CRB's 4" Glasser Build

[andybear]

I used https://www.boltsnutsscrewsonline.com
they charged $10 delivery, but the rest of the stuff, all SS was much cheaper than bunnings. 304 DIN912 SHCS: M3 X 30 was $8.40 for 30 of them. These had the allan key head. And you can order almost any quantity, not just plastic packs of 8.

[CaptainRedBeard]

Thanks Andy, that site has exactly what I'm looking for :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Dig Brinker]

Haha, was gonna say I saw a flaring tool like that at the big green shed for around $50 the other day. I bought the cheaper $25 job. There's a place called pro-bolt, google them, they have everything! I use them for bike bling :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[scythe]

His is probably a "ridgid" brand one so it is top quality.
Still about $250-$300 tho, and i doubt you could break it.

I have bought a few cheaper quality tools lately, all broken or worn out during/after the job was done.
So i will be buying a name brand next time.

[CaptainRedBeard]

Started off this morning excited, little confused, and very tired. Didn't sleep much, still building was on my mind 8-}
I built a little jig to hold each riser while I drill, and marked out my measurements and hole centres on a piece of A4, cut and taped.

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Now my math seemed to be woeful this morning. The OD of 3/4" is slightly over 60mm. I thought 3mm holes sounded like a good idea, 60/3=20. 20 holes. So I marked out a hole centre every 3mm, and went on to start drilling.

Anyone find what was wrong with my math?

I'll save you the trouble, sure 3mm goes into 60mm 20 times, but leaves 0mm gap between each hole. Effectively it just cuts the top off my risers. :angry-banghead:

So I've already destroyed one riser, back to the drawing board. I've decided to drop the 20 hole idea and gone down to 10 holes at 3.5mm. My biggest concern with going to a larger hole diameter is that it reduces my bath height, which I don't really want to do.

Anyway, some math I've been pondering:
The internal diameter of 3/4" is about 11.3mm. Area = 100mm <>. Area of a 3.5mm hole = 9.62mm. 9.62 x 10 holes = 96.2mm, not that far off the area that a soldered riser allows. So I'm hoping this new plan will work :laughing-rolling:

[WTDist]

what if instead of drilling holes you cut down from the top of the riser vertical in 2 spots then vertical between those 2 slots. making it a square cut out. Not sure if this line pic below comes out like it looks here as i type :think: imaging the bolow thing is the riser

first one like your holes drilled, second cut down from top 3mm, then across 3mm then up to take a square out. forget the white dots, needed them to make it look right
________
|OOOOO|
|.........|
|.........|


.__ ... __
|..|__|..|
|..........|
|..........|

if you did 3mm down by 3mm wide you would need 11 for 99mm^2.

If my math is right 11 will be 33mm wide (when together) leaving 27mm and in between (27mm contact area for a cap also) 11 of those you can have 2.45mm or 2.25 if there were 12. you could still solder onto the top of these, brazing would be best with the little contact area and the screw putting pressure on it. Soft might pull of like the test one you did but never know unless its tried. Was going to try it on my DC but i took the easy way out

[CaptainRedBeard]

I considered slots, was going to do 1mm slots x 5mm deep, spaced 2mm apart (just like bubble caps), but didn't like the idea of soft soldering them, from my experience, the soft solder likes to travel between joints and not so much across open plate, so having all those slots in the way would be a pain in the arse to get the soft solder flowing from slot to slot. And I don't want to hard solder, I risk annealing the caps too much, and I need to drill the bolts through them yet.

I've started drilling the risers. Pesky business. Thought I was pretty accurate on the centre punch, but still turns out a bit wonky.

Here's a progress pic:

20160511_113610-1200x1600.jpg

[hillzabilly]

Nice one mate ,with the riser ,the flared section could be knocked down to 90' giveing a bigger area ta seal ,and need less tension on ya bolts to seal,I feel the tapered ones may distort ya plates over time ,as the pressure is on a very narrow margin to seal well,also on stripping to clean you may find that you need to reposition each cap to the same plate and position .cheers hillzabilly :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[CaptainRedBeard]

Nice one mate ,with the riser ,the flared section could be knocked down to 90' giveing a bigger area ta seal ,and need less tension on ya bolts to seal,I feel the tapered ones may distort ya plates over time ,as the pressure is on a very narrow margin to seal well,also on stripping to clean you may find that you need to reposition each cap to the same plate and position .cheers hillzabilly :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm really hoping that it won't require too much tension to seal, but if it isn't working so well, I'll chase up a 90 degree flare tool.

Fingers crossed the plates don't distort, if they do, I'll rebuild the plates thicker (only using 1.0mm). And if that fails too, I'll just buy Macs bubble caps :laughing-rolling:

[stilllearning]

CRB,

I'm a little late with my reply, looks like you're putting your new drill press to good use :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Just for thoughts / comments, here's what I came up with today, using what was discussed here and adding a bit of my own.

Solder an end plate onto your riser, making the riser slightly shorter than the inside of the cap, same as before. Then cut slots, just the same as a normal cap into the top of the riser, cutting through the side wall, top plate and the solder all in one hit. Should get the vapour openings up nice and high on the riser, so you don't sacrifice too much bath depth. The process should be pretty easy, and there should still be enough meat in the copper to be pretty strong against the nut. Obviously now with a drill press, drilling holes is probably just as easy for you, but this might help someone who doesn't. I figure they'd already have something to cut cap slots, so no need for another/extra tools using this method.

Section.jpg

I've used a bolt that is long enough to hang out the bottom, to make it easy to get the nut on (I've got 10 thumbs)
I was also thinking that a slight bevel/countersink on the underside edge of the plate hole might help with sealing, should give slightly higher surface area for copper to copper contact?

riser.jpg

exploded.jpg

[scythe]

Yeah solder first and then cut slots or what ever you want to do.

