Scalliwag

The only problem with nitriting is that if your are fixing a gouged housing the nitriting has almost no buildup.
They reason the first housing was so nasty is because it was for testing and not for use when it was finished. I have been trying some different chemicals for cleaning aluminum and ain't found **** that I like yet.
I think I will start a new thread on if anyone has found a cost effective method of cleaning aluminum.

drago86

Thats a nice coefficient, its only slightly higher than one of my favorite little coatings, keronite, which is ceramic, i think that stuff will work well, look at keronite, would be great for thoose side housings www.keronite.com

Scalliwag

Yep, that keronite does look good. I will find out if my spray shop has ever used it. It would only work for me if I got my hands on some of the aluminum side plate castings since they say it is for aluminum and other light alloys.
I liked where they can use PTFE in the keronite. I would be tempted instead of "priming" the rotors with oil before firing an engine off the first time, pouring some straight PTFE into the rotor housings. I am not sure if any would impregnate into the micropores, but it would be worth a shot I think.

I am looking at financing a spray rig if this works out. I got some input on the spray process and the mechanics is not that complicated. This coming from an experienced spray person that I have "$talked$" into teaching me how to use it IF I ever get a system.
I have a new vertical mill being delivered in about an hour. My wife is going to kick my *** in a little over an hour She did not like my vertical mill or the housing machines I built. I probably should be telling her about this shouldn't I? If you don't see any posts from me by midnight call 911!!!

nimrodTT

I hardly got past the brainstorming stage, I like the spray-on idea better because the thickness of the coating gives the ability to cover up problem areas. What kind of vertical mill are you getting?

Scalliwag

I already have the vertical, it is a Burke. Old but pretty good. It has all Timken bearings which is supposed to be "the ****". It is tighter than a frog's *** (water tight) With a 4" cutter on it there is no runout on it. I use it to cut rotor slots mainly.
The vertical mill is actually a combination mill/lathe. It is not much to brag about but it can do peripheral ports. Right now the spindle speed does not go down as slow as I want so I am picking up another step pulley for it. It's only $600. Alot of the machine work that I had done for my rotor machines could have been done with it. Enough of it that I could have bought this twice. Since I am now into another machine being built I want to knock off all the parts I can. Shafts and spindles will be about the only work I will need to send out after tonight. Except for about $300 worth of surface grinding

drago86

I might be wrong, but i think mazda applyed a thin coating of teflon to their motors from the factory to ensure a smooth first start or something, read that on another forum somewhere, and the thing about the keronite is its not exactly sprayed on, it does use plasma, but its in a solution bath, and it oxidises the surface material, insted of coating it, turning it into ceramic, would be grat for side plates. I cant wait for you to test the housings, i think youve come farther than anyone before on this.

Scalliwag

I have not read on Mazda using teflon for that purpose but it would not surprise me.
There was another product talked about early on in this thread that is very similar to the keronite as far as it's application and alloys. I think it only worked on aluminum though. It did the same thing as far as changing the surface composition to ceramic. As long as you are talking about using it on aftermarket aluminum side plates it will work. When I spoke to the sales rep of the other product (it's name does not come to mind) he stressed that the surface has to be aluminum and does not build the surface.

Scalliwag

Hewy sent me a really nice information packet and a CD with a multimedia presentation on the product. The file was 65 meg so it was a little too huge to put on a file server. I made an 8 meg asf at a fairly descent bitrate and posted it here http://webpages.charter.net/mikeroberts/coatings.asf If you have a dial up or slow connection you may want to right click the link and select "save target as" so you can download it and view it. If you are interested in the thread here enough to be reading this I can assure you that it is worth viewing. There is an interview with a Stanford University professor. Also pay close attention to the oil drilling comments.
The voice is out of sync because I had to convert a mpg to an avi and then to an asf file. The original file on the CD is really good at full screen, but I did the best I could on it. Hope you like it.

Scalliwag

I decided to do a web search on Prof. William D. Nix Ph.D. to find out more about his expertise. I came up with several hits. Here is a link to one http://www.mse.cornell.edu/materials...advisor_9.html
People like this I just don't know whether to love or hate! Anytime you get to thinking you know your **** about anything just read a resume like his to put you back in check! I guess my envy is showing

drago86

hmm, what plays asf's?

Scalliwag

Windows Media Player is what I use. You can download ver. 7.1 or the beta ver. 9.0 at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...6redirect%3Dno
I use ver.9 with no problems. I don't mind running beta's though because I always have good system backups so I can get my system back in 15 minutes on a worst case scenerio.

