEL brackets still need welding to the QA adapter. I'll get to that later. The last pic on the left is a prototype bracket for attaching the base end of the cylinder to the FEL arms. That bracket was drawn up in auto-cad, printed out on four 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper, then transfered to some cardboard for a test fit. Once I finalize the size and shape. I'll get 4 of them plasma cut out of 3/8" plate steel.

Any suggestions on the bracket? should I punch some holes in it near the base end for additional welding points?

Larry

mjncad · Jun 8, 2009

Dang Larry...that's the prettiest fitting set of lynch pins I've ever seen.

I just love attention to detail.

Gizmo2 · Jun 8, 2009

GuglioLS,
Don't know how I missed this thread. Very nice work can't wait to see it finished. I have customized and made many things and I can really see the amount of work in your project. Looking at a finished unit one cannot begin to imagine the amount of work, the what ifs, the oops and the rework that occurs doing something like this. Great project, now stop reading this and let's see some pictures of the finished unit.

GuglioLS · Jun 8, 2009

Thanks Matt, Gizmo2,

I'm finally done welding bushings and plates. Of course I only post close up pictures of the best of my welds

Here is a video clip showing the fitments of the pins after welding everything up. No doubt I would not have posted this if a sledge hammer was needed to get the pins in.

Now it's time to get the brackets plasma cut. I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow.

Larry

Gizmo2 · Jun 9, 2009

GuglioLS said:
Thanks Matt, Gizmo2,

Of course I only post close up pictures of the best of my welds

Isn't that what we all do? I certainly would not post any of my bad welds and the older I get the fewer and further apart the good ones are. Nice job.

GuglioLS · Jun 11, 2009

Yesterday morning I went to get the brackets cut. To my surprise I found out the only person who knows how the plasma cutter works left the shop for greener pastures. I was not going to let that small inconvenience stop progress. So lucky me got permission from Dorthy the widowed shop owner to figure it out. I got there at 9:30am and finally by 4:15 pm figured it out and got this by the end of the day:

I watched in awe as it effortlessly cut clean through 3/8" plate steel.
There is allot to plasma cutting and getting decent results such as cut speed, amps, punch through distance, torch gap to the surface, order of what gets cut first and I sure some other stuff. The plasma cam software is a frigging nightmare. In the end I was able to lick it good enough to get my brackets cut clean. Dorthy asked me to cut some parts for a customer waiting over a month. Luckily it was only 16 simple rectangles 6" X 18" X 1/8" thick, I spent another 3 hours figuring that out. Needless to say I got my brackets for "Free". And an invitation to come back and cut parts. If I ever loose my day job I can always work @ minimum wage as a "Plasma cutter" LOL.

Anyway here are the end results:

I got the balance of the hose for the new cylinders plumbed today. And cut the cross tubes on the cylinders a little shorter. Sorry no pictures of that because it's just boring detail stuff.

Larry

mjncad · Jun 11, 2009

The plasma cut parts look good Larry. That automated plasma cutter looks like it's been around a while. I would think most modern manufacturers of entry level robotic plasma cutters should be able to to take an AutoCAD DXF file and translate it at a bare minimum. If they could take SolidWorks and Inventor files too, that would be a plus.

The time you spent teaching yourself how to use the plasma-cam is still far less than what it would take to cut the parts out the old school way.

I wish I had cheap access to a PlasmaCam as I can draw the stuff up in AutoCAD relatively quickly and it would beat using my primitive method of hole saws, bandsaws, drill bits and grinders for some of my projects.