CNC Machining a Small Part

by John

The part measures 20x12x7mm.  And it has some tiny details.

Not quite finished here. Still needs a shaft hole drilled and reamed, and the top holes to be threaded.

The design is simply and quickly drawn on V-Carve. A rectangle with rounded corners for the base, and a rectangle with 2 arcs on each corner of the column. Circles added for fastener holes.

This is where it ended up….

The part is a bracket for the shaft. It locates the shaft in 3 dimensions, so the height of hole above its base is exact.

There are many ways to approach the machining of the part, and this is the technique which I used……

The part is machined in the end of a piece of material which can be held in a vice for milling, and later held in a lathe chuck for parting off. The hole for the shaft was made after parting off. The parallel end faces permitted it to be held in a vice. The shaft hole could also have been made by holding the brass rod in a vice or chuck before parting.
Not quite finished. When the bracket comes off next time, it will spend some time in the gemstone tumbler to take off the sharp edges and improve the surface finish.

The control wheel for the elevating gears was found in my rejects box. It was made for the triple expansion engine. It looks pretty good? Cant remember why I rejected it for the triple. Maybe my standards are lower these days.

There are not many photos of these cannons on the net, and none of them show this wheel. Or was it a simple handle? The shaft has a squared end for a wheel/handle of some sort. So this wheel is my best guess as to what would have or could have been used. Virtually all of the cannons remaining of this type have had the small parts removed/souvenired/stolen which is sad. Some old photographs of bigger Armstrong RML’s show wheels of this type, so I feel justified in making this design assumption.

P.S. And after making that comment above, I rediscovered this photo a few days later. I think that it is the Armstrong RML at Portland, Victoria. Note the hand-wheel at the front, which will be for barrel elevation. This is a different setup from the gun which I am modelling, with the gears within the carriage, but the hand-wheel is similar to what I came up with.

Another design consideration. SWMBO likes the cannon without the chassis, as in the above photo.

But this is how it looks on the chassis.

…and there are many hours of effort in making the chassis, and movement gears/brake/big wheel/riveting etc. and still more to be added, such as the projectile loader, gunner platforms, etc.

The gun and its carriage have brackets which make separation from the chassis very difficult/almost impossible. So I am considering a design modification which would permit a choice of with or without chassis. What do you think?

(please note. this is a MODEL cannon, has no touch-hole/vent and is therefore not capable of being fired.)