stilllearning's Glasser Build

[stilllearning]

First plate roughed in, drilled out the 10mm holes on the press, starting with 5mm and went up 1mm drill bit size each time to 10mm, as I drilled all ten plates in one hit for a total thickness of 20mm. Seemed to work well, didn't generate much heat and didn't seem to stress the drill or the bits much at all.

Cut the outer diameter with a jigsaw, fitted with a stainless/special fine tooth blade. Once I've roughed all 10, I'm going to clean the edge up on the lathe.

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[stilllearning]

A little more progress this weekend.
After roughing in all the plates with the jigsaw, assembled the entire stack together and refined the edges on my lathe. Had to remove the M8 bolts and rely on the 5mm bolts in the pilot holes, the M8 heads were too close to the edge and would have snagged on my file in the lathe.

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I had been using a short 5mm bolt to hold the plates together, swapped this out for a 5x60mm stainless bolt, which gave me enough "shank" to grip with the lathe drive chuck. Left the other short 5mm in which kept the plates spinning at the same speed.

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I did this on my wood lathe, which I understand I might get a little flak for using for metal - it's a little unsafe. I'm pretty confident on my wood lathe though, and I know the machine well (not saying accidents don't happen regardless!). So I ran it at its lowest speed, removed the tool rest so that the was one less thing to get fingers/tools caught in, and used a live centre in the tailstock to help support the weight of the plates. I started by very carefully brining the angle grinder up with both hands and knocked the bulk of the material off, then used a flat second cut file with both hands to finish off the edge. Worked well in the end - the angle grinder and file didnt "grab" on the metal at any point much to my surprise. I wouldn't use anything more aggressive then a second cut file though, I reckon it would probably grab and take fingers with it. :scared-eek:

Once this was done, bolted everything back together, then into the drill press to bore out the pilot holes to 19mm. Only 6 plates this time, used a bit of WD-40 as cutting fluid and gave the plate stack a dunk in water for 10 minutes after each hole to cool down (and give the bit time to cool).

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I realised before doing the boring, that my symmetry between plates was a little out - I had gathered all the plates back up and found that pretty much none of the outer (rod) holes lined up anymore, some were several millimetres out. This would obviously equal crooked rods when everything was assembled down the track. Luckily I had been marking things with a nikko around the edges of the plates when I started, so figuring out which way around the plates needed to be for the holes to line up again using the nikko marks wasn't too hard. I decided to make this permanent by making a punch mark next to the hole which will be at the back of the still. This way I always know which way around each plate should be in the future, and which side the bubble caps and downcomers need to be on for everything to line up perfectly.

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So, a bit of a long winded post for only a little bit of gain, but as a total newbie these are things I'm discovering as I go so if I write them down and it helps someone else, then its worth it.
Last photo, 6 bubble plates bored and ready for caps, the top four plates will be for my packed section/botanical basket but they're not finished yet so stay tuned.

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[Psykamaholik]

:drool: :drool: :drool:

Note to self: buy a lathe

great work :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stilllearning]

Happy Friday to me!
Got a couple more stainless goodies in the mail today from FSD. Keg is off to the fabricator next week to be fitted out with all the bells & whistles.

[rumdidlydum]

Happy Friday to me!
Got a couple more stainless goodies in the mail today from FSD. Keg is off to the fabricator next week to be fitted out with all the bells & whistles.

I like bells and whistles :teasing-tease: :laughing-rolling:

[stilllearning]

1 step forward, 2 steps backward -

The step forward:
Got cracking on cutting the slots in my caps over the weekend, Made paper templates in CAD and sticky taped them on, then used the chuck on the lathe to hold them while working. Cut the slots by resting the dremel on the tool rest, then turning the chuck manually by the handwheel between cuts. Used the heavy duty cutting discs for the dremel, although they only last about 8-10 slots or so. I'm going to need a fair few to cut 30 caps worth.
Cleaned them up by filing & sanding. All up one cap takes around 10 minutes, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

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The 2 steps backward;
Got all the components made up to start assembling my first plate, started off by soldering in all the riser stubs which went pretty well, the real problems started when I tried to solder on the first cap.
Ended up with way too much solder in there, I couldn't get it to flow nicely where I wanted it, and it just ended up filling some of the slots and making a mess of the plates. In the meantime the heat un-soldered the risers and some of them fell out. Now I'm in the catch 22 of solder in a riser, a cap falls off - solder on a cap, a riser falls out kinda thing. What am I missing here??? :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:

I was thinking of trying a reflow method like you can do for electronics - clean and tin all the parts to be joined with solder, assemble them all together then heat the entire lot in one hit and let the solder reflow between the joins. Has anyone tried something like this? Seems like it might work. Otherwise, what if I hard solder in the riser and downcomer pipes, then soft solder the caps on?

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[woodduck]

Coming along nicely :handgestures-thumbupleft:

First up if that is as clean as you are getting your plates before soft soldering, that will be a problem. Soft solder loves clean, like really clean surfaces.

