2ND QTR 2009           •   •   • 
DATE HRS TTD ACTION IMAGES
04/01/09 3.0 1061.5 Put the knobs in the lathe and drilled them all the way through with a smaller drill so I wouldn't damage the threads made in the beginning. I then bored out the inside of the knobs, leaving about .45 of threads left for the steel thread inserts. I also cut off the rectangular clamping section and turned most of knob down to the shaft diameter. I then installed the steel thread inserts. Knob details Finished knobs
04/11/09 8.0 1069.5 Decided to see if I could come up with a simpler mechanical solution to opening the valve on the paintball tank. The tank comes with a small schrader valve which only needs to be depressed .065" to activate. The paintball valve uses a threaded knob to depress a plunger against the valve. I decided to design a cable actuated lever system to depress a cylindrical rod against the plunger. Closeup of paintball schrader valve Design for cockpit air lever Design for air bottle valve
04/28/09 2.8 1072.3 Turned some round aluminum into two more paintball valve cylinders. First I turns the rounds down to 1.495" then drilled and bored them to fit the paintball valve. Drilling cylinder Boring cylinder Fitting valve Cylinders with paintball valve
05/01/09 1.5 1073.8 Over at Ken's I cut some material to make the sheetmetal mounts for the bottle valve assembly. I made them out of .090 aluminum scrap and then bent them in the powerbrake. Cutting strips for valve mounts Notching for the pivot tabs Bending pivot tabs
05/23/09 2.5 1076.3 Got some aluminum block material and milled it to dimension for the air lever and for the housing it pivots in. I also figured out that I could bend some more scrap to use for the lever instead of milling it from block. Material for bottle vale project
06/02/09 3.7 1080.0 Borrowed Don's rotary table and zeroed it out on the mill. Started milling the air levers, beginning with the 1/2 radius main body. I am making two of everything in case I screw one up, it doesn't take much extra time to machine the second part once the setup is done. Rotary table setup Cutting the 1/2" radius Air levers so far
06/04/09 1.2 1081.2 More milling of the air levers. Milling the air levers Milling the air levers Air levers in progress
06/07/09 1.4 1082.6 More milling of the air levers. Cut pivot holes and reamed them 3/8. Then cut a 5/8 dia step .25 deep for the pivot bolt. Then I discovered that I bored the wrong side of each lever!!

 

 Airlevers bored for pivots - but wrong side
QTR TOTAL 24.1  
 2ND QTR 2009           •   •   •