WoOOOOOoooOO!!! It is looking great Scalli, can't wait for the finished product!!

--Fritz

 

Do you spray with an inert gas or just use air for testing purposes right now?

Any thoughts on how to get a more consistent surface than that? It looks like just a splattery/ very spotty appearance? Or will it taker several layers to builds it up?

You really should be commended on you efforts Scalli. It looks incredible; I really hope this works out, and you get some real data and confirmation that this can work for tests until it becomes necessary to get a full setup.

GOOD JOB!!

 

The longer the gun sprays and the hotter things get the more it kind of blobbed and erratic patterns started happening.
After shutting down and looking at the electrodes it was pretty easy to see why. I went by the hardware store after I posted last and started shopping like a madman. It was one of those that I had to kind of make this up as I went along AT the hardware store.
I needed to cool the electrode more than the head so I had to completely remake the electrode collets from scratch Sorta like a water cooled TIG head. The coolant needed to be in direct contact with the tungsten in order to transfer temperature. And the tungsten had to seal so that coolant did not leak in the gun. Sounds easy enough right?

So after about 45 minutes of bouncing aisle to aisle I headed to the register with $35 worth of **** to make this.
One thing that did not dawn on me at first but hit me good when it did, was I need two completely separate coolant systems because... well figure what is going to happen if the same source of liquid is in contact with both electrodes That would have nuked my welder
So in my next test after making the new "water cooled collets" I only had one electrode being cooled. I was kind of suprised at how much longer it let me run before giving me **** though.
Anyways now I have to get another pump to play with I did take more pics but I am at the shop right now. I will post when I get home in a bit.

 

This makes me happy. Cheers to your accomplishment to your next goal Scalli!

- Steiner

 

Here I ran it until it started spattering bad. Once I get both electrodes cooling I can have more time to make adjustments. Hewy was telling me that you can tell by the sound when it is adjusted right. That is pretty much like a MIG. It will start sounding "cleaner" as you get closer to the sweet spot.
But to get there I will have to be able to have the gun set to spray without me touching it so I can have both hands free. One to adjust wire speed and the other for amperage.
I have a strong feeling though that I may have to put this on my AC welder for the best results. I will have to hook a remote to arc manually since it will not tie into the wire feeder. At least not a direct plug in.

You can tell by the pic that the longer I sprayed the bigger the spatter got. Notice that the bigger spatter is on top of the smaller. Obviously the finer I can keep the spray the better.

 

Oh BTW here is what I found at the scrapyard today. The cooler works but anyone familiar knows that they have left handed fittings so I have to get a couple of those Monday I can use the water cooler one side of the gun (as well as my TIG )
The foot pedal for the TIG was nuck'n futz lucky because it was a Hobart just like my TIG so it was a straight plug in. They do come in different resistance so I have to check that before I try to run it. I pulled the specs for mine right after I got it in case I had to build a pedal... but I guess I don't have to do that now

BTW, the cooler was $30 and the pedal was $10.

 

I was going to say why don't you just get a foot pedal to adjust wire speed.

- Steiner

 

Darn my web server is down A foot pedal for wire speed would be tricky to work or else you would have to make it kind of stiff to stay at a certain point.
Well all this working on the gun has me way behind on making parts orders so I got to get to work at that.
I will get back on the gun Tuesday though.

 

Wow! I've spent the better part of an hour reading through the last 43 pages of posts. You guys have some great ideas and lots of determination. Its amazing what a determined team can accomplish!

I wish all of you the best of luck with all your projects, i simply wanted to let you know that our company (JHB Engineering) manufactures cermet coated rotor housings and end housings. We offer 2 coating for the rotor housings and one for the end housings, both superior to chrome. These parts have been 5 years in development and testing and were unveiled for the first time this year at Sevenstock 7.

If any of you are interested in more information visit our website at www.jbhperformance.com

Keep up the innovative spirit!

 

That link did not work but I figured out the h and b were wrong on the link. The direct link to the housings are http://www.jhbperformance.com/products/rotorhousing.php
That is very interesting and exactly what I have been trying to do obviously. The pricing is reasonable as well.

So at least a lot of the theory here has been correct. Some questions I wonder about is how much better are these at withstanding apex seal failure? I am sure that is subjective to an extent but I am guess that failures have happened that you have seen the results?

I know that if the hardness and anti-galling properties are higher they should withstand better.
How about if a housing you have done gets mildly damaged, can you "touch up" areas and hone it back to spec at a reduced cost to the customer? Or does that process have to be done from scratch?
It sucks to know I will not be the first to do it, but it is nice to know it will work.

