Hobbies SE4

Here at MBI, we pride ourselves in not being stuffy collectors who like things to come in boxes. In general, we like tinkering with old toys and making them do what they were supposed to do! However, when this particular engine came up on eBay the other day, for a very reasonable price, I just had to buy it. It is a Hobbies SE4 (made some time around 1937-1939) by Malins Engineers, who were to become Mamod on behalf of Hobbies. This was the top of the range engine at the time, with twin cylinders, geared counter shaft  whistle displacement lubricator and sold in a wooden box.

Considering this engine is over 70 years old, it is in very good condition, with the only real problem being the lack of paint on the firebox, the lack of lid on the box and no burner. I'm debating whether or not to make the burner, as replicas are available at a reasonable price.

The engine came with a Bowman loco burner which I need for another engine in my collection, and a non-original extension chimney. The brass tube the chimney was made out of will come in handy though, I've had great difficulty finding 1" OD thin wall brass tube to replicate a burner for another engine, and this so happens to be just what I was looking for.

The photos were taken immediately after unpacking with no cleaning. Since the photos were taken, I have rubbed the engine over with an oily rag (no polish) and it has bought the original paint out very nicely!

Further photos can be found on our Flickr account, which we will try and make use of to add extra photos relating to our posts here.

Further Photos

The Engineer.

Where are they now?! The Swingboat.

Sorry I've been away, busy busy busy! Heres something to keep you occupied.

Regular readers may remember the swing boat I built for GCSE product design, you may also remember it was very much an exercise in building and I never really indented on using it properly so its just sat about being slowly chopped up for other jobs. 

Here the beefy crossbar is being used along with some 6" nails to rewind some film, The bar is currently cut in two and is propping up an organ in the workshop. MBI recycling before it was cool!

The Carpenter.

The Influence of Drink...

Last year, before a BBQ with a bunch of school friends, we decided it would be a good idea to make a water wheel powered rotisserie...don't ask why, it just was! Anyway, with scraps scavenged out of the school workshop scrap bins, a crude water wheel powered rotisserie was assembled in ten minutes at the end of the lunch break. Upon testing the extremely crude contraption, it was discovered the water wheel flung water everywhere - not much good for a BBQ, so it was put away, and the BBQ continued. Anyway, a few pints down the line, and we decided, much like the mine owners of the early 1700's that water wheels were outdated, and what was needed was steam...

I belted up my D.R Mercer traction engine to the rotisserie, and the following hilarity ensued...

An improved version is being mooted, using a more powerful engine, more suitable gearing, a larger BBQ and a multiple spindle rotisserie!

The Engineer.

Open Day Hot Air Engines

One of the reasons of the lack of updates on here was the work on the Stirling engine for my university design module. I had a few problems with getting it to run properly, and ran out of time for tweaking at the end, so decided to fit an electric motor. As well as the main engine, I decided to make a cut away version as shown on the left showing the basic operation of a Stirling engine.

The two models won the £50 cash prize as voted for by the 30 odd other groups on the same course!

The Engineer.

An Apology...

Just thought we'd let you know that we are still here! Both of us have been very busy as of late doing various non fun things! Work, exams and coursework - the usual. We both have one or two interesting things to post up at some stage, it's just finding the time! Still, the intention is for normal service to be resumed in about a months time! But between now and then, we will try and get one or two things posted up here to tide you all over!

In the meantime...

MBI

Bearing Puller

As part of my uni course, we have to complete a two day workshop tutorial, one day on manual machines, the other on CNC machines. The view taken by the uni is to get an 'experience of the people we will manage do', personally, I think it is far more important than that, and that a manager shouldn't be given the job until he has spent a decent amount of time in each section of the works.

Anyway, we had to construct this bearing puller - it's quite a smart little project I feel. The tolerances it had to be made were within +/- 0.5mm - so quite a bit of margin for mistakes there! The main body was made on a big CNC Bridgeport milling machine which was quite a smart piece of kit...could squeeze one into my workshop I am sure! It was a very enjoyable couple of days to spend in a workshop full of old Bridgeport milling machines and old Colchester lathes getting my hands dirty as a distraction from all the mathematics and materials science I'd been doing!

The Engineer.

Mousetrap Car

Some uni work again! Recently, as part of our Mechanics module (Newton's Laws and all that) we were set the task of building a small car powered by a mouse trap to traverse a distance of 5m as fast as possible. Each car was to be built out of 3mm MDF and powered by a spring from a standard mouse trap given to us - everything else was up to us. With CAD software and the laser cutter available, it was decided to take advantage of this, making everything in 3D, assembling it and then laser cutting the wooden components. Little work was actually needed to make the car - cheating I know, but c'est la vie!

Anyway, a 5m track was laid out, with a light sensor at each end, these were connected to a computer and were used for measuring the time taken to traverse the track. A computer program was set up to calculate the minimum time a car should take to run the 5m based on the weight of each car and the engine stored in a control spring...this showed quite a considerable fluctuation in the spring constant of the supposedly identical springs!

Anyway, after this, using various bits of data from the test, and other assumptions made, a set of calculations had to be done to calculate velocities, accelerations and times for the movement of the car. I did these calculations using Excel, with which you are able to produce a rather snazzy spreadsheet where changing one piece of data such as the weight of the car, alters everything!

By the way, after hating Excel for the last 18 years of my life, I have discovered the joy of these snazzy spreadsheets and have introduced The Carpenter to them, who now uses them for calculating information for organ building.

The Engineer.

Bass-ically i finally got back to my own work!

Well its been a hectic past couple of weeks with "proper" workload so I haven't posted much, still today whilst playing my somewhat beaten up semi restored double bass, I decided I needed to get back on with its restoration. So I cut some pine strips to re make the missing (broken off) decorative beading on its edge. I also worked some glue into a body crack to stop further propagation.

I cut some pine to match the body thin enough to bend to the required curve, and glued them into place holding them down with a few dress makers pins, a useful asset for this sort of work. Once thats dry i'll slowly work the it back to a matching bead and it should look nice again!

The bass itself is probably about thirty years old, it was my teachers old school bass and has been through the wars! I recognise it'll never be a Stradivari example but a little work and it should be a charming example showing its war wounds but with an aged dignity.

The Carpenter

Micro Power Generation

With all this eco-waffle you keep hearing about, the term micro-generation pops up quite a lot, but I don't think something quite of this scale is what is meant! Something here we didn't make, but I thought would be interesting to post none the less - it's a 'Ministeam' generating plant manufactured by Lutz Heischler in Germany. I picked this up, missing it's crank pin and piston for £7 at Steam Toys In Action 2013 up in Leicester. I got onto my good friend Phil at Forest Classics who sorted those bits out for me, and while I was at home the other weekend, I assembled it and tried it out. I was pleasantly surprised by it's impressive performance.

The Engineer.

Stirling Engine III

I took the Stirling engine home for the weekend do do a bit of work on it. I planned to make the displacer cylinder and piston, which I got done but also managed to get a few more bits done including assembly of the crankshaft support assembly.

The displacer cylinder was made from an old sump syringe that I cut in half, the base is from an old brass plate I had in the scrap box, I think it looks rather smart, the firebox will be built up under this. The displacer piston is made from some 2" diameter brass tubing I picked up at a car-boot sale. Everything is silver soldered together, which was made far easier by my new larger gas torch which I use to pile heat into the whole component, using my smaller one to focus on the specific area of the job.

The Engineer.