If you want to cut a wider slot with a hacksaw try stacking a few blades side by side, 3 will probably be the max before a blade is not under tension.

[Dig Brinker]

Up early and into it, good to see. Must've been dreaming about stills again :teasing-neener: drilling or slotting the rest of your risers? Look forward to your update Cap :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[CaptainRedBeard]

Hey stilllearning. Jesus, you've put some time into that 3D drawing app. That looks awesome. It's pretty well exactly the same as I've built, except I did holes instead of slots on the risers(obviously). If I have any issues and need to rebuild the caps, I'll definitely look into this design. Honestly, i didnt even think about slotting the caps across both top and side edges. As far as slotting everything goes, I'm a bit nervous on it. I haven't got a grinder, but I do have the ozito version of a dremel. I've been working on a jig design to hold the cutting wheel on my bench drills "bench"(lost for the right word). Then fixing the caps to a drill bit, loading them into the bench drill, and lowering them into the cutting wheel.

Safety first sort of stuff, so I'm taking my time with the caps to make sure everything is going to be stable, and I walk away with all my fingers.

With the countersunk, bevelled edge, I used a deburrer which put a slight tapered edge on the plate. Not much, but im sure it helps. Because I only used 1mm plates, I haven't got a lot of depth to play with. And as hillzabilly mentioned(which I didnt think of earlier), the plates/caps can distort under the tension and heat over time, so having thin spots in my plates might weaken it a little too much.

During my planning and research stage, my only thought on plate thickness was the possibility of it becoming annealed when soldering, but because I was going screw in style, I chose the cheaper 1mm option. If* (and I'm hoping it doesnt) this plate setup is no good, I'll just order new plates from A&E and try again.

I'll be pretty busy over the next week, so hopefully I can get some bits and pieces done this afternoon before I go away for work. Really wanted to have this built in under a month.

Thanks for all the design ideas guys, it's truly helpful! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[CaptainRedBeard]

Up early and into it, good to see. Must've been dreaming about stills again :teasing-neener: drilling or slotting the rest of your risers? Look forward to your update Cap :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Haha you bet I was! Can't get enough copper porn, waking up all sticky is just half the fun! :laughing-rolling:

I'll continue drilling the rest of the risers for now, get these plates finished etc. After her maiden voyage, I might need to redo the plates and the risers as per my previous post. Trial by fire 8-} (but not literal fire I hope)

[stilllearning]

Thanks, I'm a structural draftie by day - I love tinkering with this kind of stuff in my spare time. :happy-partydance:

I just had a lightbulb moment when you said you were using the drill press to lower your caps into the cutting wheel... Sounds like a good way to do it, I'm gonna give this a try next chance I get.

[CaptainRedBeard]

I just had a lightbulb moment when you said you were using the drill press to lower your caps into the cutting wheel... Sounds like a good way to do it, I'm gonna give this a try next chance I get.

I think it's the safest way that I can slot them using the tools I have. Because the caps have the bolt hole on the top, it gives me an easy securing point to the drill press.

Keep up those drawings though! 3d drafts of stills are an excellent way to show off concepts and designs!

[scythe]

Just make a way to lock the drill chuck from spinning so that if the grinder bites your not going to explode a disc as the drill rotates and bends the disc past the point of no return.

[CaptainRedBeard]

Just make a way to lock the drill chuck from spinning so that if the grinder bites your not going to explode a disc as the drill rotates and bends the disc past the point of no return.

Thanks for the advice scythe. I'm not sure how I will accomplish that, I'll have to suss it out when I get home from work. I'm sure I could jam the chuck somewhere to hold it steady.

[CaptainRedBeard]

So yesterday I drilled 5 of the risers to see how consistent I could get the holes. Turned out pretty bad. The drill bit being so skinny, bent away with the roll of the tubing, only fractionally, but it could be enough to mess up my margins between holes. I shoved the drill bit as far up the chuck as I could to lessen the flex, seemed to do much better.

So today I marked out the remaining 19 risers (missing 1 that I destroyed). What a tedious fkn task. Mindless skull fkng boredom that was :angry-banghead:
Only just managed to get through them with the 1 marking paper :teasing-tease:
25 Risers, 10 holes per riser, 250 centre punches, 500 holes to drill.
Jeez the slot method is sounding like a better idea :laughing-rolling:

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Then went on to cut up some of the bits and pieces I'll need over the coming weeks.
-3x flange tubes for T-piece, 2x flange tubes for 90 degree elbow, 2x flange tubes for column plate flanges, 1x600mm shotgun tube(not in pic)

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Then cut up what 2" tube I had left and flattened it out for the caps. Got a copper hammer at work that did well to reduce the amount of tool damage when bashing it flat.

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And finally, I plugged in some M6 bolts to hold my plates together while I hack saw my circle.

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Lots to do yet, but trying to knock over bit by bit each day. Might rotate between drilling risers and cutting plates when when I get home from work ~x(

[WTDist]

Just make a way to lock the drill chuck from spinning so that if the grinder bites your not going to explode a disc as the drill rotates and bends the disc past the point of no return.

Thanks for the advice scythe. I'm not sure how I will accomplish that, I'll have to suss it out when I get home from work. I'm sure I could jam the chuck somewhere to hold it steady.

I clamped or perhaps screwed my grinder down on a bench, then i held my caps and slowly moved them in and out while the grinder was basically bolted down. easy as


Try tin snips cutting the plates, much easier than a hack saw. i use hacksaw to cut everything, all my pipes. Grinder for bubble cap slots and tin snips for all flattened copper. Ive had some nearly 2mm thick i used snips on, was hard but i did it with my long nose irwin snips