Scalliwag

Here is a scan of some specs off the booklet they sent me. Note that they heated the material to 1200 degrees F and WATER QUENCHED and it stayed bonded!
The galling threshold was tested in excess 50,000 PSI.
Fugg ceramic!

Rx7carl

Man these materials you find are incredible Scalliwag! If they can be applied and made to last on a rotary, the possibilities are enormous. Although 1200*F is not much to write home about when you look at the egt's were running.

Scalliwag

I would agree with that statement but since someone is already running them on combustion chambers and valve faces I am comfortable with that. I don't think our exhaust temperature is any higher than a piston motor.
Hewy is sure that one of their customers was doing cylinder sleeves, it just wasn't the snowmobile people.
They have been selling this particular product since 1991 so he has talked to more than a few people about their applications. I told him if he remembers to let me know who they are.
I emailed the professor for his thoughts. I paced awhile before deciding to do that but then I figured what the hell the worst that could happen is he just ignores my email.
Everybody else just tells me to run the stupid things and quit bugging everybody! Haha! That really is the only way to know.
During the building of the housing grinder and polisher I thought the machine shop was going to get a restraining order to make me quit bugging them! But one thing I do know is that if I had not had almost every one of the conversations the project would not have worked. The fact I was secretive about how everything was actually going together did not help the poor bastards! Parts made at two seperate shops... it was painful for everyone. This was not an easy task.
BUT! Let's say that I spray a housing and it gets a gouge from a broke seal later in life. If I have my own spray equipment I can "patch" spots and grind them back to good for cheap. So if a housing cost $300.00 to spray the first time, but only $75.00 plus shipping if it ever did need to be repaired from then on that would be comforting to know. I'm not saying that those numbers are good at this point. But I did find out that "touch-up" does not have any drawbacks so it does add another angle to consider.
I am going to try to gouge the test housing just to see what it will take. I will let you know what I did and the results. We will see just how "anti-galling" this **** is!

drago86

i think the 1200 is ok, in the chamber you do see nearly 2000 degrees, but its more of a surface thing, and alot will be reflected. also remember that the housings are water cooled, which keeps everything nice and cool, if it didnt your apex seals would burn up, as they get 90% of their cooling from the housing surface. we see way higher exaust temps because our exaust ports open very early in blowdown period, so the mixture is still burning quite a bit when its expelled at high rpm

Scalliwag

Wow! The professor emailed me back. Below what I wrote and he replied to. I have to let him know the temperatures expected. Keep in mind that he talks about celcius here. This may still be outside of the temperature range, but I won't know until I get another response. Also I need to tell him that the guys at Accurate Metals have used it on exhaust valves and combustion chambers.
His response does concern me. Maybe he can tell me what to look for once I pull a motor back apart to see if the coating if failing in case it is not obvious.

here is where his email starts. Scroll to the bottom to see what I had wrote.

Mike,
Thanks for the note about Liquidmetals Armacor LM-M. The friction and wear properties of Liquidmetal might be very good for your application. But what temperatures are expected? If the temperatures reach several hundred degrees Celsius or higher, the properties will degrade quickly, I think. Liquidmetal is basically an unstable form of the alloy; any significant heating of the alloy will cause it to start to crystallize and this will lead to a loss of strength. But if the temperature remains low, it should be a good application for the material. The high hardness of the alloy and the low friction should make it a good material for your application.


Hope this helps.


Sincerely


W.D. Nix


Greetings,

I am working on a project to restore Mazda rotary engine housings using Liquidmetals Armacor LM-M. The surface area that the apex seal of the rotor seals against the wall of these housings get worn and become scrap metal.

In Liquidmetals presentation CD I saw your interview. After researching your qualifications online I was in awe of your background.

I was wondering if I could get your input on if you believe this product is a good candidate for friction surfaces on an internal combustion engine. Any input from you would be very helpful. I am taking .020" off the stock metal surface and having the surface built to .035" with the coating. I then take it back down to the original state leaving a .020" thick coating surface.

This product looks very promising but expert advice is much better than a novices guess. Here is a link to a picture of a test housing I had done. http://webpages.charter.net/mikeroberts/PROJECT.jpg
Thanks, Mike Roberts

Scalliwag

Like the dumbass I am, it is not the LM-M that was used. I am not sure where I got that info. I have to check with the spray shop so they can check it out.
I just read the spec sheet and it was one of a possible three Armacor products.
I just emailed the professor back and pointed out my fuggup. I asked him what he would recommend and hopefully it will be the same as what the shop had used.
You can't imagine my frustration to have got this messed up. It is not everyday I get email from a professor, I wished I had my information correct when I first contacted him. DOH!!!

