Production Projects Past and Present
Bristol Pegasus Cylinder Barrel Manufacture
To produce a new cylinder barrel assembly we first had to remove the existing steel barrel, after this was achieved the cylinder head was sent for overhaul in our Maintenance dept. 30 new cylinder barrels were commissioned, 1st op was the rough machining prior to nitride case hardening of the main bore, 2nd op was to semi-finish machine the cylinder including retaining thread, fins, bore & semi flange. 3rd op includes mating a matched head & new cylinder, heating the head & fitting the barrel into the fully home position. 4th op is the finish machining of the mounting flange relative to the exhaust & inlet ports, 5th op is the finished machining of the flange relief & tapered fins.
Merlin Engine, Rotax Magneto Ignition System Spares
Situated in the top middle of the photo is the Distributor rotor assembly, this comprises of 27 individual parts moulded in a vacuum casting process.
Focusing of the moulding of the 2 part epoxy resin, initial trails proved that vacuum casting was required for the necessary integrity to resist 15,000 Volts in service. Intricate multi facet tooling moulds were designed & produced to both hold the internal electrodes & mountings and to produce the external features. the mould internal surfaces were subject to super finishing to develop a very smooth surface and treated with a number of different release agents to find the ideal one. A series trial mouldings were subjected to destructive testing. Sample pieces cut from the trail parts were inspected to qualify the integrity. Upon final release of the proved off method a production run was produced to go forward into machining.