On the other problem, you will need to expand the risers just enough so they fit in tight and won't fall out. I used an expanding tool but only cause I had one. You could use a steel drift or a bolt or the like. Or you can hard solder them in if you want but it will soften your plates a fair bit with that much heat.

How many caps have you done? How wide is your cutting blade? The slots just look a little wide or a touch close but that might just be the photo. I'm sure it won't matter but just thought I'd mention it just in case.

Good luck and don't let it get you down, we all have these types of f#@k ups :laughing-rolling: nothing that can't be fixed.

[woodduck]

Oh I forgot to mention that i only put a small dob of solder in a couple of places to hold my caps on, you don't need to solder right around :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[GroggyAl]

Keep the good work coming Stillearning. I am following in your footsteps with a glasser.

I have used the reflow method when I have access problems with a joint. I tin both components (wiping the excess of with a rag), assemble and reflow. Only problems come when you have a really tight joint and you have to sand the components really well in order to get them to fit.

[WTDist]

Oh I forgot to mention that i only put a small dob of solder in a couple of places to hold my caps on, you don't need to solder right around :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:text-+1:
i just did a small 2-3 mm section also. amazing the strength it will have although if you actually tried you could bend it off but who is doing that 8-}

[stilllearning]

Woodduck, thanks for the heads up on the cleaning - I have just been using some 400 wet & dry to give them a light sand, I'll make sure I put a bit more time into them on the next try.
On the caps, the slots are about 2mm wide with 2mm gap. 5mm long. Is this not a good size? The 2mm is about the same as two blade widths on the dremel, so I was making 2 side-by-side cuts, then moving onto the next. Should I maybe only be doing 1 blade width? I've only slotted 5 caps so far.

WT, I've been following your travels too - I'm going to give the reflow method a go this weekend, as well as flaring the pipes slightly like woodduck suggests for a tighter fit. I'm going to try a couple of techniques which I'm going to adapt from making electronic circuit boards a few years ago, stay tuned - if they work they might be really worthwhile. I won't reveal exactly what just yet until I've got something to report.

As usual, thanks for the help.

[woodduck]

I'm not exactly sure on the "correct" measurement but from what I found from the build threads and what I did was, 1mm wide cut every 5mm. I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong but I recon that's the go. Not saying the wider cuts won't work just the narrower may work slightly better, maybe. (Hope someone will help us out here)

The sandpaper should work ok, just make sure the copper is nice and shiny with no dark or green spots, dust or oil etc.

Keep up the good work :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stilllearning]

Also, forgot to mention - got the quote back from the stainless fabricator to do all the work to my keg - $400 which I didn't think was too bad, considering I won't have spend any of my own time on it, and it will be to a standard many times better than what I could ever achieve myself. Unfortunately I don't really know anyone who can do this for me on the real cheap so I guess I'm paying "retail" prices.
I'm providing all the special bits - the keg, the 4" ferrule, 4" SGK, 2x 2" element ferrules, 3" thermo, 1" drain & ball valve, and the adjustable feet. They are providing/fabricating the boxed-out part for the elements, the legs and all the welding/hole cutting (I've already cut out the chime though).

This is the design I've asked for(look familiar?? :-D )

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[rumdidlydum]

:scared-eek: thats a good price :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Keep up the good work :D

[maddogpearse]

Why the box around the element ports? Just weld them in parallel straight into the keg.

[stilllearning]

Why the box around the element ports? Just weld them in parallel straight into the keg.

I know, I know, that would be much simpler. I saw the box out on another build on here and really liked it, that's all. I think its just a neat way to finish them off.

[stilllearning]

WT, I've been following your travels too.

<-- Sorry, I meant GroggyAl here. Although I've been following your travels too WT!
The 4" SGK I said was going on the keg is actually a 4" SSG too. ;-)

[maddogpearse]

Why the box around the element ports? Just weld them in parallel straight into the keg.

I know, I know, that would be much simpler. I saw the box out on another build on here and really liked it, that's all. I think its just a neat way to finish them off.

All good, as you were! Your right, it's got some cosmetic appeal! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stilllearning]

Evening everyone,

Been a while since my last update, not much has happened on the copper side of things, but got my boiler back from the fabbies today. Very happy with the results.
Now it just needs a bit more of a clean up & polish, and the sparky to come do his thing and she's right to go. The guys at the workshop nicknamed it R2-D2 thanks to the legs, I think the name might stick even though it's not very original :-D

We ended up going with some square section rather than the round I had on the drawings for the legs, simplified the foot connection a tiny bit, and improved the clearance between the back leg and the element clamps.

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As for the copper, the parts are still sitting in exactly the same place on my workbench that I left them about 2 months ago... got a couple of uni exams coming up that I need to concentrate on, then its back in to it. Seeing this thing sitting there is making me keen as.

[maddogpearse]

That flash new heating vessel gets me a bit chubby! Love the RHS legs. Looks great against all the round in the distilling game! :handgestures-thumbupleft: