I spent 30 minutes last night checking over this project as it gets close to completion and thought I'd post an update here. It needs some water flow testing for the plumbing but with 1/4" copper tube and 900 PSI stainless hydraulic valves it should connect to water mains pressure just fine. The stainless sheet splash guards came out ok, lots of grinding though, as I learn to TIG weld properly. All the patterns will need some minor modification but this Mk1 pathfinder is almost ready to use: grind a few screws down, fit acrylic guards at the front over the wheels and then strip down and paint. I'll make some bronze heatsink blocks for use on the inside of the next TIG welds to avoid the black oxide and daggy welds. Counting the 10cm cylinder slugs for the pulleys, there's six sand castings in this machine and all came out fine first time.....going to be fun replicating that success the second time round.
All right the project is finished: it's finally been stripped down, the main castings coated in two coats of spray putty/primer and two coats of hammertone silver. There's a lot of fine detail stuff like grinding welds, deburring, sand blasting etc as well as testing the water spray pattern, a hand etched label plate finishes it and I just have to make a shipping crate or two.
Very nice, I like it I also design machinery, so I can truly appreciate the amount of thought and attention to detail that went into it. Job well done.
Thanks!, there are a number of features not readily apparent compared to other machines which caused technical issues that had to be solved in innovative ways. I forgot to take a picture of the number of containers filled with fasteners and components while it was stripped down for painting.
LOL Yea, I always forget to take those pictures also Imagine all the fasteners and components that went into building my first machine and this is only a partial photo It is a wire bending machine, capable of producing 20,000 preformed springs per day