Scalliwag

Not to make matters even more confusing, but... The spray shop used LMC-C. Hewy Jackson (the Armacor guy) said that I should probably be using LMC-M though.
He said that unless the actual surface temperature exceeds 1700F that this is the best candidate. M is the product used by Accurate Metallizing on the combustion chambers/ valves mentioned earlier.
So this has done a complete 360 back to the LMC-M except that is was not LMC-M on my test housing after all.
I emailed Prof. Nix back with the info Hewy gave me about the LMC-M. It turns out that Prof. Nix is on the advisory board for Liquidmetals as well as the top dogs in this field from MIT, Cal Tech, and two other big universities.
They are more behind another technology right now that cannot be used on this project here but is very interesting and could be used for casting some seriously bad *** components. This is definately worth walking off the beaten path a minute and looking at. IF I ever did cast anything I think I would definately look into this as an option. There is a video here as well. http://www.liquidmetal.com/index/index.cfm

Scalliwag

Here is a list of the advisory board. Read where they are from and what they do. http://www.liquidmetal.com/adv_board/

Manolis_D

iTrader: (2)

Well...................??? Any new news?

Let us know of any new developments, I'm sure everyone's anxious to know how this'll work out!

Thanks!,
Manolis

Scalliwag

I have two housings headed to the spray shop on Monday. They do not have the material we are going to use in stock. That is okay though because a few activities have had me a little snowed down anyway.
I do a little moonlighting setting up networks on the side to pay for these expensive habits at least until they are self-sustaining.
I had to pay for the mill I got a couple of weeks ago.
I am still excited about this and nothing significant has changed.
Hewy thinks the the Armacor M actually is better suited for this application and it turns out that the professor thought that the temp limits were much lower than they actually are. So I would have been better off with the M afterall.
I was told that working with it will not be much different. The other material actually has a better corrosion resistance which is obviously not something we are worried about.
The little time I have spent at the computer has been going back and forth with them and coming up with the plan at the spray shop.
Since from an application standpoint there is no difference in the spray work I am just getting them to spray a set and I will grind/polish them and put a motor together. The game plan is the same on all the pictures during the process as it happens.

banzaitoyota

Thanks for the update!

Manolis_D

iTrader: (2)

woohoo! sounds good Thanks for the update!

Scalliwag

Okay here is where I am at. There is no doubt that this can be made to work according to two spray shops, two people that are leaders in the field, and one tech from a company that makes metalizing equipment. They all basically agree that if it is metal that if the coating is applied correctly that it will outperform any plating process (as in the one used at Mazda)
Because I have already commited to this I am taking a very large leap. I have the two housings to be picked up from the spray shop. I have decided to go ahead and get a spray setup.
This will do two things. The most important is that my equipment will be setup will have a variable speed turntable and the "gun" will be one the is designed for "inside" work. That is "inside" as opposed to what looks a whole lot like a paint spray gun.
The people that consulted me on this said that the advantage is that I will not have a high center because the housing has to be sprayed from both sides with the standard gun.
The second advantage is that while this is going to cost me out the *** initially, in the long run is will save money in that all work will be done in house.
I am sure that some of you that have been closely watching this has been wondering what the hell has been going on. Well once I started leaning toward doing this I decided to spend a lot of time getting in touch with as many people as possible with all the details. Most are people already mentioned, a couple like the tech advisor for the equipment manufacturer are new to you guys.

So this has gotten even more hardcore and required a lot of consulting and getting my wife to agree (since this does involve a loan)
The equipment comes with a standard gun as well so it is not limited to to the housings. Also I will be playing with some cylinder sleeves for piston engines as well.
I will obviously need to find more uses to justify this purchase.

And hey guys if I can make enough money or get a bigger loan I can buy an aluminum foundry and cast aluminum side plates! (just kidding..... well at least for now!) Sorry to leave people hanging on this I should have got back sooner because a lot of you have given me some great input. The housings will be picked up.
All plans on the first motor is the same as the previous post. The first and maybe even the second motor will be done with housing sprayed at the shop I have been using.
I will post pictures of the spray rig providing my loan is approved. That should not be a problem though. My next "vacation" is a metallizing "training camp". This will be the first training I have had in years that forbids "business casual"!

This should at least be interesting guys.

nimrodTT

Wow, that's a HUGE step up! Are you testing the first two sets then buying the spray rig, or the other way around? I'd just like to urge you to test first before making a big investment like that.