Kirkham Skunk Works Sneak Peak :)

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by N2VENOM

David, I'm wondering if you can recommend a good layman's introduction to metallurgy. I'm not looking for something to prepare me for a career change or anything; I just want to be able to "speak the language" and understand what the heck people are talking about when they refer to various metallurgical processes. I have a decent background in chemistry and medicine and should be a quick study. Thanks, Darren...

Carroll Smith's Engineer to Win (along with the rest of his books). I have read all of his books probably 10 times. As for a quick study...it is an extensive field with thousands and thousands of alloys and processes. I was very fortunate to have many customers in F1, Aerospace, and other very advanced fields, freely share their knowledge with us. I am happy to answer any questions you may have. I am sure there are others on the board who are very bright who are happy to help.

David

[N2VENOM]

Originally Posted by David Kirkham

Carroll Smith's Engineer to Win (along with the rest of his books). I have read all of his books probably 10 times. As for a quick study...it is an extensive field with thousands and thousands of alloys and processes. I was very fortunate to have many customers in F1, Aerospace, and other very advanced fields, freely share their knowledge with us. I am happy to answer any questions you may have. I am sure there are others on the board who are very bright who are happy to help.

David

David, Thanks for the referral. I ordered it today. I guess I will need to start another project after the flip-top so the Kirkham engine will have a home.

[David Kirkham]

Drilling the lifter bores.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by ItBites

David,

I thought you were the Engineer... Musta been Tom?

Thomas is a mechanical engineer. What I lack in paper I have worked to make up with books and experience.

Originally Posted by ItBites

David,

If you're not gonna re-heat treat, two things:

1. Your strength, especilly yield strength will be low in the center of the billet. Period. Further, your hardness will be down as well. These may not be any issue if you have put the thickness in the right places. Any aluminum billet above a T-4 condition and thicker than 6" suffers from property degradation in the center. Billets 12" thick can be real bad in the center, but depends on your source a little bit.

Indeed the center will be somewhat softer than the outside. Our billet just over 9 inches thick. We cut the entire bottom end off the motor to minimize the softness in the center. Also, we are using an Aerospace forging house with extensive experience with large billets. We spoke with their engineers quite a bit aobut it.

Originally Posted by ItBites

David,

2. Your block will warp when you unclamp it from the CNC bed, even taking small amounts of material per pass (unless you unbolt it to allow relief between passes). You can mitigate some of this by unbolting from the CNC bed after each or a couple of passes and re-truing you datum (or even shimming your datum). To properly do this you need to index off of other important features (bore centerlines, crank centerline, and cam centerline...) and measure the block again in the 'free' state. Determine the average of how things moved and adjust your datum accordingly. I have done this, but it is very tedious to do right, and at the end, you still have, at best, an average of tolerances and dimensions.

We are certainly aware of stress relieving and the associated problems of dimensional creep. That is why we are holding on to one end of the block to do the machining. The other end is free to move around as the A axis unclamps and repositions. (The pillow block unclamps with A axis movements and re-clamps before machining to keep the system rigid.) Each time the pillow block unclamps, the block can move.

Originally Posted by ItBites

David,


Not knocking what you're doing (trust me, I am not, I see that you guys do some very cool stuff). Just hoping to share some advice from someone who has been there and also interested in learning, if y'all have found a way to do what you're attempting, without dimensional walk. I could use that mojo!

Thank you so much for your advice. We certianly don't have all the answers and are always willing to learn from anyone else who can help. Time will tell. We will see how it turns out in the end. If we didn't try, we wouldn't know. "What's the worst that can happen? We learn something." Bob Ross.

David

[David Kirkham]

Today we are working on the sides of the block with the motor mounts. One side done.

[RodKnock]

That's a really nice billet aluminum dog house. What would one of them cost a consumer?

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by RodKnock

That's a really nice billet aluminum dog house. What would one of them cost a consumer?

We haven't figured out pricing yet. But I imagine they will be competitive. We will finalize pricing by the Annual Open House.

David

[David Kirkham]

[David Kirkham]

There are quite a few long reaches in the engine block that need special tools. We didn't want to wait for custom tools to be made...so, we made our own. Here we are relieving a 1/2" carbide end mill. We relieve (cut down) the shank of the end mill so it doesn't drag on the walls as the cutter goes deeper into the part. We are grinding the end mill with a CBN (Cubic Boron Nitride) grinding stone.

[David Kirkham]

Working on the lifter valley.

[David Kirkham]

Machining out the valley.

[1985 CCX]

Guess I was wrong? I figured you were going to mill an entire car from a block of ally.....

Great job!

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by 1985 CCX

Guess I was wrong? I figured you were going to mill an entire car from a block of ally.....

Great job!

Maybe one day

David

[Bluedog]

David,

Is this going to be a 427 sideoiler block? Somehow I missed the description in the thread!

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Bluedog

David,

Is this going to be a 427 sideoiler block? Somehow I missed the description in the thread!

A "side-oiler" block simply means the oil galley runs down the side of the block. They did this so they could drill the oil passages to the cam from the side oil galley. Side oilers oiled the mains and the cam in "parallel." In other words, the oil went to the mains and the cam at the same time.

Modern technology today oils the mains first, then the cam is oiled from the mains. This is called "priority oiling." Our modern block uses "priority oiling."

David

[Racer_X]

Originally Posted by David Kirkham

A "side-oiler" block simply means the oil galley runs down the side of the block. They did this so they could drill the oil passages to the cam from the side oil galley. Side oilers oiled the mains and the cam in "parallel." In other words, the oil went to the mains and the cam at the same time.

Modern technology today oils the mains first, then the cam is oiled from the mains. This is called "priority oiling." Our modern block uses "priority oiling."

David

David,

Question here. Along this same school of thought, is it possible to drill a center-oiler block for priority oiling? I haven't looked at a center oiler to see if there's enough webbing material to drill from mains to cam bore or if it's even necessary.

Just a thought while discussing this process.

Keep up the great work. I look forward to the finished product!

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Racer_X

David,

Question here. Along this same school of thought, is it possible to drill a center-oiler block for priority oiling? I haven't looked at a center oiler to see if there's enough webbing material to drill from mains to cam bore or if it's even necessary.

Just a thought while discussing this process.

Keep up the great work. I look forward to the finished product!

Thanks for the kind words.

I would have to look and see if there is enough room to do it. I doubt it.

David

[1ntCobra]

It looks like this block is going to be sleeved. In your older thread I thought you were going to take a different approach with some sort of coating.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by 1ntCobra

It looks like this block is going to be sleeved. In your older thread I thought you were going to take a different approach with some sort of coating.

We got looking into a book on F1 cars (David Bull Publishing) and noticed they used wet sleeves in F1 engines. I was talking to Thomas about it and we remembered Caterpillar engines are all wet sleeves too. Hmmmm, maybe someone had a better idea

We thought, "Hey, let's try it."

Ain't America Great!

David

[David Kirkham]

We are using a 3/4 carbide 2 flute end mill spinning at 10,000 RPM and cutting 120 inches per minute 0.2 deep. The chips hit the door like a machine gun.



We have to shovel the chips into the auger while we are machining to keep the under control.