Greetings and salutations...
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 12:50 pm
So I've been lurking here for a while, added a bit here and there, and figured it was about time to make it official.
Through the extreme generosity of the members here i have a received some 2", 4" and various other bits and pieces (redux, royboy73 and Shiftynev )
And with them I have set about fulfilling my current distillate related dream of a 4" bubbler.
My background is fitter/machinist (i'm more machinist than fitter) but have never soldered apart from the 2-3 lessons we did back at tafe during my apprenticeship
Progress is slow but rolling on.
To date ive managed to cobble together 90% of an RC, 40% of some 2" bubble caps and about 85% of a PC.
here are some pics (lets see if this works):
here we have my initial stage of RC construction, initially it was going to be 120mm-ish tall.
after shortening the 4" outer pipe to 80mm-ish and making up some end plates i followed Mac's guide for soldering the bottom plate.
The i decided i wanted to put in a baffle so that my water didn't shortcut half my RC.
Given that it was so "small" (atleast in my mind) now i wanted to ensure as much cooling as possible.
You can see what i thought was my first mistake of my build.
I soldered the baffle to the wall such a rookie error, this only highlighted to me my actual first error, not drilling my end plates and baffle at the same time.
So previously all my vapor tubes slid in nicely and now all of them were out of alignment by about 3-4mm :angry-banghead:
So then after spending about 2hrs filing my baffle holes to allow my tubes to slide through i had the brilliant idea of de-soldering the baffle completely.
Then i realised that the baffle needs to be secured some how, so i cut a 40mm-ish length of 3/4" and split it so it would slid over my centre vapour tube and stop it from falling down during use, i did the same on top of the baffle plate so that it would not flap around.
now that i had my baffle sorted it was time to close it all up.
I tried using Mac's method to solder the top plate but it proved to difficult once the baffle was in so i just soldered what i could get to by poking a longer length of aquasafe100 through the vapour tube holes in the plates.
Top plate
Only one section about 15mm long was missed but i soon fixed that
Bottom plate
This is the style of drill i used to make all of my holes for vapour tubes and water connections (the aptly named Sheet-metal-drill grind).
I ground it my self and it worked fantastically (good thing i paid attention during my apprenticeship), the centre point stops it from wandering around your plate and the elevated points cut through the plate before the center section of the drill eliminating the risk of tearing.
it leaves you with a little "slug" or disk of copper at the end and a minimal amount of swarf.
Here is my RC mostly cleaned up ready for easy flanges i am yet to finish
My water connections are made to increase turbulance within the RC, hopefully.
I probably went too large on the cross hole, its 8mm.
My water connections are offset so that i can use the braided 90* elbow fittings.
When i get a bit more time i will solder my water connections in and give it a pressure test.
The astute among you may notice that i drilled the holes for my water connections after i had soldered in all my vapour tubes.
This is where my specially ground drill comes in to play again, and and i used a milling machine so that i could not pull it self in as it broke through, not that it did anyway.
My PC was a pain.
2" OD with 4x0.5" vapour tubes.
4" was heaps easier to work with
The amount of solder i've lost inside my PC is shamefull.
This is the bottom, i just ground the vapour tubes on a linisher while turning it in my hand, if i think about it having the points away from the centre would be better and would be less prone to air-lock but its done now and it will still work.
Its a bit hard to see due to over-exposure but i soldered it from the outside, its going to be a bugger to clean up, i think i will just leave it for now.
The top has been linished flat.
2"bubble caps were made and still need to be slotted but that fun job is for another day
They are only 40mm high so i might have to make some more if i want a deeper bath depth, they will do for now tho.
I've got a good design (i feel) for the up-commers i just need work to get some bigger stainless bar in that i can experiment with.
So there you have it.
Behold my dream coming to fruition.
Through the extreme generosity of the members here i have a received some 2", 4" and various other bits and pieces (redux, royboy73 and Shiftynev )
And with them I have set about fulfilling my current distillate related dream of a 4" bubbler.
My background is fitter/machinist (i'm more machinist than fitter) but have never soldered apart from the 2-3 lessons we did back at tafe during my apprenticeship
Progress is slow but rolling on.
To date ive managed to cobble together 90% of an RC, 40% of some 2" bubble caps and about 85% of a PC.
here are some pics (lets see if this works):
here we have my initial stage of RC construction, initially it was going to be 120mm-ish tall.
after shortening the 4" outer pipe to 80mm-ish and making up some end plates i followed Mac's guide for soldering the bottom plate.
The i decided i wanted to put in a baffle so that my water didn't shortcut half my RC.
Given that it was so "small" (atleast in my mind) now i wanted to ensure as much cooling as possible.
You can see what i thought was my first mistake of my build.
I soldered the baffle to the wall such a rookie error, this only highlighted to me my actual first error, not drilling my end plates and baffle at the same time.
So previously all my vapor tubes slid in nicely and now all of them were out of alignment by about 3-4mm :angry-banghead:
So then after spending about 2hrs filing my baffle holes to allow my tubes to slide through i had the brilliant idea of de-soldering the baffle completely.
Then i realised that the baffle needs to be secured some how, so i cut a 40mm-ish length of 3/4" and split it so it would slid over my centre vapour tube and stop it from falling down during use, i did the same on top of the baffle plate so that it would not flap around.
now that i had my baffle sorted it was time to close it all up.
I tried using Mac's method to solder the top plate but it proved to difficult once the baffle was in so i just soldered what i could get to by poking a longer length of aquasafe100 through the vapour tube holes in the plates.
Top plate
Only one section about 15mm long was missed but i soon fixed that
Bottom plate
This is the style of drill i used to make all of my holes for vapour tubes and water connections (the aptly named Sheet-metal-drill grind).
I ground it my self and it worked fantastically (good thing i paid attention during my apprenticeship), the centre point stops it from wandering around your plate and the elevated points cut through the plate before the center section of the drill eliminating the risk of tearing.
it leaves you with a little "slug" or disk of copper at the end and a minimal amount of swarf.
Here is my RC mostly cleaned up ready for easy flanges i am yet to finish
My water connections are made to increase turbulance within the RC, hopefully.
I probably went too large on the cross hole, its 8mm.
My water connections are offset so that i can use the braided 90* elbow fittings.
When i get a bit more time i will solder my water connections in and give it a pressure test.
The astute among you may notice that i drilled the holes for my water connections after i had soldered in all my vapour tubes.
This is where my specially ground drill comes in to play again, and and i used a milling machine so that i could not pull it self in as it broke through, not that it did anyway.
My PC was a pain.
2" OD with 4x0.5" vapour tubes.
4" was heaps easier to work with
The amount of solder i've lost inside my PC is shamefull.
This is the bottom, i just ground the vapour tubes on a linisher while turning it in my hand, if i think about it having the points away from the centre would be better and would be less prone to air-lock but its done now and it will still work.
Its a bit hard to see due to over-exposure but i soldered it from the outside, its going to be a bugger to clean up, i think i will just leave it for now.
The top has been linished flat.
2"bubble caps were made and still need to be slotted but that fun job is for another day
They are only 40mm high so i might have to make some more if i want a deeper bath depth, they will do for now tho.
I've got a good design (i feel) for the up-commers i just need work to get some bigger stainless bar in that i can experiment with.
So there you have it.
Behold my dream coming to fruition.