But I would like to hear some examples as to what you have seen in the results. Were getting seals to seat any trouble, etc.

 

Yes, we have had failures during testing, most of which we had to force to fail.

In one engine, with cermet B coating we ran the engine at 4000 rpm and fed aluminum oxide into the engine (about 1/2 a cup) in efforts to cause excessive wear. We also cause hydraulic lock in another engine by filling it with liquid and forcing the engine to turn over in efforts to crack or damage our cermet A coating. Lastly we caused extreme detonation in a cermet A engine to see if we could break it.

The results were all the same, no measurable wear on the cermet coatings and little or no damage to the cermet parts in all the above tests. We did however break the rear end housing by the upper dowel pin in both the hydraulic lock and detonation test... I've been told by several engine builders that this type of failure typically happens at over 45psi of boost.

We were unable to break our apex seals during these tests but we do not claim that they are "unbreakable" by any means. So we have not yet seen an apex seal failure at this point.

We can repair our cermet A housings at a slightly lower cost, cermet B is the same cost to have re-coated.

Its worth mentioning that we had our engines put through a 10000 hour simulation test (simulates 300 000 miles) about 3 years ago during our development of these parts and we experienced the same results as Mazda did in with the 787B.... minimal wear. We have also experimented with several types of coatings and application processes and found that the coating material and process are highly critical as well as the finnish quality and tolerances.

again, you guys are doing great work! I know for a fact that Mazda looks to the rotary community for new ideas all the time.... keep it up

Marc Couture,
JHB Performance Engineering

 

Holy Shiite! Whose idea was it to pour the aluminum oxide into the motor?!?!?! That is great. If you ever ate Post Grape Nuts and that un-nerving sound like you are chewing gravel is how I imagine it sounding.
But this does make perfect since to me with what little experience I have with the coatings. or at least the Armacor. Even diamond and zirconia have a hard time.
Way back on this thread when I was in the big argument with the guy that had a problem with me making all the claims and not having SAE's to back anything up is coming back to me now.
There was just no way in his mind that this was at all possible at least not without a piece of paper to prove it I'm sure you guys had much more documentation, resources and knowledge to fall back on than I have but common sense told me the material would at least be better than stock. But as I found in that long exchange "common sense" can be very elusive to some people.

I also saw on your site that you guys are working with hydrogen powered rotaries. Man that is an incredibly promising project. It is a really cool day job you got there. I am just a lowly computer guy for a defense contractor by day I help people that help people help other people blow other people up I guess. Gawd forbid that "peace" breaks out

This is very interesting work you guys are doing and I know everyone here has a lot of interest. So all of your input and especially stories of your destructive testing is greatly welcome!

 

To further answer your question, no, there are no big issues with getting seals to seat. We've been testing with various after market seals in the last few months with good success so far.

We also offer and recommend NRS ceramic power seals, as an automotive engineer (with obvious experience in ceramics) i've inspected these seals an found them to be of the highest quality available. We will be offering these on our website soon.

Our engineers are presently working on several rotary engine projects for manufacturers other than Mazda including Hydrogen power and steam power. The rotary engine industry is BOOMING, no matter what anyone tells you. I guarantee that within 5 years from now millions and millions of engines will be in production. As i said earlier many of these companies look to sites like this for R&D ideas and to see what works and what doesn't (including Mazda). The work and testing that all of you do is very important!

If someone wants to help me do this i can post pics of the parts after the tests we've done so all of you can see for yourselves what aluminum oxide, hydraulic lock and extreme detonation do to cermet coatings.

E-mail me at mcouture@jhbperformance.com and i can send someone the pics to post on this site.

Good Luck!

 

I will email you once I get home. If you ever want free hosting, use www.photobucket.com It is free and easy. They even generate the code to the picture so you can copy and paste it in your posts.
You could email them to my scalliwag@scalliwag.com address also. I am anxious to see them.

 

I just e-mailed a few pics to Steiner, he will post them for me (thanks Steiner!) I should have a few more pics in a couple days of the aluminium oxide test.... I'll send them to both of you guys.

 

wow, i had no idea anyone was doing this other than scalli. kudos to you! i would like to get any pics that arent posted as well, por favor.

one more thing...if you have this process down, and obviously have access to all the necessary equipment, why not make aluminum end housings so we can have a 100 lb 13B?

pat

 

I would personally love to have some aluminium side housings as well, unfortunately the owners decided that this was not feasible at this time and the market was not large enough to support this project. racing beat does offer these, what is the general feeling about those parts??? I can't afford a set myself yet.

