{"id":542,"date":"2010-07-22T13:59:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T20:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/?p=542"},"modified":"2010-07-22T14:10:56","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T21:10:56","slug":"542","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"Still July, still pluggin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calliope #5 progress
\n–Well gang I\u2019ve been plugging away on the plenum<\/strong> and I\u2019ve made progress despite a setback or two. Yesterday I got the last bushings<\/strong> welded onto the top so now there are 13: 3\/8\u201d pipe connections on top. When that was done I started machining the attachment point on the side of the plenum where I\u2019d fasten the vacuum cleaner hose connector. Sure as shit I made a mistake<\/strong> and got two of the holes drilled off by 0.1\u201d. No problem, thinks I, I\u2019ll just flip the part over and do the hole pattern again on the opposite side, then I\u2019ll TIG the wrong holes to seal \u2018em up.
\nSo I got the 12 holes positioned correctly on that side, set up the Tapmatic<\/strong> in the drillpress and started tapping. Imagine my surprise when, long about hole #6 I broke a tap<\/strong>! So much for plan B, eh? Well I got desperate and had a go at an improvised solution. I ground down one end of a hex key<\/strong>, making it pointy enough to sit atop the broken tap and as carefully as I could with my rotten eyes I welded<\/strong> the two together. It took a couple of tries as the tap remnant shattered once more, but eventually I had a decent purchase on the thing and I got it out! I put the initial failure of the tap down to using the wrong lubricant<\/strong>. I took a sniff in the oilcan and it smelled more like way oil than Cool Tool<\/strong><\/em>, which I prefer for tapping all but the hardest materials.
\n–Anywayyyy with that predicament solved I bored out the center with a trio of endmills, finishing up with a 1\u201d roughing endmill. I want the hole to be big enough to get adequate air thru, but small enough so that I can cut an O-ring groove<\/strong> in the space between bolt circle and air hole on the aluminum hatch cover<\/strong> that will eventually cap the space when I switch from air to propane<\/strong>.
\n–Final work on plenum: capping the ends with some 1\/8\u201d plate. I got one end plate milled and ground, then tacked in place last night. Today I\u2019ll make up the other end plate but this one will have a hole in it and sport yet another 3\/8\u201d weldable pipe bushing<\/strong> which will eventually be the attachment point for a string of pipe that will become the pilot light<\/strong> for the pyrotechnics.
\nLatest photos<\/strong> are the last 6 in this set:
\nhttp:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/steamboat_ed\/sets\/72157608281318568\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Calliope #5 progress –Well gang I\u2019ve been plugging away on the plenum and I\u2019ve made progress despite a setback or two. Yesterday I got the last bushings welded onto the top so now there are 13: 3\/8\u201d pipe connections on top. When that was done I started machining the attachment point on the side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,57,54,17,56,1],"tags":[46,13,11],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-burningman","category-calliope","category-danger","category-projects","category-shop","category-uncategorized","tag-burning-man","tag-calliope","tag-shop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nmpproducts.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}