Working towards my final project (Project Daredevil), I worked with Dan to machine 4 flywheels. This happened over the course of 2 full days. For most of the first day, I shadowed Dan and acted as his assistant as we worked out a process for manufacturing a single flywheel. On the second day, we did the 3 other flywheels, taking turns as we worked around our own schedules. To machine the flywheels, we used a manual mill (centering and hand-cranking the x, y, and z axes ourselves). This was entirely new to me so it was great to learn from Dan. It was also very tiring!

The flywheels follow this drawing done in Fusion

Machines

Kalamazoo Horizontal Band Saw. This machine has a few main controls. When facing the bandsaw, On the upper right hand side is TRAK K3 EMX Mill in the CBA shop

Material

1 foot of 1.5” diameter Cast Iron rod.

Tools

  • various size collets
  • keyless chuck
  • 1 1/4” diameter square endmill
  • tap wrench
  • M5 tap

High Level Process

  1. Bandsaw the rod to get chunks of about 17 mm (given that our target thickness is 14 mm)
  2. Bring these chunks to the mill to face (which means flatten the faces of the the cylinders)
  3. Mill the cavity (to shell the cylinder)
  4. Tap the the M5 hole in the middle to generate threads so we may attach to the motor.

Detailed Process

I compiled a Google slideshow of images and videos with captions and labels as I found it to be the easiest medium to work with.