[Steam-engine] RE: feedwater

[Andy glines]

Its funny that I'm the one who made this suggestion
because I have bee agonizing over doing the same thing
with the Huber.  The way it was plumbed was having the
feed from the injector and the water from the
crosshead pump enter at the same place.  The whole
point of two feedwater sources is redundancy which my
system doesn't provide.  For some reason I really
don't want to put another hole in my boiler.  Guess
I'll have to get over it.  
Let's talk about how to make the new hole.  We
discussed this at the '04 Pawnee Steam School.  I'll
share the method that we talked about.  Determine the
size of the hole needed from a tap drill chart. 
Instead a drilling an reaming to the proper size you
want to drill the hole undersized.  Now we will expand
the small hole to the proper size.  Heat the area
around the hole red hot then drive in a tapered punch
to expand the hole.  Only drive the punch in a little
then reheat.  If we get to aggressive with the
expanding we could cause cracks.  Keep tabs on the
hole size so it doesn't get to big.  Stop expanding
while the hole is still slightly small.  After the
work piece has cooled, ream the hole to the proper
size for tapping.  The idea behind expanding the hole
with a tapered punch is to upset the metal around the
hole making it thicker.  FYI "upsetting" is a
blacksmith's term for working metal in such a way that
it becomes shorter and thicker. 

comments please?? 

--- Blake <blake at little-mountain.com> wrote:

> That might be the best suggestion so far. Why not
> just drill and 
> tap a new feed water opening? There should be no
> reason you can't 
> do that as you're not doing any welding whatsoever.
> 
> Blake


Andy Glines
Evansville, IN


	
		
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