johnsmachines

Today I bored the cylinders on the triple expansion engine.

Most model engineers would perform this task on a lathe, bolting the work to a faceplate or possibly using a large 4 independent jaw chuck.

The most accurate machine in my workshop is my CNC mill, so I decided to use the mill.

The setup is as depicted in the photo below.

The cylinder boring setup.

Cylinder boring complete. The setup took a couple of hours. The boring process also took 1-2 hours.

Of course, the high pressure cylinder needed to be center drilled, then drilled to 6, then 12, then 15mm, then bored to size 22.23mm.
Doing the job on the mill, I can be confident that the bores are all on the center line, all parallel, and the centers all correctly located. The intermediate cylinder finish was not acceptable, due to some chatter on the final cut, so I bored it out an extra millimeter to rectify the problem. The extra size will not matter. The piston (and rings?) will be made to fit the bore.

At the end of the session, I have left the setup intact, so I can check whether further processes can be performed using the same setup.