Copper washers

Oct 02, 2005 17 Replies

I need to make, buy or beg a small number (half a dozen will do) of copper washers, 1" x 1.25", thickness not critical, I need them in the next three days or so. Any suggestions? I've got some 2" dia 'copper' bar, I thought of turning them from this & parting off but it's the most evil stuff I've ever tried to machine. I could probably knock up a pair of wad type punches which would do to knock them out from sheet by hand, but achieving concentricity might be a problem. I suppose with numbers that small it wouldn't matter too much if I had to make 20 to get 6 good ones



TIA



Tim



Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service


Are these 1" or 1.25" diameter, or rectangular? Couldn't quite get my head around those dimensions for some reason... should that have been 0.125" thick??

Most sheet metal places could knock those out on a flypress type punch if you had the material.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

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Peter, I read this as 1.25" OD , 1" ID but I could be wrong - not that I know of a source of such a beast.

Regards

Bob

That's right, Bob. They're large diesel injector seating washers.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

Any fuel injection people handy nearby ?

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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oops, replied before this post showed. Still it was a good guess.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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The local man hasn't anything near that size. I've eventually persuaded him to take an interest in doing the injectors for me, but he can't help with the washers.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

Why the h*ll couldn't I see that!!

Peter

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you could try your local pirtec hyd hose supplier

Tim,

Get a piece of normal plumbing pipe - cut axially and flatten into sheet.

Trepan washers on vertical mill or even lathe - >>maybe

Tim

Another possible fudge is to get the nearest smaller washer, anneal it and stretch ID with a tapered mandrel, flatten, anneal, repeat etc

Ian

Tim

I have some 1 3/8" OD, 1" ID and 1/16" thick

Any good to you?

Richard Armstr> I need to make, buy or beg a small number (half a dozen will do) of

bloody hell this lot sounds painful. Whist Gert was cooking the broken leg of lamb for tonight's sacrifice I nipped into the workshop and turned a piece down to 1-1/4", bored it

1" and parted 6 pieces off about 1/16" thick. I'll chuck these at the postie tomorrow Tim.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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I'll take back what I said about you!

Many thanks John (and to others for offers/suggestions!) This was my first thought, but I don't know what the 2" bar is that I've got, bought as 'copper' off ebay, but I was struggling to even turn it down when I wanted something similar but smaller a while ago. Maybe I didn't make the right sacrifice

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

Are you sure that alternatives like off the shelf dowty seals won't be a better bet?

Turning copper, though achievable is a total pain (I've done a few brake caliper crush washers in an emergency), punching is the way to go.

Dowty seals have rubber inserts to act as seals. They are not a crush washer. Tim's application is for injector body to cylinder head joint which is subjected to a higher temperature that rubber will take.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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In message , Bob Minchin writes

[snip]

Assuming that the above sizes are "nominal" then I would purchase a couple of appropriately sized metal cutting hole saws and obtain some copper sheet of the required thickness and then...

1st operation: clamp the sheet to a fibre board or hard wood base and cut a hole with a 1" (or slightly smaller) hole saw. 2nd operation: Using the (approx. 6mm) hole that was made in the base board during the 1st operation, cut a hole with a 1.25" (or slightly larger) hole saw. Discard the copper sheet with a large hole in it and keep the resulting 1.25" OD , 1" ID washer shaped object.

Absolutely right, and these things really do have to seal perfectly at all times. I once had a copper injector sleeve go on a Rolls Royce CV12 engine that was attached to a Petbow power centre out in Nigeria. God knows why the damn things were so thin in the first place, but as it was surrounded by a water jacket the consequences were quite severe when it broke through, and we had one very expensive rebuild including replacing the interestingly shaped crankshaft.

Peter

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