Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

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LouStule
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Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by LouStule »

I've noticed recently that the casting kits from Stuart Turner are lacking adequate material to actually finish the models. The castings themselves are still of high quality but the bar stock, rod, hex stock etc. are really cutting it close. As an example, The current kit I'm working on (Oil Field Pump) has several small parts that need to be made from 3/16" steel rod. The parts list supplied with the kit say you get one piece 5-1/2" long. The piece they actually included was only 4-3/4" long. That is simply NOT enough material to make all the parts-I'll have to supply more. Another example-they supply a piece of brass bar 1" long (give or take) and expect you to make 2 bushings each one 3/8" long. Bear in mind, these are rough cut pieces supplied in the kit that need to be faced, parted AND held in the chuck. The first one is easy...not enough material for the second one. The kit before this was a Stuart Turner Victoria and some of the bolts etc. weren't even long enough to match the plans. I buy my kits brand new from Stuart Turner in England. They seem to be really skimping on material now. I always have to supplement with my own stock now even if I don't screw it up the first time! :P Anyone else notice this? Thanks.
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Harold_V
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by Harold_V »

No excuse for shorting on material, but one thing you can do with success when you are dealing with a short piece like you described for making the two bushings is to machine both of them before parting. In order to do that without damaging the finished pieces, it's a good idea to rough both sides, so light chucking will be adequate for finish passes. Once fully machined, you can part the first one to proper length, then face the remaining one to length while it's still in the chuck. Also, you're leaps and bounds ahead of the game if you have soft jaw capability. You can hold finished parts without damage, and expect virtually perfect concentricity in the bargain. You can also use collets, assuming you have a selection that allows for the roughing and finishing diameters.

H
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LouStule
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by LouStule »

Harold_V wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:54 am No excuse for shorting on material, but one thing you can do with success when you are dealing with a short piece like you described for making the two bushings is to machine both of them before parting. In order to do that without damaging the finished pieces, it's a good idea to rough both sides, so light chucking will be adequate for finish passes. Once fully machined, you can part the first one to proper length, then face the remaining one to length while it's still in the chuck. Also, you're leaps and bounds ahead of the game if you have soft jaw capability. You can hold finished parts without damage, and expect virtually perfect concentricity in the bargain. You can also use collets, assuming you have a selection that allows for the roughing and finishing diameters.

H
Thanks for the tips. I've been looking at some collet chucks. Maybe now is the time?
pete
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by pete »

Afaik Stuart Turner was sold some years ago to one of the later foundry's the original ST company was having there castings done at. I guess most other casting kits are a little conservative with the provided material, but that seems to be getting well past the penny pinching point.

As far as using collets and chucks on a lathe? 5C would be the first choice by most in any commercial shop. Pretty expensive though with the number required and the unknown accuracy of the cheaper off shore one's. There's obviously other collet types with most being rarer to find on the used market and quite possibly even more expensive. 2C would be one example. Today and in a home shop where speed of use is of less importance, ER collets and chucks are probably about the best bang for the buck. A lot of people seem not to think through the the full options and how you might end up using these and buy a ER collet chuck with the correct Morse Taper to fit there lathe head stock taper because it's basically a plug and play method by just adding the correct length draw bar. It works fine for short lengths of bar stock, but your still locked into the combined accuracy of both the male & female Morse Tapers and what ever run out the chuck may have. Every lathe I know of comes with a hollow spindle for good reason and to me it's too valuable to give up just to hold and drive collets. Far better in my biased opinion is to treat a collet chuck just like any of spindle nose mounted lathe chuck and either shop make a direct fitting ER collet chuck or buy something like one of these, https://littlemachineshop.com/products/ ... -421559299 That one is an ER 32 size but others are also available in at least the 25 and 40 size. Then machine your own set true type back plate to fit what ever chuck mount design your lathe uses. Yeah a lot more time and work, but that keeps that spindle through hole for longer shaft work and allows you to dial in the collet chuck to whatever accuracy level you want for multiple parts.

