Cylinder valves for triple, and a neat method for cutting thin grooves.

by John

The triple expansion steam engine now has a valve in each cylinder head.  They are manually controlled, not automatic, and I guess that is the reason they are called “false” valves.

The body of each valve was shaped in the CNC lathe, using software called “Ezilathe”.   There is a lot of good software for CNC milling machines, particularly Mach 3, but not much for lathes, at least for the non professional user.  “Ezilathe” is a free program (currently), works brilliantly, and was written by my friend Stuart.  It has an inbuilt simple CAD program, automatically generates G codes, and has a G code editor.   It also has a terrific, easy to use threading facility. It has an accurate simulator, and a tool editor.   Do a search on CNC Zone to download a copy.

The

The “false valves” in the cylinder heads.

One problem which I experienced with these valves was that the thread which secures the valves to the heads, stopped short of the expanded hexagon part by about 1mm, and I needed to turn a very narrow groove in the stem to allow the hexagon to screw down hard on the head.  I do not have a lathe narrow grooving tool with enough reach to do this, so the following photo shows how it was done…

A broken slitting blade, held in a shop made holder. Normally I use it under power, but in this case, the part was held fairly tenuously, so I turned the lathe spindle by hand. It worked perfectly!

A broken slitting blade, held in a shop made holder. Normally I use it under power, but in this case, the part was held fairly tenuously, so I turned the lathe spindle by hand. It worked perfectly!

Just for interest. This tiny engine was made by model engineer Peter B on a 3D printer. It is about the size of a matchbox.

Just for interest.
This tiny engine was made by model engineer Peter B on a 3D printer. It is about the size of a matchbox.