If any of you have any info that could help me convice the boss here that this IS feasible send it my way and i'll try my best, we have an alumunium foundry just down the street from us.

Also, what about aluminium rotors? has this been tried or done by anyone? Would you guys be interested in this?????

Thanks for your help...

 

Problem with aluminum rotors is if you ping you would probably dent them very easily.

Obviously detonating is not something that should be hapening, but not sure it would be good.. That and i would thing the apex seal groves would wear to much.

 

The RB aluminums are just too expensive but with all that is involved in the casting and machining I can understand why.
I would rather knock the weight more off the housings than the rotors. If the rotors are too light that is a whole different problem. The housings are definately the best recipient of a weight loss program between the two.
But if you did make them out of aluminum and needed to add weight back you could make lead cavities near the apexes so that the weight is pushed to the outer most points of the rotors. That would help against going flat when you dump the clutch. There is always a balance and it is different per application, drag, road race, and street. Whereas with the side housings are not part of the rotational mass and so they are unneccesary dead weight for any application... except for downhill racing I guess

 

They would coat the faces so that would not be a problem. I just see other problems I mentioned.

 

Okay I got the pictures and here they are. As Marc described the first two pictures are of the dowel pin failure, and the second two are of the rotor housing with the CermetA coating AFTER the hydrolic lock and detonation tests. Please correct me if I am wrong I don't want to give any mis-information. So here they are:














The original pictures are much larger than this. If you guys want the full size pictures let me know and I'll post up a new link, I just don't want to kill the 56kers out there.

- Steiner

 

downhill acceleration is independent of weight :-D. i do agree that aluminum rotors are not such a great idea... they are already relatively light, and rotational mass isnt always bad...especially with the rough idling problems associated with rotaries. (just look at the flywheel they stuck us with...24 pounds...yikes)

side housings would be totally sweet! i kinda had the idea that you had this project up your sleeve for after the coating thing was done, scalli.

assuming coating them would be straightforward, i cant see any issues with aluminum housings... also it seems to me that the thign to do as far as marketing them would be to sell whole engines, considering that most people would be buying all the parts anyway.

a ported, 150lb production 13b capable of reliably running 20 psi for 100k miles would be damn desirable to a lot of people.

hey scalli how different is the coating you are using from the one marc's company uses or do you know? did you get the dual water cooled head going yet?

pat

 

Only problem I see with making aluminum side housings, is the actually casting process. Racing beat's price for them are very high, but I think that is due to the fact that they had to buy the materials to be able to cast them which aren't cheap. But yeah Pat I agree other than the price of equipement and casting, putting a coat on them would get rid of any problems with the aluminum getting damaged.

- Steiner

 

Quick facts about our products;

25% of all losses in a rotary engine are due to seal friction.

our cermet coatings on the rotor housings and the end housings along with our thermal barrier coating onthe rotors provide the following advantages;

lowers fuel consumption by over 16%
reduces rotor housing cooling load by 25%
reduces rotor looling load by over 40%
provides solid lubrication at temperatures over 600F (self lubricating)
longer lasting and more durable than chrome
permits use of harder apex seals and higher spring pressures
reduces friction, retains oil better than chrome


BTW, what do you think the market is willing to pay for aluminium end housings? We have quotes from the foundry for casting these parts, if feasible we can make them...

feedback appreciated!

 

I really don't know. I have not seen the specs on them. I got the water cooled collets made. Now I have an extra pump to cool both sides. What sucks now is that I have to fill eBay orders. But that's okay because those are what finances my little dungeon
Even with the tungstens being cooled I am afraid the heat will not transfer fast enough. What I may have to do is have argon coming from the back and plumb air into the gun out front of the arc. Then push just enough pressure with the argon to blow the molten wire into the air stream to accelerate them for good impact.
Otherwise it would take a metric shitload of argon to run it.

I can't use nitrogen with tungsten which sucks because that **** is cheap. I really wanted to avoid having to protect the tungsten anymore than cooling it.
Of course Marc could save me a lot of trouble by telling me how they do it After all it is kinda ballsy for him to waltz in here bragging after they stole my idea.... 3 years before I had it How the hell is a little guy gonna get anywhere when these other guys are beating us to the good ideas The man got me down!