The ER collets themselves can still be an issue though, most or maybe all of the cheaper one's won't provide any guaranteed run out numbers and I've seen checks being done on Youtube with those having run out numbers well above what my scroll chucks and most of my drill chucks can repeatably do. It's almost random luck you might get decent one's or not. There's obviously better such as the Swiss made Rego - Fix but with $30 - $45 or higher price tags for each collet. If I was anywhere in North America I'd take a close look here for a mid ranged price set of collets. https://www.maritool.com/ER-Collets The owner is a Practical Machinist member and all his products seem get real good reviews on that forum. But even using any ER collet size, it's recommended practice you fill the collet at least 3/4's or more of it's length to maintain it's accuracy and grip so the collet closes equally at each end. And to me with a home shop and having a mill, ER collets are capable of dual usage for either part or tool holding. Those 5C's are still the better option for just part holding if you ignore the much higher entry cost.
LouStule
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by LouStule »

pete wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 12:23 pm Afaik Stuart Turner was sold some years ago to one of the later foundry's the original ST company was having there castings done at. I guess most other casting kits are a little conservative with the provided material, but that seems to be getting well past the penny pinching point.

As far as using collets and chucks on a lathe? 5C would be the first choice by most in any commercial shop. Pretty expensive though with the number required and the unknown accuracy of the cheaper off shore one's. There's obviously other collet types with most being rarer to find on the used market and quite possibly even more expensive. 2C would be one example. Today and in a home shop where speed of use is of less importance, ER collets and chucks are probably about the best bang for the buck. A lot of people seem not to think through the the full options and how you might end up using these and buy a ER collet chuck with the correct Morse Taper to fit there lathe head stock taper because it's basically a plug and play method by just adding the correct length draw bar. It works fine for short lengths of bar stock, but your still locked into the combined accuracy of both the male & female Morse Tapers and what ever run out the chuck may have. Every lathe I know of comes with a hollow spindle for good reason and to me it's too valuable to give up just to hold and drive collets. Far better in my biased opinion is to treat a collet chuck just like any of spindle nose mounted lathe chuck and either shop make a direct fitting ER collet chuck or buy something like one of these, https://littlemachineshop.com/products/ ... -421559299 That one is an ER 32 size but others are also available in at least the 25 and 40 size. Then machine your own set true type back plate to fit what ever chuck mount design your lathe uses. Yeah a lot more time and work, but that keeps that spindle through hole for longer shaft work and allows you to dial in the collet chuck to whatever accuracy level you want for multiple parts.

The ER collets themselves can still be an issue though, most or maybe all of the cheaper one's won't provide any guaranteed run out numbers and I've seen checks being done on Youtube with those having run out numbers well above what my scroll chucks and most of my drill chucks can repeatably do. It's almost random luck you might get decent one's or not. There's obviously better such as the Swiss made Rego - Fix but with $30 - $45 or higher price tags for each collet. If I was anywhere in North America I'd take a close look here for a mid ranged price set of collets. https://www.maritool.com/ER-Collets The owner is a Practical Machinist member and all his products seem get real good reviews on that forum. But even using any ER collet size, it's recommended practice you fill the collet at least 3/4's or more of it's length to maintain it's accuracy and grip so the collet closes equally at each end. And to me with a home shop and having a mill, ER collets are capable of dual usage for either part or tool holding. Those 5C's are still the better option for just part holding if you ignore the much higher entry cost.
Thank you for the valuable info. In the mean time, I guess I'll just use some extra stock from my scrap bin.
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gwrdriver
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by gwrdriver »

The model or model engineering business of Stuart Turner Ltd (Henley-on-Thames) was sold off decades ago, first to a UK live steam supplier (Cheddar Models IIRC) , and later to an industrial firm, Jones & Bradburn Ltd (located on Guernsey), who among other things manufactured lawn and garden furniture. J&B were an automated operation and began to incrementally re-engineer the Stuart kits for automated casting. In the process they "value-engineered" the castings for automation, and to remove excess metal not required for machining. While that still left a sufficient machining allowance, some castings ended up too thin in places and those suffered from chilled spots. The base casting for the #10V was notorious for this. The same value-engineering process resulted in raw metals being cut to no more than necessary for the actual parts. The smaller model kits from that era (late 1980s) suffered from that problem.

Another problem which arose was spares. The old Stuart Turner made castings in large batches. For instance they would run a batch of #10 cylinders which would go into a bin and would be taken from the bin as castings sets were made up. Spares were always available out of the bin. But under the automated J&B system all the castings for a particular engine were cast at one go as a set. Spares were available but only by breaking sets, which they would do, but you might have to wait quite a while before the particular casting you needed was orphaned. I once waited two years for a spare beam for the Major Beam engine (to make it a double beam) and eventually gave up.

