Loki047

iTrader: (6)

Happy Birthday Mother *******. Turns out a woman I work with owns a ******* MACHINE SHOP. WIRE EDM, WATER JETS, CNC Mill. A god damn orgasm of ****.

Lets do it to it.

I just moved a few weeks ago, but I should be up and modeling stuff again in the next week or so.

Zabac

iTrader: (39)

marry her

Loki047

iTrader: (6)

her husband owns it. I tried to marry him but that was uuncomfortable for everyone

Ben

iTrader: (33)

well, hopefully that takes care of that. wire edm ftw.
and hopefully we can make the gears to where there is no pump machining required?

99NBMia

iTrader: (6)

awesome!

cardriverx

iTrader: (12)

i call im a prototype tester! =P

cjernigan

iTrader: (13)

Guess I won't be practicing my materials testing then. Sweet deal.

Agent935

Oooo Nice I'd like to see it happen!

y8s

iTrader: (8)

i volunteer my pro/e and solidworks skillz.

or, ****, when we get the benchtop CNC at work i'll just use that.

firedog25

That's awesome. I just wish I knew someone with a mandrel bender....


Actually, at my last station there was two machine shops, one had two CNC mills. Only one told us we could do whatever we wanted while they were there and nothing was going on.

Loki047

iTrader: (6)

GOod cause thats going to be the hardest part. Getting the spline profile (depending if its even or odd tooth its gonna be a bitch) but then again it depends on the measuring devices he has.

I need an oil pump. Ideally two, one for y8s one for me. Independently verify, and if that doesn't yield results close enough to each other, then we will average the differences and add a fudge factor.

Since these are wire edms we dont need heat treatment and can probably get away with prehardened alloys and such. We did a similar process an axle and it came out beautifully (so im pretty familar with our options)

One thing that we need to start talking about now is who is willing to test the pump? I can test it in car next summer, but thats a while away.

If someone is willing to test it when the pump is ready I will provide a complete 1.6 and oil pump, and help with pulling of the other one.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

The inner gear is even at 10. The outer is one more at 11. Miata rodster sells either both gears or just the inner, so apparently the inner gear is more important. That makes sense, sense, as it's the one that's pressed onto the crankshaft. I would think that the one pressed on the crank is the one that normally fails. I doubt the outer gear would ever break.

Miatarodster say's they made six gearsets using EDM, then switched to CNC mill for cost reasons. They used stainless steel roundstock, cut blanks out with a lathe, then heat treated the blanks, then machine then flat and to proper thickness, then lastly CNC the blanks to make gears.

Loki047

iTrader: (6)

the process as i see it, will be to get prehardened alloy, edm the shape, then face mill it. since he has cnc mills and edms (obviously) shouldnt take more than an 2 hours per gear depending on the speed of this machines obviously. The tolerances on the gears arent that crucial compared to what edm is usually used for,

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Indeed if you guys can use EDM machines for free then use them. Just pointing out that miatarodster switched to cnc to save cost, but sounds like you guys have access to the good stuff for free. If that's the case, by all means use it. EDM is cool as ****. I still would heat treat the blanks rather than buy come pre-heat treated stuff but that's just me. Just so you KNOW you gear is properly heat treated inside and out. Either way will work but that would be my preferance. I would think heat treating the blanks would yield stronger more uniform gears. I would grind the gears rather than face milling them to specs. Maybe you guys can get a better finish face milling than I can. I can't wait for the finished product.

TheBandit

iTrader: (8)

If you need further assistance with the modeling let me know and I'll help out. Good luck.
-Michael-

cardriverx

iTrader: (12)

Id be willing to test if ya guys need it.

Ben

iTrader: (33)

I agree with Pat as far as heat treating the stock ourselves. Except for maybe the first gear, we could use untreated stock just to test fit without incurring extra cost.
I obviously have an oil pump to volunteer in my spare block, but I haven't torn into it. I would be more than willing to either tare into it or to get another pump.

Here's another issue: There seems to be a few different pumps available. I don't know what the differences are. I believe that Bill from FM said that all late 1.6 and all 1.8 can interchange though, and only the early SNC 1.6 motors actually require a different pump? But that is my memory talking.

I'm starting to get excited about this.

neogenesis2004

iTrader: (12)

I already have my billet gears, BOOYA!!!!

Loki047

iTrader: (6)

Dear god no. THe companies that do this do it all the time. Not one off pieces that we would be doing. They sell to caterpillar and reputable machine shops (500+ plus employees). I would rather look up in a catalog and choose exactly what I want then guess and check with heat treating.

The only reason i know this is because we heat treated our first axle (by CATs heat treat division for development and prototype) and they ******* warped it beyond belief. Not only that, there were stress cracks through the entire piece (not radial so we knew it was from the heat treating instead of from stress risers/machining). I would rather pay for upfront for the metal and get exactly what we want/need then guess and check.

In the end we got a pretreated alloy that met our goals perfectly. It was costly because we needed a peice that could be machined. EDM wont have that need so we can save lots of moolah there (no expensive alloy thats freakilsy hard but can still be machined)

Loki047

iTrader: (6)

Making 1.8/1.6 wont be an issue once we have drawings. Itll just be a matter of programming them in the machine.