I don't know who currently owns or produces Stuart engines so I can't comment on the present production. I found early-on I would occasionally need to supplement the Stuart metals with my own materials but never let that keep me from building a few.
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LouStule
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by LouStule »

gwrdriver wrote: Fri Sep 17, 2021 3:53 pm The model or model engineering business of Stuart Turner Ltd (Henley-on-Thames) was sold off decades ago, first to a UK live steam supplier (Cheddar Models IIRC) , and later to an industrial firm, Jones & Bradburn Ltd (located on Guernsey), who among other things manufactured lawn and garden furniture. J&B were an automated operation and began to incrementally re-engineer the Stuart kits for automated casting. In the process they "value-engineered" the castings for automation, and to remove excess metal not required for machining. While that still left a sufficient machining allowance, some castings ended up too thin in places and those suffered from chilled spots. The base casting for the #10V was notorious for this. The same value-engineering process resulted in raw metals being cut to no more than necessary for the actual parts. The smaller model kits from that era (late 1980s) suffered from that problem.

Another problem which arose was spares. The old Stuart Turner made castings in large batches. For instance they would run a batch of #10 cylinders which would go into a bin and would be taken from the bin as castings sets were made up. Spares were always available out of the bin. But under the automated J&B system all the castings for a particular engine were cast at one go as a set. Spares were available but only by breaking sets, which they would do, but you might have to wait quite a while before the particular casting you needed was orphaned. I once waited two years for a spare beam for the Major Beam engine (to make it a double beam) and eventually gave up.

I don't know who currently owns or produces Stuart engines so I can't comment on the present production. I found early-on I would occasionally need to supplement the Stuart metals with my own materials but never let that keep me from building a few.
Thank you for this. This has been my experience also (albeit no chilled castings from Stuart SO FAR), I wasn't aware of the history behind it so thank you for that. I've gotten so that now I don't even worry about squeezing the required number of parts out of the supplied stock. I supplement it with my own. I find this is easier and less frustrating than trying to machine the final piece while holding it 1/32" in the chuck because that's all you have left. As far as spare castings go...I wasn't aware of the shortages there but I have learned to be VERY careful on where on the internet you buy "Genuine Stuart Castings" because I have had a few chilled castings that way and they are virtually impossible to machine.
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gwrdriver
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by gwrdriver »

With new owners (or two or three since I kept track), spares may no longer be a problem. As for castings, there have been a couple of people in the US who were selling counterfeit "Stuart" castings and other castings for UK locomotive designs, by using genuine castings as patterns. Those castings were of course awful and undersized to boot. Neither of those individuals are active now and I'm not now aware of any others.
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by Conrad_R_Hoffman »

Might save things by going back to the past on fab methods. Cut the bushing blanks to length and face them in collets or chuck. Drill & ream. Put on taper mandrel between centers to finish OD. Still, AFAIK, Stuart stuff isn't cheap and the supplied metal should be larger than the finish part dimensions!
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LouStule
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by LouStule »

Conrad_R_Hoffman wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:49 am Might save things by going back to the past on fab methods. Cut the bushing blanks to length and face them in collets or chuck. Drill & ream. Put on taper mandrel between centers to finish OD. Still, AFAIK, Stuart stuff isn't cheap and the supplied metal should be larger than the finish part dimensions!
True but I'm talking bar stock, square stock, hex stock etc. They give you a certain length of it and a certain number of parts to make with it. In the past, you had plenty of material to work with and would usually end up with about 1/4"-3/8" of left over material. That's fair. Now, using a 1/16" parting tool or standard width hack saw to separate the finished parts from the supplied stock is almost guaranteed to result in the last piece being too short to hold and machine. Hence, to the scrap bin to find some stock to use for the last piece. It's just easier this way now than stressing over "Will I make it or will I not?" I suppose in laboratory conditions the supplied length is "adequate" but my home shop is anything but a lab!
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by whateg0 »

Definitely not ideal, but if there's enough material for both parts, a parting tool, and a facing cut on each part, then you can turn each end first, then part. That might have been mentioned already. If you have the material though, that is probably easiest. I would call them though and ask them to send you an extra length for the inconvenience.
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gwrdriver
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Re: Stuart Turner Casting Kits Skimping on Material

Post by gwrdriver »

whateg0 wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:41 pmI would call them though and ask them to send you an extra length for the inconvenience.
I can hear that phone conversation now . . . .

Hello Stuart Turners?
Yes would you kindly send someone out to the shed for a short length of 5/32" bright steel.
Have them pack it up, label it, and ship it to me right away,
What? Well for the inconvenience you've caused me of course.
OK then, but I really don't think it's necessary to bring my parentage into this.
Hello? Hello?
GWRdriver
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